From the London Echo, October 6, 1894.
“BURIED ALIVE.
“A story of a horrible nature comes from St. Petersburg in connection with the interment at Tioobayn, near that city, of a peasant girl named Antonova. She had presumably died, and in due course the funeral took place. After the service at the cemetery, the grave-diggers were startled by sounds of moaning proceeding from the coffin. Instead, however, of instantly breaking it open, they rushed off to find a doctor, and when he and some officials arrived and broke open the shell, the unhappy inmate was already the corpse she had been supposed to be a day earlier. It was evident, however, that no efforts could have saved life at the last moment. The body was half-turned in the coffin, the left hand, having escaped its bandages, being under the cheek.”
The following case, cabled by Dalziel, appears in the London Star, August 19, 1895:—
“SOUNDS FROM ANOTHER COFFIN.
“Grenoble, August 17.
“On Monday last a man was found in a dying condition by the side of a brook near the village of Le Pin. Everything possible was done for him, but he relapsed into unconsciousness, and became to all appearances dead. The funeral was arranged, and, there being no suspicion of foul play, the body was interred on the following day. The coffin had been lowered to the bottom of the grave, and the sexton had begun to cover it with earth, when he heard muffled sounds proceeding from it. The earth was hastily removed and the coffin opened, when it was discovered that the unfortunate occupant was alive. He was taken to a neighbouring house, but rapidly sank into a comatose condition, and died without uttering a word. The second burial took place yesterday.”
While in India, in the early part of this year (1896), Dr. Roger S. Chew, of Calcutta, who, having been laid out for dead, and narrowly escaped living sepulture, has had the best reasons for studying the subject, gave me particulars of the following cases:—
“Frank Lascelles, aged thirty-two years, was seated at breakfast with a number of us young fellows, and was in the middle of a burst of hearty laughter, when his head fell forward on his plate and he was ‘dead.’ As there was a distinct history of cardiac disease in his family, while he himself had frequently been treated for valvular disease of the heart, he was alleged to have ‘died’ of cardiac failure, and was duly interred in the Coonor Cemetery. Some six months later, permission was obtained to remove his remains to St. John’s Church-yard in Ootacamund. The coffin was exhumed, and, as a ‘matter of form,’ the lid removed to identify the resident, when, to the horror of the lookers-on, it was noticed that, though mummification had taken place, there had been a fearful struggle underground, for the body, instead of being on its back as it was when first coffined, was lying on its face, with its arms and legs drawn up as close as the confined space would permit. His trousers (a perfectly new pair) were burst at the left knee, while his shirt-front was torn to ribands and bloodstained, and the wood of that portion of the coffin immediately below his mouth was stained a deep reddish-brown-black (blood). Old Dr. Donaldson, whom we were all very fond of, tried to explain matters by saying that the jolting of the coffin on its way to the cemetery had overturned the body, and that the blood stains on the shirt and wood were the natural result of blood flowing (i.e. oozing) out of the mouth of the corpse as it lay face downwards. A nice theory, but scarcely a probable one, as all the jolting in creation could not possibly turn a corpse over in an Indian coffin, which is so built that there is scarcely two inches spare space over any portion of the contained body, and unless the supposed corpse regained consciousness and exerted considerable force, it could not possibly turn round in its narrow casket.
“Mary Norah Best, aged seventeen years, an adopted daughter of Mrs. C. A. Moore, née Chew,DR. ROGER S. CHEW’S CASES. ‘died’ of cholera, and was entombed in the Chew’s vault in the old French cemetery, at Calcutta. The certifying surgeon was a man who would have benefited by her death, and had twice (though ineffectually) attempted to put an end to her adopted mother, who fled from India to England after the second attempt on her life, but, unfortunately, left the girl behind. When Mary ‘died’ she was put into a pine coffin, the lid of which was nailed, not screwed, down. In 1881, ten years or so later, the vault was unsealed to admit the body of Mrs. Moore’s brother, J. A. A. Chew. On entering the vault, the undertaker’s assistant and I found the lid of Mary’s coffin on the floor, while the position of the skeleton (half in, half out of the coffin, and an ugly gash across the right parietal bone) plainly showed that after being entombed Mary awoke from her trance, struggled violently till she wrenched the lid off her coffin, when she either fainted away with the strain of the effort in bursting open her casket, and while falling forward over the edge of her coffin struck her head against the masonry shelf, and died almost immediately; or, worse still,—as surmised by some of her clothing which was found hanging over the edge of the coffin, and the position of her right hand, the fingers of which were bent and close to where her throat would have been had the flesh not rotted away,—she recovered consciousness, fought for life, forced her coffin open, and, sitting up in the pitchy darkness of the vault, went mad with fright, tore her clothes off, tried to throttle herself, and banged her head against the masonry shelf until she fell forward senseless and dead.”