What became of Tom Paine's body? Walt tells the story

Billy Bedammed, from Teaticket MA, asks: "Mr Walt, I have a stamp in my collection showing a man with a big nose named Thomas Paine. Which president was he?"

[Walt chuckles.] I'm afraid your friend loses, Billy. That man was no president. He was Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain, aka Tom Paine) an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He authored Common Sense and The Rights of Man, the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and inspired the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights.

Sadly, Thomas Paine died reviled and nearly friendless, in large part because of his ultra-liberal ideas. Only six people attended his funeral. However, one of his harshest critics, an English pamphleteer named William Cobbett, had a change of heart after seeing the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the poor. Mr Cobbett became a radical reform, inveighing against monied interests and monarchical privileges. In 1817, after serving two years in prison for sedition, he fled to the land of the free, as the USA then was.

Soon after his arrival, William Cobbett visited the grave of his hero in New Rochelle NY. He was outraged at how poorly the grave was being maintained, writing "Paine lies in a little hole under the grass and weeds of an obscure farm in America." He made it his mission to remove Paine's earthly remains to England, where he thought they could be properly venerated, with a monument which would be a rallying place for the poor and downtrodden.

Getting Tom Paine's body was easy enough. Cobbett dug it up in the dark of night and shipped the corpse to Ole Blighty. Unfortunately, he lacked the money needed for the elaborate funeral he had planned, let alone a decent mausoleum. What to do?! He decided to take the relic on a tour of Britain, expecting that thousands of people would pay to see it. He was wrong. No-one came to Cobbett's "bone rallies". Eventually he was reduced to selling locks of Paine's hair. Wrong again.

William Cobbett was forced to realize that nobody in England gave even one piece of excrement about Thomas Paine. Reluctantly, he shelved his plans, and shelved Paine's earthly remains under his bed, where they stayed until Cobbett's death in 1835. The estate, including what was left of Tom Paine, passed to Cobbett's son. When he was arrested for debt, all his possessions, including poor Tom's skeleton, were seized for auction. However, a judge ruled that the skeleton was not a marketable asset, and ordered it returned to the younger Cobbett. What happened to it after that remains a mystery.

Credit where credit is due Dept.: This story was adapted from A Treasury of Great American Scandals, by Michael Farquhar, Penguin 2003.