Replevying a Corpse

As a hardened reader of sensationally horrible deaths in the Victorian press, you would think that very little would shock. Yet there is a category of mortuary stories that recently has given me pause. I refer, of course, to stories involving writs of replevin on corpses.

What?

Here is the basic legal definition.

Replevin is an action or a writ issued to recover an item of personal property wrongfully taken. Replevin, sometimes known as “claim and delivery”, is an antiquated legal remedy in which a court requires a defendant to return specific goods to the plaintiff at the beginning of the action. The advantage of a writ (order) of replevin is that it deprives the defendant of the use of the property while the case is awaiting trial, therefore increasing the likelihood of a quick settlement.

But what does this have to do with corpses?

REPLEVYING A CORPSE

A Dead Woman’s Body Held for a Board Bill.

Trouble Between Foster Geggs and Mrs. Frost, His Landlady.

A Difference of Fifty Dollars Provokes a Strange Suit.

Difficulties Experienced by a Constable in Serving a Writ.

‘Squire Sanderson issued a writ of replevin yesterday for the remains of the wife of Foster Geggs, a merchant of New Lexington, Ohio. They were detained by a Mrs. Frost, a keeper of a boarding-house at No. 322 Walnut street. Constable Frank Dossman served the papers, and, after a great deal of trouble, the body was secured.

Five weeks ago a gentleman and lady arrived in this city from New Lexington, Highland County, Ohio. They were Mr. and Mrs. Foster Geggs. They applied to Mrs. Frost for board and lodging, and were accommodated. The lady appeared to be in bad health, and

THEIR MISSION TO THIS CITY

was the search of medical aid for Mrs. Geggs, who was suffering from a complication of diseases. She appeared to regain her health for a time, but a week ago she had a relapse. Early yesterday morning her sufferings were released by death. When daylight had arrived Geggs sent for Estep & Meyer, the undertakers. They embalmed the body, and, incased in a handsome coffin, it was ready to be shipped to New Lexington for burial. Shortly after noon the undertakers’ wagon arrived to take the remains to the depot, but Mrs. Frost refused to allow them to be removed. She claimed that Geggs owed her $50 for board and lodging.

HE ACKNOWLEDGED THE INDEBTEDNESS,

but not to the amount she claimed. He offered to settle for $25. This offer the woman spurned. He pleaded with her to allow the undertakers to remove the body of his dead wife, but she shook her head and said no. She wanted her money, and was going to have it, if she had to hold the body for a week. Several of the boarders tried to persuade her to release the remains, but it was of no used. Finally, Geggs threatened to swear out a writ of replevin. Mrs. Frost laughed at the idea, and dared any Constable to enter her house. Seeing no other way to secure the body of his wife, he appeared before ‘Squire Sanderson and swore out

THE WRIT OF REPLEVIN.

The ‘Squire detailed Constable Dossman to serve the papers. When he arrived he found the door of the house locked and barred. He rang and knocked for admittance, but Mrs. Frost refused to admit him. He next tried the windows, but could not in any way gain an entrance. The alley way was the only resort, and on this side the Frost woman did not look for the Constable to enter. After scaling a high fence he found open the rear door. Having gained admittance, he found the corpse in the parlor. The writ was served on Mrs. Frost, and she reluctantly opened up the front door and

THE COFFIN WAS REMOVED

to the undertaker’s wagon, which was still in waiting. The remains were driven to the Grand Central Depot, from whence they were taken to New Lexington last night. The writ also called for several valise and trunks, which were also secured. The interesting and sensational suit will be heard Monday December 27, by “Squire Sanderson.

This is the second instance in this city where a corpse was secured only on a writ of replevin.

ANOTHER CASE

About two years ago the wife of Johnnie Ryan, the Fifth-street concert hall man, swore out a writ for the body of her baby that was buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery on the Warsaw pike. Mrs. Ryan wanted the remains removed to another cemetery, but the Superintendent refused to give up the body, claiming that she owned for the burial lot, and the digging of the grave. She appeared before “Squire Sanderson and swore out the writ. Constable Frank Johnson, with a squad of Special Constables, served the papers. A number of spades were secured and the body of the child was resurrected. The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 17 December 1886: p. 4

Popular thought held that a body was not property and could not be stolen.

The common law recognizes no property in anybody in the dead, though it does recognize the property in the shroud and other apparel of the dead as belonging to the person who was at the expense of the funeral. Cincinnati [OH] Daily Gazette 17 April 1880: p. 8

and

But whatever may have been the rule in England under the Ecclesiastical law, and while it may be true still that a dead body is not property in a commercial sense of that term, yet in this country it is, so far as we know, universally held that those who are entitled to the possession and custody of it for purposes of decent burial have certain legal rights to and in it which the law will protect. Indeed the mere fact that a person has exclusive rights over a body for the purposes of burial, necessarily leads to the conclusion that it is property in the broadest sense of the term, viz., something over which the law accords him exclusive control. (Larsen v. Chase, 50 N. W. 238, cited in “Property in Dead Bodies,” Walter F. Kuzenski, Marquette Law Review, Issue 1, Vol. 9, December 1924)

However, in real life, bodies were often held for ransom. The threat of either retaining a corpse, of publicly displaying it, or of burying it in a pauper’s grave was used in all kinds of circumstances to extort money, legally owed or not. A decent burial was a serious business; even the poorest would go to great lengths to have the trappings of a “proper” funeral, rather than a pauper’s rites, with burial in the Potter’s Field.

Some hospitals apparently had VIP undertakers on the early 20th-century equivalent of speed-dial. I assume the undertakers paid handsomely for their priority status.

ON REPLEVIN WRIT

John Lund Secures Possession of Wife’s Corpse.

Undertaker Holds Body of Woman Who Died at Hospital and Refuses Possession.

After he had been forced to take out a writ of replevin to secure the corpse of his wife, who died yesterday morning at U.B.A. hospital, John Lund, an Englishman, was permitted to proceed with the arrangements for the funeral. Mrs. Lund died yesterday morning and, in accordance with a custom common in the hospitals, a nurse immediately notified Edward J. Corkery, an undertaker at 524 South Division Street. Corkery called for the body.

Soon afterward Metcalf & Co., who had been notified by the husband, went for the body and were referred to Corkery, who refused to give it up unless paid for his trouble. Lund went to the prosecutor for a warrant for kidnaping, but the prosecutor advised him to take out the replevin papers, and made them out himself. The body was taken by a constable late last night on the writ and removed to Metcalf’s establishment.

The funeral will be held from the residence of Andrew Olesen, 264 Ann street, Saturday afternoon at 2:30. Grand Rapids [MI] Press 5 September 1907: p. 8

It is a nice point whether a dead person can be kidnapped, but the prosecutor obviously made the right call.

With this next case, we meet Mr. John B. Habig, a well-known Cincinnati character and keeper of the Cincinnati public morgue for 20 years, in a highly discreditable incident.

AN EXTRAORDINARY REPLEVIN

An Attempted Case of Extortion

The body of the aged gentleman who fell dead in front of No. 88 Twelfth street, on Thursday morning, as reported in the Gazette of yesterday, was identified yesterday by his son as that of William Hall, as was surmised. The young man, William C. Hall, an engineer on the I.C. & L Railroad, came to the city yesterday and after identifying the body at Mr. John B. Habig’s undertaking establishment, No. 183 West Sixth street, ordered it removed to Soards, a few doors east for shipment and interment, at the same time offering Habig $10, as payment for keeping the corpse. But Habig was not that kind of man; he wanted more than $10 for keeping the body a day and a half, and demanded $40. The young man refused, claiming that the demand was extortionate, and was told that he must pay it, or he could not have the corpse. This was late last night, but Mr. Hall posted off to ‘Squire True, who, fortunately, was in his office trying the case of the Hamiltonian horse-killers, and who at once gave Mr. Hall the requisite magisterial assistance. Constable Green was armed with a writ of replevin and at once started off after the body. Shortly before midnight the strong arm of the law grasped the corpse and transferred it to Soards’ establishment, from whence it will be shipped to Mt. Carmel to-morrow morning. If Mr. Habig wishes to rid himself of the richly deserved odium which much attach to the act, he must rise and give a satisfactory explanation of his exorbitant demand.

In years gone by the deceased kept a well-known livery stable on Sycamore street below Fourth. Cincinnati [OH] Daily Gazette 8 August 1874: p. 4

The Cincinnati Enquirer also reported on the case, adding the detail that “The daughter of the deceased remarked that she did not wish Habig to bury the body because he had sent a drunken attendant with her when she went to view it.” The newspaper added, “Mr. Habig has added to his reputation, but not to his stock of money, or we have been sadly misinformed.” Yet when he died, the Enquirer wrote favorably of him, stating in his obituary: “On down the pages of crime’s annals in this vicinity the name of Habig is so closely linked with these crimes and tragedies that it is a question if there lived in Cincinnati during that period a man whose name was more familiar to the public eye.” [Cincinnati (OH) Enquirer, 4 May 1898: p. 8] He was described as a big, fat, jolly man, always ready for fun. De mortuis, one assumes. Plus he left three sons to carry on the undertaking business, who would be more inclined to advertise if the Enquirer didn’t rake up the past.

Freight and railway companies often found shipping the dead a very profitable line.

Replevying a Corpse

A poor widow had the dead body of her husband brought by rail from Dover to Leamington, without first inquiring the cost. The railway company charged at the rate of 1s a mile, making £8, and as the widow could not pay this sum they detained the corpse for two days until the money was raised. Evening Post, 14 May 1892: p. 1

HOLDING CORPSE FOR THE EXPRESS

The agent of the Adams Express Co. at Shamokin held the corpse of Henry Fretz, awaiting the payment of charges amounting to over a hundred dollars. It was finally settled by the government.

Fretz was from Pitman, Northumberland county, and an apprentice in the United States Navy. February 14 he was drowned in the San Francisco Bay and government officials notified his parents that they would bury the body there or bear the expense of having it shipped home.

