As we drift toward the culmination of our month-long Halloween extravaganza, every big-box retail outlet seems to offer a selection of skeletons. These osteal accouterments range from tiny 5-inch trinkets to gargantuan 10-foot behemoths.
Today’s skeletons, of course, are plastic. Our poor ancestors had to get by with the real thing. America was a huge market for authentic human skeletons back in the day. The Cincinnati Commercial Gazette [29 April 1894] noted the volume of this bone trade:
“About fifteen hundred skeletons are imported into this country every year, nearly all of them from Paris, where the art of preparing such osseus remains is understood better than anywhere else in the world. They cost forty dollars each, but one can by a nice skull for six dollars.”…