Death by Eclipse and Other Coronal Curiosities

Eclipse with Solar Streamers, (Or Eye of Sauron) from 1913

I don’t know about you, but the upcoming eclipse has me feeling pretty damn jumpy. Other than the fact that the waning light is uncannily like that when a tornado is about to hit, there’s a feeling that the world is at a tipping point and all it would take is the barest weight of the umbra to send it spinning into the abyss….

But it was ever thus. And it is this theme—of eclipsical unease and coronal curiosities that I treat today. It seems that nobody is fond of eclipses but the scientists.

Comment on the Eclipse of June 8th

By William D. Burk

An Eclipse of the Sun or Moon at best can never bring anything good, because the earth is robbed of the Sun’s vital energy or the Moon’s natural energy for the time being. The part of the world where an eclipse is most visible is bound to suffer more than other parts where the eclipse is not visible, and the effect will be more or less so in things or places that are ruled by the sign and Lord of the sign wherein the eclipse falls. Azoth April 1918: p. 236

Eclipse legends are found in many different cultures. One particular subset, found even today, focuses on the well-being of pregnant women and of children. Here are some Caribbean beliefs c. 1900.

HOW ECLIPSES INFLUENCE BABIES

A SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEF IN THE WEST INDIES

THE METHOD OF COUNTERACTING EVIL EFFECTS

Cuba and Porto Rico lay outside the line of totality in the last eclipse of the sun; in fact, the amount of obscuration was rather less than was observed in New-York, or more correctly, than would have been observed if the clouds had permitted. None the less, to the eclipse is to be charged a large amount of infant ill-health and mortality.

In those islands all mothers and nurses have a fear of the evil operation of an eclipse on tender infants. They say that it is a fear that the children will be hit by the eclipse, but if any one should suggest that it is the devil which does the hitting the statement will not be disputed by adult Cubans and Porto Ricans. The only remedy against the malign influence that is know is to strip the babies as soon as the eclipse begins and expose them in the open air unattended until the shadow has passed entirely off the sun. If the child gets a case of pneumonia or bronchitis as the result of the several hours of exposure, it is proof positive that it has been “hit” by the devil behind the astronomical phenomenon; if the baby escapes it is due entirely to the purity of its soul.

When any child is “hit” it is taken first to the “padre” for the expulsion of the devil, and then to the “medico” for the completion of the treatment. In all such cases the approved treatment consists of the administration of an emetic to dislodge the devil of the eclipse and confidence that all will go well under the influence of faith and medicine. On the morning of the eclipse the weather in Cuba, at least on the north shore, was decided raw, and a larger portion of the exposed children took colds and died. Children who are not thus exposed at the time of an eclipse are supposed, according to local superstition, to be “hit” by the eclipse “diabolo” in less manifest ways, and to be beyond these methods of cure. All children who have never been exposed to this treatment must be exposed to the eclipse or take the consequences. New York [NY] Tribune Illustrated Supplement 29 July 1900: p. 13

And from India:

A woman far gone in pregnancy is locked in a room and every entrance to her room is close covered so that no ray of the dimmed sun or moon may reach her. While thus locked up the woman cannot do any work. She cannot dress vegetables or even break a straw or she may maim the limbs of the child in her womb.

If she sees any of the eclipse the child will suffer from eclipse madness or grahan-ghelu. When the eclipse is over every one bathes either at home or in a river or in the sea. They fetch fresh drinking water, purify the house-gods by going through the regular daily worship, take a meal, and present gifts, grain and copper or silver coins to the family priest. Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Volume 9, Part 1, 1901: p. 395-6

In the United States, an eclipse and “maternal influence” was blamed for a child’s defective iris.

INFLUENCE OF STRANGE SIGHTS ON PREGNANCY.

Editor Medical Brief:—Already much has been written on “the influence of strange sights on pregnancy,” and I propose contributing one article, touching a very striking case of that kind. Some years ago, about 1808, was requested to see a child teething, and while talking with the mother about the child’s condition my attention was directed to one of the little fellow’s eyes, the mother remarking the while that “about one-half of that eye is darker than the other half and always has been since I first noticed the color of his eyes.” His were dark enough to be called black. On close inspections I found that the eye resembled an eclipse so closely that the impression at once entered my mind that probably the mother had been looking at the sun during an eclipse, and upon inquiry, elicited the fact she had looked long at an eclipse of the sun during the early months of utero-gestation. It was a complete facsimile; the line of disk of the eclipse being perfect and smooth. I may add, it was not discernible at about the distance of one yard from the eye, and did not extend outside of the colored part of eye. The child died since of measles in Grafton, W. Va. J. G., M. D. Medical Brief, Volume 9, 1881: p. 379

Eclipses were cited as a cause of insanity.

ECLIPSE DROVE HIM INSANE; DIED ON WAY TO STATE HOSPITAL

Union City, Jan. 29. Rev. Horatio Carr, of Union township, who went insane at the sight of the eclipse on last Saturday morning, died at 5 p.m. yesterday afternoon while en route to North Warren, where he was being taken to be placed in the state institution for the insane.

Rev. Carr was past 70 years and had been considered “queer” for the past several years, and following the eclipse of the sun he became imbued with the belief that the world was coming to an end. His queer actions became so pronounced that it was thought advisable to take him to Warren for treatment.

On the trip to the state institution, he became very violent, and his weak physical condition, unable to withstand the great shock, caused his death. His body was brought to the Cooper-Crowe undertaking parlors in Union City, and he will be buried from there this afternoon.

Rev. Carr was a graduate of Allegheny college, and despite his “queerness” was a scholarly man and well versed in religion. He is survived by a brother, Samuel Carr of Union City, and several distant relatives. The Kane [PA] Republican 29 January 1925: p. 8

They were also blamed for suicides: An eclipse coupled with the full moon made the consequences even more dire:

ECLIPSE CAUSES SUICIDE

Canton Man Affected by Appearance of the Moon.

Canton, O., Nov. 30. The eclipse and the change of the moon Saturday, it is believed, as the cause that drove Jacob Walser, aged 45, to commit suicide on the J.A. Reed farm, north of town. Walser’s body was found hanging by a strap from the rafters in the barn.

Walser was subject to melancholia every time the moon changed it was said at the Reed home. This had lasted for 10 years, as long as the family had known him. ‘I am feeling bad,” Walser would say whenever the moon changed. Saturday there came the eclipse coupled with the change to the full moon, which had a bad effect upon Walser. Warren [PA] Times Mirror 30 November 1909: p. 3

An eclipse was indirectly the cause of King Rama IV of Thailand’s death and I seem to have heard rumors about a French King and a Roman Emperor who died of terror during eclipses. Several less exalted people were said to have been frightened to death by eclipses in 1869 and 1900.

Frightened to Death by the Eclipse.

Winsboro News and Herald June 14. Fright at the eclipse was the cause of the death of a…woman who died at her home in the Jenkinsville neighborhood a few days ago. At the time of the eclipse the woman was at work in the field, and seeing the peculiar appearance of everything as the eclipse progressed, she, not knowing the cause of it, became terrified and started home. She ran a distance of three miles to her house, and when she reached it she fell down in a convulsion. The convulsions, which were probably caused by the long run and over exertion, continued, and the woman died a day or two ago. Yorkville [SC] Enquirer 23 June 1900: p. 2

KILLED BY THE ECLIPSE

A woman named Mrs. Gifford, living in the northern part of Marion county, died on Saturday from the effects of fright at the eclipse. She had no knowledge of its approach, and was alone at the time it came on, with the exception of a child four weeks old. Terrified at the sight, she seized the child and fled to a neighbor’s a mile distant. When she reached there her reason was gone. A doctor near by was called who pronounced her incurable. She lingered along till Saturday when she died without her reason having returned. Star Tribune [Minneapolis MN] 18 August 1869: p. 1

These ladies may, indeed, have died of fright, but there was a long-standing belief that eclipses could not only weaken the sick, they could kill.

Eclipses are the astronomical phenomena which, in all ages, have produced most vivid impressions on the minds of men. Ramazzini states that during the eclipse of the moon in January, 1693, the mortality among the sick was greatly increased; and many cases of sudden death occurred. According to [Richard] Mead, on the day of the total eclipse of the sun in April, 1725, all the cases of disease were exacerbated.

Baillon relates the following: A number of Parisian physicians were called in consultation to the case of a woman of high rank, at the time of a solar eclipse, but so lightly did they regard her case that they walked out to view the sky. They were, however, quickly recalled, to see her in a comatose condition, which continued until the sun had regained its natural brilliancy.

According to Matthew Faber, chief physician to the Duke of Wurtemberg, a hypochondriac, who was usually very peaceable, became, at the time of a solar eclipse, first extremely sad, and afterwards so very furious that he sallied out from his house with a drawn sword and struck down all those who opposed him….

According to Rawley, Lord [Francis] Bacon fell down with syncope during an eclipse of the moon, and did not recover until the moon’s disk was again clear. One of my own patients has been singularly affected during an eclipse of the moon. As soon as the obscuration commenced, her respiration became slow and her pulse weak; at a more advanced period her pulse rose, but her respiration was almost suspended. Then she fell into a state of utter unconsciousness, without any motion whatever. As the moon passed out of the earth’s shadow, these symptoms gradually disappeared; and after the eclipse had terminated she felt no traces of the disorder. This case has some analogy with that of Lord Bacon. These facts can scarcely be attributed to the imagination. St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal, Volume 13: p. 514-515

Physician Richard Mead offered some “surprizing” observations:

“What happened January 21, 1693, was very surprizing. For the Moon having been eclipsed that night, the greatest part of the sick died about the very hour of the eclipse: and some were even struck with sudden death.”…

And it is still fresh in the memories of some, that in that memorable eclipse of the Sun, which happened April 22, 1715, and in which the total obscuration lasted here at London three minutes and twenty-three seconds, many sick people found themselves considerably worse during the time: which circumstance people generally wondered at.” The Medical Works of Richard Mead, 1762: p. 188-89

It is axiomatic that animals behaved in strange ways during eclipses, but apparently they, too, were vulnerable to death by eclipse.

