“The Messager du Midi relates the following dreadful story:—A young married woman residing at Salon (Bouches du Rhône) died shortly after her confinement in August last. The medical man, who was hastily summoned when her illness assumed a dangerous form, certified her death, and recommended immediate burial in consequence of the intense heat then prevailing, and six hours afterwards the body was interred. A few days since, the husband having resolved to re-marry, the mother of his late wife desired to have her daughter’s remains removed to her native town, Marseilles. When the vault was opened a horrible sight presented itself. The corpse lay in the middle of the vault, with dishevelled hair and the linen torn to pieces. It evidently had been gnawed in her agony by the unfortunate victim. The shock which the dreadful spectacle caused to the mother has been so great that fears are entertained for her reason, if not for her life.”
The British Medical Journal, December 8, 1877, p. 819, inserts the following:—
“BURIED ALIVE.
“A correspondent at Naples states that the Appeal Court has had before it a case not likely to inspire confidence in the minds of those who look forward with horror to the possibility of being buried alive. It appeared from the evidence that some time ago a woman was interred with all the usual formalities, it being believed that she was dead, while she was only in a trance. Some days afterwards, the grave in which she had been placed being opened for the reception of another body, it was found that the clothes which covered the unfortunate woman were torn to pieces, and that she had even broken her limbs in attempting to extricate herself from the living tomb. The Court, after hearing the case, sentenced the doctor who had signed the certificate of decease, and the mayor who had authorised the interment, each to three months’ imprisonment for involuntary manslaughter.”
From the Daily Telegraph, January 18, 1889.
“A gendarme was buried alive the other day in a village near Grenoble. The man had become intoxicated on potato brandy, and fell into a profound sleep. After twenty hours passed in slumber, his friends considered him to be dead, particularly as his body assumed the usual rigidity of a corpse. When the sexton, however, was lowering the remains of the ill-fated gendarme into the grave, he heard moans and knocks proceeding from the interior of the ‘four-boards.’ He immediately bored holes in the sides of the coffin, to let in air, and then knocked off the lid. The gendarme had, however, ceased to live, having horribly mutilated his head in his frantic but futile efforts to burst his coffin open.”
The Undertakers’ and Funeral Directors’ Journal, July 22, 1889, relates the following cases:—
“A New York undertaker recently told the following story, the circumstances of which are still remembered by old residents of the city:—‘About forty years ago a lady living on Division Street, New York City, fell dead, apparently, while in the act of dancing at a ball.EVIDENCE OF UNDERTAKERS. It was a fashionable affair, and being able to afford it, she wore costly jewellery. Her husband, a flour merchant, who loved her devotedly, resolved that she should be interred in her ball dress, diamonds, pearls, and all; also that there should be no autopsy. As the weather was very inclement when the funeral reached the cemetery, the body was placed in the receiving vault for burial next day. The undertaker was not a poor man, but he was avaricious, and he made up his mind to possess the jewellery. He went in the night, and took the lady’s watch from the folds of her dress. He next began to draw a diamond ring from her finger, and in doing so had to use violence enough to tear the skin. Then the lady moved and groaned, and the thief, terrified and conscience-stricken, fled from the cemetery, and has never been since heard from, that I know of. The lady, after the first emotions of horror at her unheard-of position had passed over, gathered her nerves together and stepped out of the vault, which the thief had left open. How she came home I cannot tell; but this I know—she lived and had children, two at least of whom are alive to-day.’
HORRIFYING CASES.
“Another New York undertaker told this story. The New York papers thirty-five years ago were full of its ghastly details. ‘The daughter of a Court Street baker died. It was in winter, and the father, knowing that a married sister of his dead child, who lived in St. Louis, would like to see her face before laid in the grave for ever, had the body placed in the vault, waiting her arrival. The sister came, the vault was opened, the lid of the coffin taken off, when, to the unutterable horror of the friends assembled, they found the grave-clothes torn in shreds, and the fingers of both hands eaten off. The girl had been buried alive.’