The parents requested the body to be shipped and it arrived in Shamokin Wednesday evening, accompanied by a bill for charges amounting to over a hundred dollars. Being unable to pay the claim, the agent refused to turn the corpse over to the grief-stricken parents and it was held in the Shamokin office, where it remained until the tangle was straightened out by the government assuming the charges. Wilkes-Barre [PA] Times 27 February 1909: p. 9

Sometimes the writ was for a partial corpse.

Recently a man had his leg amputated in a Washington hospital, and, upon visiting the capital some months afterwards, discovered the member preserved in alcohol. He was shocked, and demanded it, that he might bury it. The demand was refused, but, upon bringing suit in replevin, the case was decided in his favour, and he was given possession of his own leg. The Arizona Sentinel [Yuma, AZ] 28 February 1885: p. 2

Here we find dueling replevins: for corpse and for shroud.

POLICE WILL GUARD FUNERAL SERVICES

Undertaker Threatens to Take the Clothes Off of a Corpse During Row With a Rival, So Precaution Is Taken

Funeral services for Charles Klytta, 60 years old, will be held under police protection this afternoon from his late residence, 5438 South Laflin street, because B. Trundell, an undertaker at 1702 West Forty-Eight street, threatens to interrupt the ceremonies with a writ of replevin and remove from the body a suit of clothes which he says he paid for.

This threat grows out of a dispute between two undertakers soon after Klytta fell heir to $1,000 several weeks ago. Klytta was employed by Trundell, but he was a close friend of Joseph Patka, 1750 West Forty-Eighth street, a business rival of Trundell’s.

When Klytta received the $1,000 he left his wife and eight children and went to live with Nicholas Jasnoch, 4858 Winchester avenue. Then he began to spend his small fortune in having a good time. He became ill and was told he had not long to live.

Immediately both undertakers asked Klytta if he couldn’t throw the “business” their way. Klytta was in a dilemma. He liked Patka as a friend, but also thought he should respect the wishes of his former employer. Finally a Bohemian lodge of which he was a member was asked to settle the question. A committee waited on Klytta’s death bed and argued the matter, with the result that Patka was chosen.

Scarcely had Klytta breathed his last, however, when Trundell drove up and carried off the body. Mrs. Klytta pleaded in vain for the return of the body. Then she engaged Attorney D. Carmichael, and he tried to get the body. Yesterday the lawyer obtained a writ of replevin from the Municipal court and, accompanied by a bailiff and a policeman, went to Trundell’s establishment. The body was laid out in state in the parlor, clad in a new suit of clothes.

The writ did not provide for taking the clothing with the body and an argument ensued. Finally Patka took the body and new suit and carried them off to his undertaking shop. Therefore Trundell threatens to obtain a writ of replevin for the clothing and to get it today when the services are held at the Klytta residence. The Inter Ocean [Chicago, IL] 8 November 1912: p. 1

Undertakers more usually replevined their own property, such as coffins or candle-holders.

Bill Is Not Paid:

Takes Coffin Back

Detroit, Oct. 9 Because his bill for $300 had not been paid, Stanley Lappo, an undertaker, flanked by two constables, entered the home of Mrs. Vincent Dziegiuski. After retrieving the woman’s body from its casket, he loaded the latter, with candles, pedestals and display palms, into his wagon and drove off. The undertaker later explained the woman’s husband had agreed to pay the account before the funeral took place. When he failed to do so, Lappo obtained a writ of replevin and took possession of his property.

The husband later effected an arrangement with another undertaker, and the funeral was held a few hours later. Duluth [MN] News-Tribune 10 October 1921: p. 6

Sometimes the quarrels leading to a writ were not about money, but about something more visceral. This is an excerpt from the story of Mrs. Terrica Beck, an elderly Catholic woman badly treated by her daughter and son-in-law. I have not found a resolution to the case.

Throughout her last illness she desired to be buried in the Catholic cemetery. This was her last request. She died in her sister’s house. The expenses of her last sickness were borne by her sister. The coffin and shroud were purchased, and the last sad offices performed by her sister.

Scarcely had her last breath expired, when her son-in-law, before careless of her welfare, appeared and laid claim to her clothing and body. More desirous of the property, he departed expressing his willingness that Mrs. Beck’s dying wishes as to her interment should be complied with….In accordance with the wishes of the deceased, her body was placed in the vault of the Catholic cemetery, whence it was removed by a suit of replevin sued out by her son-in-law. He had obtained a coffin and shroud from the city, and had a grave dug at the expense of the city in the Potter’s Field. He was willing to pay the expense of a law suit, to defeat the dying wish of his wife’s mother, but not to pay for giving her more than a pauper’s funeral. Plain Dealer [Cleveland, OH] 28 April 1870: p. 3

One can only imagine the family dynamic that would lead to the following situation:

Refused to give up Body

Anderson, Ind., Jan. 4

Mrs. Joseph Speece was compelled to replevin the body of her husband so that it could be buried. He died Wednesday at the home of his wife’s father, John Nelson, and when she prepared for the funeral Nelson refused to give up the body until a large board bill had been paid. When a writ was served the body was delivered. The widow also sues Nelson for $100 for the detention of the body. Wilkes-Barre [PA] Times 4 January 1901: p. 1

One last oddity: Although judges in several jurisdictions ruled in the early 1900s that corpses had no commercial value (were not property) and thus could not be replevined, that judgement did not stand all over the country. In a 1906 case where there was a wrangle about the funeral expenses exceeding what the family wanted to pay, the family obtained a writ of replevin to get the body back from the overcharging undertaker. “As some value had to be given the writ it read ‘one corpse to the value of $50.’” The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 30 September 1906: p. 12

There are many dismal stories of first/second wives, mistresses, and hostile family members battling over loved one’s corpses, but they don’t always go as far as replevining. Other stories of legal proceedings over corpses? Swear out a writ to Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

Thanks to Michael Robinson for the details of corpse property law.

Undine, of Strange Company, sent this great story of a legal fight over an embalmed body.

She also added a bonus tale of a dead-beat dad: A (somewhat) related story was about a man whose wife died, and he afterwards stiffed the undertaker on the bill. (“Stiffed,” get it? Oh, never mind) When, a while later, his daughter also passed away, this undertaker refused to take the job. In fact, he spread the word through the “Undertaker’s Association” that the man was a, well, deadbeat, so all his colleagues refused the man’s business as well. (As a side note, the bereaved man tried to get a free coffin from a local charity. When they realized he wasn’t indigent–just an incredible skinflint–they indignantly refused.) I don’t recall exactly how the story ended, except that he finally managed to get his daughter buried using a blanket instead of a coffin!

Thanks, Undine!

For more stories of Victorian death and mourning see my book, The Victorian Book of the Dead, also available for Kindle. Or ask your library/bookstore to order it. You’ll find more details about the book here and indexes here.

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.

The Mute: 1845

THE MUTE

By Mrs. Gore

Death hath its vanities, and these are of them…

These sable statues are the Mutes of a funeral ceremony!— Habited from top to toe in suits of sables, their faces composed to decent sympathy with the lugubrious ceremonial of the day, they assume their post shortly after daylight, in order to preserve tranquility around the house of mourning; an aim accomplished by hanging out a banner of woe, which never fails to collect upon the pavement before the door all the errand boys and idle apprentices of the neighbourhood; the young children to gaze with wondering eyes upon those mysterious symbols of death—the elder ones to gossip over the name and nature, demise and sepulture, of the defunct; of what doctors he died, to what heirs his lands and tenements are to descend… And all this uproar, because the vaingloriousness of human nature requires that a door whence the dead are about to be borne forth to decay, should be pointed out to vulgar notice by the attendance of those twins of Erebus, a couple of undertaker’s Mutes!…

Let it not be inferred, however, that Mutes are an inevitable fringe upon the sable garment of death. On the continent of Europe, their office is performed by proxy. On the day of burial, funereal draperies (black or white, as the sex and age of the defunct may be) are suspended, at early morn, across the ground floor of the house of death; which, being level with the causeway, and undivided from it by an area, is easily attainable. This drapery is of serge or velvet, plain or garnished with silver, according to the means of the family. For the noble, it is furthermore adorned with heraldic escutcheons; by the opulent, it is even overscattered with silver tears and palms of triumph. For though “dust to dust” is the universal sentence of mortality, there is dust and dust! There is the dust of Rothschilds, and the dust of paupers; there was the dust of Dryden, which was bandied about for burial between the poverty of his family and the brutal jests of an insolent lordling; there was the dust of Frauenlob, the minne-singer, borne forth by the fairest damsels, clad in white, chanting his own sweet songs to the place of interment. There was the dust of Sheridan, snatched from the hands of the bailiff to be escorted to the immortality of the Abbey, by dukes and earls, eager to catch the reflection of the last gleam of his renown: and there is the dust of those whose coffins are made the rallying point of the seditious, who shake their clenched fists at government and spit their venom at the throne, under sanction of a hat-band and weepers.

But there is also the dust of the poor and nameless:–people, whose career on earth has been one of duty and submission;–people, over whose casual coffin the hearts that loved them have not leisure to break, lest those should starve who depend upon their labours for daily bread. These must be thrust into the grave in haste. These leave no memory to the multitude. In foreign lands, they boast no drapery of the pompes funébres above their doorway; at home, no nodding plumes. No ragged throng gathers before their threshold to see the coffin, covered with a parish pall, paraded beneath the lidless eye of heaven. The holiness of solitude is there, even amid the crowded city. Nature herself hath stationed beside their door, the unseen Mute.