Effects of a Solar Eclipse on Animals.—In his report on the eclipse of July 8th, M. [François] Arago mentions in support of a popular notion which he had always disbelieved, that a friend of his put five healthy and lively linnets in a cage together, and fed them immediately before the eclipse. At the end of it three of them were found dead. Other indications of the alarm it produced were seen in a dog which had been long kept fasting, and which was eating hungrily when the eclipse commenced, but left his food as soon as the darkness set in. A colony of ants which had been working actively, suddenly ceased from their labors at the same moment.—Gazette Medicale. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1843: p. 128

While I don’t have a clue about the astrological statements in the following excerpts, eclipses were invariably seen as portents of conflict, particularly by astrologers in the 1910s, who earnestly analyzed the effects of stars, planets, and eclipses on the prospects for war.

If eclipses have effect on international affairs it would seem that the solar eclipse of April 27th, 1912, in 27˚ 5’ Aries was the celestial portent of the GREAT WAR. Though it occurred over two years before the outbreak of that conflict it is the only solar eclipse within a reasonable number of years previous to it whose central line of total eclipse passed directly over the scenes of the greatest carnage in that war subsequently occurring. This line of totality passed through the northwest of France, Belgium, the Baltic and the north of Russia. If we call this a coincidence it is certainly a most remarkable one. Cardan averred that an eclipse of the Sun in Aries portended “terrible wars and slaughter,” and that eclipse certainly lived up to that reputation. As time went on the next warning the world received of the close approach of the conflict was the lunar eclipse of March, 1914, Previous to the solar eclipse of April 17^th, 1912, some astrologers, among them Zadkiel, issued warnings of war, but seemed to expect it that same year and as nothing of that kind occurred the eclipse seems to have been forgotten. It would seem that the matter is of sufficient importance to be taken up by proficient mathematical astrologers and the relation between these eclipses and the Great War be established once for all, if such is possible… The Adept, The American Journal of Astrology, December 1920: p. 8

If the central line of totality is significant, what can we expect for those areas darkened by Monday’s event?

This passage tells of the ominous total solar eclipse on 21 August 1914, and explains the lapse of time between the eclipse of 1912 and the outbreak of the Great War:

The Power of Regulus

“As a matter of fact, it was not merely Mars that was ascending at the summer solstice, but Mars in conjunction with a martial star of the first magnitude, Regulus (or ‘a’ Leonis), and this no doubt greatly emphasized the martial influence. It is an astrological theory, to which perhaps some credence should be given, that fixed star effects are of a sudden and dramatic character. It is a curious fact that the eclipse of the sun on August 21st of this year (1914) [a total solar eclipse. The totality was seen in Northern Europe and Asia.] fell on the identical place occupied by Mars and Regulus at the summer solstice. According to the celebrated astrologer, Junctinus, a great eclipse of the Sun in Leo ‘presignifies the motions of armies, death of a king, danger of war, and scarcity of rain…’

It is generally held by astrologers that great wars are heralded by eclipses. The central eclipse of the Sun on April 17, 1912, which occurred in twenty-seven degrees of Aries, was…followed in the middle of October by the outbreak of the Balkan War, exactly at the time when Mars transited the opposition of the place of the eclipse. At the autumn equinox of that year Mars was culminating at Vienna and in the Balkans. An eclipse is traditionally held to rule as many years as it lasts hours [uh-oh…]; the duration of the rule of this eclipse would thus be fully three years. It must not then be assumed that its effect was exhausted by the Balkan War, which as a matter of fact was in its nature merely the forerunner of the present conflagration…. Prophecies and Omens of the Great War, Ralph Shirley, 1915: pp. 63-4

Apparently the bit about the influence of an eclipse lasting as many years as it spans hours goes back to Ptolemy. As Ann Geneva writes in Astrology and the Seventeenth-century Mind: William Lilly and the Language of the Stars, ”this timeframe provided astrologers with the necessary leeway to connect natural phenomena to important terrestrial events by extending their statute of limitations.”

Having found a good deal of Forteana associated with cholera epidemics, I was surprised that there were far fewer reports of high strangeness in connection with the solar events. I’ve previously reported on a mysterious giant bird associated with an 1869 U.S. eclipse.

My favorite bit of eclipse Forteana is this story, reminiscent of the popular lightning daguerreotypes, found etched on or in window glass.

The following singular phenomenon is related by a Nashville paper: A young lady of this city, wearing a highly polished silver pin, was looking at the eclipse considerably, through an ordinary smoked glass, during the time of transit, and afterwards discovered that the eclipse had daguerreotyped itself upon her pin at the time the sun was half obscured the impression remains there permanently, resisting the action of rubbing as well as exposure to the atmosphere. This is a phenomenon for artists to study upon. The South-Western [Shreveport LA] 15 September 1869: p. 4

While we would like to think that the modern world is beyond all superstition about these anomalous scientific events, in 1999, during the Aug. 11 eclipse, a Brazilian police superintendent released three prisoners because he thought that the eclipse would mean the end of the world. (Picui, Brazil), and a baby born during the blackout was killed by its 31-year-old mother, who feared it was cursed. (Strahotin, Romania) Augusta [GA] Chronicle 10 October 1999: p. 2

A number of schools are planning to close on Monday for fear children will damage their eyes. And yesterday I was startled to get a notice from FedEx about possible service interruptions.

FedEx is closely monitoring potential effects of the total solar eclipse on Monday, August 21, 2017. Our first priority is the safety and well-being of our team members, and we will implement contingency plans as necessary. Events of this nature often cause pickup and delivery delays and disruptions for FedEx customers. [They do??]

Other examples of eclipse unease or Forteana? Send to chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com, who plans to stay indoors with the curtains tightly drawn.

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.

Painting the Face of a Dead Emperor

23 March is the anniversary of the death of Tsar Paul I. Normally I pay little attention to Russian history except for the costumes, ghosts, and Faberge objets, but blundered across this happy, if macabre, memory from the memoirs of Léonard-Alexis Autié, Marie Antoinette’s coiffeur, who perhaps started the tradition of calling celebrity hairdressers by their first names. Léonard is a shocking name-dropper, but in this case, he seems to have been in the right place at the opportune time.

Paul I. died suddenly, as everyone knows, in the month of March, 1801. Many conjectures have been hazarded as to the cause of this unexpected death; and in the interest of my publisher, if I ever have one, I shall not repeat one of them. Certain books are treated, on their arrival in Russia, with as scant courtesy as that extended to the milliners’ husbands; and I should be in despair if mine, presuming that book there will be, should be placed on the index of the director of police, a functionary of whom I beg to declare myself the very humble servant.

I will content myself, therefore, with saying that the late Paul I. was an emperor endowed with more than the ordinary allowance of personal hideousness, and that he did not recover, after his death, a nobility of feature with which he had not been favoured in life. Nevertheless, it was necessary that, according to custom, he should be exhibited before the eyes of the people; and means were sought to diminish as much as possible the effect of the rapid and revolting decomposition of His defunct Majesty’s features. I was sent for to the Palace to advise upon this expedient. When I stood in presence of the corpse, I realized that the alteration in the face was due rather to the actual colour of the skin than to any displacement of the muscles, and I thought that with the aid of a little white and rouge, cunningly applied, I could succeed in giving a more life-like colour to this dead flesh. I next brushed up and curled the Emperor’s hair; and in the end I succeeded in restoring this face, in which decomposition had already begun its hideous work, so well, that Paul I. was actually less ugly on his state bed of death than he had been while living.

I had just reached my fifty-fifth year when I thus set the last touch to the edifice of my reputation. I had followed the career of a hair-dresser in all its ramifications; I had distinguished myself in the invention of every style of head-dress; no shade, no texture of hair had escaped the exercise of my art; but one thing was wanting to achieve my glory: the exploit of dressing the hair and painting the face of a corpse. This last complementary feat I achieved on the 24th of March, 1801.

Souvenirs of Léonard: Hairdresser to Queen Marie-Antoinette, Volume 2, Léonard, 1896

Tsar Paul I was strangled by some of his nobles on 23 March 1801, a fact that Léonard gavotted around with admirable tact and one eye on the censor. The note about milliners’ husbands was a reference to a flood of pretty milliners coming to Russia from Paris and becoming mistresses to the aristocracy. If, by chance, a milliner’s devoted husband followed her, he was unceremoniously bundled back to France so as not to spoil the fun. Léonard was, in fact, in Russia at the time of the Tsar’s murder, having fled the French Revolution, not wishing to lose his head for dressing a royal head. That said, there is considerable doubt about the many titillating tit-bits in Léonard’s volume, which was published posthumously in 1838. Léonard died in 1820 and it has been suggested that fantasist Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon, whom we have met in these pages before, was the real author.

Léonard’s (if it is his) reference to face-painting seems to suggest that it was so commonplace at this date (1801) as to be on his bucket list. There is a longish passage in The Victorian Book of the Dead from an 1884 paper about a barber who painted the faces of the dead, but I have found surprisingly little about the practice in the nineteenth-century press, which was otherwise always avid for a morbid sensation. It seems to have been practiced primarily in cases of discoloration or decomposition and was not necessarily routine until the twentieth century. We find instructions for painting, rouging, or otherwise making up the corpse emphasized only in post-1900 embalming texts—and even then there was a certain revulsion by social critics against overdoing it. The American Way of Death, by Jessica Mitford and, of course, The Loved One, by Evelyn Waugh had some sharpish comments about cosmetic treatments for the dead.

Of course, there are different standards for royalty, especially murdered royalty who need to look their best for lying in state. And, really, nothing in the preservation/restoration line is too good for the sovereign ruler of all Russia. Just ask Lenin. He, too, is said to look better than the day he died.

