Marie Phelps-Sweet
Marie Phelps-Sweet (c. 1893 – legal death August 26/27, 1967)[1] was the second person cryopreserved by the Cryonics Society of California.[2] She was a California coordinator of the Life Extension Society and civil rights activist.[3][1] She was the second person (after James Bedford) and first woman in the world who was cryopreserved in the hope of future revival, if "Sarah Gilbert" is not considered.
Phelps-Sweet had been an interior decorator consultant before moving to California.[4]
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Marie Phelps-Sweet legally died in her sleep sometime between the night of August 26 and the early morning of August 27, 1967. Her lifeless body was discovered in the bed of a Santa Monica hotel room, early in the afternoon of August 27, some ten hours after she had checked in. The reason for her stay at the hotel remains a mystery. What is known is that a local mortician from the undertaking firm Gates, Langley, and Gates, upon summation from the authorities to remove her body, discovered her Life Extension Society (LES) membership card, which carried "instructions to freeze her body."[5]
Her body was ultimately taken into custody by the county coroner, who in keeping with the LES instructions placed her in a "refrigerated storage facility at 30 degrees [Fahrenheit], just below freezing." In the course of these events, as she was an active member of the Cryonics Society of California as well as LES, Robert Nelson, the president of the Cryonics Society of California, was informed of the situation, and began making preparations to have her suspended.[5]
She was kept in dry ice, later together with Helen Kline and Russ Stanley, in Joseph Klockgether's mortuary. Nelson had frozen the three. Klockgether was very uncomfortable having the three bodies on his premises.[2]
In the spring of 1969, Louis Nisco, who had been cryopreserved by the Cryo-Care Equipment Corporation, and his cryocapsule were shipped to Klockgether’s mortuary. Klockgether and Nelson had the capsule cut open, removed Nisco and an interior support, and then put Nisco and the other three back inside. The bodies were not deliberately thawed but must have suffered substantial warming, though according to Klockgether they were still frozen. Then a welder resealed the capsule, which required a wait of several more hours, and it was refilled with liquid nitrogen. The capsule remained at the mortuary another 14 months, tended by Klockgether, who refilled it periodically.[2] In May 1970, the capsule was shipped to Robert Nelson's facility in Chatsworth.[6]
Phelps-Sweet and the other three in the same capsule were among those who thawed out in the Chatsworth incident.[7][6]
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- ↑ 1,0 1,1 Marie Phelps-Sweet, pioneer activist for justice and progress, dies and is frozen in California. Freeze-Wait-Reanimate. September 1967. Retrieved January 19, 2025 (page 323 of the file)
- ↑ 2,0 2,1 2,2 Suspension Failures: Lessons from the Early Years. R. Michael Perry. cryonicsarchive.org. Retrieved January 20, 2025
- ↑ Failed Futures, Broken Promises, and the Prospect of Cybernetic Immortality: Toward an Abundant Sociological History of Cryonic Suspension, 1962–1979 (page 151 of the file). Grant W. Shoffstall
- ↑ Ev Cooper and the Conference That Didn't Happen: Trials of an Early Freezing. R. Michael Perry. Cryonics 2016 #3. Retrieved January 20, 2025 (page 16)
- ↑ 5,0 5,1 Failed Futures, Broken Promises, and the Prospect of Cybernetic Immortality: Toward an Abundant Sociological History of Cryonic Suspension, 1962–1979 (page 176 of the file). Grant W. Shoffstall
- ↑ 6,0 6,1 Robert Nelson and the Chatsworth Scandal. Charles Platt
- ↑ Failed Futures, Broken Promises, and the Prospect of Cybernetic Immortality: Toward an Abundant Sociological History of Cryonic Suspension, 1962–1979 (page 190 of the file). Grant W. Shoffstall