Deeply ensconced within the bowels of
the Smithsonian Institution lie many a strange and bewildering thing; none less
so than a pair of boots made from the skin of a human being.
The boots were made by H. & A. Mahrenholz
(Henry and August), prominent New York leather tanners and shoemakers, who sent
three pairs of boots, made from three types of skin, to the Smithsonian for
display at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876; alligator, anaconda and human.[i]
Left: Mahrenholz human skin boots, The Tennessean (Nashville), January 9,
1994, page 2J; Right: Mahrenholz anaconda skin boots, Smithsonian
Institution, Catalog Number 260769.
The Mahrenholz brothers tanned and
used all sorts of exotic leathers; horses, donkeys, kangaroos, alligators,
anacondas, boa constrictors, and catfish.
He also hoped to refine his human skin-tanning technique, to keep white
skin white, instead of the “light, brown color that the tanning had
created.” If he could succeed in keeping
the natural skin color, he hoped to preserve and stuff a family of three, “a
man, woman and a baby,” for display at Bellevue Hospital. Despite his interest in perfecting the white-skin
tanning process, he was an equal opportunity tanner, who also had plans to “tan
and stuff a colored brother and a sister.”
Boots from Human Skin.
Converting the Cuticle of an Unknown
Man into Leather – How the Tanning is Done – Ghastly Contribution to the
Centennial.
[From The New York Mercury.]
Human skin has at last been utilized, and a pair of boots is
the result. H. & A. Mahrenholz,
bootmakers, of this city, have long been interested in experimenting upon the
skins of sundry animals and fishes, with a view of ascertaining their
adaptability for leather. In addition to
tanning the hides of horses, donkeys, kangaroos, alligators, anacondas, boa
constrictors, and catfishes, Mr. H. Mahrenholz, who is more especially
interested in the work, has produced good leather from the skin of a human
being.
Of this he has made a pair of handsome boots, which were sent
to the Smithsonian Institute, at Washington, for transmission to the
Centennial. Of a pair of boots from an
alligator skin also sent, Prof. Spencer V. Baird, of that institution, writes
that he has they will be accorded a place in the exhibition, but that he has
not decided on displaying the human boots.
He fears the indignation that may be excited assumed profanation of the
human body.
The skin was taken from the breast; stomach and back of a man
in a dissecting room, who had died suddenly from an accident, and whom decay
had not begun to act upon. It was placed
in a solution of hemlock bark and white oak bark, usually used in tanning, and
in three weeks from the first steeping, appeared as the upper leathers and legs
of the boots in question. The soles were
made from cowskin. The boots were not blacked,
but forwarded in the light, brown color that the tanning had created. The leather is somewhat coarser than
calf-skin, and more porus. The pores of
cattle are far more minute than those of horses and human beings, and bovine
animals, like dogs, perspire but slightly. Their heat departs largely from the
open mouth.
A Man Good for Four Boots.
After allowing for the necessary waste, the skin of an
average-sized man will make two pair of boots, including the soles, but the
latter would not be sufficiently hard for economical use. Here is a new idea for individuals selling their
bodies for dissection before death. The
Mercury chronicles to-day, in its amusement items, the fact of a variety
performer having bequeathed his corpse to a doctor for dissection in
consideration of $100. If he had made a
reservation of the skin and ordered its manufacture into boots, he might have
realized another $100. Numbers of the
curious would give $50 a pair for them.
Human Beings to be Stuffed.
Mr. Mahrenholz is continuing his experiments upon human skin,
but with a higher view than that of preparing it for boots. He desires that, after tanning, it shall
preserve its original whiteness, and is now endeavoring, by a process different
from that ordinarily availed of, to attain his end. In case of success, he purposes to tan the
cuticles of a man, a woman and a baby, and stuff them for exhibition in the
Bellevue Hospital Medical Museum. He
proposes also to tan and stuff a colored brother and a sister.
Human Skin in Decoction.
The fragments of human skin now under the tanning process
were recently exhibited to a Mercury reporter.
The aspect of the skin and its surroundings were not fascinating. It was in a dilapidated pail in a cellar
under the sidewalk, and lying around were coal and wood, bits of rope and iron,
old boxes, scraps of leather, moldy alligator skins, and dirt
incalculable. The decoction in the pail
was a yellowish solution of dog manure and water. It is not generally known that dog manure is
highly valued for dressing the finer qualities of leather, especially when of a
very limy order. It is purchased from
dog-fanciers and dog hospital-keepers at $1.50 a bushel, when as above, and at
seventy-five cents a bushel when lime does not enter largely into its
composition. The human skin was half the breast and armpit of a man suddenly
killed, and who had not been identified.
