Author Tony Gentry's novel "The Night Doctor of Richmond" (Photo courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth University)
Author Tony Gentry in his pleasant voice says, “I was a little concerned it would seem too fantastical.”
He explains why he included a list of source material in his novel “The Night Doctor of Richmond.” The paperback is available at Book People, Shelf Life Books and other local shops.
Gentry in the acknowledgements relates his coming across the 19th century “resurrectionist” Chris Baker. In elegant but accessible language that is at times dreamlike, the writer tells this tale,
Author Tony Gentry (Photo by Tess Steinkolk photography)
grounded in reality, while on occasion resembling a spooky fable told around a camp fire. He with deftness brings to life varied voices, of educated medical professors, of the unlettered but clever Baker, his wife, Martha, and scandal-seeking journalists all rendered in distinct and nearly extinct Richmond cadences.
Gentry, a Richmonder born at the Medical College of Virginia, retired as professor in occupational therapy from Virginia Commonwealth Hospital, and in his training once dissected a body. This
For a half century, from Baker’s boyhood until his death in 1919 at 70, he procured hundreds of buried corpses for the studies of the Medical College of Virginia and its late 19th century rival the University Medical College. These bodies were those of recently executed criminals, former city poor house residents, the indigent, and often Black. Some of the corpses were sold and packaged off to teaching colleges in other cities.
He lived and worked in the basement of MCV’s Egyptian building. Lanterns and candles lit the dismal space and Baker’s ghastly work, and with no real ventilation aside from one small window.
The revulsion of his employment made Baker a pariah within the Black community. He transformed into a legendary character of fear. The white population granted him little regard aside from disdain although the institutions for which he undertook his gruesome labors held him in, if not esteem, but a form of respect.
Gentry plunged into the archives of the Health Sciences Library of the Virginia Commonwealth University Health Systems, (the former Tompkins-McCaw Library, given its less personal name in 2020), where he found letters of medical students.
“They talk about him in a generous way: this man is an essential worker, he cared about the work he did. He comes across as a man everybody at the institution sort of liked. These are all white people. There had to be a certain charm to him, and an intelligence, and they recognized those qualities in him.”
Baker existed in a narrow social space, where he negotiated both the white hierarchy that treated him as a necessary tool and his own community who viewed him as a walking devil. Baker suffered beatings, arrests and jail, and, according to accounts, pursuers shot, or shot at him, several times.
“He was the ultimate outsider,” Gentry describes. “And to this day, nobody’s standing up for him. And that’s how I approached the story.”
Baker emerged again into public consciousness with the 1994 discovery during construction excavation on the VCU medical campus of a well holding the bones of mostly African-American men, women and children.
The finding inspired a documentary by Shawn Utsey, a VCU psychology professor and chairman of African-American Studies. The film, “Until the Well Runs Dry: Medicine and Exploitation of Black Bodies,” examines 19th century “resurrectionists,” and gives attention to Baker.
Gentry explains how that well is but one of its kind. The University Medical College that operated on East Clay Street would’ve needed its own disposal system. And then, in the Egyptian Building is the well Baker would’ve primarily used and which is long buried under concrete.
He did these things with the full permission of the MCV administration.
Circa 1899 Medical College of Virginia anatomy lab photo featuring Chris Baker (left) with students (Photo courtesy Special Collections and Archives, Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth University)
Gentry points out that a 2014 joint resolution of the Virginia General Assembly recognized how “'the ghoul of Richmond,’ became a master of anatomy, knowing and understanding the human body as well as the medical students did.”
Baker, but not the medical professionals for which he worked, is mentioned throughout the document.
Baker knew of no other life. He excelled in his profession.
The awful work gave rise to urban myths, that of his being a kind of shaman or “witch doctor,” who could heal or kill with a look. He was also accused of murder and even cannibalism. And yet, in a demonstration of a P.T. Barnum-esque fascination with the macabre, at public lectures given by MCV administrators, Baker would be brought onto the stage of the auditorium of the Egyptian Building to be seen — and receive acclamation.
Gentry emphasizes how in days we now barely recognize, without television, radio or other distractions, that a primary way people learned of the world was through newspapers and attending public events. These included formal lectures and demonstrations sometimes of educational or scientific interest, but also of spiritualists, magicians and so-called freaks. People then and now are attracted to the horrific — as long as they can maintain their distance and know where the exit is.
These pieces fell together into a character that Gentry could write about, though delving into Baker’s world and attempting to enter his head often proved daunting. “I thought: I kind of like him,” he says. “It’s a very hard thing to say, because he did some horrible things.”
The aura of Baker’s notoriety continued into fairly recent generations, especially among Black families. Long after Baker died in 1919, parents advised their children to get home before dark lest they get nabbed by “The Night Doctor.” This carried an extra meaning in a “sundown town” of racially divided Richmond, where if found on a street after dusk, Blacks could with near impunity fall prey to beatings and worse. The supernatural threat of Baker added power to the warning.
Yet Chris Baker lived and breathed, a man compact but sturdily built, who enjoyed smoking his pipe and, in Gentry’s telling, took pride in the whittled wooden figures of his father that for him carry a totemic power.
Accounts vary about Baker’s personal life, of marriage or lack thereof, a son, or four children. He in fact married Martha, whom Baker regards as his guardian angel, and according to tax ledgers, she owned property in Jackson Ward where the Bakers parented at least one son, John. Martha died three years after her husband. “They managed, despite everything, to build a life together,” Gentry says.
Between the assorted — and frequently sordid — newspaper accounts in both the Black and white press, and other tantalizing evidence, puzzling pieces of Baker’s life and times emerged, resembling James River rocks protruding through running high waters. Given the outright lies spread about Baker, perhaps in Gentry's fiction, there is some truth.
Baker’s remains are in what is thought be an unmarked grave in Evergreen Cemetery. Given recent volunteer efforts to clear the overgrowth of neglect and renewed attention toward the burial grounds, perhaps Baker’s grave may yet be found.
And what a strange day that will be.