Other examples of corpse face-painting from nineteenth-century sources? chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

The Cry of the Banshee: 1887

The Cry of the Banshee

There is now living in Bristol a Mrs. Linahan, an old Irish woman, who has not seen her own country for forty years. She is old, poor, bed ridden and suffering, but patient and cheerful beyond belief. Her strongest feeling is love for Ireland ,and she likes talking to me because I am Irish. Many a time, sitting in her little, close room, above the noisy street, she has told me about banshees and phookas and fairies, especially the first. She declares solemnly she once heard the cry, or caoin of a banshee.

“It was when I was a little young child,” she told me, “And knew nothing at all of banshees or of death. One day mother sent me to see after my grandmother, the length of three miles from our house. All the road was deep in snow, and I went my lone – and didn’t know the grandmother was dead, and my aunt gone to the village for help. So I got to the house, and I see her lying so still and quiet I thought she was sleepin’. When I called her and she wouldn’t stir or speak, I thought I’d put snow on her face to wake her. I just stepped outside to get a handful, and came in, leaving the door open, and then I heard a far away cry, so faint and yet so fearsome that I shook like a leaf in the wind. It got nearer and nearer, and then I heard a sound like clapping or wringing of hands, as they do in keening at a funeral. Twice it came and then I slid down to the ground and crept under the bed where my grandmother lay, and there I heard it for the third time crying, “Ochone, Ochone,” at the very door. Then it suddenly stopped; I couldn’t tell where it went, and I dared not lift up my head till the woman came in the house. One of them took me up and said: “It was the banshee the child heard, for the woman that lies there was one of the real old Irish families – she was an O’Grady and that was the raison of it.’” English Magazine

Aberdeen [SD] Daily News 18 May 1887: p. 4

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Clapping and keening were a feature of Irish funerals; professional keeners called bean chaointe would cry of the merits of the deceased and the broken hearts of those left behind.

The “raison of it” was that banshees were said to be attached only to the oldest, noblest Irish families, usually meaning those prefaced by “O’” or “Mac.”

In some cases, families have been apprised of an approaching death by some strange spectre, either male or female, a remarkable instance of which occurs in the MS. memoirs of Lady Fanshaw, and is to this effect: “Her husband, Sir Richard, and she, chanced, during their abode in Ireland, to visit a friend, who resided in his ancient baronial castle surrounded with a moat. At midnight she was awakened by a ghastly and supernatural scream, and, looking out of bed, beheld by the moonlight a female face and part of the form hovering at the window. The face was that of a young and rather handsome woman, but pale; and the hair, which was reddish, was loose and dishevelled. This apparition continued to exhibit itself for some time, and then vanished with two shrieks, similar to that which had at first excited Lady Fanshaw’s attention. In the morning, with infinite terror, she communicated to her host what had happened, and found him prepared not only to credit, but to account for, what had happened.

“A near relation of mine,” said he, “expired last night in the castle. Before such an event happens in this family and castle, the female spectre whom you have seen is always visible. She is believed to be the spirit of a woman of inferior rank, whom one of my ancestors degraded himself by marrying, and whom afterwards, to expiate the dishonour done his family, he caused to be drowned in the castle moat.”

This, of course, was no other than the Banshee, which in times past has been the source of so much terror in Ireland.

However, sometimes embarrassing errors occurred.

Amongst the innumerable stories told of its appearance may be mentioned one related by Mrs. Lefanu, the niece of Sheridan, in the memoirs of her grandmother, Mrs. Frances Sheridan. From this account we gather that Miss Elizabeth Sheridan was a firm believer in the Banshee, and firmly maintained that the one attached to the Sheridan family was distinctly heard lamenting beneath the windows of the family residence before the news arrived from France of Mrs. Frances Sheridan’s death at Blois. She adds that a niece of Miss Sheridan’s made her very angry by observing that as Mrs. Frances Sheridan was by birth a Chamberlaine, a family of English extraction, she had no right to the guardianship of an Irish fairy, and that therefore the Banshee must have made a mistake.

Strange Pages from Family Papers, T.F. Thistelton-Dyer, 1895

Mrs Daffodil and that person over at Haunted Ohio are both fascinated by tales of banshees. It is always useful to know one’s death omens. For other stories of banshees, both knocking and shrieking, please see A Banshee in Indiana, The Banshee of the O’Dowds, The Banshee Sang of Death, and A Banshee at Sea

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

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 on Twitter @hauntedohiobook. And visit her newest blog The Victorian Book of the Dead.

The Tooth Snatcher

Since we are nothing if not topical here, I excuse this slight supernatural story involving tooth-snatching on the grounds of enfeeblement from a recent root canal. Ouch.

“The Rev. Mr. Perring, Vicar of a parish which is now a component part of London, though, about forty-five years ago it had the appearance of a village at the outskirts, had to encounter the sad affliction of losing his eldest Son at an age when parents are encouraged to believe their children are to become their survivors; the youth dying in his seventeenth year. He was buried in the vaults of the church.

“Two nights subsequently to that interment, the father dreamed that he saw his Son habited in a shroud spotted with blood, the expression of his countenance being that of a person enduring some paroxysm of acute pain: ‘Father, father! come and defend me!’ were the words he distinctly heard, as he gazed on this awe-inspiring apparition; ‘they will not let me rest quiet in my coffin.’

“The venerable man awoke with terror and trembling; but after a brief interval of painful reflection concluded himself to be labouring under the influence of his sad day-thoughts, and the depression of past sufferings; and with these rational assurances commended himself to the All-Merciful, and slumbered again and slept.

“He saw his Son again beseeching him to protect his remains from outrage, ‘For,’ said the apparently surviving dead one, ‘they are mangling my body at this moment.’ The unhappy Father rose at once, being now unable to banish the fearful image from his mind, and determined when day should dawn to satisfy himself of the delusiveness or verity of the revelation conveyed through this seeming voice from the grave.

“At an early hour, accordingly, he repaired to the Clerk’s house, where the keys of the church and of the vaults were kept. The Clerk after considerable delay, came down-stairs, saying it was very unfortunate he should want them just on that very day, as his son over the way had taken them to the smith’s for repair,—one of the largest of the bunch of keys having been broken off short in the main door of the vault, so as to render it impracticable for anybody to enter till the lock had been picked and taken off.

“Impelled by the worst misgivings, the Vicar loudly insisted on the Clerk’s accompanying him to the blacksmith’s—not for a key but for a crowbar, it being his resolute determination to enter the vault and see his Son’s coffin without a moment’s delay.

“The recollections of the dream were now becoming more and more vivid, and the scrutiny about to be made assumed a solemnity mingled with awe, which the agitation of the father rendered terrible to the agents in this forcible interruption into the resting-place of the dead. But the hinges were speedily wrenched asunder—the bar and bolts were beaten in and bent beneath the heavy hammer of the smith,—and at length with tottering and outstretched hands, the maddened parent stumbled and fell: his son’s coffin had been lifted from the recess at the vault’s side and deposited on the brick floor; the lid, released from every screw, lay loose at top, and the body, enveloped in its shroud, on which were several dark spots below the chin, lay exposed to view; the head had been raised, the broad riband had been removed from under the jaw, which now hung down with the most ghastly horror of expression, as if to tell with more terrific certainty the truth of the preceding night’s vision. Every tooth in the head had been drawn.

“The young man had when living a beautiful set of sound teeth. The Clerk’s Son, who was a barber, cupper, and dentist, had possessed himself of the keys, and eventually of the teeth, for the purpose of profitable employment of so excellent a set in his line of business. The feelings of the Rev. Mr. Perring can be easily conceived. The event affected his mind through the remaining term of his existence; but what became of the delinquent whose sacrilegious hand had thus rifled the tomb was never afterwards correctly ascertained. He decamped the same day, and was supposed to have enlisted as a soldier. The Clerk was ignominiously displaced, and did not long survive the transaction. Some years afterwards, his house was pulled down to afford room for extensive improvements and new buildings in the village.

“As regards the occurrence itself, few persons were apprised of it; as the Vicar—shunning public talk and excitement on the subject of any member of his family—exerted himself in concealing the circumstances as much as possible. The above facts, however, may be strictly relied on as accurate.”

Glimpses of the Supernatural, Frederick George Lee, 1875

Editor’s note: A friend who provided the above example writes to the Editor:—”I knew the family, and the circumstance of Mr. Perring’s singular dream; and can certainly testify to its truth.”

A minor point, but while this was published in Spiritualist journals and Lee’s book, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the language suggests eighteenth century.

While the body-snatchers’ primary goal was corpses for the anatomist market, teeth were also prized merchandise. Dentures were frequently made from post-mortem pearly-whites, also known today as “Waterloo teeth,” after the wholesale tooth-snatching that occurred after that battle. This article tells the history of the practice, which did not begin with Waterloo, and suggests that many people did not realize the source of their false teeth.

Ben Crouch, described in the following squib, was said to be the leader of “the most expert gang of resurrectionists ever known.” He specialized in corpse teeth, and even got the proper credentials to facilitate his dental acquisitions.

[Crouch] was a big, powerful man, quite famous as a prize-fighter. His father was employed as a carpenter at Guy’s Hospital, which probably explains the way in which he first became attracted to resurrectioning… In 1817 he and Jack Harnett, another of the gang, gave up resurrectioning and began the business of supplying dentists with human teeth. They got sutlers’ licenses and followed the English army to France and Spain. After a battle they would get as many teeth as possible from the dead, likewise stealing any money or valuables that might be found on the corpses. The Medical News, Vol. 81, 1902

Other toothsome Spiritualist tales? Send with a warm salt-water rinse to chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

In other supernatural teeth news, I posted previously on a woman bitten by a demon after some table-tipping experiments, also on The Phantom Teeth of Knightsbridge, and occult dentistry.

