Offers Body to College.  An Ohio Girl Is Willing To Be Dissected as soon as She Is Dead.  Her Odd Scheme To Raise Money.  She Ran away from Home Because Her Parents Refused To Buy Her new Clothing — Interview with Her Mother

[Special Dispatch to the Leader.]

Knoxville, Tenn., March 12. — The Tennessee Medical College received a letter Monday from Miss Maude Smith, of No. 235 North street Massillon, O., in which she offers to sell her body to the college for dissecting purposes.  She is willing to give bond that her part of the contract will be carried out when she dies and requests an immediate answer to her communication.  The letter was mailed at Massillon on February 24, but was not received here until Monday.

This is the second offer of the kind received by the Tennessee Medical College during the past three weeks, the first having been made by a Knoxville young lady, Miss Etta May Kennedy, but was not accepted.  As a matter of course the present one will not be either.

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Massillon, O., March 12. — (Special.) — Miss Maude Smith, who recently wrote to a medical college at Knoxville, Tenn., offering to sell her body to the institution, is a daughter of Councilman Peter Smith, of this city.  Miss Smith wrote a number of such letters, sending one to every medical college or doctor she had ever heard of.  In each letter she promised to give bond that the body should be turned over to the purchaser, immediately after her death.  In each case she professed willingness to allow the purchaser to make his own price.  Miss Smith is not now at her home here.

“Maude talked something here one day,” said the mother of the young woman today, “about selling her body being a good way to get money, as it wouldn’t make any difference what becomes of the body after death; and I just laughed, thinking she was joking.  Saturday she disappeared from home.  I got a message indirectly from her that she was going to Toledo Monday.

“Maude is stage-struck.  She played in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ for a while.  She ran away from home once before, and when her father brought her back he wanted her to apologize.  She wouldn’t ____ so as a punishment he refused to buy _____ the new clothing that she wanted.  Still she wouldn’t apologize, and I guess that’s what she wanted the money for.  Maude used to be a good girl, but her associates lately have had a bad affect on her.”

Source:  Cleveland, Ohio, Leader, March 13, 1902, page 3

Offers Body to Medical School

Knoxville, Tenn., Feb. 14. — Miss Etta May Kennedy has written the management of the Tennessee Medical college offering to sell them her body for use after death.  The offer was such a strange one that the injunction which she made that the offer be kept secret could not be kept, for professors and students discussed it, and it thus became public.

Source:  Pittston Gazette (Pennsylvania), February 14, 1902, page 2

Her Body for Medical School.  Miss Kennedy Desires To Aid Scientific Research

Knoxville, Tenn., Feb. 15. — Miss Etta May Kennedy has written the management of the Tennessee Medical College, offering to sell them her body for use after death.  The offer was such a stiange one that the injunction which she made that the offer be kept secret could not be kept, for professors and students discussed it, and it thus it became public.  Miss Kennedy is a member of one of the oldest families in this city and this part of the state, and no [illegible] reasons exist why she should be in need of money.  The inference is that she makes the offer in the interest of science. The letter is said to hint at conditions which will make the carrying out of her part of the agreement for the delivery of her dead body to the college easy to carry out within a short time.

Source:  Mount Carmel Daily News (Pennsylvania), February 15, 1902, page 2