National Affairs: Collins’ Corpse

He “owned” the front pages of U. S. pages for almost two weeks in February, 1924. The name of Floyd Collins then was almost as famed as the name of Charles Augustus Lindbergh today. Trapped in an underground Kentucky cave, he remained imprisoned for 15 days while rescue parties and feature-writers thronged the vicinity. Eventually he was taken out, dead. Then newspaper compositors set up new names for their headlines and except for a maudlin phonograph record entitled The Death of Floyd Collins the unfortunate Collins was forgotten.

Last week, however, the press again carried his name in a somewhat ghoulish aftermath of his ill fortune. One Dr. Harry Thomas, owner of the cave in which Collins had died, had his body exhumed from its burial vault, planned to place it on exhibition to give the cave an “added attraction” for visiting tourists. Placards were printed advertising the corpse, a busy Sunday was anticipated. Angered, brothers of the dead man sought legal advice in an attempt to prevent the exhibition. But Mrs. Harry Thomas pointed out that when Dr. Thomas purchased the cave from the Collins family, the body was included in the deed as an accessory in the transfer. Thus it seemed that cave-tourists could gape, gabble, shiver, shudder at will.