Valentine’s Day: It’s Murder

Valentine’s Day, with its endless opportunities for romantic disappointments, amorous rivalries, and insulting comic valentines, was a source of many heat-of-passion homicides.

VALENTINE CAUSES MURDER

One Man Dead and Number Injured in St. Louis Fight.

St. Louis, Feb. 16. As the result of a quarrel which started over a valentine, John Carley, aged thirty, is dead from a bullet wound, Mrs. Minnie Howard, his step-sister, is under arrest charged with the shooting. William Ewing and Maud Goodwin received cuts and bruises and were locked up as witnesses. The trouble occurred in a boarding house conducted by Mrs. Howard. She asserts that she fired the shots which killed Carley, to prevent him from killing Ewing during the general scrimmage.

Lincoln [NE] Nebraska State Journal 17 February 1904: p. 2

Valentine Causes Murder.

Pickensville, Ala., March 22. Lee Doss shot and killed Luther Ball, who had sent an offensive valentine to a sister of Doss.

The Allen County Republican-Gazette [Lima OH] 23 March 1897: p. 1

It is curious that this story of Valentine patricide mentions the dead man’s insurance, practically inviting local vultures to swoop on those minor daughters.

THE DEADLY VALENTINE.

A Penny Caricature Results in the Murder of a Modern Woodman in West Virginia.

A comic valentine resulted in the violent death of Charles R. Stewart, a member of camp No. 5719, Charleston, W. Va., on the evening of February 13. “Neighbor” Stewart’s son, Louis, defending his mother, shot his father to death. The tragedy was the sequel to the receipt by Stewart of a comic valentine, which he thought had been sent him by his wife, with whom he had not been on the best of terms. Mrs. Stewart angrily denied sending the penny caricature. The son, Louis, interferred in the quarrel. The father turned to assail him with a chair, when the son drew a pistol and fatally wounded his father. The son is in jail. Stewart held a Woodman certificate for $2,000, payable to his three minor daughters, and full settlement will be made as soon as the complete proofs of death are filed.

Louisville [NE] Courier 24 March 1900: p. 1

C.R. STEWART, SHOT BY HIS SON, DIES FORGIVING.

Charleston, W. Va., Feb. 15. Charles R. Stewart, shot Tuesday night by his son, Lewis, died yesterday. Before his death he became reconciled with his wife, whom he accused of sending him a comic valentine, when his son interfered. Stewart said to Judge Hall: “Be as easy on my boy as you can, and may God forgive him.” The Coroner’s jury held young Stewart on a charge of homicide.

The Standard Union [Brooklyn, NY] 15 February 1900: p. 12

The law did go “easy” on the boy.

Merciful Sentence for Parricide.

Special to The Washington Post.

Charleston, W. Va., July 21. Lewis Stewart, who last February shot and killed his father, C.R. Stewart, was to-day found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to pay a fine of $10 and to spend one hour in jail.

The Washington [DC] Weekly Post 24 July 1900: p. 2

Attempted murder was also a recognized Valentine’s tradition, according to this frighteningly candid chemist.

Poisoned Valentines.

“Poisoners,” said a chemist, “make use of Valentine Day to send boxes of poisoned cake or candy to their foes. Therefore beware.

“This fact is a sad reflection upon human nature,” he resumed. “Yet here is a worse reflection. Once, in a poisoning case in St. Louis, I testified that there were several deadly poisons that left no trace of any sort behind in the body of the victim. Well, the lawyers asked me what these poisons were, and I refused to divulge their names. ‘Such knowledge is too dangerous for the public at large to possess,’ I said.

“The judge upheld me, and I didn’t give the names of the poisons. But do you know that within the next month I received eight hundred letters from all parts of the world asking me, on all sorts of plausible pretexts, the poisons’ names? And still, to this day, I occasionally receive such letters, especially in the valentine season. I’ve received over a thousand in all. That is to say, I have direct knowledge of a thousand persons who would, if they dared, commit murder.”

The Journal and Tribune [Knoxville TN] 13 February 1910: p. 29

A POISONED VALENTINE.

The Deadly Present Sent to a Jersey City Belle Last Monday.

From the New York Star.

Miss Nellie Willis is a well-known young lady, who moves in good society in Jersey City. She lives with her mother, who is a widow, at 167 1/2 Fourth street. For several weeks she has been annoyed by receiving anonymous letters, some of which were obscene, while others contained passionate words of love. No attention was paid to the letters, and most of them were destroyed soon after they were received. When at last the letters became abusive they were turned over to the post office authorities, who were asked to try and discover who the writer was, so that the annoyance could be stopped. Efforts were made to find the writer, but without success. Sometimes the missives would be mailed in Jersey City, and at other times in Brooklyn and again in New York and Garden City.

Neither Miss Willis nor any of the members of her family could imagine who these letters were coming from, or for what purpose they were written. Miss Nellie is about 19 years of age, has a very pretty figure and is quite handsome. She has two sisters, one of who is married to Mr. Alexander Connors, who is in the feed business at Thirty-fourth street and Tenth avenue, New York, and another one is married to Mr. P. Cox, a Wall street broker. Her brother is an engraver and does business on Maiden lane.

The letters suddenly stopped coming to the house, and for a week not a note of any kind was received, and Miss Willis began to think that the annoyance had stopped.

On Monday morning the postman delivered at the house a good-sized box addressed to Miss Willis. As it was St. Valentine’s day it was supposed by Mrs. Willis that the package contained a valentine from one of her daughter’s many admirers. As Miss Nellie was out when the package was received, it was left in the parlor until she returned. When Miss Willis opened the package that evening she found a pretty box made of lacquered wood, and on opening it saw that it was filled with delicious looking figs.

She took one of the figs from the box and was about to eat it, when her attention was called to a green spot on the side. Upon a closer examination she found that the fig had been slit with a knife, and on breaking it open, the inside was found to be sprinkled with a green powder. The rest of the figs were examined, and every one had been treated in the same way. The box was taken to a chemist, who told Miss Willis that she had had a narrow escape from being poisoned, as each fig contained a big dose of Paris green.

The discovery was so startling that the young lady was taken ill and has been suffering from nervous prostration. The box and figs were turned over to the police, who are making every effort to find the scoundrel who mailed the package. The postmark was that of one of the stations in New York. When Mrs. Willis was spoken to about the matter she said:

“I cannot imagine who sent Nellie the box or for what purpose it was sent. Someone must have a spite against her. She narrowly escaped being poisoned.”

Miss Willis met with a romantic adventure shortly before Christmas. At a party one night she met a young [man] named H. Cisco. He called on her several times, when he asked her to marry him. She refused his offer, and her mother forbade him to come to the house. When he found out that he could not call on her he would watch wherever she went and annoy her with his attentions on the street. He finally threatened to kill Miss Willis, and she had him arrested. When brought up before the police justice he said that be was a student at the Troy Institute, and that he did not intend to harm Miss Willis. He was discharged, and since that time nothing has been heard of him.

The Savannah [GA] Morning News 23 February 1887: p. 7

HER VALENTINE A STRANGE PARCEL

York Young Woman Receives a Package, Following Threatening Letters

Special to The Inquirer. York, Pa., Feb. 18. Miss Lulu M. Cole, an attractive and popular young woman of this city, received a deadly valentine last Saturday, the fact of the reception of which has just been made public.

On that day a box came to her by mail. It contained a small vial, the contents of which, when examined by a pharmacist, were said to be poison. It will be further analyzed. There was no note accompanying it, and there is scarcely any clew to the sender.

In a measure Miss Cole was prepared for the deadly messenger by a number of letters– eight or more–which she had been receiving during the preceding few days, all of which were threatening, and some of which expressed a burning desire to see Miss Cole dead. One of the writers is said to have made use of the expression that she or he would not be. satisfied until the girl was no more.

The whole matter has been placed in the hands of the postal authorities, and an effort will be made to discover the offenders. The authorities, as well as Miss Cole, are reticent about the matter and will give none of the letters for publication. Miss Cole denies a report that she suspects a woman who is jealous of her, claiming that there is no jealousy nor any cause for jealousy, so far as she knows, and that she has not the least idea as to whom the writer or writers may be.

The Philadelphia [PA] Inquirer 19 February 1903: p. 1

The mystery of the Valentine poison does not seemed at all clarified by this ‘explanation.’

WHO PUT IN THE POISON?

Miss Davis Says She Simply Sent a Bottle of Whiskey to Miss Cole.

York, Pa., Feb. 22. The mystery surrounding the sending of a bottle of poison through the mail to Miss Lulu Cole of this city has been cleared up by Detective White.

Miss Grace Davis, a young woman of the West End, made a statement to-day to the effect that she had mailed a small bottle of whiskey and a valentine to Miss Cole, explaining that it was all a joke.

“When Miss Cole accused me of sending threatening letters to her, of which I am absolutely innocent,” said Miss Davis, “I decided to have some fun. I filled a small bottle with whiskey in the presence of my mother and sister and others and, with a valentine inclosed it in a package and intrusted it to a friend, Percy Blossed, to mail. He tasted some of the whiskey before mailing the package. I marked the bottle ‘Nerve Tonic.’”

Miss Davis’s story has been corroborated and the detective is now working to discover how poison was introduced into the liquor after it left the hands of Blosser, who can prove by witnesses that he had not tampered with the package.

So far as known Miss Davis and Miss Cole have always been friendly.

The Sun [New York NY] 23 February 1903: p. 3

GIRL DRIVEN FROM HOME BY THREATS

Miss Lulu Cole Again Tormented by Anonymous Threatening Letters.

York, Pa., March 4. Another threatening letter has been received by Lulu Cole, who recently received by mail a bottle supposed to contain poison and numerous letters containing threats upon her life.