It is often said that a man must be born an artist. Surely a Mute also must be a Mute by imprescriptible right. There is no accounting for tastes—there is no accounting for trades. To be a butcher, a dentist, a surgeon, a scavenger, may be “the gift of fortune;” but, to be a Mute at a funeral, must “come by nature.” What but the decree of Providence can create that rigid immobility of feature—that leadenness of eye—that stoniness of brow —that more than military uprightness of deportment; not altogether like the African, “God’s image cut in ebony,” but an abstraction of sable woe, scarcely vivified by the touch of life. A mummy has more animation in it than the accomplished Mute in the discharge of his duties; and when stationed beside some aristocratic doorway in St. James’s Square (to bespeak reverence for the ennobled clay, covered with crimson velvet glittering with cherubim of gold), the black marble figure of a knight templar, upon his tomb in some mildewed cathedral, is not more rigidly unexistent than the well-drilled Mute.

Accident, however, hath sometimes created the singular individual which one might suppose a forethought of Providence.

In a cheerful, sunshiny cottage, on the Severn side, there once rolled upon the floor a chubby child, whose skin was glossy with healthfulness, whose eyes bright with joy, whose voice a carol, whose cheek red as the apples clustering in the tree that spread its knotty, shapeless branches beside the little homestead. Jem Willett was a pledge of joy to his parents, for he was a firstborn; a ray of the sun of promise, which, in the early days of matrimony, beams alike for rich and poor ; and he was dandled by his father, and hugged by his mother, till a little Jack came to claim a share in the family endearments. Still, Jem was the favourite. He was the first He was such a merry, lightsome-hearted, little fellow. Nor was it till a whole tribe of Toms and Neds, Bets and Sals, put forth equal rights with himself to slices of the brown loaf, that poor Jem’s humble garments were suffered to go ragged, and he was allowed to crawl to bed with the rest, unblest by the caresses of a parent. But what leisure had father or mother for domestic love?—Their bread was embittered by its scantiness;–the staff of life was a slender staff in their hands.—Taxed to support the waste and wantonness of the great castle whose towers were visible from their cottage door, the loaf, which was their luxury, scarcely sufficed their wants: and how could they be expected to love the children whose cries of hunger distracted their poor hovel ?—The caress became a cuff; the tender word, a curse. The children were sent out to work. It was something that they were not sent out to beg!

Yet, in spite of these clinging cares, there was an inborn joyousness in poor Jem Willett’s nature, that would not be repressed. He seemed to whoop and halloo the louder for his rags; and even want sat so lightly on him, that “his cheek so much as paled not.” A better fortune seemed reserved for him, than for his brother and sister starvelings. While one or two were draughted into a factory-team of drag-children, while Jack became a cow-boy, Bill a climbing-boy, and Tom the drudge of a collier’s barge, Jem (who was growing up what the linen-drapers’ advertisements call “a genteel youth”) was apprenticed to a carpenter: apprenticed by the benevolence of the parish, which was now sole proprietor of Richard Willett’s lame widow and fifteen children, the husband and father having fallen a victim to small gains and a large family,–high rent, and low fever.

Jem was now the happiest of boys; that is, he had as much bread as he could eat, and a little more work than he could do. But a humane, intelligent master put him in the way of doing it in the best manner. He was an improving lad. By the time he was out of his apprenticeship, he became a good workman. Bill had been put out of his miseries by opportune suffocation in a narrow flue, belonging to the county member, at Marrowbone Hall; Tom had fallen overboard, after a severe banging from his tyrant, and was gone to feed the lampreys of the Severn; Jack was becoming almost as great a brute as the beasts he tended; and the factory brother and sisters were slaved, gassed, and drubbed into a transfiguration tripartite of the yellow dwarf. But Jem was gay and rubicund as ever; well-grown, well-fed, well-taught, a good-humoured, good-looking fellow as ever breathed.

Unluckily, the result of this even temper and comely aspect, was an early marriage. On finding that he could earn eighteen shillings a-week, one of the prettiest lasses in Gloucestershire persuaded him that it was too large a sum for his single enjoyment; and Jem Willett, like Richard Willett before him, became a father at so early an age, that there was little chance of his surviving to become a grandfather. He chose to gird on the crown of thorns, without allowing time for the previous expansion of its roses. He chose to jump from boyhood to middle age, without allotting a moment to the pleasures of youth. Nevertheless, the plane and the chisel sped prosperously. Jem was never out of employ, never sick, never sorry. Children came; ay, and on one occasion, twins, who seemed to bring a blessing with them; for Jem Willett’s household throve in proportion to its increase.

But, alas! the sin which—ere the foundations of this earth were laid—marred the harmony of primeval heaven, is still predominant below. — The Willetts were ambitious! Jem’s pretty wife had been three years in service in London, before a visit to her friends in Gloucester converted her into the wife of the handsome young carpenter. Poor Mary could not forget Cheapside; and had a natural hankering after St. Paul’s Church-yard. The High Street of Gloucester was not worthy to hold a candle to the Strand, among whose gay haberdashers’ shops her green and salad days had passed. In the clear atmosphere of her country home, she pined after the smother of the metropolis; and, like others of her sex, from Eve modernwards, contrived to win over her partner to her fault. Her faithful Jem was taught to believe that there was no promotion for him in a country town; that so good a workman might enjoy, in London, the wages of a cabinetmaker; and that two days’ journey with his family, in the Gloucester wagon, was all that was wanting to convert his eighteen shillings per week into six-and-thirty. They were before-hand with the world. They had seven-and-forty pounds to draw out of the savings’ bank, to establish them in London. It shewed a poor heart, according to Mary Willett, to sit down contented with their humble fortunes, when “happiness courted them in its best array.” In short, after some prudential misgivings on the part of Jem, the woman persuaded him, and he did go. Their goods and chattels were sold off at considerable loss, but still so as to add some pounds to their capital; and having put money in their purse, and stowed away their five children under the awning of the wagon which was to prove their chariot of fortune, away they snail’s-paced it, along that great western road, which has conveyed to Hyde Park Corner so many aspirants after metropolitan promotion.

Few are destined to reach it in such piteous plight as Jem Willett and his wife —Within eight miles of London, thanks to an insufficient lantern and inefficient wagoner, the huge vehicle was overturned into a paviour’s hole; and Jem all but crushed into nothingness, by the weight of a huge bale of merchandise.—The infant in his arms never breathed again!—The mangled father was transported upon straw, in a light cart, to St. George’s Hospital, with his family, all of whom were more or less injured by the accident, and, at the expiration of a year from their departure from the country, the Willetts were settled in a squalid, lodging of a bystreet in Chelsea, with three out of their five children remaining, and two pounds ten, out of their forty-nine. There was misery in the little household,—past, present, and in expectation. It was in vain that poor Mary cursed her restless spirit as the cause of all. Her self-accusations yielded no fuel to their empty grate; no food to their hungry mouths. A severe injury received by Jem in the right shoulder, at the time of his accident, incapacitated him for the carpenter’s bench, and all other manual labour; nor could the poor people devise any mode of gaining a living for a man who was no scholar, and had not connexions to back him in applications for employment, as light porter to some house of business.

It was a sorry time. The winter was a hard one,—their money gone: even the last half-crown in their little treasury had been changed to purchase provisions for the day. Mary was eager with her husband to make an application for parochial relief, such as might be the means of getting them passed back into Gloucestershire. She knew that they should be no better off there than in London. But it was their own place. They should hear familiar voices; their eyes would rest upon familiar spots; their hands be clasped in those of the humble friends of their childhood. There would be somebody to look upon their half-starved babes, and say “God speed them!’—

But Jem resisted. Though his early condition had familiarised him with the shame of pauperism, yet the independence his own exertions had since achieved, had taught him pride. It was pleasanter to hope, it was almost pleasanter to starve, than to confront that bitter tribunal, a Monday board. Another day came; and Mary, who had looked so wistfully upon the last half-crown ere she could make up her mind to change it, found herself looking, with exactly the same shuddering, upon their last sixpence!–In the interim, their prospects had darkened. Jem had been refused work in various quarters, where he had flattered himself his crippled powers were still available. “You don’t look strong enough,” was the universal reply; and on returning from a grocer’s, in Whitechapel, to whom he had taken a recommendation for employment in his warehouse, he found the eldest girl, a delicate slip of a thing, unable to bear up against the squalor and wretchedness with which she was surrounded, suffering under a violent attack of ague; the disease, of all others, requiring the administration of wholesome nourishment.

“She will die! She will follow her dear brother and sister!’” faltered the poor fellow, rushing from the house, determined to seek for his sick child the parochial aid he had been too proud to seek for himself; and as he went along, the temptation was almost too strong to escape from the slow agonies of life, by plunging himself headlong into the Thames, that ran, temptingly, within reach. It was December; and the dingy waters rippled on, like the waves of an unclean element, under a heavy autumnal fog that shut out all prospect of the sky. How different from the dancing waters of his own translucent Severn; the friend and companion of his merry childhood —The reminiscence brought back careful thoughts of his dead brothers;–of his old mother, the inmate of a poor-house; of toil and sorrow, hunger and cold,—till Jem Willett could not help feeling that it was a sorry world for those who, like himself, were born to work out the condemnation of the first human sin

His eyes were red with unshed tears, his nose blue with heartchill and a north-west wind, his features pinched, his looks meagre; it might almost be added, his “bones marrowless—his blood cold.” Yet a sort of fierce striving against evil fortune, caused him to maintain a firm demeanour, and to erect his head to the utmost stretch, as he was about to enter the workhouse gate.

Such was the origin of the after fortunes of Jem Willett!—Ere he could cross the fatal threshold, he found himself civilly accosted by a solemn individual, who announced himself as “Mr. Screw, the eminent Knightsbridge upholsterer;” and the long rambling conversation that ensued, ended in Jem Willett’s quitting the premises, “attached to the establishment” of his new acquaintance, at twelve shillings a-week wages, and the promise of advancement. He was about to be converted into a MUTE!

