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The mummy of Stoneman Willie, who was Kept on display for 128 years at a funeral home, receives a proper burial. (1)
An official report has revealed that Stoneman Willie was an alcoholic who died of kidney failure in a local jail on 19th November, 1895; a false name he gave the police after his arrest for pocket-picking Willie’s identity was unknown for many years; and local officials were unable to locate his relatives, because he had given a false name after he was arrested for pick-pocketing.
According to the funeral home, he was mummified after his death by a mortician who was accidentally experimenting with new embalming techniques.
With the State’s permission, the funeral home was able keep the body of Stoneman and monitor their new embalming experimentation process, which had lasted over these decades.
Save for his Irish roots, a little have been been known about Stoneman Willie. However, the funeral home, Auman assures that it now has identified him and will reveal his real name, this week after his inhumation, using historical documents.
“We don’t refer to him as a mummy. We refer to him as our friend Willie,” Said Kyle Blankenbiller, The Funeral Director, “he has just become such an icon, such a storied part of not only Reading’s past but certainly its present.”
Due to the whole unusual stories, life, and incidents surrounding Stoneman Willie, he has become a part of Reading’s history.
The city, ahead of the funeral, will monumentalize him, as was seen on with Sunday locals celebrating Reading’s 275th anniversary and parading with the coffin of Stoneman Willie on a hearse trailer.
Stoneman will remain on display at the Auman’s Funeral Home; and then, thereafter shall be moved, on October 7, to a graveyard where he will be given a deserving burial with his real name etched upon his headstone. (3)
