Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented

by William Tebb; Edward Perry Vollum

CHAPTER XX.

CREMATION AS A PREVENTIVE OF PREMATURE BURIAL.

SUGGESTIONS FOR PREVENTION.

SIR HENRY THOMPSON’S OPINION.

Amongst the numerous suggestions made by correspondents in the press with a view of preventing live sepulture, none has been more frequently put forward than that of cremation. Sir Henry Thompson, the president of the Cremation Society of England, in the second edition of his admirable volume, “Modern Cremation: Its History and Practice,” p. 41, observes:—“There is a source of very painful dread—as I have reason to know—little talked of, it is true, but keenly felt by many persons at some time or another, the horror of which to some is inexpressible. It is the dread of a premature burial—the fear lest some deep trance should be mistaken for death, and that the awakening should take place too late. Happily such occurrences must be exceedingly rare, especially in this country, where the interval between death and burial is considerable, and the fear is almost a groundless one. Still, the conviction that such a fate is possible—which cannot be altogether denied—will always be a source of severe trial to some. With cremation no such catastrophe could ever occur; and the completeness of a properly-conducted process would render death instantaneous and painless if by any unhappy chance an individual so circumstanced were submitted to it. But the guarantee against this danger would be doubled, since inspection of the entire body must of necessity immediately precede the act of cremation, no such inspection being possible under the present system.” While agreeing with this distinguished authority as to the advantages of cremation from the sanitary and æsthetic point of view, which he dwells upon in the treatise referred to, and admitting that a certain amount of protection against live burial is obtainable by means of the dual medical inspection, we cannot agree that this protection is absolute. Cases of trance are on record where some half a dozen doctors, after careful examinations, have pronounced a cataleptic patient to be dead, and the patient, in defiance of their united opinion, has recovered consciousness, and been restored to health.

Dr. Franz Hartmann, in his “Premature Burial,” quotes the two following cases amongst many others:—

“Madame de P——, aged eighteen years, and subject to hysteria, apparently died, and for forty hours she presented all the signs of real death. All possible means of restoring her to life were taken, but proved of no avail. Five physicians of Lyons were called in, and they finally agreed, positively, that the lady was really dead. The funeral preparations were made; but owing to the supplications of a sister of the deceased the burial was delayed, when after a while the patient recovered. She said that she had been all the time aware of all that was going on, without being able to give a sign, and without even being desirous of attempting it.” (F. Kempner, p. 38.)

“In 1842 a remarkable affair occupied the attention of the court at the city of Nantes. A man apparently died, and his death was certified to both by the attending physicians and the medical inspector; he was put into a coffin, and the religious ceremonies were performed in good style. At the end of the funeral service, and as he was about to be buried, he awoke from his trance. The clergy and the undertakers sent in their accounts for the funeral expenses; but he refused to pay them, giving as his reason that he had not ordered them; whereupon he was sued for the money.” (F. Kempner, p. 39.)

Neither can we share the optimistic views of Sir Henry Thompson as to the rarity of premature interment. The results of searching and independent inquiries and study in various countries by each of the authors of this treatise all point the other way, and the various authorities whose names and opinions are cited elsewhere in this volume confess their astonishment at the number of cases brought to light during their investigations. The Rev. H. R. Haweis also, in his work “Ashes to Ashes: A Cremation Prelude” (London, 1895, now out of print), advocates cremation on the ground of preventing living burial, and quotes several cases of persons buried while in a state of trance. During a discussion on the merits and demerits of cremation in the Birmingham Gazette, September 17, 1895, Lieutenant-General Phelps, an able and judicious observer, advocated cremation for similar reasons, and said that “the use of a crematorium would entirely prevent that ghastly accident, the burial of the living. There is no room to doubt that this frightful catastrophe is of continual occurrence. The phenomena of trance are little understood, and a certificate of death is held by most of us to justify the burial of the ‘corpse,’ dead or alive. Those of us who object to the risk of being buried alive should do all in our power to promote the success of this sanitary contrivance for disposing of our dead.”