Known As One-Eyed Joe, He Was Sentenced To 19 Years At The Eastern State Penitentiary, But His Death Behind Bars Called Attention To Unethical Medical Practices On Prisoners
John Frankford, also known as One-Eyed Joe, was a rough-and-tumble figure and a famous horse thief who traveled from Ohio to Maryland throughout the mid to late 1800s, navigating saloons, shootouts with sheriffs, and shady deals.
Frankford grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He was notorious for stealing horses and selling them. But he was best known for his skill of breaking out of jail.
Between 1860 and 1885, he was charged with a crime at least two dozen times. When he got caught, he always escaped and continued with his horse-stealing ways.
After some time, the Lancaster County jail built a special cell for Frankford to prevent him from escaping.
However, in 1881, he managed to dig under it and crawl out through a stone chimney. A guard spotted him and shot him in the face. He ended up losing an eye, which earned him the nickname of One-Eyed Joe.
In 1885, Frankford was busted at a horse sale in Philadelphia. He was sent to the Eastern State Penitentiary. At the time, it was the most strict and famous prison in the world. It is considered to be the place where the practice of solitary confinement originated in the United States.
Frankford was sentenced to 19 years in prison for horse theft. But he never made it out of the penitentiary alive. Eastern State was operational from 1829 to 1971. During that time, 80,000 prisoners were held there. Only a few dozen of them ever broke out of the facility.
In the late 1800s, prisoners spent most of their days in their cells. When they were taken out for work or exercise, guards would put hoods over their heads so they couldn’t recognize where they were.
By the 1890s, Frankford was no longer closely confined. His duties consisted of plumbing, plastering, and caring for the prison’s dogs.
Marco – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
In 1895, around Christmastime, one of the dogs attacked him. The dogs had gotten into a fight, and when he tried to separate them, he was bitten. Unfortunately, the bite got infected, and he died in January 1896 at the age of 58.
Frankford’s daughter, Maggie, traveled to the prison to make arrangements for her father’s body to be sent to Lancaster for his funeral.
The prison kept stalling, and when she finally got to see the body, the sight was appalling. Frankford’s body was covered with bruises.
The top of his skull appeared to have been cut open and sloppily stitched back together with twine. His stomach was also cut open, and his intestines were spilling out.
After being released from prison, a man named Alexander Leidsley reached out to Maggie to tell her what he had witnessed when he snuck over to visit a friend in the hospital wing on the day Frankford died. The prison’s doctor, John Bacon, removed Frankford’s heart and brain and placed them in a bucketful of snow.
The case was taken to trial. On the stand, Dr. Bacon admitted to taking Frankford’s brain for science but denied ever taking the heart. However, the prison did not have any records of doctors removing organs for study.
This called attention to an unethical medical practice — the stealing of bodies or body parts for science.
In 1882, Pennsylvania was in need of bodies for medical students to dissect, but there simply weren’t enough bodies.
So, an underground trade for bodies developed. Corpses came from dug-up graves or those who died in asylums and prisons.
When the practice finally came to light, the public caused quite a riot, leading to state laws regulating bodies for dissection.
Overall, Frankford’s case opened people’s eyes to how prisoners and others of lower societal status were being treated.
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