Observations

Physically they are for the most part in quite good condition and are not more than a bit dusty. Most of the "interesting" files dealing with homicides, drug abuse and auto accidents are missing, although a few car accidents and drug-related deaths remain. I am uncertain what the requirement is for those cases that went into the "drug file." In many but not all of the missing homicide, auto and drug files some details can be determined based on the empty folder; the decedent's name is available, and occasionally gender. Some references to referrals or specific tests that were run are also listed.

The remaining files are a mixture of accidental death and suicides. The information available varies depending on the manner of death but can include birth as well as death information, photos, the medical examiner's autopsy report, and letters from decedent's insurance companies, employers or relatives. The coroner's inquest forms also state the type of cases upon which inquests must be held, including fetal deaths, and therefore some fetal deaths are present.

Some apparently extraneous information is also available more by accident than design; for example, when the Coroner Hunt was running for county commissioner, the back of some of his fliers were apparently used to type up the medical examiner's findings for one case. Another case contains a copy of a memo referring to a state police examination of statewide auto accidents and the cases which the police ought to be called in to examine which, presumably, might otherwise be left to local authorities.

The number of work related accidents is limited, particularly compared to the 1900s-era files.

During the 1960s section of this internship it was interesting to document the multitude of different statistics ranging from types of deaths and occupations. One statistic that I noticed early on in my investigation were the occupations listed on each case file. Out of the countless numbers of case files that I came across the most common occupation for women above the age of twenty was housewife. I found it very interesting that some of the terms they would use to describe a woman that was not involved in the business world, such as, house duties or would simply list ‘home.’ I began to keep track of the women that had professions and in 1966 I only came across six women with professions such as: teacher, waitress, buyer, electric inspector, nurse and restaurant owner. Something that I found very interesting about these six women that decided to break into the workforce was that three of them committed suicides. As I moved out of the 1960s and broke in 1970 I found a large increase of women taking jobs outside the home. In 1970 alone I documented twenty women with jobs such as waitress, teacher, telephone operator, secretary, and store clerk.

While these records deal with the deaths of citizens of the Pittsburgh region, each file provides a concentrated look into the deceased life, painting a specific picture of the time period. Many of the files are barely distinguishable from one another: “arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease” is a phrase that has become as recognizable as “cheese sandwich”. The biggest question quickly became which files to pay closer attention to, so as not to get bogged down with countless heart attacks. The cataloging of the cause of death on the file folder gives a very general idea about what type of death. For example deaths classified as ‘natural’ are not terribly exciting as most of the decedents are extremely old. Glancing first at the type of death followed by the decedent’s age and then depending on those two factors the more specific cause of death and coroners report, which details the scene. These portions of the files give the most information in a concentrated area.

Some of the more interesting files have had small personal tokens that give some clue as to what the person’s life or death was like. For example, many of the suicide files include the suicide note left by the decedent. In addition I have come across a butcher’s union carrying card, two bullets, one removed from a suicide victim’s head, the other from a man’s sternum (complete with a fragment of his sternum). An interesting inclusion to one file was the box from cough syrup, which dated the file with the fact that at this point they were still including a large amount of hydrocodene in the ingredients (something that no longer is included in cough syrup as it has proven to be addictive). Small tokens such as these make sorting through the files anything but tedious.

A box from 1970 included a surprising amount of files that included photographs from the scene. Previous boxes had only included photos from industrial accidents that documented blast furnace explosions and property damage of that nature. However, this particular box included photographs of a steel worker’s head after being struck by a giant hook used for hoisting steel beams. Other files included pictures of a man whose cause of death was “asphyxiation by strangulation, plastic bag over the head” in which detailed photos showed bruising around the thorax and neck. Yet another file included a series of photographs from an autopsy that had several pictures of the man’s intestinal track laid out on the table. The graphic nature of these photos was a little bit jarring, but also brought the cases back to reality instead of keeping them at a distance where each file simply needed to be processed instead of explored.

