Way, way back, Boston 1775 stumbled into the seemingly bottomless topic of Dr. Joseph Warren’s body. After the doctor was killed at Bunker Hill, the British forces put his body in a shared grave, and then after the siege of Boston—on 4 Apr 1776, in fact—the Americans dug him up again. At other times people claimed, apparently without foundation, that his corpse had been mutilated and that they were bringing the fatal bullet back to Boston.
Derek W. Beck was seeking information about Warren for his manuscript 1775. Another reader alerted me to a report of the Warren family taking photographs of their collateral ancestor’s skull, and eventually Derek found reproductions of those photos. Go to Derek’s blog today for a third image and more analysis.
Physicians, including Warren’s brother John, examined this skull in some detail in 1776 to be sure the body was actually his; eventually Paul Revere identified his dental work. William H. Sumner later described seeing the remains:
the skull was perforated by a musket ball in the upper part of the head, in such a place, as I am informed by professional gentlemen, would probably have produced sudden, though it might not instant death.“The upper part of the head” suggests the larger hole in the back, rather than the smaller one below the left eye. Sumner, not being a “professional gentleman,” or doctor, might have mistaken that larger hole for an entry wound rather than an exit wound, and thus become the source of mid-1800s statements that the British had shot Warren from behind.