Jem was to enter upon his functions on the morrow. He was in fact as great an acquisition to Screw, as Screw to him. The Knightsbridge upholsterer and undertaker having been bereaved of one of his standard Mutes, by the great master and commander of his gloomy trade, was sadly at a loss for a fellow of sufficiently doleful countenance to match the fine funereal face of the survivor. “Poor Bill Hobbs, who was dead and gone, was a treasure; a man whom it brought tears into the eyes of the multitude to look on. He confessed he never expected to find an adequate substitute for Bill Hobbs. All he could expect of his new adherent was, to do his best,–that is, look his worst; and if he gave satisfaction to the customers, he might count upon eighteen shillings a-week, at the close of the winter. Perhaps, if the influenza was about and it proved a good burying season, something might be done sooner.”

Poor Jem was beside himself with joy! Such an unexpected stroke of good fortune,—such manna in the desert, such corn in Egypt! His wife wept for gladness when she heard of his promotion. To be sure, it was not exactly the line of employment he would have solicited; not exactly the duty that the fair, chubby, laughing Jem seemed brought into the world to perform. But misery brings down the spirits to an incalculably low level; and Jem seemed to fancy it might be satisfactory to his poor disabled frame, to array itself in a decent garb of woe, and stand sentinel at the gates of death.

During the first week, he gave unqualified satisfaction. No advance having been made to him by Screw, whose name was prophetic of his nature, Jem had to endure the torment of taking up his position of a foggy morning, without having broken his fast, after sitting up all night beside the pallet of his groaning child; and so piteous was his countenance, under sorrows and privations thus accumulated, as to excite the envy of his sable brother, as well as the admiration of his new master. Screw looked upon him as a Mute of genius. His countenance was something between that of Quixote, Reynolds’s Ugolino, and the man who “drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night.” His stomach was empty; his heart sinking with the idea of the family affliction, of which he was the outward and visible sign; his soul sickening at the whispered allusions of his professional brother on the opposite side the door, to “stiff ‘uns and black jobs, shrouds and winding sheets, pickaxes and shovels!’” The last funeral in which Jem had borne a part, was that of one of his own beloved babes; and he could not hear a coffin made a theme for jesting! Mr. Screw and his men, when they drew up the hearse and mourning coaches to the door, were as much struck with the appropriate air and features of the new Mute, as some might be by the proportions of the Venus de Medicis. He was an honour to the profession;–tall and solemn as a cypress;–a frontispiece, foretelling the nature of a tragic volume. Screw went even so far as to advance him eight shillings, for the use of his family, on the Thursday night; an act of liberality unprecedented in the annals of his establishment. Nay, as the scarlet fever was rife in Chelsea, before the close of the month, the new Mute was raised to the promised modicum of eighteen shillings per week. –

All now went well in his little household. The young ravens were fed, and Mary’s clothes gradually returned from the pawnbroker’s; and though Jem’s vocation was still loathsome to him, though he could scarcely restrain his tears when he saw white feathers nodding over the vehicle that bore forth the little coffin of some only hope from the roof of its parents, to be cast into the wintry earth,–the sensibility which made his calling thus distasteful rendered him invaluable to his master. While the Mutes of other establishments, or former Mutes of his own, degraded their scarfs and hatbands, by being seen tossing off a glass of gin, or a well-crested pot of porter, with their insignia of office fluttering about them, thereby bringing into discredit the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious undertakership, Jem was always dumb as death, and moulded in clay that required no wetting. He was, in fact, a model-Mute.

It is possible that the merits of the man contributed something to the prosperity of the master; for, in the course of a year or two, Screw removed from his suburban abode to one of the handsomest streets at the west end; set up a shop, with a gothic front, on whose door, in lieu of panes, there figured two funeral escutcheons; with death’s head, cross-bones, and “Resurgam,” painted, achievement-wise, on one; and a street-door, guarded by two Mutes, holding handkerchiefs to their eyes, on the other;–for the off-Mute of which pictorial representation, Jem Willett was supposed to have sat to the artist. Above the escutcheons, was inscribed, in letters of gold, “Funerals Performed.”—PERFORMED ! ay, just as Macbeth is “performed” by Macready, or Nicholas Flam by Farren. On the other windows were pasted announcements of “Houses to Let; furnished or unfurnished; ” Mr. Screw having taken upon himself the trade of providing mansions for the quick, as well as for the dead.

Upon his removal to this aristocratic warehouse, Screw felt in conscience bound to raise the wages of his Mutes to the level of those bestowed upon their black gentlemen by Gillow, Banting, and other fashionable purveyors to the last wants of humanity; and Jem, in the enjoyment of thirty shillings per week, lost all recollection of his former woes. “Who was it persuaded you to come to Lon’on, I should like to know?”—was now the favourite query of his wife. “How would a workman, with his bread-winner disabled, have found means of earning thirty shillings a-week, in Gloucester?”—And if Jem refrained from replying that, had he never come to Lon’on, his shoulder would never have been broken in the socket, when he might have enjoyed the same wages, with a less noisome occupation, it was because he was too good-natured to cause vexation to his wife. The Willets had now their share of the good things of this world. They ate, drank, and were merry. After burial-hours, Jem might be seen taking his pipe and glass, in winter at “The Undertakers’ Arms,” in summer at “The Adam and Eve” tea-gardens. Care came no longer near him. He said to himself, “Soul, take thine ease !”—and his soul did as it was bid!

But, alas! ruin was laying a train under his feet! Amid all this jollification, his features lost their sharpness; his complexion, its pallor; his limbs, their dignified gauntness. The ruddy tints of his Severn days came back in undiminished brilliancy; nay, his very nose became “celestial rosy red.” An incipient paunch was springing.—Othello’s occupation was gone! In the overflowing of his heart, he could not forbear, now and then, a jovial word with his brother Mute; and, in the awful discharge of their duties at the doors of defunct peers of the realm or ministers of state, he had even been betrayed, by absence of mind, into humming snatches of a tune, haunting his imagination after the carouse of the preceding night. The starveling Mute was become a jolly dog! It was no longer “Willow, willow,” with him, but “Wine, mighty wine!”

Under such circumstances, it was scarcely wonderful that Screw and Co. should require his resignation to be sent in. One Saturday night, in Midsummer time (when the morning sun shines with telltale brightness on the minutiae of the rites of sepulture), Willett was requested to give his receipt in full, on receiving his final one pound ten. The “establishment” required his services no longer. He was superseded;—not superannuated, but super-gladdened. The foreman said to him, like Apollo, in the song, to “Voice, fiddle, and flute,

No longer be Mute!”

His jolly face reflected discredit on the house. At a funeral, he was the impersonation of a practical joke;—a figure of fun; a parody upon the tragedy; a jest upon a grave subject. He was like Aesop’s weasel in the meal-tub; the only difference, that Jem was turned out of his luxurious berth, while the weasel was forced to remain in. Though twice the man he was when taken into Screw’s establishment, he was not half so good for the undertaker’s purpose. He was as much out of place as a fat harlequin, or gouty rope-dancer. He was a merry Mute!

Poor Jem is, at this moment, looking out for a new place. He is too tender-hearted for a beadle, though the gold-laced hat would mightily become him. But our friend is unconsciously dwindling into such a condition, as may entitle him, a second time, to the honours of Muteship. As Napoleon became a second time Emperor, it is by no means impossible, that the now sorrowing father of four needy children may shortly return to the establishment of Messrs. Screw and Company, well-qualified to become anew—a MUTE!

Selections from the Heads of the People: Or, Portraits of the English, drawn by Kenny Meadows, 1845: pp. 38-48

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 Wrong Bundle: 1875, 1870

THE WRONG PACKAGE.

AN UNDERTAKER’S BLUNDER.

A somewhat novel incident, an excellent illustration of the serio-comic, recently occurred in Cincinnati. A baby had come to a household, but it was still-born and a small funeral was the only thing in order. The little thing was wrapped up and laid up on a chair to await the arrival of the undertaker, but that personage was some time in making his appearance. In the interval a lady of the household, not the one most interested in the baby, had returned from a shopping tour and placed another bundle containing her purchases of silks and laces and similar vanities of the mind feminine. In course of time the undertaker came, the small bundle was put into the small coffin, there was the usual sad scene and the cemetery soon witnessed the burial. Upon the evening of the same day when their sorrow had given away to more worldly reflections, the ladies of the house in mourning assembled to examine the purchases of the lady who had been shopping. The bundle was opened, and the ladies experienced something very like horror. There was no finery in the package, only a little dead baby! The undertaker had mistaken the bundle! There was another procession to the little grave in the cemetery, over which the daisies hadn’t had a chance to start yet, and a resurrection scene. The coffin was exhumed, the finery taken out, and the body of the baby substituted, to the greater satisfaction of all concerned. It was only an undertaker’s blunder, and it was serio-comic, thoroughly

The Hermann [MO] Advertiser 19 June 1875: p. 2

A CABMAN’S MISTAKE.

How a Bundle of Washing Was Buried For a Corpse.

George Weisbrode, of Walnut Hills, now retired, was a sexton for twenty-three years, having helped to move the bodies from the old Jewish Cemetery in 1868.

“In 1870,” said he, “a cabman drove up to the cemetery about 10 o’clock and told me he had the corpse of a child that had died of cholera or smallpox—I forget which now—and that it must be buried at once. I and my man dug a grave, and the cabman then lifted out a big heavy bundle. I thought it queer that they had no coffin, but he said they hadn’t had time to get one. I buried the bundle, and the cabman droved away. In about two hours he came pounding at my door and said he had made a mistake. The bundle I had buried was some washing. I dug up the clothes and buried the body in their place. The cabman carried the clothes off with him again.”

The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 31 January 1892: p. 9

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

Shrouded Spectres: Burial Shroud Superstitions and Ghosts

1775 Thomas Rowlandson drawing of graverobbers–including Death–pulling a shrouded corpse out of the grave. [Wellcome Library]

Previously I reported on the manufacture of shrouds and burial robes. Today we’ll look at some representative stories of the superstitions and ghosts associated with burial shrouds.