I very nearly missed one of the more interesting photographs. The case included all of the normal procedural documents along with some newspaper clippings. The article included was of an engagement announcement of the decedent to a young woman, both individuals finishing their college degrees before marriage. After reading the article I assumed it was the case file for the young woman, so I read the case report from the coroner to learn what ‘accidental’ tragedy had befallen her. Oddly enough the deceased was her fiancée and was found in his apartment (which had been locked from the inside), hanging about 10 feet from the front door by a rope. His body was clad in women’s clothing (complete with go-go boots and mini skirt as indicated by the receiving record of personal effects), and wrapped with gold chain link. The cause of death was ruled accidental asphyxiation due to strangulation. It is in cases like this that I feel as though I have gained a small piece of insight into the lifestyle of the decedent.

In suicide cases some files give such a complete picture of the scene and the decedent’s thoughts that it is a little unsettling. For example one of the first suicide cases I came across detailed the several hours leading up to the man shooting himself in the head with a revolver. After locking his son in his bedroom the man went to the basement, scrawled a note apologizing to the son, and informing his wife that he was terribly unhappy, in debt, and unable to see another solution. The son broke out of his room soon after he heard the gun shot and found his father slumped over on the couch and had apparently used his foot hooked onto a coat hanger to pull the trigger. Several telephone numbers and small doodles were written on the back of the note as it appeared to be a piece of scratch paper.

Another case involved a woman who died of asphyxiation due to a plastic bag being over her head. The note she left said roughly ‘I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience that cleaning up my body may cause any one. I just didn’t feel as though I had much to offer any more. If it’s not too much trouble could you please make sure my remains are donated to the Pitt medical school so that I can be of use to someone. Thank you.’

The last box I came across was completely different from the traditional filing system it was an assortment of still born and fetal deaths all stuck into one folder and then a series of maybe 6 folders that were no jurisdiction cases separated by months. These generally only had the Coroner’s report included and were not separated individually. I’m not entirely sure why this box was organized (or not organized) in this manner as it seemed that it would be extremely difficult to locate any file in particular. However, I suspect that there was some sort of reasoning behind grouping these cases in such a way, it was just not described in any way within the files.

Before explaining the interesting files the natural causes of death deserve some attention. Those that died of natural causes during the 1960’s were between the ages of 60 to 80. More being toward the sixty- to- seventy ranges then the eighties. These people mostly died from heart attacks or simply states they did not feel well went to lay down and never woke up again. A number of others passed away at hospitals after being ill for a while but I found that majority of people did not know they were sick and were not receiving treatment from a doctor. Now, to take a look at some of the interesting coroner files.

A few files I looked out stood out to me among them were a number of industrial accidents, suicides, and one is something a person would only think to see on television. I had a few industrial accidents that involved men falling into a vat of acid and dying from the severe burns that acid can cause. Other industrial accidents involved people being struck by falling objects and dying from the head trauma. Suicide is never an interesting topic; no matter how it is distorted, it is always a sad thing. I found a number of suicide notes that instructed their loved ones what to do afterwards, but I found it odd that the majority of them did not give a definite reason as to why they would kill themselves. It seemed that the method most often used to commit suicide was carbon monoxide poisoning. I deduce this is because it is painless, most often the person will just fall asleep never to wake again. One particular person to do this did so in her garage while her three sons were still in the house. The mother did not take into account that the gas would penetrate through the house and also kill her sons. Reading this file made me extremely sad to think that someone was so unhappy and desperate that she neglected to think of all the possibilities in doing so and took the lives of her children as a consequence.

To move off of this topic one file I read actually had a man die during the act of intercourse. He was a relatively young man in his early 30s and according to his wife they were in the act when he began to breath really hard and suddenly collapse on top of her. At first she mistook this as him climaxing but soon she realized what had occurred. Another file had a boy about 14 die from electrocution when he was swimming at a friend’s house and had a radio out on the deck with the wire hanging over a metal fence. When the boy got out of the pool to play with the dog he was still dripping wet and grasped the fence causing him to be electrocuted. In addition to these files I found a number of automobile accidents that did not have information on them. As I got later into the 60s I noticed files started to be labeled as drug files, this was towards 1968-1969.

