History

The Bizarre Journey of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Penis

The most famous sexual organ in European history

Rarely does it happen that a person’s penis travels more than the person. Napolean Bonaparte is one such case.

The year is 1821 and the place is Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean. As per Napolean’s physician Antommarchi, he is said to die of stomach cancer just like his father.

There is still debate over his actual cause of death, but that’s a topic for another day. Let’s focus on the penis!

Antommarchi removed Bonaparte’s liver and intestines and dropped them in jars of ethyl alcohol for autopsy. He also took Napolean’s penis during the autopsy and hid it.

The journey across the Atlantic ocean

Thus starts the journey. The penis was handed over to Napolean’s priest Abbé Ange Vignali, who smuggled it to Corsica, Napelean’s birthplace across the Atlantic ocean. When the priest died, the penis was inherited by his family until 1916.

The relic went to his sister and then ultimately her son, Charles-Marie Gianettini. Gianettini sought to sell the relic and displayed it as a “mummified tendon taken from [Napoleon’s] body during post-mortem.”

A British collector Maggs Bros bought the penis from Gianettini in 1916.

Journey to America

Maggs sold it to the legendary American antiquarian bookseller Dr. A.S.W Rosenbach of Philadelphia for £400 (then $2000) in 1924.

Dr. Rosenbach, an eccentric American collector, displayed his proud possession in parties and meetings. He also loaned it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a very short time. The museum displayed it on a small velvet cushion.

Time magazine reported —

“.. it looked like a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace or a shriveled eel”

23 years later, the penis was sold by Dr. Rosenbach to collector Donald Hyde. After Hyde’s death, his widow sold the penis back to Dr. Rosenbach’s successor, John Fleming.

Fleming then sold the penis to Bruce Gimelson for $35,000. Gimelson consigned it to Christie’s in London for an auction where it was purchased by urologist Dr. John Lattimer for an equivalent of $3000.

The penis measured one and a half inches in length when it was purchased. Each inch was deemed to be worth $1,000. By this time, the penis strip had reduced to a penile tissue.

Dr. Lattimer kept his Napoleonic trophy in a suitcase under his bed in, New Jersey, where it stayed until he died in 2007.

The penis has not changed its owners since!