A good shroud was of the utmost importance for a “decent” burial. One benevolent English gentleman, seeing a young Irishwoman sewing what looked like a bridal gown, commented on the “finery.” The young woman rather tartly set him straight: she was sewing her own shroud and whatever happened to her, at least she’d be properly dressed for burial.

Seeing the apparition of some relative or acquaintance in a shroud almost certainly meant doom for the shrouded person.

I will relate a double dream that occurred to two ladies, a mother and daughter, the latter of whom related it to me. They were sleeping in the same bed at Cheltenham, when the mother, Mrs. C , dreamt that her brother-in-law, then in Ireland, had sent for her; that she entered his room, and saw him in bed, apparently dying. He requested her to kiss him, but owing to his livid appearance, she shrank from doing so, and awoke with the horror of the scene upon her. The daughter awoke at the same moment, saying, “Oh, I have had such a frightful dream!” “Oh, so have I!” returned the mother; “I have been dreaming of my brother-in-law!” “My dream was about him, too,” replied Miss C . ” I thought I was sitting in the drawing room, and that he came in wearing a shroud, trimmed with black ribbons, and approaching me he said, ‘My dear niece, your mother has refused to kiss me, but I am sure you will not be so unkind.”‘

As these ladies were not in the habit of regular correspondence with their relative, they knew that the earliest intelligence likely to reach them, if he were actually dead, would be by means of the Irish papers; and they waited anxiously for the following Wednesday, which was the day these journals were received in Cheltenham. When that morning arrived, Miss C hastened at an early hour to the reading room, and there she learnt what the dreams had led them to expect: their friend was dead; and they afterwards ascertained that his decease had taken place on that night. They moreover observed, that neither one nor the other of them had been speaking or thinking of this gentleman for some time previously to the occurrence of the dreams; nor had they any reason whatever for uneasiness with regard to him. It is a remarkable peculiarity in this case, that the dream of the daughter appears to be a continuation of that of the mother. In the one he is seen alive, in the other the shroud and black ribbons seem to indicate that he is dead, and he complains of the refusal to give him a farewell kiss.

One is almost inevitably led here to the conclusion that the thoughts and wishes of the dying man were influencing the sleepers, or that the released spirit was hovering near them. Spirits Before Our Eyes, William Henry Harrison, 1879: p. 129

Pins and knots were forbidden on burial clothing or shrouds, according to Irish tradition. If they were inadvertently used, the ghost would come back to haunt the careless person until matters were remedied.

A STRANGE PROCEEDING

A Grave Exhumed in a Catholic Cemetery and the Shroud Carefully Unpinned.

Ansonia, Conn., Feb. 18. Yesterday morning four women, respectable in appearance and advanced in years, entered the side gate of the Roman Catholic cemetery, proceeded along one of the avenues and halted at a new made grave. Presently two men made their appearance and with shovels opened the grave. The women stood with bated breath, tears running down their faces. Presently the box which enclosed the casket and remains of a young girl was reached. One of the women gave a low scream. The strong arms of the men raised the box and placed it above ground. The lid was taken off the box and the casket opened. The features of a young, handsome, and beloved daughter of one of the women was exposed to view. The men looked on as if in wonder at what followed. None but the women understood it. Busy fingers went through the dead girl’s hair and shroud and all the pins that could be found were removed. The string which has placed around the feet after death was removed. A needle and thread were brought into use to supply the place of the pins in the hair and shroud. The lid was then placed on the casket and the remains lowered into the grave, which was filled once more.

This strange proceeding gave rise to many inquiries. Only a few could answer them.

It was learned that there is a strong superstition among the Irish people that if a corpse is buried tied or with pins or with even a knot at the end of a thread that sews the shroud the soul will be confined to the grave for all eternity, and that the persons guilty of the blunder will be disturbed by the restrained spirits while on earth. Thus it was, according to the testimony of the one of the women, who said she had been bothered for two nights previous by the ghost of the girl, now all were happy. This is not the first time that an incident of the kind has occurred in the same cemetery. New Haven [CT] Register 18 February 1886: p. 1

The drowned young woman in this next story returned to complain to her parents that the undertaker had buried her on the cheap, with a filthy piece of flannel instead of a proper shroud.

A RECENT REMARKABLE CIRCUMSTANCE,

WHICH OCCURRED IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT.

In the month of September, last year, the body of a young woman, dressed in black silk, with a watch, a ring, and a small sum of money, was found floating near Spithead, by a lieutenant of the impress, and conveyed to Ryde in the Isle of Wight. As no person owned it, a parish officer, who was also an undertaker, took upon himself to inter it, for the property that was attached to it, which was accordingly performed.

One evening, about a fortnight after the event, a poor man and woman were seen to come into the village, and on application to the undertaker for a view of the property which belonged to the unfortunate drowned person, they declared it to have been their daughter, who was overset in a boat as she was going to Spithead to see her husband. They also wished to pay whatever expence the undertaker had been at, and to receive the trinkets, &c. which had so lately been the property of one so dear to them; but this the undertaker would by no means consent to. They repaired, therefore, to the churchyard, where the woman, having prostrated herself on the grave of the deceased, continued some time in silent meditation or prayer; then crying, Pillilew! after the manner of the Irish at funerals*, she sorrowfully departed with her husband. The curiosity of the inhabitants of Ryde, excited by the first appearance and behaviour of this couple, was changed into wonder, when returning, in less than three weeks, they accused the undertaker of having buried their daughter without a shroud! Saying she had appeared in a dream, complaining of the mercenary and sacrilegious undertaker, and lamenting the indignity, which would not let her spirit rest!

The undertaker stoutly denied the charge. But the woman having secretly purchased a shroud (trying it on herself), at Upper Ryde, was watched by the seller, and followed about twelve o’clock at night into the church-yard. After lying a short time on the grave, she began to remove the mould with her hands, and, incredible as it may seem, by two o’clock had uncovered the coffin, which with much difficulty, and the assistance of her husband, was lifted out of the grave.

On opening it, the stench was almost intolerable, and stopped the operation for some time; but, after taking a pinch of snuff) she gently, raised the head of the deceased, taking from the back of it, and the bottom of the coffin, not a shroud, but a dirty piece of flannel, with part of the hair sticking to it, and which the writer of this account saw lying on the hedge so lately as last month. Clothing the body with the shroud, every thing was carefully replaced; and, on a second application, the undertaker, overwhelmed with shame, restored the property. The woman (whose fingers were actually worn to the bone with the operation) retired with her husband, and has never been heard of since. T.P. London Free Mason Magazine 1 June 1796: p. 406

*Keening was a well-known feature of Irish mourning—but can anyone tell me what “Pillilew!” means? The only meanings I can find are “quarrel” or “bother!”

Too much ostentation was as bad as too little for the Baltimore “old maid,” who haunted her old boarding house when she was not buried in the shroud she had wanted.

A Baltimore Ghost

An Old Maid’s Ghost has been sitting on a bridal bed in West Baltimore, and worrying all the lodgers in a boarding house. The old lady’s spirit was exercised over the grave-clothes. A short time before her death, she asked the lady with whom she was boarding not to bury her in any costly dress, but in a plain shroud, and threatened to haunt the house if her direction as not heeded. Her friends thought that it was only an old maid’s notion, and when she died buried her in an elegant silk and adorned the casket with beautiful flowers. About two weeks ago, a bridal couple engaged board at the house. Enter the ghost. The young wife awakened her husband, one night, with a startled exclamation. There was somebody in the room, she said; somebody was sitting on the bed. He heard a noise. Somebody was moving softly across the room, he said; somebody had been sitting on the bed. Whereupon he struck a light; the shade was not in sight. The next night a gentleman in the next room was visited by the ghost, during the next fortnight, she paid visits to every sleeping-room in the house. All the boarders have left the house, and the landlady is talking of having the body exhumed, the silk dress taken off, and the plain shroud put on. It is just as well to let an old maid have her own way in matters of dress. St Alban’s [VT] Daily Messenger 12 October 1876: p. 2

More stories of shrouds and spirits The Victorian Book of the Dead, which can be purchased at Amazon and other online retailers. (Or ask your local bookstore or library to order
it.) It is also available in a Kindle edition.

See this link for an introduction to this collection about the popular culture of Victorian
mourning, featuring primary-source materials about corpses, crypts, crape, and
much more.

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.

“No Money, No Funeral:” 1906

Here, in a mean street in a poor district, is a house let out in rooms. In the lower front room the ragged dirty blind is down. From this house you will see in a couple of hours, if you wait and watch, a grand funeral procession start. There will be an open car drawn by a pair of horses, and on it will be a wreath-laden coffin. Funeral coaches and four-wheel cabs will follow with many mourners, and the street will be filled with a crowd of women and children assembled to see the grand funeral of Widow Wilson’s eldest son.

While you are waiting for the funeral car and carriages to arrive, I will take down the fourth wall. Now you can see inside the room with the drawn blind.

It is a poverty-stricken, squalid room. In the centre is a rickety table, round which the widow and her three remaining children are gathered, making a scanty meal before they put on their black to follow the dead lad to the cemetery. The thin stew has been taken from the fire, and is being served out on chipped and cracked plates to the children, and in the centre of the table at which the family are dining lies the corpse.

I am not inventing the details to paint a picture of life among the poor–I am giving the actual facts as discovered by the School Board officer of the district, who called to inquire why one of the children had not attended school the previous day.

No one seeing the elaborate and expensive funeral that started a couple of hours later from the house could have imagined the scene there was to be witnessed behind the brick wall. The living and the dead had been together in that one room for over a week.

There are many reasons why funerals are not hurried in the poorer districts. Here is a case in which one was delayed for three weeks.

Mrs. Jones’s baby died just as it was completing its first year’s experience of life. Mr. Jones drew the money from the burial club and gave an order to the undertaker. But before the day fixed for the funeral arrived Mr. Jones had lost half the money by backing horses that didn’t win. In his distress he spent the balance at the public-house. “No money, no funeral,” was the undertaker’s motto, so the baby uncoffined, but shrouded in a sheet, was left in the cupboard.