It had lost none of its color, and the identity was not to be
mistaken. The grease did not leave the
skin quickly. It was at the bottom of a
pail, with a stone upon it, and above was a piece of anaconda skin.
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, St. Louis, Missouri, April 20, 1876, page 2.
Despite the initial reluctance to
display the boots, they were apparently put on display, as described in a
souvenir guidebook, and in a separate account of a visit to the Exposition.
Among the curiosities at this point is a pair of boots made
by a Broadway shoemaker, and which claims to be manufactured from the skins of
men. Here are alligator boots also, and
boots from the boa, exhibiting the peculiar marks of that reptile. Then there
are dressed rattlesnake skins, sturgeon skins, and ladies’ satchel, slippers,
and cigar case made from alligator hide; a coil and rope manufactured from
cow-hide, a doll’s head made of raw hide, and looking quite equal to those made
of china or papier-mache.
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial
Exposition 1876,
Leslie, page 99.
A Trip to the Centennial Exhibition.
The shoe and leather building is especially attractive, of
course, to those interested in leather and rubber goods. This building is tastefully decorated with national
and State flags, and among other curiosities includes boots made from human
skin.
Fitchburg Sentinal (Fitchburg, Massachusetts), October 24, 1876, page 4.
 |
| The Shoe & Leather Building, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial Exposition 1876. |
The macabre boots made international
news; not all of it necessarily reliable.
Facts were altered on occasion for dramatic or humorous effect.
Boots of human skins are now on exhibition in New York. The maker claims that he can build two pairs
out of the skin of one man, and that the leather is a little coarser than calf
skin, but quite as durable. This gives a
capital chance to a man for speculation.
He can sell his hide before his death, with the agreement that it shall
not be used until he has been gathered into that mysterious bourne.
National Republican (Washington DC), May 5, 1876, page 2.
A pair of boots made from human skin are now being exhibited
at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington.j
The boots are the production of an ingenious New York tanner, who has
converted the skin of a dead laborourer into fairly solid leather. During the first French Revolution it is said
that a tannery was established at Meudon, near Paris, for utilizing the skins
of victims of the guillotine.
The Graphic
(London, England), May 6, 1876, page 7.
Be careful how you jump out of your skin these times. Some Yankee might jerk it up and have it made
into boots before you know it. The
experiment has already been tried, and the report is an ordinary sized human
skin will make two pair of boots – good as calf.
Belmont Chronicle (Saint Clairsville,
Ohio), May 11, 1876, page 3.
A pair of boots made from human skin is on exhibition at the
Centennial. It is said to make good
leather, and when tanned becomes six times its original thickness. The medical colleges sell them to the tanners
at five dollars apiece. Tough!
The Jeffersonian (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania), August 17, 1876, page 3.
A Mr. Mahrenholz, an American, has devised a plan for
utilizing the remains of his deceased wife’s sister by converting her skin into
leather. He has lately tanned a hide of
a deceased wife’s sister also deceased, and her skin was an immense boon to the
disconsolate widower and children. A
pair of boots manufactured from the skin of this ill-fated lady have been
deposited in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, where they excited much
interest and attention.
The Hull Packet; and East Riding Times (Hull, East Yorkshire, England), June 30, 1876, page
3.
Anyone reading this last article
about his unconventional plans to dispose of his deceased sister and
sister-in-law might reasonably assume that Henry Mahrenholz were some sort of
pagan witch doctor or something, but nothing could not be further from the
truth; Mahrenholz was then an observant and devout Catholic.
A dispute with the church a decade
later, however, would turn him away from the Catholic Church, and famously
prompt him to make what was then an unconventional choice for disposing of
deceased family members – cremation.
The body of Carrie A. Mahrenholz, daughter of Henry J.
Mahrenholz, a shoe manufacturer of 1,153 Broadway, New York, will be cremated
at Fresh Pond this afternoon. The
funeral was held at 2 o’clock, at the residence of Mr. Mahrenholz, under the
auspices of the pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church . . . .
The circumstances which brought about the cremation of the
young lady are likely to create considerable comment in Catholic Church
circles. Miss Mahrenholz died last
Sunday evening, and the father applied to one of the priests of St. Ann’s
Church for a burial permit that his daughter’s body might be interred in
Calvary Cemetery. This was refused for
the reason that the young lady was unattended by a priest at the time of her
death. Mr. Mahrenholz is greatly
incensed at the action of the church people.
He said today:
“I have owned a plot in Calvary Cemetery since 1769 and have
eight members of my family buried there.
I intend to have all their bodies removed and have them cremated.”
