Thomas Paine’s remains lie mainly in the Manchester area (probably)

Gavin Jacobson says nothing is known of Thomas Paine’s remains following William Cobbett’s death in 1835 (Review, 20 June). In fact, it is known that the remains passed immediately to Cobbett’s neighbour George West and then to Cobbett’s old friend Benjamin Tilly, who acted as their guardian from 1844 until his own death in 1869.

It is also known that eventually the remains became dispersed, with the skull acquired by the Rev Robert Ainslie in the 1850s and finding its way to Australia in the 1980s; the brain returned to Paine’s original burial place in New Rochelle, New York state, around 1900; and most of the skeleton acquired by Alexander Gordon following Tilly’s death, and given a secret burial in the mid-1870s, probably in the Manchester area where Gordon worked as a Unitarian minister.
Michael Bush
London

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