HEARD A DEAD MAN GROAN.
Startling Experience Of a Nurse In a Cholera Hospital.
[New York Press.]
It has so long been accepted that jack of all trades is master of none that I would feel some hesitancy in denying the old saw were I not capable of proving its fallacy by living proof. Alfred S. Nutt, whom I met on Broadway yesterday, has lived to defy this law and he is not yet thirty-five years of age.
He is at once a skillful nurse, a good actor, a capable carpenter and clever enough as a Shaksperean [sic] scholar to be able to recite twelve of the bard’s plays, line perfect, from memory. As a nurse and a care-taker of the insane he has very few superiors, and there are not many men who have had a tenth part of his dangerous and thrilling experiences. As an actor he has astonished the veterans of the footlights by his pose, grace and delivery. As a carpenter his hand is cunning enough to yield him a living should he at any time be forced to take up that trade. As a memorizer very few men can compare with him.
Nutt has had a rather a varied and interesting career for a man of his age. He was the faithful nurse and attendant of the late John McCullough, and was constantly with the lamented actor for two years prior to his melancholy death. Before that he had taken an intense interest in studying the various forms of insanity, and had secured engagements in cases of violent mania so that he could more closely observe the different phases of the malady. The most dangerous part of his experience, however, was as one of the staff of trained nurses, headed by Florence Nightingale, in the cholera districts of Spain and Portugal. People were dying off like flies in a frost. In and about Missal, a town not far from Oporto, the population had become panic-stricken. Mothers deserted their children and children their parents. Even the priests became infected with the general fear, and the majority of them refused to give consolation to the dying or to hold services over the dead. Miss Nightingale and her brave-hearted corps never hesitated a moment in their duty. They went into the stricken houses, and by a show of confidence and cheerfulness managed to coax a few people–enough to return to assist them in the arduous and not altogether agreeable work of the cholera ward in the hospital. With all the work, however, there seemed to be no staying of the disease. Some of the sights were gruesome enough. Nutt had a personal experience that would in all probability have terrified a superstitious man into a spasm.
It was one of Nurse Nutt’s unpleasant duties to carry out the dead and prepare them for burial, and at this ghastly work he was kept busy almost constantly. One morning he was summoned to remove the body of a young man who had died the night before. The agony of his taking off had been so great that he was horribly contorted, his knees being drawn up to his chin and his muscles in great knots. Nutt carried him out and tried to straighten his frightfully distorted limbs so as to put him in the rude pine box provided for each patient the moment he or she entered the hospital. This was found to be impossible, and the nurse concluded that he would wait for a few hours until the natural relaxation, which always follows rigor mortis, took place. He was very tired with the day’s exertions and threw himself down on a cot near the dead man. He fell asleep about noon and remained in that condition, he thinks, for about five hours. It was dusk when be was awakened by a noise as of some one knocking at the door. He lifted his head and looked to the left. Directly in the line of his vision was the pine box, alongside of which lay the dead cholera patient, with his legs and arms contorted. As Nutt looked he saw one of the corpse’s arms straighten out and strike the floor. Then one of his legs did the same thing. To another man this might have been something horrible; to Nutt it was simply the obedience of a natural law–the relaxation of the muscles–just what he had been waiting for, too. He turned over, stretched himself and was preparing to get up, when he saw the supposed corpse turn over on its stomach, and, with sepulchral groans, begin crawling painfully along the floor.
Nurse Nutt was on his feet in an instant. He was startled, to be sure, but not in the least frightened. He realized instantly that it was a case of suspended animation, and his only thought was how the poor fellow’s life might be saved. He lifted the patient from the floor to the bed, and then ran into another room to call a physician. He was gone not more than two minutes. When he returned he found that the patient had rolled off the bed and was on the floor again. He was on his back. His limbs were again contorted. His eyes were glazed. The doctor bent down and put his ear to the chest. “Why, nurse,” said he, “the man is dead. He’s cold, too, and has certainly been dead for at least six hours.”
“So I thought,” replied the astonished Nutt, “but I’ll stake my life that he was alive three minutes ago, when I left this room. He came over by that box near the door, and awakened me with a groan. I distinctly saw him turn over on his face and crawl at least ten feet on his hands and knees. Then I picked him up, put him on the bed and called you.”
The doctor, without making reply, removed the dead man’s shirt and exposed the upper portion of his stomach. Unmistakable evidences of decomposition were there shown. The flesh was turning black. “Are you satisfied?” asked the doctor.
“Yes,” replied Nutt. “I am satisfied of one thing–I have seen a dead man move.”
The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 21 July 1888: p. 10
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.
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