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 28, 1889, page 6.
This incident, he said, “illustrated a narrow, bigoted
spirit” on the part of the religious sect that he had always trained with, and
henceforth he wanted a more humanitarian creed and meant to cultivate one. Never more should he have anything to do with
Roman Catholicism or its institutions.
“My daughter,” said he, “was as spotless as the Virgin Mary, and I
should be an inhuman father if I did not feel indignant and incensed at this
outrage. Is there anything Christian in
debarring a pure child from the orthodoc form of burial? Are we not living in an enlightened age?”
New York Times,
May 29, 1889, page 1.
For its part, the Catholic Church had
a different story. Vicar General Preston
said that she “never was a Catholic, in the true sense of the word.” Although
she had attended the Academy of Mount St. Vincent with the Sisters of Charity, [ii]
she was “instructed for confession, but never received holy communion,” and
that during a return visit after leaving school, she told the Sisters that she
had joined a Protestant church.
“Miss Mahrenholz,” continued Monsignor Preston, “did not die
suddenly. She was sick for some time and
died of consumption. She was very sick
for three weeks, and had not made her Easter duty or attended mass in any
church for years. The Sisters of Charity
whom she used to know, hearing of her illness and sympathizing with her as a
former pupil, visited her and used their influence to bring her to the practice
of the Catholic religion before her death.
This she positively refused, and she also declared that she would not
see a priest.
The Brooklyn Citizen, June 1, 1889, page 6 (from the New York Sun).
That may have been the official
reason, but his past forays into the “dark art” of using human skin couldn’t
have helped his cause.
Mahrenholz’s rift with the church was
still open when his grandson, Henry Mahrenholz, Jr., died in 1891.
Another
Cremation.
The
Mahrenholz Family’s Breach with the Church Not Yet Healed.
The return of a burial certificate to the Board of Health
to-day shows that the body of Henry J. Mahrenholz, jr., was incinerated
yesterday in the Fresh Pond (L. I.) Crematory. . . .
The deceased was a grandson of the Henry J. Mahrenholz who in
1880 created a sensation in religious circles by denouncing the Pope and
renouncing the Catholic faith. . . .
Since then all the members of the Mahrenholz family have
renounced the Catholic faith.
The New York Evening World, August 6, 1891, page 3.
Another tragedy and yet another
cremation followed two years later, with the death of his son August. No cause of death is given, but August had
been severely injured at the age of 14 in 1885 with what were then believed to
be mortal wounds, suffered when playing with an “infernal machine” he found
lying in the street.
Young Mr.
Mahrenholz’s Body to be Burned, as Was His Sister’s.
The ashes [of his daughter] he preserves, with a rose from
Bismarck’s garden and a sprig of laurel from Washington’s tomb. The body of his son will also be cremated to-day
at the Fresh Pond furnace.
The young man died Sunday at his villa in Williamsbridge.
The New York World, December 20, 1893, page 10.
Henry Mahrenholz likely picked up the
rose from Bismarck’s garden on his trip to Germany, along with his brother August,
as part of a delegation of the Independent New York Shooting Corps that met
with Bismarck in Berlin in 1890.[iii]
A man of strong opinions, Mahrenholz
dodged jury duty in 1895, in the trial of a streetcar conductor appropriately
named Lawless, who was charged with causing the death of a Bridget Malone.
When Lawless was in the witness chair he said that he rang
the bell for the car to stop. It did not
stop at once, and he rang three times, signaling to the motorman to stop
instantly.
Juror No. 3, H. J. Mahrenholz, of 1,153 Broadway, remarked to
the witness:
“You conductors ring too quick, anyhow. The motorman can’t understand you.” . . .
Lawyer H. W. Mayer, who appeared for the cable road, asked
for the removal of the juror from the box.
Mr. Mahrenholz was requested to step aside, and he did so.
New York Times,
August 15, 1895, page 6.
Coincidentally (or not), 1895 was a
watershed year in streetcar deaths in New York City and environs. Earlier that summer, for example, the
professional baseball team across the river in Brooklyn had for the first time been
called the “Trolley Dodgers,” in consequence of the dangers involved in
avoiding trolleys which had recently been electrified, which introduced new
dangers from the increased speeds and from the electrified trolley. That team has since moved and is better known
today as the Los Angeles Dodgers. See my
earlier post, “The Grim Reality of the ‘Trolley Dodgers,’” https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-grim-reality-of-trolley-dodgers.html.
Mahrenholz made and sold fancy shoes
with fancy names like the “Tuxedo” and the “Piccadily.”