The writer of this later letter boldly defies the postal authorities, detectives, and constabulary, and tells Miss Cole that her life is in jeopardy even at the own fireside. Living in continual fear has become so great a strain upon Miss Cole that her health is being impaired and she will, on the advice of her physician, leave town for awhile.

The Washington [DC] Times 4 March 1903: p. 4

Let’s be careful out there this Valentine’s Day!

Pigeons of Doom: 1700

Both doves and pigeons are constantly associated in the popular mind with death. Every reader of Westward Ho! will remember the white dove which was the habitual death-token of the Oxenham family.

We have in Shropshire a less poetical record of a similar death-warning, which, however, seems to have been attached not so much to a particular family as to a particular house. The narrative shall be given verbatim from the pages of the old writer who has preserved it for us.

‘Beecause many maryages of persons in this parish of Myddle have beene made with persons of Cayhowell, I will say something of that farme. . . . There is a wounderfull thing observable concerning this farme, of which I may say, in the words of Du Bartas—

Strang to bee told, and though believed of few,

Yet is not soe incredible as true.

It is observed that if the chiefe person of the family that inhabits in this farme doe fall sick, if his sicknesse bee to death, there come a paire of pidgeons to the house about a fortnight or a weeke before the person’s death, and continue there untill the person’s death, and then goe away. This I have knowne them doe three severall times. 1st. Old Mrs. Bradocke fell sicke about a quarter of a yeare after my Sister was maryed, and the paire of pidgeons came thither, which I saw. They did every night roust under the shelter of the roofe of the kitchen att the end, and did sit upon the ends of the side raisers. In the day time they fled about the gardines and yards. I have seene them pecking on the hemp butt as if they did feed, and for ought I know they did feed. They were pretty large pidgeons; the feathers on their tayles were white, and the long feathers of theire wings, their breasts, and bellyes, white, and a large white ring about theire necks ; but the tops of theire heads, their backs, and theire wings (except the long feathers,) were of a light browne or nutmeg colour. (My brother-in-law, Andrew Bradocke, told mee that hee feared his mother would die, for there came such a pair of pidgeons before his father’s death, and hee had heard they did soe beefore the death of his grandfather.) After the death of Mrs. Bradocke, the pidgeons went away. 2ndly. About three-quarters of a year after the death of Mrs. Bradocke, my father goeing to give a visit to them at Kayhowell, fell sicke there, and lay sicke about nine or ten weekes. About a fortnight beefore his death, the pidgeons came; and when hee was dead, went away. 3rdly. About a yeare after his death, my brother-in-law, Andrew Bradocke, fell sicke, the pidgeons came, and hee died; they seemed to me to bee the same pidgeons at all these three times. When I went to pay Mr. Smalman, then minister of Kynerley, the buriall fee for Andrew Bradocke, which was in April, Mr. Smalman said, this is the fiftieth Corps which I have interred here since Candlemas last, and God knows who is next, which happened to bee himselfe. Andrew Bradocke died of a sort of rambeling feavourish distemper, which raged in that country, and my sister soone after his decease fell sicke, but shee recovered, and dureing her sicknesse, the pidgeons came not, which I observed, for I went thither every day, and returned att night. Afterwards my Sister sett out [= let] her farme to John Owen, a substantiall tenant, who about three yeares after fell sicke; and my Sister comeing to Newton, told mee that shee feared her tenant would bee dead, for hee was sicke, and the pidgeons were come; and hee died then.’

From Richard Gough, Antiquityes and Memoyres of the Parish of Myddle, 1700, Ed. 1875, pp. 45-48

Shropshire folk-lore: a sheaf of gleanings, edited by Charlotte Sophia Burne, 1885: p. 227-9

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: On several recent mornings Mrs Daffodil has noticed the mourning doves making moan in the shrubberies. The creatures visit only intermittently and Mrs Daffodil does not know whether to take it as an omen or a directive…

Doves and pigeons are often conflated in folk-lore. One suspects that their reputation as downy death omens comes from their role as a symbol for the Holy Spirit. In some parts of England there was a superstition that if pigeon feathers were found in the feather bed or pillow of a dying person, that person would not be able to pass on until the offending feathers were removed. See this post on “Feather Superstitions” for the particulars of death-preventing feathers.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

Corpse Collectors

A famous corpse collector: Juana la Loca, pictured in 1877 by Francisco Pradilla. Joanna of Castile was said to have carried with her the embalmed body of her husband, Philip. She would have the coffin opened so she could kiss the body and see if he had yet come back to life. Her refusal to have Philip’s corpse buried was one of the factors in her brother having her declared mad and incompetent to rule.

Perhaps I was a curator at the Body World exhibition in a previous life, but one of the categories of stories that fascinates me is that of people who cannot let the bodies of the dead be decently buried. These enthusiasts are discovered keeping corpses— mummified, skeletonized, liquefied, or shrink-wrapped—in freezer, sitting room, bed, or garden. There are, of course, a variety of rationales for this behavior: mental illness, denial, a belief that the dead will be resurrected, social security checks to be cashed, or a crime to cover up. One woman, whose husband’s body lay in their house for nine months after his death said that he had told her that he wanted his corpse to be eaten by birds. There was no word about whether she had left the bedroom window open to facilitate this wish.

This corpus is by no means complete: I’ve omitted the distasteful story of Karl Tanzler/Count Carl von Cosel, and tales of those spouses embalmed and kept in the drawing room due to some mythic clause in the will about enjoying property as long as the dead spouse “remains above ground.” I’ve left out religious rituals like this Indonesia festival and the story of Hannah Beswick, “the mummy of Birchen Bower,” whose mummification and storage in a clock case was dictated by her fear of being buried alive.

The motives of the corpse collectors in this post are more obscure; perhaps due to what is now defined as “complicated grief,” where the bereaved are incapacitated by sorrow and cannot move forward.

In our first case, a heartbroken father took extreme measures to keep his dead children with him.

A FATHER’S VOW

He Declares That His Dead Children Shall Never Leave Him

He Has Their Bodies Embalmed, and the Casket Placed in a Room Where He Keeps Them for Twenty Years.

[Philadelphia Press]

A funeral took place in Palmyra, N.J., on Tuesday last, which furnishes the sequel to one of the most remarkable cases ever known. The bodies of three embalmed children, which had been preserved by an eccentric father for twenty years, were interred in one grave, the father having died three months before, and the remaining members of the family being unwilling to perpetuate his singular ideas, in violation of common custom.

In 1859 Henry Coy lived in a comfortable old-fashioned dwelling, on the northeast corner of Front and Cooper streets, Camden. His family then consisted of himself, a wife and two children—one a girl of five years and the other a curly-haired, handsome boy of two. Mr. Coy was a surgical instrument maker, engaged in business in this city, on Eighth street, near Walnut, and afterward in the neighborhood of Second and Dock streets. He was regarded as a skillful man at his trade, and was said to be worth money, but his reticent disposition and disinclination to mix in society prevented any specific inquiry as to his exact financial standing. People who knew him in a business way, however, were content to spread the rumor that he was a man of no inconsiderable wealth. His entire time out of business hours was spent with his family, to whom he appeared devotedly attached.

THE FATHER’S STRANGE CONDUCT

Soon after the war began, Mrs. Coy died, after giving birth to another child—a girl. She was buried, and after that the father seemed more than ever in love with his children. The little daughter was rather a delicate child, and in 1862 she was taken ill and died after a few weeks’ sickness. Unceasing attendance at the little one’s bedside, and the constant loss of sleep, seems to have strangely affected the fathers mind. He would not permit any of the neighbors to touch or even look at the dead body, and declared that it should never leave his sight while he lived. And the eccentric man then went to work to accomplish that purpose. With the assistance of a mysterious stranger the little corpse was subjected to an embalming process and then incased in an air-tight casket and carefully deposited in one of the upper chambers of the dwelling. Old-time residents of Camden remember well that it was a popular superstition that the spirit of the child used to regularly appear at the windows in a supplicating attitude, and the house was said to be haunted. All attempts to see the mummified corpse or to learn the truth of the queer story were fruitless, and in a few months there were not many persons who gave it credence. Some time between the latter part of 1863 and the summer of 1864 observing people noticed that the baby had disappeared, and the previous appearance of a physician’s chaise at the door a dozen times during the week led to the believe that the infant had died and had been embalmed, as the first one had been. The doctor was a strange one, and nothing could be gleaned from him. Just when the boy died is not known, but it is supposed that he followed not long after the second death, and was also put in a casket and laid alongside his brother and sister.

MOVING THE BODIES

In 1866 the story of the mysterious embalming was renewed, and for some unexplained reason it was whispered about the upper part of Camden that Mr. Coy was a Mormon; that he had a dozen or more wives concealed in the house, and that every night prayers were said over the bodies of the dead children. There appeared no just foundation for these stories, for the father was rarely seen on the street, and during his brief absence form home the dreary-looking old house seemed entirely deserted. The upper stories were never opened, and cobwebs collected over the windows and under the eaves. The man became such a thorough mystery that all efforts to ferret out his secret were abandoned, and the gossips were obliged to build their startling stories of ghosts and uncanny noises by night purely from imagination. Mr. Coy left Camden for a time, and, it was popularly supposed, took the bodies of his children along with him; but nothing definite was known of his movements nor of the truth of the rumor, until five or six years later, when he moved. It was then noticed that three oblong boxes were carefully packed in a wagon, and the father drove away with them.

Nothing more was heard of Coy until his recent death was announced, and then the story of twenty years ago was either forgotten or deemed too incredible for revival. The triple burial at Palmyra on Tuesday, refreshed the strange tale in the minds of a few, and it was shown that the rumor had been correct.

The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 6 May 1882: p. 10

Henry Coy is buried at the Epworth Methodist Church Cemetery under a stone which reads “Henry – Sarah Coy and Family.” I wonder if the house has survived and still has a haunted reputation?

