The Mystery of John Doe No, 24

The Mystery of John Doe No.24

The Mystery of John Doe No. 24

It was a mild yet seasonable Thursday morning in October of 1945 in the town of Jacksonville Illinois when this tale of mystery begins. A pair of local police officers were making their morning rounds in their prowl car when a call came over their radio, of a young unidentified African-American teenaged male wandering the streets (they used another term to describe him). Now in this day and age, seeing an African-American strolling down the street of any neighborhood is a common sight and wouldn’t attract much notice. But at the time this story takes place, it’s 1945, and the times were pretty different then. When the Officer’s caught up to him and attempted to question him, they discovered the young man to be both deaf and mute. When given a paper and pencil later at the police station, the only word he was able to write was the name “Lewis” which is what everyone assumed his name was. As for where he had come from and how he’d gotten to Jacksonville, no explanation could be found.

Numerous attempts to learn his identity and to find relatives throughout the State went without success and under the name of John Doe No. 24, the young lad was sent to the Lincoln State School and Colony in Jacksonville, by a local Judge who had determined the young lad to be feeble minded. And so began a lifetime of institutional incarceration for John Doe No. 24, that would continue on until his death decades later. During that time, John was subjected to years of abuse, both physical and mental while in the state mental institution, things only got worse for him as he eventually lost his eyesight due to diabetes. By the mid to late 1980‘s, after spending a little more than 30 years locked behind the walls of an asylum, he was transfered to a number of nursing homes, winding up finally at the Smiley Living Center in Peoria where he would spend the last years of his life.

Records had indicated that John was severely retarded but those workers at the Smiley Living Center would despute such records as false, saying that he was a proud man with more intelligence than standard tests showed. They remembered those small and sparkling bits of what the true man inside the shell was, the way he would scrawl “Lewis” and his pantomimed, wild accounts of foot-stomping jazz clubs and circus parades.

"It was so obvious from what he pantomimed that he had quite a life at one time," said Kim Cornwell, a caseworker. "Like a grandfather, he could probably tell funny stories. We just couldn't reach out enough to get them."

“It’s so sad to think that you could disappear and no one would miss you.” Said the Administrator of Sharon Oaks Nursing facility, also in Peoria and where John Doe died. “You wonder how often such a thing happens.” Many speculate on how he had come to Jacksonville that October of 1945, and many agree that he was most likely abandoned and left to fend for himself.

He had a straw hat he loved to wear, and he took a backpack with his collection of rings, glasses and silverware with him everywhere. At Christmas parties he danced to vibrations from the music. The  last Christmas he would experience, the staff at Smiley bought gifts for residents who did not have relatives or other visitors. They bought him a harmonica.

"He just grinned from ear to ear," said a nurse who knew John well

.In August of 1993, he had surgery for colon cancer. Upon his return to Smiley, he had problems eating and was showing signs of suffering from depression and by October, it had been decided that he would be able to receive better care at Sharon Oaks Nursing Home and so he was transfered there, and it would be there that God would call him home on November 28th, 1993, having suffered a stroke. The grave side service for John Doe No.24 was brief and a woman who attended asked those present if anyone had any words they wanted to say. No one did. They believed John’s age to have been 64.

One lost soul amid an ocean of other lost souls, John might have not been remembered if it had not been for singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter who commemorated him in her song: John Doe No. 24 and it was she who paid for the grave stone which now stands to mark John’s resting place....

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