Chapter V: Narrow Escapes From Premature Burial (2)

“The cases of collapse and apparent death during epidemics of cholera are very numerous, as will be seen by reference to medical literature. We have now before us particulars of cases from the _Calcutta Journal of Medicine_ for 1869, vol. ii., p. 383, where Dr. Charles Londe, of Paris, observes that patients pronounced dead of cholera have been repeatedly seen to move. See also, for Italy, _Lancet_, 1884, vol. ii., p. 655.

“A correspondent, signing himself T.E.N., in _To-Day_, October 12, 1895, says:--‘When acting as special correspondent to the _Evening Herald_ in Hamburg during the cholera plague, I met a gentleman who had been passed for dead and placed in the mortuary to await burial. When the porters entered some hours later to remove the hundred or so bodies, they found this gentleman sitting up in great pain, and very much frightened. He was placed in a ward and recovered. About the same time a little girl came to life actually at the graveside. She had been brought in one of several four-horse vans that conveyed bodies for interment in the Ohlsdorff grave-yard. Fortunately for her, she had not been placed in a coffin, the exigencies of the time rendering it impossible to provide caskets for the dead. When the disease began to die out, the people found time to ask--“Can it be possible that life remains in any of the bodies buried?” That the doctors in the latter days cut the ulnar arteries of all subjects before passing them for dead is full of significance.’”

[CASES COMMUNICATED BY DR. CHEW.]

The three following cases were communicated to the author, during his sojourn in Calcutta, by Dr. Chew, in the early part of this year (1896):--

“In March, 1877, Assistant-Surgeons H. A. Borthwick, S. Blake, H. B. Rogers, and myself received orders to proceed from Rawal Pindi by bullock-train to Peshawur to join the various regiments we were to be posted to for duty. We had just passed a place called Rati when Borthwick showed strong symptoms of cholera, from which he suffered all that night. The nearest hospital was twenty-five miles behind us, and though we had neither medicines nor sick-room comforts with us, we had no alternative but to journey onwards, because the train-drivers (Indians) refused to turn back, and if we did return to Rawal Pindi we would have been court-martialled for disobeying lawful commands and coming back without orders to do so. Travelling by bullock-train is very slow work, and far from a comfortable mode of transit; however, we were obliged to make the best of it, and early next morning Borthwick was cold, stiff, and seemingly dead. Here was a fine state of affairs--the nearest cantonment, which we had no expectation of reaching (_i.e._, Nowshera) before nine p.m., was thirty-six miles off, and by the time we arrived at it, it would have been too late to approach the authorities, while Peshawur, our destination, was another twenty-nine miles further off. Dispose of the body we dared not, and we had no choice but to continue our route. All that day there was not a movement or other sign to show that life was not extinct, and affairs seemed no better by five p.m. next day, when we reached Peshawur. The apparent corpse was lifted out of the bullock-train and carried into the hospital dispensary (where a strong fire was blazing) preparatory to papers being signed and arrangements made for its final disposal. Whether it was the heat of the fire before which he was placed, or whether the vibriones had produced an antitoxin, I am not prepared to argue; but _we do know_ that Borthwick recovered consciousness while lying on the bed in that dispensary, and that he whom we mourned as dead returned to life. He served in the same military stations with me in the North-West Frontier till 1880, when he accompanied me to the Calcutta Medical College, where we parted company in February, 1882, I bound for Egypt and he for frontier duty. At first we corresponded regularly, but since 1885 we lost touch of each other.”

“REVIVAL IN A MORTUARY IN INDIA.

“Sergeant J. Clements Twining, of H.M.’s 109th regiment of British infantry, located at Dinapoor in 1876, was brought in an unconscious state to the hospital, supposed to be suffering from _coup de soleil_. Everything that could be done was ineffectually tried to rouse him from coma, and he was removed to the dead-house to wait _post-mortem_ next morning. At two a.m. the sentry on the dead-house came rushing down to the dispensary (about four hundred and fifty yards off) declaring that he had seen and heard a ghost in the dead-house, to which myself and the compounder and dresser on duty at once proceeded, to find that Clements Twining, who was now partially conscious, was lying on the dead-house flags groaning most piteously--he had rolled off the table on to the floor. He returned to health, and in 1877 accompanied his regiment to England, where I met him at Woolwich in 1883, and he asked me to corroborate his story of ‘returning to life’ to certain of his acquaintances who had refused to believe him.”