John Speaks of North Carolina was equally heartbroken when his young son ran off to join the Army and died in France two years later. He refused to bury the corpse and built a special room for the boy’s coffin.

KEPT FROM THE GRAVE.

DEAD SOLDIER NOT BURIED

VICTIM OF THE GREAT WAR

COFFIN AT A FARM-HOUSE

PARENTS’ FOUR YEARS’ VIGIL

After a four years’ vigil over the remains of his soldier son, Mr. John Speaks, of Iredell County, North Carolina, still refuses to bury the body, which is lying in state in a little annex to his farmhouse. Although a poor man, he has persistently refused to accept the $10,000 insurance which the Government is ready to pay on the life of the dead soldier. He will not take compensation for the life of his son, who was killed by a German shell.

Thomas Boyd Speaks, the son, was 15 years of age when he volunteered for service overseas, without the knowledge or consent of his father. The latter was distressed, and made efforts to secure the release of the boy, but without success. Two years after he had enlisted in the “Iredell Blues,” at Statesville, Thomas Speaks was killed in action near the Argonne Forest, a little over a month before the armistice was signed. He was buried in France, but in 1921 the body was sent to the United States with thousands of other Americans who had fallen in battle.

For seven months John Speaks slept every night in the same room with the flag-draped coffin, and when this became known to the county physician, the sheriff, and the welfare superintendent, acting on reports of neighbours, called on the farmer. They found, however, that the presence of a metal coffin was neither dangerous nor obnoxious to the public. In deference to public opinion, however, the father agreed to the removal of the body from the family living room, and constructed a small building in the garden to shelter it. There it has rested ever since.

The building is only 8 ft. square, is neatly weather-boarded, and has small windows at each end, with a little porch across the front. Pots of flowers and shrubbery adorn the entrance and sides. The coffin is wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, and rests on the box in which it was sent from Europe. The following inscription is on the coffin plate: —”Thomas Boyd Speaks, bugler, Company E, 18th Infantry.” On the walls of the room hang a hat and cap and several other articles of apparel formerly worn by the boy. A clothes brush and a plank on which letters were cut by him with a jack-knife before he enlisted are among the other relics in the room. The parents also carefully preserve a letter from the young bugler, in which he told them how much he wanted the terrible war to come to an end, and how anxious he was to return and tell them of his adventures.

John Speaks, who is 53 years of age, and is a serious-minded man, is surprised that his action has caused any concern.

He declared that any money from the Government for his son’s life would burn his fingers. He does not belong to any church, believing that they are all wrong, but he reads his Bible. Asked why he did not bury his son’s remains. Mr. Speaks said he felt certain it would not be long before the Resurrection of the Dead, and he also mentioned that his son had already been buried once, and he considered that was sufficient. New Zealand Herald, 27 February 1926: p. 2 and Charlotte [NC] Observer 25 October 1925: p. 4

Thomas Boyd Speaks who was only 17 when he died, now lies buried with his parents at Smith Chapel Cemetery in North Carolina.

Another devastated mother of a soldier kept her boy’s corpse in a glass-topped coffin until they could be buried together. It took thirty years.

THIRTY YEARS UNBURIED.

A Mother and Her Mummified Son Laid in the Same Grave.

Louisville, Ky., Feb. 8. A remarkable funeral took place at Rock Island, Tenn., yesterday, that was the talk of the whole county. The dead were a mother and her son, and the most remarkable feature of the event was that the son had been dead and unburied for thirty years. The truth of this is vouched for by responsible parties, who have seen the body at various times.

During the civil war the woman’s son, then a mere lad, enlisted in the Confederate service and was killed at the battle of Murfreesborough. He was an only son—his mother’s idol—and the shock completely prostrated her. She passionately declared that she would never part with her son while she lived, and that when death claimed her also both should be buried in one grave. She had an air-tight cedar casket made with a glass top, in which the body was laid. This was placed in a room assigned for the purpose, where the mother often repaired to commune with the dead. The body did not putrefy, but gradually became mummified. Thirty years it lay there. At last it was removed, and the devoted mother and her son were buried side by side in one grave.

An immense procession followed the bodies to their resting place. New York Times 9 February 1893: p. 1

In a less fraught story, this gentleman, like some very public Bluebeard, kept his first wife to hand in a box.

TWO WIVES BUT NO QUARRELS.

One of the Women is Petrified and Kept in a Box.

J.N. Rickles, the proprietor of a carriage establishment at Chanute, Kan., enjoys the unique distinction of having two wives who do not quarrel, although they are frequently in contact. He was visited recently by Mr. Broadhead of St. Louis. While the two men were talking in Mr. Rickles’ office Mrs. Rickles came in and was introduced.

“This is my wife—that is, one of my wives,” said Mr. Rickles. “She is wife No. 2. My first wife is over there in the corner.”

Mr. Broadhead considered the remark a most unusual one. Noticing his perplexity Mr. Rickles volunteered to explain. He led the salesman to a pine box in one corner of his establishment. Lifting a lid off the box he displayed to the astonished salesman the form of a petrified woman. The form was perfect and the features almost as natural as one could expect to see in life. Mr. Broadhead says that Rickles explained to him that his first wife had died nearly a quarter of a century ago, while he was living in what is known as the “bad lands” in North Dakota. Several years later he had the body exhumed for removal and found that it had turned to stone. He then concluded to keep it in his possession and since then has taken the body with him wherever he went. In this instance Mrs. Rickles No. 2 is not the least bit jealous of having Mrs. Rickles No. 1 in the house. Marshall [MI] Statesman 4 May 1894: p. 6

In this next article, the daughter who so carefully buried her mother and sister in the basement gave an excuse rarely heard in 1913: The two dead women had been afraid of having their bodies snatched.

BODIES OF TWO WOMEN UNEARTHED IN HOUSE

Daughter in Hospital, Held Pending Investigation.

Tells St. Louis Police She Buried Mother and Sister Because They Feared Cemeteries.

St. Louis, Mo., April. 22. The bodies of Mrs. Ernestine Kommichau and her daughter, Selma, were unearthed this afternoon in the basement of a building at 2412 South Broadway. Marie Kommichau, another daughter, confined in the City Hospital with a broken leg, is under arrest and will be held pending an investigation. The three women occupied the house three months ago. Three weeks ago Marie said her sister had died and the mother had taken her body to Illinois for burial.

Albert Stuhr, owner of the building, early today visited the premises and reported the peculiar odor to the authorities. Detectives located the newly-made grave and the bodies were found partially encased in concrete.

Marie Kommichau, whose broken leg resulted from a fall down stairs, is 49 years old. She declared at the hospital this afternoon that her mother had died of senility and her sister of heart trouble caused by excessive use of headache powders. She explained that with her mother and sister she had conducted a notion store in the front room of the house at No. 2412 South Broadway for nearly twenty years.

Afraid of Cemeteries

“My mother and sister were afraid of being buried in cemeteries,” she said. “They were afraid their bodies would be stolen and also afraid that they would be buried alive. That was the only reason I did not have their bodies attended to in the usual way.

Before my mother died, she made sister and me promise that we would not take her body out of the house, so the undertakers could get her,” said Miss Kommichau. “We had no doctor for her—there has not been a doctor in our house for ten years, and a doctor could have done mother no good.

“We put her body in a showcase which we took from the notion store and poured plaster of Paris around the glass and cracks to keep the air out. We kept the showcase containing the body upstairs in ta rear room. No one knew for none of the neighbors had paid any attention to mother and they did not inquire about her.

“When sister died I knew that people would ask about her and that if neighbors found out I was keeping her body they would ask about mother too. So I told the neighbors that mother had died and that Selma had taken her to Illinois for burial.

Buried Both Bodies in Basement

“Then I took both bodies into the basement. I laid them on the basement floor and poured plaster of Paris and cement over them.”

Marie said that she needed help in removing the body of her mother from the showcase and called in a German woman who was passing the store and whom she never saw before.

“She was clumsy,” continued Marie, “and was no help. I told her she needn’t mind about staying. I never saw her again and I don’t know whether she ever told anyone.”
Marie said that one man, Adam Almeroth, living here, knew of the deaths.

“He is a very religious man,” said Marie. “He has called on us now and then for a long while. He said prayers over mother’s body and over sister’s body. I don’t think he knew the bodies were buried in the basement, for I don’t remember ever telling him.”
Marie asked the police not to allow the bodies of her mother and sister to be removed from the house.

Mrs. Ernestine Kommichau was 79 years old and Selma was 50 years old.

The bodies were so disintegrated that identification was difficult. From the neck of each was suspended a crucifix. At the feet of each was a porcelain urn of the kind sometimes used to hold holy oil. The graves were decorated with two small cedar trees, a wire cross and a mussel shell. Under the corpses was a layer of quick lime. Dallas [TX] Morning News 23 April 1913: p. 2

In 1945 the mummified body of a woman, found in her daughter’s bedroom, caused a sensation in Washington D.C. when it emerged that mummy dearest had died in 1912 and had exacted a strange death-bed promise.

UNDERTAKER SPREADS SOME LIGHT ON MUMMIFIED BODY FOUND IN CAPITAL

Pittsburgh, April 23. Edgar E. Eaton of Wilkinsburg, Pa., veteran undertaker, cast some light on the grisly story of Mrs. Mary E. Woodward, whose mummified body was found in Washington, D.C., this week, more than 32 years after her death. The perfectly-preserved body was found in an ancient casket in her daughter’s bedroom by investigators. The daughter, also named Mary E. Woodward, died two days ago at the age of 79.

Eaton said the eerie situation began in March,, 1912 when Mrs. Woodward died in St. Louis

“There may have been some trouble over burying the mother in St. Louis, but I don’t know,” Eaton said.

“The first I recall is that her body was brought here on March 30, 1912—17 days after her death. We re-embalmed it April 15.

“Miss Woodward asked us to keep the body here and took rooms in Wilkinsburg. We fixed a room, and every day she would come and sit there.”