Mrs. Jones, when the disaster was made known to her, told her story to her poor neighbours. They generously clubbed together, and in a few days they handed her the needed amount.

In her gratitude Mrs. Jones invited a few of her neighbours, who had not subscribed, to drink the health of those who had. The health-drinking affected Mrs. Jones so much that returning home she was absent-minded, and the balance of the funeral money was stolen from her by a thief who had followed her out of the public-house.

The body lay in the cupboard for another week, and the news of the delayed funeral reaching the authorities, an official called, and baby was at last taken away and buried by the parish.

That was the greatest punishment that could have been inflicted on the parents.

The Mysteries of Modern London, George Robert Sims, 1906: pp. 144-145.

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.

The Undertaker’s Condolences: 1888

Put Money in Thy Purse.

From the New York Sun.

Undertaker (to recent widow): “In the death of your husband, my dear Mrs. Hendricks, the community loses a valuable member.”

Widow: “Ah, yes, Mr. Mould.”

Undertaker: “You will want solid mahogany, of course?”

Widow: “I–I think so.”

Undertaker: “Ever faithful to his duties and loyal to his friends.”

Widow: “Ah, yes, Mr. Mould.”

Undertaker: “And the plate must be of pure silver, I suppose.”

Widow: “Well, er, eh, yes, pure silver.”

Undertaker: “I can recall so many generous acts of your husband’s. His was a noble nature, Mrs. Hendricks.”

Widow: “Ah, yes. Poor John was the soul of generosity.”

Undertaker: “The handles and trimmings will have to be first-class in every way, of course, and say about twenty-five carriages.”

Widow: “I-er hardly think so many will be needed.”

Undertaker: “Oh yes they will, my dear madam. Consider your husband’s standing in society and the number of friends he had. It is a serious question if twenty-five will be enough.”

Widow: “Very well. Mr. Mould.”

Undertaker: “Thank you, Mrs. Hendricks; I believe that is all. Good morning.”

St. Louis [MO] Post-Dispatch 18 December 1888: p. 3

Chris Woodyard is the author of the forthcoming book A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog, The Victorian Book of the Dead.

The Resurrection of Willie Todd: 1897

THE RESURRECTION OF WILLIE TODD

By Arthur Thompson Garrett

“WHAT! marry that insignificant nonentity? Never! Understand me, never!” and the Honorable Gregory Bismuth glared at his pretty daughter, his scant supply of gray hair standing fairly erect with indignation.

“But, papa,” answered Arabella Bismuth, the great lawyer’s only child, “Willie is a good young man; what have you against him?”

“I’ll have my foot against him the next time he comes here,” snorted the irascible father. “The idea of Arabella Bismuth, daughter of Gregory Bismuth, granddaughter of Anthony James Bismuth, great-grand—”

“Papa, papa, there is no need of you going over your ancestral tree in anti-chronological order. The question is, What is your objection to my marrying Willie Todd?”

“Objection! objection! you impudent young chit, just like your mother, though my objection is that he isn’t a man. He’s nothing but a plagiarism. I had hoped that my daughter would show more sense than to express a desire to wed a remote circumstance like William Todd;” and the lawyer departed for his office, leaving his daughter in tears.

Arabella Bismuth was a pretty girl and an heiress, two qualifications that were sufficient to make her quite a figure in the matrimonial market. She shunned, however, many seemingly advantageous opportunities to wed, and singled out young Todd as her future husband. This selection irritated her stately father exceedingly, as he was aware that Willie Todd would never set the world afire with his brilliant achievements. He had allowed the young man to come to the house, as he considered him a harmless, inoffensive dude, and had no fear of his fascinating the handsome daughter. Great was his surprise when Arabella informed him that she and Willie desired to marry (Willie could never have managed to screw his courage up to that point).

After the Hon. Gregory Bismuth’s majestic form had disappeared down the street, the object of his wrath, the effeminate Todd, emerged from a house across the way and, walking over, ascended the steps of the Bismuth mansion.

“How did he take it, Bell?” inquired the lover.

“Take it!” ejaculated Arabella. “It’s lucky for you, Willie, that you didn’t break the news, or I would probably have been a widow before being married.”

Willie shivered. “Heavens, what a narrow escape. Why, do you know, I came near bracing him yesterday!”

“It’s lucky that you didn’t, for— hide, Willie, hide; here comes papa. He has either forgotten something or seen you come in.”

“Great Scott. I hope not. Where can I hide?”

“Here, get behind this screen; I think I can keep him away from there.”

“Say, Arabella,” said Willie, as he concealed himself, “spring the subject on him again and let me see how he acts; perhaps he is only bluffing.”

“All right, but keep still; here he is.”

“With whom were you talking?” asked Mr. Bismuth as he entered the room.

“I was just talking to myself,” answered Arabella.

“Well, quit it; it’s a bad habit. Have you seen anything of my glasses?”

“No; did you forget them?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” answered her father, sarcastically. “I just simply walked back six blocks to casually inquire if you had seen them.”

“Well, I haven’t.”

“Don’t get saucy, you young minx, but help me find those confounded glasses;” and he commenced such a thorough and systematic search that Willie was sure he would be discovered. “I must have left them behind this screen, where I was reading;” and he walked over, but was stopped by Arabella, much to Willie’s relief.

“No, no, papa, they are not there, I’m sure. Look through your pockets again.”

Mr. Bismuth mechanically did as he was told, and after two or three frantic dives in different pockets he at last brought forth the missing glasses.

“Ha! ha! ha! and you had them all the time. Ha! ha! ha!” and Arabella laughed hysterically.

Her father looked at her in a puzzled way and said, “Yes, it’s very funny, but I guess I’d better send Dr. Hamline around to see you. You’re sick. Your face is flushed, and you laugh like a maniac.”

“No, I’m all right, papa, but before you go I wish you’d consent to my marrying Willie; won’t you?”

At this Mr. Bismuth boiled again. “Never, never, and when a Bismuth says never he means it. That scamp is a worthless loafer and I would take delight in paying his funeral expenses.”

“Papa, papa, do you know what you are saying?”

“Certainly I do—a Bismuth always knows what he is saying. He simply wants you for the money you will inherit, and I say he shall never have it, and a Bismuth never told a lie. I remarked a moment ago that I would delight in paying his funeral expenses, and to be true to not only the reputation of myself, but my ancestors, I will keep my word. That is all the money he will ever wring from the coffers of the house of Bismuth;” and the great attorney started for his office, after again assuring himself that his glasses were safely in his pocket.

“Whew,” remarked Willie, as he emerged from his hiding-place, “he seems to have it in for me in earnest, doesn’t he, Bell?”

“Yes, Willie, I am afraid we can never win him over.”

“Well, let’s elope.”

“Elope?”

“Yes, certainly. Ain’t that what all lovers do? Let’s go away and get married, and then when it all blows over we can come back. Your father will cool down by that time and be ready to fall on my neck with tears of forgiveness.”

“Yes, Willie, he would fall on your neck quickly enough, but don’t put too much faith in the tears of forgiveness. That isn’t what he would fall with. Besides, Willie Todd, how much money have you right now?”

Willie began a diligent search and managed to show up thirty-seven cents and a pawn ticket for his overcoat.

“That looks like eloping, doesn’t it? Papa never allows me any money, and I wouldn’t part with my jewelry. No, Willie, we can’t elope on credit.”

But Willie did not answer for a few minutes; he was lost in thought. “Say, Bell,” he said, finally, “if I’ll raise money enough to pay the expenses of a first-class elopement, will you go, and take the chances of ultimate forgiveness?”

After a moment’s deliberation Arabella said, “I will.”

“All right, then, your father shall bear the expense.”

“My father? You must be crazy, Willie.”

“No, I’m not. He never breaks his word, does he?”

“Never.”

“He said he’d pay my funeral expenses, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m going to die.”

“Die!”

“That’s what I said, and my lifeless body shall be placed in the cold and silent tomb, at the expense of your father, and I rely on you to make him come down handsomely.”

“Well, I must say that I cannot see through this; I’m not going to marry a corpse .”

“Oh, I don’t mean to really die. I’ve a friend that is a mesmerist, and I’ll have him put me in a trance. My cousin will be the undertaker. After the funeral they will dig me up, and then we can go on our wedding-tour with the funeral money. Great scheme, isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t sound very reasonable, Willie. Suppose something should happen to this mesmerist while you are in the ground, or that papa should hire another undertaker, or that the cemetery authorities should keep too close a watch, and prevent them from digging you up?”

“Oh, well, we’ve got to take some risks, but there isn’t much danger. I could live a month in that state. The only hitch is that you could not act the mourner in a natural way.”

“Yes, I can. I’ll put an onion in my handkerchief. I can be mournful enough then, for I abhor onions.”

“Well, good-by, then, for the present. I guess I’ll die to-night; there’s no time like the present, and, say, don’t forget to remind your father that I must have a handsome funeral. Broadcloth suit, very expensive coffin, and get a diamond ring, if you can;” and the blithe young man, so soon to be laid to rest, departed to find his friend the mesmerist.

That same evening, true to his word, Willie Todd, by the aid of Professor Drummond, lay on his bed, to all appearances a corpse. His cousin, the undertaker, having been engaged in the afternoon, soon made his appearance. He was to furnish all the requisites of a first-class funeral, the same to be returned to him in good order.

Arabella and her father were reading when the messenger arrived with the sad tidings. The lawyer was afflicted with catarrh, or he certainly would have detected the odor of onion in the room. When the news was gently broken, Arabella’s handkerchief flew to her face to produce the necessary tears.

“Well,” remarked the lawyer, “so he’s dead, is he? Most sensible thing he’s ever done;” and he resumed his reading.

“Papa, p-p-papa,” sobbed Arabella, “have you no feelings at all?” and the tears rolled down her cheeks. The onion was doing its work grandly.