[THE USE OF MORTUARIES.]

“CHOLERA CORPSES REVIVED IN A MORTUARY.

“When the East Norfolk regiment was out cholera-dodging in 1878, Colour-Sergeant T. Hall and Corporal W. Bellomy were sent into cantonments for burial as cholera corpses in the Nowshera Cemetery. There was some delay in the interment owing to a difficulty in obtaining the wood necessary for their coffins, so both bodies were placed in the dead-house, which was generously sprinkled with disinfectants to ward off the risk of contagion. First Hall and then Bellomy regained consciousness, and were duly returned to duty. The following year Bellomy was ‘invalided’ to England, where I understand he now enjoys the best of health.”

“Shortly after the Afghan war of 1878, Surgeon-Major T. Barnwell and I were told off to take a large number of time-expired men, invalids, and wounded, to Deolali on their way to England. Some of the wounded were in a very critical state, necessitating great care; one man in particular, Trooper Holmes of the 10th Hussars, who had an ugly bullet-wound running along his left thigh and under the groin. Our only means of transport for these poor fellows was the ‘palki’ or doolie carried by four bearers at a curious swinging pace. When we got to Nowshera, Holmes seemed on a fair way to recovery, but the swinging of the doolie seemed too much for him, and he grew weaker day by day till we got to Hassan Abdool, when we could not rouse him to take some nourishment before starting on the march, and to all appearance he seemed perfectly dead; but, as there was neither the time nor convenience to hold a _post-mortem_, we carried the body on to ‘John Nicholson,’ where, the same difficulties being in the way, and no facilities for burial, we were obliged to put the _post-mortem_ off for another day, and convey the corpse to Rawal Pindi rest camp, where we laid him on the floor of the mortuary tent and covered him over with a tarpaulin. This was his salvation, as next morning (_i.e._, the third day succeeding his ‘death’), when we raised the tarpaulin to hold the _post-mortem_, some hundreds of field mice (these tracts are _noted_ for them) rushed out, and we noticed that Holmes was breathing, though very slowly--five or six respirations to the minute--and there were a few teeth marks where the mice had attacked his calves. To prevent a relapse by the jolting on further marches, we handed him over to the station hospital staff, who pulled him round, and then forwarded him to the headquarters of his regiment at Meerut.”

A lady, distinguished alike for her literary gifts as well as for her philanthropy, sends me the following:--

“I am much obliged to you for sending me ‘Perils.’ It is a terrible subject, and one that has haunted me all my life, insomuch that I have never made a will without inserting a clause requiring my throat to be cut before I am put underground. Of course one can have no reliance on doctors whatever, and I have myself known a case in which a very eminent one insisted on a coffin being screwed down because the corpse looked so life-like and full of colour that the friends could not help indulging in hopes.

[CASES IN IRELAND.]

“My great grandmother, after whom I am called, a famous heiress, was a notable case of narrow escape. As a girl she passed into a state of apparent death, and a great funeral was ordered for her. Among the guests came a young girl friend, who insisted that she was not dead, and raised such a stir that the funeral was postponed, and time was allowed to pass till the marvel became that there were no signs of change. I could never ascertain how long this comatose state lasted before she recovered; but she _did_ recover, so thoroughly that after her marriage with Richard Trench, of Garbuly, she became the mother of twenty-two children. Obviously this was no case of a feeble, hysterical, cataleptic subject. I will enclose photograph taken from a miniature of her in a ring in my possession.

“There was another case, well known in Ireland in my youth, of a Colonel Howard, who had a fine place (I think it was called Castle Howard) in Wicklow. He was supposed to be dead, and a lead coffin was actually made with his name and date of death on it; after which Colonel Howard came to life, and had the plate of the coffin fixed over his kitchen chimney as a warning to his servants not to bury people in a hurry.”

