“Nowadays as soon as a small-pox patient is supposed to be dead, he or she is enclosed in a coffin and hurried off to the church-yard or cemetery the ensuing night—at least this is the practice in country places. I have no doubt that many have been buried alive.—Yours faithfully,
“Ex-Curate.
“September 18.”
Brigade-Surgeon W. Curran cites from the Revue des Deux Mondes, April, 1873, in his Eighth Paper, entitled “Buried Alive,” as follows:—
“On the 15th of October, 1842, a farmer who lived in the suburbs of Neufchâtel (Lower Seine) went to sleep in his hay-loft in the midst of some newly mown hay. As he did not get up at the usual hour the next morning, his wife went to call him, and found him dead. When the time for his funeral arrived, some twenty-four or thirty hours subsequently, those who were charged with the burial put the body on a bier, and having placed this on the ladder that communicated between the ground and the loft, they allowed it to slide down. IMPORTANCE OF CAREFUL EXAMINATION.All of a sudden one of the rungs of this ladder gave way, and the bier, falling through, was dashed violently on the pavement below. The shock, which might have been fatal to a live person, proved to be the ‘saving clause’ of our supposed dead one; and fortunately, too, the attendants had not, as so commonly happens in such contingencies, absconded; on the contrary, responding without delay to the requirements of the situation, they quickly realised the gravity of the crisis, and, unbinding the shrouds of the farmer, they soon restored him to consciousness and life. He was able, we are further told, to resume his ordinary duties in a few days afterwards.”[7]
The Undertakers’ and Funeral Directors’ Journal, January 22, 1889, says:—
“Mr. J. W. Smith, of 158 River Avenue, Alleghany” has just had, for instance, a remarkably narrow escape of prematurely putting his family in mourning, and one which will, we may be sure, be a very disagreeable recollection for him during the rest of his existence. After a visit to the Pittsburg Opera House one night, Mr. Smith was found lying ‘stiff and cold’ behind the stove in the dining-room, and apparently dead. A superficial examination by Dr. M’Cready confirmed the worst fears of Mrs. Smith, but subsequently the doctor sought carefully for any little spark of life which might lurk unseen, and, very fortunately for Mr. Smith, found it. But, beyond that, nothing could be accomplished; no effort to restore animation produced the slightest effect. Two other physicians were then summoned; but neither attempts at bleeding, the use of ‘mustard baths,’ nor the application of electricity, could rouse Mr. Smith after his visit to the opera. For three weeks he lay insensible, and when he regained consciousness a fever followed. This event, and some others of a similar character which are occasionally heard of, show that the examination of persons apparently dead should always be undertaken by an efficient person, and by no means in a perfunctory manner.”
The late Madame Blavatsky was subject to death-like trances, and Dr. Franz Hartmann informs me that she would have been buried alive if Colonel Olcott had not telegraphed to let her have time to awaken.