Gone and forgotten

Anonymity is sacred in New York. Millions wander the streets each day happily oblivious to the lives around them. But every once in a while, we are reminded of the dark side to this blindness.

Today's Times tells the story of Christina Copeman, who was discovered in her Brooklyn home -- two years after she died.   

Neighbors Reflect on a Death No One Noticed
By ANDY NEWMAN

For the last years of her life, Christina Copeman kept to herself.

She stopped answering the door shortly after her estranged husband died in 1990. She turned away from her friends and neighbors in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, ignoring their hellos.

So when Ms. Copeman dropped out of sight altogether, people were not immediately suspicious. Perhaps she had gone back to Trinidad for a vacation, they said. Maybe she had gotten sick there, or decided to stay.

That was nearly two years ago.

There have been countless incidents like this, though few in which the deceased managed to elude discovery for quite so long. In 1871, Margaret Mannisan had a fate similar to Coperman's:

August 8, 1871

A SHOCKING DEATH -- TERRIBLE FATE OF A FEMALE RECLUSE

Yesterday morning the occupants of a lower room at no. 5 King street noticed blood upon the ceiling, and called in Patrolman McAuley, of the Twenty-eighth precinct. The policeman went to the room overhead and knocked at the door. It was fastened on the inside, and the policeman, after waiting a sufficient time for it to be opened, forced it open. The occupant of the room was MARGARET MANNISAN, a native of Ireland, sixty-five years of age, unmarried. Upon a pile of rags upon the floor lay her dead body, swollen and decomposed almost beyond recognition.

Coroner Young, upon making an investigation later in the day, found that the woman had lived alone in this attic room for the last five years, and had not been seen alive since Friday night. Upon an examination of the body Dr. marsh was of the opinion that the woman had died in convulsions, in which she had ruptured a blood vessel.

The deceased was spoken of by those who knew her as a sober, industrious woman of eccentric habits, who, however, hated the male sex with almost unnatural malignity, and would never speak to any of the gender.

Yes, it was all because she hated men.

A few years later, a man died leaning on the window sill of his apartment, which overlooked the elevated train tracks. Note one of the great all time subheads..

February 19, 1894
STARED AT BY THE DEAD

TWO WHOLE DAYS' VIGIL KEPT BY A CORPSE

And not a soul knew it--alone, unattended, desolate-- This is an experience possible to many others who read this paper

Early one morning the guards on the elevated road in New York noticed a middle-aged man apparently kneeling beside an open window. Although it was a raw and cold morning, his head was uncovered. His eyes seemed to be staring intently across the street. All day long, as the trains thundered past, the man seemed still to be watching, and even when night came on a glimpse of a white face could be seen staring out into the darkness. The next morning the guards were all on the lookout, and still the man could be seen with his chin resting back on his hand.

Coroner Donlin, who chanced to be looking out of the car window during the day, sat at once that it was no common faced that stared at him. He left the train, went to the house, and there found kneeling by the window the stiffened corpse of a man. For two days he had kept the vigil of the dead.

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