Dr. Colin S. Valentine, LL.D., Principal of the Medical Missionary Training College, Agra, N.W.P., told the author during his visit to Agra, February, 1896, that Captain Young, an officer in the regiment of which he (Dr. Valentine) was at that time army surgeon, who had been dreadfully mauled while tiger-hunting in Madras, was laid out for dead, and all the arrangements were made for his funeral at six o’clock that evening, when consciousness returned, and he lived for twenty years after.

In a lecture on “Signs of Death and Disposal of the Dead,” delivered by Dr. A. Stephenson at Nottingham, January 9, 1896, the lecturer said “he once attended a girl living in that locality who was in a trance. All the preparations were made for her funeral, and the grave ordered. She remained in a trance three days, and her mother was annoyed because he would not sign her death-certificate. On the third day she slowly rose and recovered. The girl would have been buried unless he had had a very great fear of her being buried alive.”[6]

From the London _Echo_, March 3, 1896.

“NARROW ESCAPE OF A GREEK-ORTHODOX METROPOLITAN.

“A letter from Constantinople, in the _Politische Korrespondenz_, gives a remarkable case of an apparent death which would have ended in a premature burial but for the high ecclesiastical position of the person concerned. On the 3rd of this month, Nicephorus Glycas, the Greek-Orthodox Metropolitan of Lesbos, an old man in his eightieth year, after several days of confinement to his bed, was reported by the physician to be dead. The supposed dead bishop, in accordance with the rules of the Orthodox Church, was immediately clothed in his episcopal vestments, and placed upon the Metropolitan’s throne in the great church of Methymni, where the body was exposed to the devout faithful during the day, and watched by relays of priests day and night. Crowds streamed into the church to take a last look at their venerable chief pastor. On the second night of “the exposition of the corpse,” the Metropolitan suddenly started up from his seat and stared round him with amazement and horror at all the panoply of death amidst which he had been seated. The priests were not less horrified when the ‘dead’ bishop demanded what they were doing with him? The old man had simply fallen into a death-like lethargy, which the incompetent doctors had hastily concluded to be death. He is now as hale and hearty as can well be expected from an octogenarian. But here it is that the moral comes in. If Nicephorus Glycas had been a layman he would most certainly have been buried alive. Fortunately for him the Canon Law of the Orthodox Church does not allow a bishop to be buried earlier than the third day after his death; whereas a layman, according to the ancient Eastern custom, is generally buried about twelve hours after death has been certified. The excitement which has been aroused by the prelate’s startling resurrection may tend to set men thinking more seriously about the frequent probability of the cruel horror of the interment of living persons.”

The above-mentioned facts have been authenticated for the author by Dr. Franz Hartmann, of Hallein, Austria.

NARROW ESCAPES OF SMALL-POX PATIENTS.

Many physicians who dispute the frequency of premature burials admit that the liability to such catastrophes is considerable during epidemics of small-pox, where extreme exhaustion, amounting to a suspension of life, is distinguishable from actual death only by patient and prolonged observation.

From the _Lancet_, June 21, 1884, p. 1150:--

“SUSPENDED ANIMATION AFTER SMALL-POX.

“Sir,--I send you privately names and addresses by means of which you can test, if you please, the accuracy of the following statements, which I forward for insertion in your journal:--

[APPARENT DEATHS AFTER SMALL-POX.]

“Some years since, a young man who had been attacked by small-pox was declared by the medical man to be dead, and was laid out for burial. The nurse, however, on paying a visit to the supposed corpse, thinking there was something uncorpse-like about its appearance, put a wine-glass over the mouth, and returning in a quarter of an hour, found it dimmed with breath. He was resuscitated, and, so far as I am aware, is still living. He would now be about forty-five. He is a farmer.

“A mother and her baby were ill of small-pox, and seemed likely to die. The grandmother, however, made the nurse promise that if death appeared to ensue, and even if the medical man pronounced either or both to be dead, she would put additional blankets on the one or both, and leave them so till her (the grandmother’s) return, which would not be till the next day. They both appeared to die, and were declared dead by the doctor; but the nurse did as she had promised, and the next day when the grandmother returned, they were both alive, and were both living not very long since.

