Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented

by William Tebb; Edward Perry Vollum

The late Lady Burton, widow of Sir Richard Burton, provided that her heart was to be pierced with a needle, and her body to be submitted to a post-mortem examination, and afterwards embalmed (not stuffed) by competent experts. Lady Burton, it is said, had been subject to fits of trance on more than one occasion, and was terribly afraid that such an attack might be diagnosed as death.

Those who are most apprehensive of apparent death being mistaken for real death are the clergy and other ministers of religion, and funeral directors—in other words, those who know most about it.

Let anyone introduce the subject when in company, on a suitable occasion, and we shall hear of startling cases sufficient to shake credulity, and to compel us to realise the danger to ourselves, as well as to all other members of the community, under our present loose customs. If this dread of premature burial is not universal, as some writers and authorities aver, it is certainly widely extended; and the evidence set before our readers will show that it is by no means without foundation.

WIDELY EXTENDED.

The Lancet, March 17, 1866, says:—“There are many apparently trustworthy stories afloat, both in this country and on the Continent, which favour the belief that premature interment not only does sometimes take place, but is really of not so unfrequent occurrence as might be supposed. Some few believe it to be not an unlikely event, and break out into a cold perspiration at the thought of the possibility of the misfortune happening to themselves. Others have actually made provision in their wills that means should be taken, by cutting off a finger, or making a pectoral incision, etc., to excite sensibility, in case any should remain after their supposed death; whilst a French countess, in order to escape so terrible a fate, left a legacy to her medical attendant as a fee for his severance of the carotid artery in her body before it was committed to the tomb.”

The Rev. John Kingston, chaplain R.N., writing to the (London) Morning Post, September 18, 1895, says—“The danger of being buried alive appears to be a very real one; and I can testify, from my experience as a clergyman, that a great many persons are haunted by the dread of that unspeakably horrible fate.” The writer further expresses a hope that the ventilation of the subject will be followed by practical results.

While speaking on the subject of premature burials, in a lecture delivered at Everett Hall, Brooklyn, New York, June, 1883, Mr. J. D. Beugless, the then President of the New York Cremation Society, said that an undertaker in that city (Brooklyn) recently made provision in his will, and exacted a promise from his wife of great caution, that his body should be cremated, being induced thereto by the fear of being buried alive. “Live burials,” he says, “are far more frequent than most people think.” It is reported that another undertaker of Brooklyn some time since deposited a body in a receiving vault temporarily: when he went some days later to remove it for burial, what was his horror, upon opening the niche in which the coffin had been placed, to find the body crouching at the door, stark in death, the hair dishevelled, the flesh of the arms lacerated and torn, and the face having the most appalling expression of horror and despair ever witnessed by mortal eyes!

An undertaker, writing to the Plymouth Morning News, October 2, 1895, mentions that he reluctantly buried a young person, who lay in the coffin for seven clear days without sign of decomposition, and only consented to close the coffin then, on the assurance that the same conditions attended all the deaths which had previously occurred in the family. Dr. Hartmann and other authorities have found that such cases are probably the subjects of catalepsy, a malady which sometimes runs in families and affects every member. The undertaker adds that, in future, he should decline to close the coffin of the apparently dead until signs of decomposition set in, “thus preventing the possibility of our worst fears being realised.” If undertakers generally would adopt these wise and necessary precautions, living sepulture would come to an end. Under the existing imperfect system of medical examination—and, as we have shown, both in England and in the United States, where there is usually no examination at all—there is often a reckless haste in interments. No thoughtful persons can contemplate the burial of a million and a half human beings annually in these two countries without mistrust and misgivings.

Many well-to-do people in civilised countries provide in their wills for the prevention of premature interment, by leaving instructions for surgical operations after their decease, post-mortems, embalmment, or cremation. It may happen, however, that wills are mislaid, lost, or withheld by the testators, or are not opened and read until after the funeral, when the instructions in this regard, however strictly enjoined, are rendered abortive. Legacies should be given conditionally on the observance of certain duties, and only payable on proofs to the executors that they have been carried out. A large majority of people do not, however, leave testamentary instructions, for the simple reason that they have nothing to bequeath. And the majority have an equal claim with the minority to be safeguarded by the State against such terrible misfortunes. Syncope, sometimes mistaken for death, is a condition to which both men and women, who are compelled by their poverty in all large cities to endure exhausting labours in ill-ventilated work-rooms, and their often ill-nourished children in board schools in England and in the public schools in America, are peculiarly liable.