Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

This column is brought to you by the letters G and N.

Since its construction in 1852, the old jail on Church Street has contributed to our history in a very big way. Many of our local sheriffs lived there. I’ve written repeatedly about people who were locked up there, died there, escaped (or tried to), went crazy in the cells, and even one guy who kept trying to break back in after being released.

For some reason, the old jail never seems to run out of stories. It’s the gift that keeps on giving for my columns. So here’s one more, about a man who only had initials.

September 28, 1931. The story hit the front page of the local newspapers: “Unknown Is Victim of Heart Disease Dies In City Cell.” That basically summed it up, but the sheer, stubborn anonymity of the man made it a bit more interesting.

Patrolman Barton Brown was awake at about two-thirty in the morning, doing his job, when he was told by one prisoner that there was something wrong with the man in the next cell over. Brown had apparently never seen the many TV shows, movies, and novels that utilize the “my fellow prisoner is sick” method of escaping, so he reported it to Chief O.D. Beck, who sent over Patrolman George Webb to check.

Webb found that the prisoner had been dead for a couple of hours by that point, which was not the only time that had ever happened in that jail. So he called the coroner, W.J. Shoemaker, who got there by four AM and checked the body over. He declared that the man had died of angina pectoris, or “something kind of wrong with his heart.” (Stop me if the medical terminology is too complicated for you.)

Normally in these situations, procedure is to contact the next of kin. But that was complicated by the fact that, essentially, there wasn’t one available. Nobody knew who the man was.

There were clues. He was short and very slim, and his clothes had been purchased in State College. He was missing a lot of teeth—Now, again, on TV they would run straight to the dental records and figure this out, but in 1931, all they could do was note that he was missing a lot of teeth. He wore a religious medallion. And he had tattoos—Three pictures of girls tattooed on his arms, one in a sailor suit and one in a sombrero, because obviously this was a classy guy. And he had the initials “G.N.” tattooed on one arm.

During a previous conversation with Mayor William Sperring, he’d mentioned that he had a sister in Altoona. (Don’t ask me what the mayor was doing talking to this prisoner; as far as I know that’s not a common city service.) The body was taken to Brown’s Funeral Home, because what else are you going to do with it?

I checked the newspaper archives for several days afterward, because like this tattooed guy, I have no life. On October 1, it was reported that there had been no success in finding relatives or other clues, so the city held a small funeral, presided over by Reverend William Taylor. (Who knows, maybe the mayor attended it.) The body was buried in Fairview Cemetery, which was only a few years old at the time. I checked the CCGS records for Fairview Cemetery, and found no mention of this guy, so I’ve turned up something the Genealogical Society didn’t know about, which always feels mildly triumphant.

It wasn’t the only time someone died in the cells of the jail, even anonymously like that. But it was interesting enough for me to get intrigued and write a column about it. Also, it’s the only one I’ve seen where the mayor was directly involved.