“Some twenty years ago, I was told that about forty years previously a young man, in a parish where I was acquainted, was put in a coffin as a person dead of small-pox; but when the bell was tolling for his funeral, and he was about to be ‘screwed down,’ he got up and vacated the coffin, and lived several years afterwards.

“In a town where I was brought up, a woman was nearly buried alive through having gone into a trance on being frightened by a young lady who had put on a white sheet and pretended to be a ‘ghost.’ For years she was liable to long spells of insensibility, from which nothing could rouse her.

“The haste with which small-pox corpses are disposed of nowadays is to be deprecated. They are usually buried within twelve hours of their supposed death, and the cases I first mentioned show with what very probable results. The only sure proof of death is decomposition, and a law ought to be passed forbidding burial until signs of it have appeared. Not very long since I was in a church-yard where a drain was being made round the church, and was not a little struck by the horrified look of a labourer who came to the vicar and stated that they had come on a skull face downward, which, he said, put it beyond doubt that the person it had belonged to had turned in his coffin after burial.--I am, Sir, yours faithfully,

“B. A.

“June 18, 1884.”

The _Undertakers’ Journal_, May 22, 1895, has the following:--

[REV. HARRY JONES’ CASES.]

“The Reverend Harry Jones, in his reminiscences, and as a London clergyman, declares his conviction that in times of panic from fatal epidemics it is not unlikely that some people are buried alive. Mr. Jones recalls a case within his knowledge of a young woman pronounced to be dead from cholera, and actually laid out for the usual collecting cart to call from the undertakers, when a neighbour happened to come in and lament over her. The story continues thus: ‘And is poor Sarah really dead?’ she cried. ‘Well,’ said her mother, ‘she is, and she will soon be fetched away; but if you can do anything you may do it.’ Acting on this permission the practical neighbour set about rubbing Sarah profusely with mustard. Sarah sat up, stung into renovated life, and so far recovered as to marry; ‘and I myself,’ says Mr. Jones, ‘christened four or five of her children in the course of the next few years.’ In another case, within Mr. Jones’ parochial experiences in London, a man employed as potman lay _in extremis_. A doctor was called in, who said ‘Turn him on his face, and I will put a thick strip of flannel soaked in spirits of wine down his spine. We will see what that will do.’ A sister brought a store of flannel, the doctor soaked it in spirit, and prepared to apply it as he proposed. First, however, he placed the soaking mass in a heap (almost as big as a small hassock) in the middle of his back. Meanwhile the sister leant forward with a candle and accidently set the hassock on fire. ‘This,’ adds the anecdotist, ‘woke the potman up;’ and not very long ago the doctor told me he had seen him in a street near the Oxford Circus.”

From the _Daily Chronicle_, September 19, 1895.

“Sir,--I infer from the following facts that numbers of persons are buried alive after being supposed to have succumbed to small-pox.

“Some years ago, at St. Paul’s, Belchamp, near Clare, a young man who had been down with the small-pox was pronounced to be dead, and was put into a coffin, which, fortunately, was left unclosed until after the bell began to toll for his funeral, when he rose and stepped out. He lived for many years after. In the same neighbourhood no less than three other similar cases occurred, saving that the undertakers were not so far forward in their work. Each of these would have been buried alive but for the facts that in one case the nurse, having suspicions, put a wine-glass over the mouth of the person (who had been already ‘laid out’), and on returning in a quarter of an hour found it dimmed with breath; and that in the other case the mother of a mother, who with her baby was declared by the doctor to be dead, had blankets heaped on them, and after a while had the satisfaction of seeing them revive. Two of these three persons are, I believe, still living, and would be just past middle-age. I enclose their names for your private perusal, that you may verify my statements if desired. The first-mentioned case happened about seventy years ago, but I heard of it from residents in the neighbourhood about forty years after it occurred.

“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:--

[IMPORTANCE OF CAREFUL EXAMINATION.]

“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. 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.