A Coffin as a Christmas Gift.
“A coffin as a Christmas gift, I acknowledge is a queer one, but when I tell the circumstances it will not seem so strange.”
The speaker was Thomas S. Whitworth, an old forty-niner, who was registered at the Maltby house last night, says the Baltimore Herald.
“It was out in the California gold mines,” he continued, “that the affair occurred. Our mining camp was called the Lost Mule Claim, from the fact that a prospector had left the animal there at one time while he went away for a few minutes, and on his return it was missing.
“The Christmas coffin was given to the wife of a miner who had died the day before Christmas. Like all mining camps at that time, there were many things missing which were hard to get, and though deaths from various causes were not infrequent, there was no undertaking establishment at Lost Mule Camp.
“The miner, who died of pneumonia, left a widow who had been extremely kind to the boys at different times, nursing them in sickness and doing things for them which only a woman could do.
“Though we were away some distance from ‘Frisco and travel was bad, as it was the winter season in the mountains, where we were located, the boys all chipped in and sent to ‘Frisco for one of the finest and most expensive coffins the place afforded. It arrived in a day or so, and the gratitude of the widow amply repaid everybody for the trouble.
“The boys chipped in together and raised a big pile for her to go home with. She lived somewhere in the east.”
The Morning News [Savannah GA] 19 January 1896: p. 5
A more sinister coffin Christmas gift was sent to a Minnesota gentleman:
COFFIN FOR CHRISTMAS GIFT
MINNESOTA MAN RECEIVES A GREWSOME [sic] PRESENT FROM AN UNKNOWN FRIEND.
Bemidji, Minn., January 1. E.L. Naylor, of this city, received probably the most remarkable gift ever presented him in a coffin received from some unknown admirer in Fergus Falls.
The casket is exactly his size and was evidently ordered with a proper knowledge of the recipient’s requirements. Mr. Naylor does not know whether the gift was intended as a gentle hint for him to shuffle off this mortal coil, but if it is he intendeds to disappoint his anonymous admirer.
On the outer box was a card bearing this inscription: “Perishable. Should be used at once.”
After he opened the box another card was found wishing Mr. Naylor the compliments of the season and hoping that the day would be his last. Mr. Naylor will keep it was a constant reminder of the regard his Fergus Falls friend has for him.
Cleveland [OH] Leader 2 January 1905: p. 4
Chris Woodyard is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog, The Victorian Book of the Dead.
The Victorian Book of the Dead 