He marketed them to buyers with money
and expensive tastes, like students in New Haven, Connecticut and .
 |
| The Yale Pot-Pourri, New Haven, Yale University, Volume 30, 1895, page xliii. |
His show window was “one of the
novelties of Broadway.”
 |
Fall River Daily Evening News (Fall River, Massachusetts), February 6, 1897, page 21.
|
Henry Mahrenholz knew the alligator
hunting business well. He personally
owned one of the alligators on display in the Central Park zoo, more than half
of the nearly 10,000 alligator hides sent annually to New York City.[iv] And the Smithsonian Institution thought
highly enough of his alligator boots that they sent a pair to London for
display at the International Fisheries Exhibition in London in 1883.[v] He described the alligator hunting business
in terms that cut against the grain of the widespread myth that white people
hunted alligators using black children as bait.
The skins are usually contracted for by the New York firms
with parties in Jacksonville, Fla., and in New Orleans. To these places the skins are sent by the
outlying small dealers who buy them from the hunters. The hunters are negroes or half breeds.
The Sun (New
York), July 1, 1877, page 5.
Many of the skins that passed through
New York City were sent to Boston to “make up into cheap, machine-sewed shoes,”
while New York firms purchased them “almost exclusively for custom work,” with
purchasers measuring their own feet and receiving the boots by express. The boots were said to be popular with
hunters in Europe, especially Switzerland.[vi]
Who else wore alligator skin shoes or
boots? A good question; which is why a
reporter posed it to Mr. Mahrenholz.
Turns out, a lot of people did, but not in the summer.
“Who wears leather from the alligator?” the reporter inquired
of Mr. Henry Mahrenholz.
“Who wears that leather now? No one can. There’s a pair of shoes I just kicked
off. It’s too hot to wear alligator
now. I’ll show you why;” and the
proprietor picked up a scaly piece of leather and deftly sliced off a slab
horizontally. “You see the hide is built up in horizontal layers that make it
impervious to water. You know that
ordinary leather is porous because of the sweat pores in all animals from which
it is made. But the alligator does not
sweat. His hide is made yet more
thoroughly waterproof by an extraordinarily severe process of tanning.”
“Then,” the reporter suggested, “hunters and fishermen, of
course, prefer alligator hide in their boots?”
“Certainly; and none more than those who hunt in Florida and
shoot eht reptiles,” Mr. Mahrenholz replied. . . . .
“If none but hunters and fishermen wear them now, who wears
them at other seasons?” . . .
“Some wear them for show and others for use. Dandies used to affect them, because they
were a novelty, and were high-priced, something that not every body could
imitate. But there’s a better use for
alligator’s hide than to clothe a fop’s foot with it,” he continued . . . “They
are in high favor with gouty people. You
know gouty feet must e kept free from the slightest moisture. If not – twinge!
“Many persons can not wear rubber overshoes. They are not required with these boots. But the strangest thing about the stuff is
that the older it is the softer it becomes.
You wouldn’t think that true, would you?” and he glanced up at a picture
of a long, scaly alligator in the act of swallowing a pickaninny. “Yes, they’re good for tender feet, too,” he
mused. “Ladies have taken a great fancy
of late for fine boots of alligator hide.”
And Mr. Mahrenholz showed how one horny fore claw went over the top of a
lady’s foot and the hind claw enclosed the heel.”
The Sun (New
York), June 10, 1877, page 3.
The picture on his wall of the
alligator “in the act of swallowing a pickaninny” (an archaic expression for a
young, black child) is related to an old myth that alligators preferred to eat
people with darker skin, and is a forerunner of another archaic expression
referring to black children, “alligator bait.”
Read more about the history of
that myth and the idiom “alligator bait” at the Early Sports ‘n’ Pop-Culture
History Blog’s earlier post, “Live Human ‘Alligator Bait’ – Fact
or Fiction at https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2020/04/live-human-alligator-bait-fact-or.html.
[i] “,
Additions to the Collection,” Annual
Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for the year 1876,
Washington, Government Printing Office, 1877, page 96 (“Mahrenholz, H. &
A., New York. Three pairs of boots made
of alligator, anaconda, and human skin, respectively.”).
[ii]
“The Convent of Central Park and a Famous Revolutionary War Site,”
BoweryBoysHistory.com. https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2015/08/the-convent-of-central-park-and-a-famous-revolutionary-war-site.html
[iii] Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1890, page 5.
[iv] The Sun (New York), July 1, 1877, page
5.
[v] Descriptive Catalogues of the Collectinos
Sent from the United States to the Internatinoal Fisheries Exhibition, London,
1883, Washington DC, Government Printing Office, 1884.
[vi] The Sun (New York), July 1, 1877, page
5.
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