“Certainly I have feelings; a Bismuth always has feeling, but I see no reason why I should be bowed down with grief. I’ll give him a grand funeral. A Bismuth never broke his word.”

“Will you b-b-buy him a new s-s-suit of broadcloth to be b-b-buried in?”

“Yes.”

“And a three-hundred-dollar coffin?”

“Yes.”

“And a diamond ring?”

Mr. Bismuth straightened up. “A diamond ring! What in Heaven’s name does a dead man want with a diamond ring? There are no pawn-shops in the other world.”

“Willie al-al-always admired diamonds s-s-so,” sobbed Arabella, “and you said you’d spare no expense.”

“All right; I’m getting out of it cheaply, anyway.”

Mr. Bismuth was truly liberal with that funeral. The cousin stayed with the body until Arabella and her father arrived, fearing another undertaker might be engaged. The doctor who examined the body gave a certificate of death from heart disease, a handy way of saying he didn’t know what was the matter. He mentioned a post-mortem examination, but the mesmerist, Arabella, and the undertaker strenuously objected. It might prove embarrassing, they thought, for Willie to come out of his trance with his internal mechanism disarranged, so the doctor was dissuaded and the heart-disease certificate was granted.

Willie’s cousin, the undertaker , said he had often heard the young man express a desire to be buried beneath a certain willow-tree that shaded a sparkling brook. Mr. Bismuth assented to this, although he remarked that he didn’t believe the deceased could now distinguish a sparkling brook from one of the common kind, but that it was Willie’s funeral and to carry it out any way to suit him. Clothed in his new broadcloth, his diamond ring sparkling in the light, the young man was placed in the most expensive coffin his cousin’s establishment afforded, and the funeral party set out for the weeping willow by the sparkling brook. At the grave the undertaker made a serious blunder when his assistant accidentally let his end of the box that held the coffin fall to the ground.

“Confound you, Bill, be careful; that coffin is worth $300 in cold cash, and I don’t want it scarred.”

“What if you don’t?” roared Bismuth in a tone of voice not usually heard at a funeral. “Whose coffin is that? I’m paying for that coffin, and it don’t make a cent’s difference to you whether it’s scarred or not.”

The undertaker stammered some un-intelligible reply, Arabella turned her face away, and the mesmerist grated his teeth. The interment was soon over, and Mr. Bismuth with his daughter started for home, after giving the undertaker a check for $500.

That night, after Arabella had retired, she thought she would see if her father’s heart had been softened any; so she arose, and went down-stairs, where he was reading.

“Papa,” she said, “I had a dream.”

“Too much supper,” commented her father, without looking up.

“No, papa, I dreamed that Willie came back from the grave; that he had been buried alive and was rescued.”

The old man glanced up from his book, and looked at his daughter sternly. “If he does an ungrateful trick like that after the expense he’s been to me, I’ll send him to the penitentiary for obtaining his coffin by false pretence. You’d better go back to bed and dream again;” and he resumed his book.

Arabella sighed and returned to her room. She was about to retire again, when she heard the signal agreed upon for their elopement. Hastily dressing, and picking up a few articles she wished to take, she noiselessly emerged from the house, unobserved by her father.

“Willie, you didn’t intend for us to leave to-night, did you?”

“Yes, the sooner the better. You see, everybody in this neighborhood thinks I’m dead, and I don’t want to be seen. I’ve got over four hundred dollars, and we can have a grand wedding-trip before we come home to be forgiven.”

“I don’t know about that,” rejoined Arabella, dubiously. “Papa didn’t seem a bit softened by your untimely death.”

“Oh, he’ll come around all right; they all do. We’ll write him an explanatory letter after we are safely married, and he won’t be long in extending his blessing. Come, now, and we can catch a train in a few minutes.”

The lovers stealthily made their way from the Bismuth grounds and were soon at the depot, where Willie purchased two tickets to a neighboring city. The next morning they were married, and started on a wedding-tour that made the $400 dwindle rapidly. The diamond ring was sacrificed, and then Arabella thought it was about time to write to papa.

“You write to him, Willie.”

“No, Arabella, my dear, it is your place to write. You know him better than I, and you can explain things in a more satisfactory way.”

So Arabella penned the following:

DEAR PAPA:

Doubtless you were surprised at my disappearing, but I know you will forgive your little daughter. Willie was not dead; it was a case of suspended animation. He was rescued, and signalled me to come down into the yard. I was terribly frightened, but he explained, and persuaded me to elope. We are nearly out of money, papa, and want you to forgive us. Write soon, and send us a check—that’s a dear —and we will soon be with you.

Your loving daughter, ARABELLA TODD.

They anxiously awaited a reply. At every whistle of the postman Willie would turn pale, and Arabella would get nervous. At last the expected missive arrived, and, eagerly tearing open the envelope, Arabella unfolded the sheet of paper and read:

MY DEAR DEPARTED DAUGHTER:

Yours of recent date at hand, and in reply will say that I absolutely and unequivocally refuse to have any dealings with a dead person. Mr. William Todd is dead. I saw him in his coffin, and, what is more convincing still, I have a receipt in full for his funeral expenses. Any female marrying into a foreign country, according to recognized international law, becomes a citizen of that country. If you have married the said deceased William Todd, then you are also dead. No Bismuth, ever, as near as I can learn, had any dealings with ghosts, and I trust that you and your husband, the late William Todd, will trouble me no more.

Your bereaved father, GREGORY BISMUTH.

Handing the letter to her husband, Arabella said, “I thought so. Read it.”

Willie perused the epistle, and it dropped from his nerveless fingers and floated to the floor. They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, and then Arabella remarked:

“It’s no use, Willie; you’ll have to go to work.”

Godey’s Lady’s Book [Philadelphia, PA] May 1897

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: The memorably-named Arabella Bismuth seems to have seriously over-estimated her Papa’s capacity for extending the parental blessing. Willie Todd should have considered himself fortunate that the Hon. Gregory Bismuth did not bribe the undertaker to keep him underground until really and truly deceased. For such a harmless, inoffensive dude there seems only one course of action: he must go on the road with Professor Drummond the mesmerist, doing the “buried alive” stunt, so popular with pseudo-Indian fakirs, who went about the United States, mesmerising attractive young ladies and “professional corpses.” One suspects that Willie Todd would be the ideal professional corpse.

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.

Ordering a Funeral for Mother

As Mother’s Day approaches, there is always a debate between the angel on my one shoulder and the devil on the other about how or if to appropriately commemorate this holiday. I’ve done poignant tales of ghostly mothers and savage reports of monsters made by maternal influence. Today we look at a theoretically devoted son, somewhat prematurely ordering a lavish funeral for his mother.

COFFIN PLATE MADE

A YOUNG MAN ORDERS A FUNERAL FOR HIS MOTHER

Being Quite Well the Lady Declines the Attention—How the Youth Beguiled the Undertaker and What That Worthy Said About the Transaction.

Yates Vanderwerken, an undertaker of Williamsburg, N.Y., left his shop in Bedford avenue the other afternoon and started out to find a corpse that would fit in a handsome casket which he had made to order. The casket was ordered on a Saturday night by John H. Coe, son of the late Senator Coe, for his mother, who, he said, had just died at Belmar, N.J.

“Mother died suddenly,” said the young man, “and we want to give her a first class funeral.”

“Where is her body?” asked the undertaker.

“At Belmar,” said Mr. Coe.

“Do you want me to send for it tonight?” “No,” said Mr. Coe, “tomorrow will do. The local undertaker in Belmar has embalmed her and will ship the body to you Monday morning. Poor mother! She was a good mother!”

“Do you still live on Rodney street, near Bedford avenue?” asked the undertaker.

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Coe, “we left that house several years ago. Mother owned half of the property in the town of Belmar, so she went to live there. Poor mother! She was a good mother!’

“When would you like the funeral—what day?” asked the undertaker.

“Tuesday,” said Mr. Coe “we’ll bury her in Cypress Hills cemetery, and I want you to open a grave there. I’ll leave that to your own selection. I would like the side of a green hill. Poor mother! She was a good mother!”

“I know she was,” remarked the undertaker, “but here is the casket catalogue.” In a moment a choice was made.

“You have selected one of the finest,” said the undertaker. “That one will cost $350,trimmed.”

“Including a nice silver plate?”

“Yes,” said the undertaker, “including the plate.” “That one will do,” remarked Mr. Coe. “Now, I suppose you want a deposit. I’ll pay you one-third down on the funeral. Suppose I give you a check for $200. I need $50 to pay the Belmar undertaker for his work, so you take the check for $200 and give me $50 change. That will be paying you $150 on account for the funeral. Poor mother! She was a good mother!” It was getting late, and Mr. Coe said he had to hurry back to Belmar to complete the funeral arrangements. Then he produced a check for $200. It was drawn on the Manufacturers’ National bank and signed J.H. Evans. Undertaker Vanderwerken accepted the $20 check and gave young Mr. Coe two $25 checks in return with the understanding that the $50 was to be used for squaring funeral accounts in Belmar. Mr. Coe went away, saying he would ship his mother’s remains to Brooklyn on Sunday or Monday.

On Sunday Undertaker Vanderwerken, according to instructions, went to the office of the New York and Brooklyn Casket company and ordered the casket. It was sent to his shop on Monday, bearing a neat silver plate on which was inscribed the following:

“Hattie W. Coe. Died September, 1897. Aged 49 years.”

Not hearing from young Mr. Coe on Sunday, Undertaker Vanderwerken believed that the young man’s brother had decided to have the body of the mother kept at Belmar until Monday. All day Monday he waited to get further orders regarding the funeral, but he waited in vain. Then he turned his attention to trimming the casket. When this was done, he covered it with a black shroud and left it in his shop ready to be used.

On Tuesday he sent two of his men to Cypress Hills cemetery, where he had purchased a grave for Mrs. Coe, and his men paid $7 to have the grave opened. When his men returned to Williamsburg, the undertaker remarked that it was strange that he had not received a message from young Mr. Coe.