Eaton said Miss Woodward always brought along a large cat and believe it to be the mummified cat which the investigators also found.

“We were told that she had promised her mother on her deathbed never to be parted from her in this life.

“The body stayed here until the Board of Health told her it would have to be buried, although it was perfectly preserved. We shipped it to Washington on Aug. 23, 1912,” Eaton related.

Eaton said he heard nothing more of Miss Woodward until a Philadelphia embalmer told him of a strange case of a daughter who had kept her mother’s body and brought it to him.

The Charleroi [PA] Mail 23 April 1945: p. 2

It is often found that, in many of these stories, the beloved corpse is either abandoned or kept in less-than-hygienic or respectful conditions. In a notorious recent case in San Francisco, a hoarder daughter kept her mother’s corpse for five years in a house seething with vermin. This father kept his child’s coffin under the porch:

KEPT A CORPSE IN THE HOUSE

Dead Child of a California Man Unburied for Five Years.

Los Angeles, Ca., July 2. For five years past “Whistling” Davis, of Long Beach, has kept the corpse of his dead child in a little coffin in house at a locality known as the Willows. The neighbors have at intervals remonstrated and threatened without avail. He has stubbornly refused to bury the body or permit any one to have it interred. Lately the neighbors became excited about the affair, the coroner was notified, and is about to commence an investigation, it being held that there is a law making it illegal for a person to thus retain the body of a deceased human being. Officers went to the beach to arrest the man. On going to his house they found the little casket containing the body under the porch. They took it in charge, and upon opening found in it the little dried skeleton. An inquest will be held tomorrow. Daily Inter Ocean [Chicago, IL] 3 July 1895: p. 2

In a similar story, from 1904 Kentucky, a child’s corpse was abandoned at the local undertaker’s establishment for eleven years. The infant was at long last buried when it was found that the parents—a local doctor and his wife—had disappeared.

Ruminating over the psychology of corpse-collecting, I have to wonder if there is an as-yet-undefined psychological condition to explain it. It is well-known that hoarding is often triggered by a loss or bereavement. Is there a form of hoarding, that involves a corpse, rather than used tin-foil and cottage-cheese containers?

Alternate theories? chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

A chapter titled “Bone of My Bone: Collecting Corpses, Relics, and Remains” in The Victorian Book of the Dead tells of other mourners who just could not let go. The book also tells of a gentleman who lived in his wife’s tomb so he could gaze adoringly at her body in her glass-topped casket.

For other corpse collectors see Mr Moon and His Mummified Molly, The Casket in the Parlor, The Seven Babies in No. 77, and A Man Buries Himself Alive.

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.

A is For Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death

I’m delighted to announce the publication of my latest book A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death. The book is available at Amazon in the USA, the UK, Canada, and Australia, but I’m told that it can be ordered by your favorite bookstore or library from book distributor Ingrams. (Please ask your library or bookstore to order it!) I’m told that Ingrams distributes to Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, Chapters/Indigo, Blackwell, Foyles, and a host of other stores, so those retailers either have it for sale on their website or it is in their database so you can order it. If you’d like a signed copy, please contact me with a message on this page or at my Victorian Book of the Dead FB page.

A is for Arsenic is a guide to the basics of Victorian mourning. The book is 208 pages packed with the basics of Victorian mourning and death, with brilliantly gothic illustrations by Landis Blair. Each entry includes a pen and ink illustration along with 19th-century anecdotes ranging from macabre stories to jokes from the Victorian press that explain the concepts and artifacts of Victorian death. (Plus sinister little poems in homage to Edward Gorey.)

I answer your dead-serious questions including: Why did body snatchers strip a body before carrying it away? How long do you mourn for someone who has left you money in their will? What was a coffin torpedo? What is inheritance powder? Who killed off keening? What is dead water? A is for Arsenic also debunks several Victorian mourning myths.

There are 26 alphabetical entries—from Arsenic to Zinc, (see below) along with an informative glossary, appendix, and detailed bibliography. Here are the topics: A – Arsenic; B – Bier; C – Crape; D – Death Token; E – Embalming; F – Fisk Burial Case; G – Gates Ajar; H – Hearse; I – Ice Box; J – Jet; K – Keen; L – Lychgate; M – Mute; N – Necropolis; O – Obelisk; P – Post Mortem; Q – Queen Victoria; R – Resurrection Men; S – Shroud; T – Tear Bottle; U – Undertaker; V – Veil; X – Sexton; W – Weepers; Y – Churchyard; Z – Zinc

Appendix: Mourning Etiquette

Glossary

Bibliography

208 pages

Size: 9 x 6” trade paperback

ISBN: 978-0-9881925-4-6

Retail Price: $18.95

Kestrel Publications, 1811 Stonewood Dr., Dayton, OH 45432-4002, 937 426-5110. E-mail: invisiblei@aol.com

Fearing the Reaper: A Fight with Death: 1892

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

-Francis Bacon-

Today, in our series of Things That Scare Us, we look at the fear of Death, particularly as personified by the hooded Grim Reaper figure.

I have neither the space nor the time to thoroughly explore the origins of the term “Grim Reaper” (earliest US newspaper occurrence 1840s) or the imagery of the skeleton with the scythe (possibly 14^th century, reaping with the Black Death). The skeleton began to be clothed in a hooded robe in the 15th century, but the “classic” Grim Reaper is primarily a 19^th-century image.

I will say that the phrase “Grim Reaper,” at least in the 19^th-century papers, was found only in connection with stories of death or in obituaries. I have not found 19th-century reports of apparitions of the Grim Reaper (as called by that name) and they are still rare today. But no matter what its origins, the skeletal figure of Death still terrifies and has even had a resurgence in the cult of Santa Muerte. Today we look at Fearing the Reaper through a story about a man’s fight–to the death–with a hooded figure of Death:

When I was living in Calcutta in an old house near the heart of the city, I was leading juvenile man in a theatrical company.

One night I awoke in my bed with a feeling that something strange was about to happen. I looked about the great apartment, but saw nobody. The room, a large one, was fairly well lit from a lamp burning on a table by the wall, about four yards from the bed and nearly facing it. On the right of the bed and distant perhaps eight yards were the windows—three, very large, very lofty and all wide open. There was no moon, so the trees and building were outlined in inky-black silhouettes against the star-studded sky. From a window to the apex of the angle formed by the return wall was 3 feet. My bed was in the opposite angle, the wall to my left.

My eyes wandered to the windows and onto the angle referred to. There was something in the corner! I tried to see.

After awhile something moved. I felt menaced and was compelled to watch that corner. There was something there! It looked like an ample black crape veil hung on a peg and moved by a gentle breeze. But there was no peg in that corner and not a breath of air stirring. Now it became plainer. Unmistakably a figure, tall and broad, clad in a black garment like a monk’s robe, with a wide, loose cowl, which hung over the head down just below the throat, thus completely hiding the features. The sleeves hung six inches over the hand.

The figure hardly moved for some time, just seeming to vibrate at times as if shivering. At length it undulated out of its corner towards me. I began to feel uneasy; it wasn’t craven fear, but an increased apprehension. Presently the figure had so far advanced into the room as to be standing between me and the window; its opaque outline was distinctly visible. Most ghosts are quoted as being transparent—mine was not. I scruddled myself back in the bed towards the wall; at last I touched it. The figure was within three yards of the bed. I felt certain if that shade came on and touched me I was a dead man. By the Lord, I wasn’t going to die without a fight. I sat up in bed, feeling for the support of the angled walls with my back, and prepared for a fight. Oddly enough, I didn’t feel there was going to be any battle of muscles, but a fight of wills. The figure came on. I audibly addressed it a sort of hoarse whisper—I couldn’t find any voice.

“Get back, will you?”

It advanced. I stiffened my arms, dug my hands into the bed- clothes.

“Go back! Go back!”

It still advanced. I felt rage at being defied. I had no sense of fear of any kind now, only frantic anger. I raged till I perspired. I cursed and swore at the figure till the arm in its wide, overhanging sleeve, which was advancing, stopped. I continued my abuse in the most violent language at my command till the figure, recurving, backed right into its corner.

“Oh, you beast; I’ve beaten you this time!”

This was my parting shot and I tumbled over tired and went to sleep.

But that is not all. I had another meeting with that grim phantom! Thirteen months after I went to Bombay I was very ill, and was carried on the Peninsular and Oriental boat to Nepal dying. Three days out we were driving through the monsoon. I was lying weak, helpless in my bunk, the ship rolling terribly. I had the same premonition. The figure was outside the cabin door. I got out of the bunk, jammed myself down in a corner ad, holding onto the washing-bowl with one hand and the raised-wood ornamentation round the porthole with the other, I most unwillingly rehearsed that scene again, and it was no walk-through. I worked as hard as I knew how. But Dr. Ferris and the Nepaul doctor tacitly agreed that if I had caved in on either of these occasions I should not now be spoiling paper in an attempt to edify newspaper readers.

H. St. Maur [possibly Harold St. Maur?]

Idaho Falls [ID] Times 18 February 1892: p. 7

One wonders if M.R. James ever read this account of a bedroom intruder and incorporated the notion of “if that shade came on and touched me I was a dead man” for his 1904 story, “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.” The narrator tells of Parkins’s reactions when faced with the Thing with the “face of crumpled linen:” “Somehow, the idea of getting past it and escaping through the door was intolerable to him; he could not have borne–he didn’t know why–to touch it; and as for its touching him, he would sooner dash himself through the window than have that happen.”

In my years as a writer about ghosts, I’ve found very few stories about apparitions of Death or the Grim Reaper. In one, the stereotypical Reaper was seen by a Cincinnati housewife, running across her lawn in a fearful hurry. She was terrified that the creature had come for her husband, who was at work. In fact, the husband was injured in an accident, but not killed. Perhaps the entity was in too much of a hurry to do a proper job?