One of the things that stood out was the fact that a lot of elderly people who died during this time period died without ever going to see a doctor.  Most had no medical history the same rang true for some younger people.  I believe this is due to the fact that doctor fees where very expensive and so where the medications one needed when sick. And since Medicare would not become a reality until the mid- 1970’s it was hard for some elderly to afford all of there bills.

Suicide was another occurrence that I found was a little high especially with young men in their early to mid twenties. In a few files I noticed that these young men who dint seem to have anything wrong with them were committing suicide, but even more stranger was the fact that an overwhelming amount of them used the same method.  By running a tube, from the tailpipe of their vehicles, into the windows, and asphyxiating themselves. One of the gentlemen wrote a suicide note that was one of the most touching and articulate writings I have ever read. He seemed like he had so much ahead of him but he couldn’t handle life. While it did not say that these men were in Vietnam it is my strong belief that these men were veterans who could not deal with civilian life.  And the manor in which they chose to end there lives could have had something to do with keeping there bodies in tact for burial because of family and such.

As I mentioned in some of my notes, one specific aspect of the records I noticed from the 1960s was that medical science allowed many people to live to a certain point, only eventually to succumb to natural deaths or accidental falls in the home. One specific case I found fairly interesting was a case where a 56-year-old woman died on the operation table due to uncontrolled bleeding from an open heart surgery. During this time period, open heart surgery was still a relatively new operation that could be performed with some certainty. Another incident (196610_167) details the failure of the replacement of an artery in a 43 year old male’s heart. The first actual open heart surgery occurred in 1892, but the first open heart surgery under anesthesia occurred in 1952 at the University of Minnesota. New and new techniques are always being perfected, and today open heart surgery is a normal, if still somewhat serious, surgery. The fact that open-heart surgery was a new procedure ten years before this record point more to the fact that medical science could still only do so much during this time period. We take for granted what doctors can do today, and as little as 40 years ago this was still a very dangerous procedure.

Heart attacks were also a common occurrence as I mentioned early, but one specific case from 1966 detailed a case where a man died onboard a flight from Dayton, Ohio to Pittsburgh. Immediately I was curious as to when defibrillators became a common occurrence on airplanes, since today this type of situation could have been avoided. According to my research defibrillators weren’t added to planes until the late 80s early 90s, and only then because they were able to miniaturize and perfect the technology enough so that anyone could use it. Once again medical technology needed a while to catch up, and 40 years later we once again take these types of devices for granted as if they always existed. What would life be like for us and our loved ones only 40 years ago? In direct opposition to this information though, another specific case documents a 105-year-old woman dying from a fall down the stairs in her home. It’s interesting to note that for some people it just seems like random luck how long they live, and if this woman wouldn’t have fallen down the stairs she might have lived even longer before death from natural causes claimed her. As our generation of older adults get older and older who knows what the limits of mortality can become.

Files containing of suicides from the time period generally contained many of the actual suicide notes within them, but few had photos of the actual scenes. Many people tended to kill themselves by gunshot or hanging themselves, like many of the cases today. There were relatively suicides by overdose, which was interesting to note since I’m sure many people look at the 60s stereotypically as a big time for drug use in general. More so than any other form of death besides natural causes, it seems as if death by suicide came up much more often than any other form of death in the 1960s. I’m not exactly sure why this is but I seem to think that for the most part this was just due to the random files I received individually as an intern. Beyond the amount of suicides, it was very interesting to notice the mindset of those about to end their lives, mainly through their suicide notes. For anyone above the age of 50 who left a suicide note, almost 100 percent of them detailed how they could not deal with the pain of whatever was going on in their lives (chronic illness, disease, family issues) and had decided to end it. This seems fairly normal, but most surprising was the amount of suicide notes that ended by mentioning to whoever found the note to “Make sure the gas and electric is shut off”. I was amazed that with suicide after suicide, almost every single one ended with some form of line like this. Did people really care the most about making sure their relatives wouldn’t have to pay bills instead of, I don’t know, staying alive? Did these people committing suicide care less about how their death would impact their loved ones than their bills being paid? It amazes me that this mindset was so prevalent during the time period. I couldn’t really find any information on suicide letters from today and if this type of thing is still common, since we didn’t examine any records from modern times. However, the fact that this happened so much really shocked me.