In another, the hooded figure of the Reaper was seen in a building adjoining a haunted theatre in Chillicothe, Ohio. The building was used as a haunted house attraction at Halloween, but the Reaper was not a prop nor did it seem to be a human in a costume. The witness said that she saw this “grim reaper thing in a big hood” gliding along the hall by the second-floor railing. It drew up alongside her and looked at her.

“If I could have seen a face—if there had been a face—our eyes would have locked. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I kept walking down the stairs and it walked alongside me…” She got out of the building and did not go back.

The last instance comes from a person who wishes to remain anonymous. I’ll call him “Eric.” He had been up most of the night with sweating, nausea, and chest pains: classic heart-attack symptoms. He was a stubborn person and did not want to go to the local ER, as it was in a rough part of town and he knew that the wait would be long, even with dire symptoms.

Suddenly Eric felt someone else in the room (his wife was asleep upstairs). He looked up and saw what he described as “the angel of death” hanging in mid-air: the classic, faceless, hooded figure. Even without a face, the thing looked at him and he looked at it. He said he was startled at first—a kind of mild shock and surprise—“Oh!” he thought. But after the initial shock of seeing the thing, there was a feeling of recognition and acceptance. Eric thought, “Oh. It’s YOU.” And that it would be all right to go now. Things would get along just fine without him.

At that acceptance—that willingness to die–the figure disappeared. He was checked by a doctor the next day and he had not had a heart attack. He formerly had been afraid, not so much of death, but of the process of dying. He says he no longer fears death.

I know that the late Mark Chorvinsky was collecting reports of Grim Reaper apparitions, but was, lamentably, harvested before he published them. I hope that they can someday be published.

Any information on the Chorvinsky collection or sightings of Death? Deliver by psychopomp to Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com.

You’ll find more 19th- and early 20th-century stories of ghosts and apparitions in The Ghost Wore Black: Ghastly Tales from the Past. Available as an e-book for Kindle and in paperback at Amazon and other online retailers. Ask your local library or bookstore to order copies from hauntedohiobooks.com.

Chris Woodyard is the author of 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.

Killed by a Corpse

L0014659 Credit: Wellcome Library, London. images@wellcome.ac.uk http://images.wellcome.ac.uk Drawing by T. Rowlandson, 1775.

In my post on the occupational hazards of the bodysnatcher, I told of a Resurrectionist strangled by the corpse he was trying to get over a fence–an age-old story, sometimes told with animals substituted for a human corpse, but still, a cautionary tale of the biter bit. That story got me thinking about other examples of humans killed by corpses, a surprisingly underrepresented category in the annals of strange deaths. Possibly if I expanded my search to stories of persons infected by diseased cadavers, whether weaponized and hurled over the walls of a besieged city, or tainting the scalpel that pricked the medical student, this collection would be larger. Instead I concentrate on what we might call the personal touch. Let’s start this unpleasant necrology with a few near-misses.

A MAN ALMOST KILLED BY A CORPSE

A gentleman recently visited the hospital in Downieville, California, to witness a post-mortem examination. He consented to assist the steward to bring the subject downstairs. He took the feet, and holding them one in each hand, started down the stairs, the steward following with the head end. The man stumbled and his hands came down. The legs of the dead man spread and shut again, clamping his neck, and he fell to the bottom of the stairs, fainting, bestridden by the corpse. It required all the restoratives to bring him to. Philadelphia [PA] Inquirer 2 January 1861: p. 5

I don’t mind stretching a point to include coffins containing corpses, as they could also be lethal. See this wonderful post from Strange Company for a full complement of people crushed by corpse-filled coffins. I will just add one more.

Nearly Killed by a Corpse.

Carlisle, Pa. Dec. 18 While Alexander Ewing, an undertaker of this city, was lowering the body of Mrs. Margaretta Gibson McClure, daughter of Chief Justice Gibson, to the grave, the crossbar over the grave broke while the body was resting, throwing Mr. Ewing into the grave, the casket falling upon him and inflicting slight injuries. He was unconscious for an hour. Great excitement prevailed at the graveyard among the large body of mourners. The Newark [OH] Advocate 18 December 1893: p. 2

There are numerous reports of floors collapsing at wakes and funerals. The fall was usually blamed for the deaths of any victims, but in this case the fall guy was an already dead woman.

An extraordinary occurrence at Corunna is reported by the Madrid correspondent of the “Telegraph.” In the upper story of a house in that town lay the dead body of an old woman. Suddenly the floor of the room collapsed, and the corpse fell on a group of men in the room below. One of the men died from the injuries caused by the falling corpse, and the others were severely hurt. A curious coincidence is that the man who was killed had gone to the house to present an outstanding account, not knowing that his debtor had died. Ellesmere Guardian 16 April 1913: p. 2

Of course simple shock at seeing a dead body might do in the observer. (See this post about being scared to death.) There seems to be something missing from this story. Mrs All versions of this story are as short as this, and as succinct.

Knoxville, Tenn., Dec. 22. A special to The Sentinel from Kingston, Tenn., says Mrs. Martha Jackson went to the home of a neighbor, where lay the dead body of Charles Hood, a youth. She gazed upon the body and fainted, and in a short time was pronounced dead. Montgomery [AL] Advertiser 23 December 1906: p. 5

Jackson’s maiden name was Hood; what was her relation to the youth? Or was there something particularly gruesome about his body? And when the dead body proved not really dead, an ex-corpse could still trigger disaster:

RISES FROM COFFIN

Shock Causes Death of Aged Grandmother.

Butte, Cal., April. 28. While members of the family and relatives were grouped about the open coffin of Mrs. J.R. Burney’s three-year-old son yesterday, listening ot the funeral service, the body moved and presented the child, clad in its shroud, sat up and gazed about the room. His wondering eyes sought those of his grandmother, Mrs. L.P. Smith, 81 years old. The aged woman stared at the child, as if hypnotized. Then she sank into a chair, dead.

As she fell, the child dropped back into his coffin, from which it was quickly snatched by the frantic mother.

A physician, hastily summoned, said there was no hope for the boy and death came a few hours later.

Today there were two coffins in the Burney home. Double services were held and the child and its grandmother were buried side by side. Idaho Register [Idaho Falls, ID] 29 April 1913: p. 2

We have all seen those stories of hunting dogs who paw the trigger, shooting their masters, sometimes fatally. This tale is in a similar vein, but its wide syndication, foreign location, and unnamed victim suggest an urban legend.

Guardsman Killed by Corpse

Geneva, Friday. 4. Killed by a corpse was the fate of a gendarme in a forest near the village of Wildegg. Coming upon the body of a man who had committed suicide, the gendarme found that the right hand still tightly clasped a revolver. When he attempted to release the dead man’s finger from the trigger the weapon was discharged and the bullet pierced his chest. He died in a hospital a few hours later. Greensboro [NC] Record 4 September 1914: p. 1

This next tragic story has unfortunately been echoed by contemporary news stories of wives or children being trapped beneath a loved one’s dead body.

SMOTHERED SLEEPING BABE

Stricken With Apoplexy, Aged Woman Caused Niece’s Death.

Wilmington, Del., June 11. During the night Mrs. Rebecca G. Vandegrift, of Middletown, the step-mother of United States District Attorney Lewis C. Vandegrift, was stricken with apoplexy and fell across the bed where her little niece, Ruth Vandegrift Wood, was sleeping, smothering the child.

No one was in that portion of the house at the time and some time this afternoon the members of the family who went to look for Mrs. Vandegrift found that she was dead and the child had also died from suffocation, caused by her aunt falling upon her. Medical aid was summoned, but all in vain.

Mrs. Vandegrift was 73 years old, while the child was but 4. Philadelphia [PA] Inquirer 12 June 1899: p. 3

Even more horrifying is this story of a true death grip:

KILLED BY A CORPSE.

The Death Grip of a Woman Strangles Her Mother.

Strange Affair that Occurred in a Western Hamlet

An Aged and Feeble Woman’s Terrible Fate

The Awful Discovery Made by Her Elderly Son.

Cincinnati, Dec. 10 One of the strangest affairs occurred last night at Elizabethtown, an insignificant hamlet on the Ohio river, ten miles below this city. The McDole family has lived for years in the most abject poverty. The mother is past 80. Besides her, the family consists of son and daughter, each about 60 years of age. The son [Charles] is a veteran, and greatly enfeebled by wounds received in the war and aggravated by insufficient and indifferent food.

Mother and daughter slept tighter, the mother being very feeble. The daughter was the most robust of the three. The family retired as usual, last night, and the son noticed nothing out of the ordinary, until early this morning, when groans from his mother’s room called him there to witness a blood curdling sight.

During the night the sister had been taken mortally ill. In her despair she had caught her aged mother in her arms and pinioned her tight against her breast. At the same time the mother’s head had been pulled down under the covers and partly bent downward, causing partial suffocation. The horror of the situation had caused her to faint, and while thus unconscious the daughter had died, hugging the mother.

The icy arms had stiffened and the aged victim was held as if in a vise. Help was summoned, but it required the united strength of two men to remove the dead woman’s arms and release the mother, who is so low from the shock and choking she received that it is scarcely probable she can recover. Pittsburgh [PA] Dispatch 11 December 1891: p. 1

As for the pinioned woman, I could find nothing more definitive than “she will live but a few hours.” However, the Cincinnati Post, in an article emphasizing the family’s eccentricity and filth, said that the victim was Mrs. Hetty McDole, age 81, and not the daughter, Martha McKinney, age 60. The coroner announced his intention to investigate the cause of death. [The Cincinnati [OH] Post 10 December 1891: p. 1]

Can anyone verify whether it was mother or daughter who became the killer corpse? Or is the whole thing one of those imaginatively lurid tales so beloved of the nineteenth-century journalist?

chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com who realizes that that last sentence is probably the pot calling the kettle black.