“They may be having trouble with a Jersey coroner,” said the undertaker. “I guess I had better go over to Belmar and ship the body here to Brooklyn.”

So he went to Belmar and driving to the Coe residence, rang the bell.

“I’m the Brooklyn undertaker,” he said. “I came to see about Mrs. Coe’s body.” “Mrs. Coe’s body!” exclaimed a young woman who answered the doorbell. “Mrs. Coe’s body! What do you mean?”

“I am to have the funeral,” said the undertaker.

“What funeral?” inquired the young woman.

“Mrs. Coe’s funeral,” replied the undertaker.

“Why, Mrs. Coe is not dead,” answered the young woman. “She’s here in the house entertaining some friends from Williamsburg. I’ll call her out if you wish to speak with her.”

The undertaker turned pale, but requested that Mrs. Coe be produced. A few minutes later she was talking with him in the reception room. He explained the object of his visit. Then Mrs. Coe fainted. Her friends escorted the undertaker to the railroad station. He telegraphed back to Williamsburg and got a message saying that the $200 check given for the funeral had been returned by the bank stamped “N.G.” Then he decided to remain at Belmar for the night in the hope that he would get material for a Coe funeral before leaving there.

“If I succeed,” he said, “all I need to do is to have a new plate made for that casket—one that will read, “’John H. Coe Cashed In his Last Check.

“If I get hold of him,” said the undertaker, “he’ll need a quicker funeral than that which he ordered four days ago.” New York Sun.

Kalamazoo [MI] Gazette 1 October 1897: p. 7

Heart-warming stuff… And it gets better. Coe disappeared for a few weeks, then was spotted fishing on Jamaica Bay by detectives and arrested. His wife, Minnie, and two daughters were reported as living in destitute circumstances.

Young Coe had a colorful criminal history for the son of a New York State Senator. He was sued in 1887 at age 19 for breach of promise. He was arrested multiple times for passing worthless checks. He failed to support his wife and children. We may get a glimpse of one of the reasons for his stunning lack of character in the following vignette. A boy’s best friend is his mother…:

CALLED A SCAMP BY THE COURT.

John H. Coe, a Senator’s Son with a Forgiving Mother, Judicially Denounced.

None of the men who made charges of grand larceny against John H. Coe, a son of the late State Senator, John W. Coe of Kings county, was present yesterday in the Lee Avenue Police Court, Williamsburg, when the prisoner was arraigned. It transpired that Coe’s mother, who lives at Belmar, N.J., and whom Coe falsely represented as dead in the early part of September, and thereby secured $50 from an undertaker fraudulently, had settled with all the complainants. When he was arraigned and Justice Kramer saw that none of the business men who had accused him was on hand, he said to Coe: “I am very sorry for your mother, but I haven’t the slightest sympathy for you, because you are a scamp. You’ll keep on in this way until you’ve ruined your good mother, and then your end will be in prison, anyway. I am satisfied that you cannot keep out of trouble.

Coe is 26 years old. His wife and three children live at 213 Heyward street. When he was discharged he left the courtroom smiling.

The Sun [New York NY] 30 November 1897: p. 7

Three weeks later Coe’s wife Minnie was dead, ostensibly of consumption. Her doctor stated publically his professional opinion that she died of grief over her husband’s disgrace.

At some point Coe drifted out to California where he missed fulfilling the judge’s prophecy of death in jail by falling down a flight of stairs. A bartender claimed to have seen the fall and that Coe was “very drunk.” While the coroner assumed Coe’s fractured skull was the cause of death, he sent the stomach to the San Francisco city chemist as a “precaution.” The chemist found “Muriatic acid” in Coe’s stomach “in quantity sufficient to kill.” How the acid got there was not stated. [San Francisco (CA) Chronicle 29 March 1904: p. 15]

I’ve not been able to find much sympathy in my heart or an actual death date for Coe’s enabling mother, who is Elizabeth G. Coe in the 1880 census; Hattie W. Coe on her untimely coffin plate; and Elizabeth A. Jackson Coe in the Wikipedia entry on Senator Coe.

I’ve collected a number of examples of mortuary scams like this—there is a story in The Victorian Book of the Dead about an ingenious young swindler who played the part of both the undertaker’s assistant and the fiancé of a deceased young woman in order to scam the cost of her funeral from undertaker and bereaved father alike. There was also a genre of practical jokes played on undertakers, where pranksters summoned multiple morticians to non-bereaved homes, to the consternation of all involved. [Another post, another day.] I believe Coe’s Premature Burial is the first version I’ve found where the prank was perpetrated by a family member.

I think that I’ve seen pre-planning funeral services advertised as the perfect Mother’s Day gift, although I can’t put my finger on an example. I suppose the sentiment could be construed as “love ya, Mom!” as opposed to “wish you were dead!” but most of the mothers I know would prefer dinner out or some good chocolates. And, ideally, children who don’t have the undertaker on speed-dial.

The Dead Man’s Razor: 1888

THE DEAD MAN’S RAZOR

Odd Experiences of a Barber With His Deceased Customers

STYLE IN THE COFFIN

Dead Woman the Worst Subject of the Loquacious Shaver

“Don’t’ be alarmed, sir. We never use that razor on the faces of living men. We call that the ‘Dead Man’s Razor.’”

Grim and hideous enough it looked, too; a long black handle, that insensibly reminds one of the hull of a rakish, piratical craft. Exactly in the middle was rudely scratched a skull and cross bones. The back of the blade gleamed over the ghastly symbol seeming to bring it out in bolder relief. The razor was in a rack in a west side barber shop.

“Just a little fancy of mine,” said the barber, as he slashed the brush around in the lather cup. “Thought it would be better to put that death’s head on the handle, so I wouldn’t be picking it up by mistake and using it on a customer who could turn his head without being helped. Dead men can’t, you know. Most people have an objection to being shaved with the same razor used on the face of a corpse. Don’t know why. Same feelin’, I ‘spose, that prevents a man who would tackle a burglar at midnight from walking through a graveyard at the same hour.”

Rather more loquacious than his kind was this Sir. Tonsor. A cadaverous man with deep set eyes and hair plaster close to his head. A mustache whose ends curled like the horns of a Southdown ram was the only hairy adornment on his face. His hands were long and his fingers were supple. Three of them on his left hand were up in the air when he worked, like the legs of a boy standing on his head. The barber, like all other barbers smelled of pomade and bay rum.

GIVING THE RAZOR A REST

“Haven’t used that razor for nigh on to three weeks, now,” he went on, as he dipped up a brush full of lather; “only wish I had a job for it every day in the week. The pay runs from one dollar up. I’ve had as high as ten dollars, but that included a haircut. Curious, too, the fancies that takes some people. Why, sir, a long durin’ the war I was called to shave a man on Eight street, who had worn a full beard for ten years. His widow, a mighty nice, pretty little woman, got it into her head that her husband didn’t look ‘stylish,’ as she put it, and I took the hair off his upper lip and chin and left him with a pair of side whiskers. All the friends of the family came in to see what sort of a job I had made, and most of ‘em declared that the dead man looked twenty years younger and was just as nat’rel as could be.”

“I guess he must have been about fifty years of age. His beard was gray and he was bald headed, and I tell you he looked pretty well broken up. Consumption, I think it was. The widow didn’t appear to know that the undertaker usually attended to such matters, and she sent one of her boys for me. When I got to the house she says to me, she says: ‘Now, I want my poor, dear husband to look just as nice as possible. I’m going to have a very elegant funeral and everything must be first class. I want you to make him look just like he was when I married him.’ ‘How was that, madam?’ says I, not knowing, of course, how the man looked at that time. ‘Why,’ says she, sort of surprised, ‘he had beautiful side whiskers when we were married, but in the last ten years he let his beard grow, and I couldn’t’ coax him to shave it off, poor, dear man. Now, I want him to look as he used to look.’ ‘All right, madam,’ says I; ‘I’ll do the best I can.’ And if you’ll believe me I blocked out as pretty a pair of whiskers as you’d want to see. Does that razor pull, sir?

A CLEAN SHAVE.

“Cases like that, however,” said the barber, “is what you might call rare. I once took a full beard off a corpse and gave him a clean shave, because just before he died a lamp got upset alongside of his bed and singed all the hair off one side of his face. You never saw a family so broken up as that family was. The man had a very heavy, close beard, and when it was all off he looked like another person. There was a terrible scar on his jaw, and his mouth ‘peared to be kind of twisted. Al this was hidden by the heavy growth of hair. I guess his folks had never seen him with a smooth face. When the widow saw him laid out she pretty near went into hysterics. She sorter half believed, I think, that the dead man wasn’t her husband at all. To tell you the God’s truth he didn’t look in the least like he did before he was shaved.

“About three eras ago an undertaker gave me a job out at Harlem. It was a young man about thirty. He had a week’s growth of beard. I shaved him carefully and let his mustache stand. That night about seven o’clock I was sent to come to the house at once. It scared me a little for I thought I might have made some sort of a blunder. When I got there, however, I found that they wanted me to wax up the man’s mustache. That was the way he used to wear it in life.

DEAD MEN’S BEARDS GROWN.

“I guess you’ve often heard it said that it was nonsense to say that the beard doesn’t grow after death. Well, it isn’t nonsense, and I don’t care who says so. I shaved a man named Farley, on the Bowery, about six years ago, and shaved him a second time before he was buried. Yes, sir, just as true as I’m telling you. He died on a Wednesday night. I did my work early on a Thursday morning, and I never did see such a stiff beard as that man did have. He was dark complected, and the skin on his chin looked almost blue, the beard was so close. He always wore a smooth face. I finished the job, as I said, on Thursday morning. The funeral was set for Sunday. On Saturday afternoon I was sent for again, and I found a very heavy growth of beard on the corpse just as heavy as you would see on a living man. His chin and the sides of his face were black with it. I shaved him again.

“That job made me feel all creepy like. It was like cutting hair off a block of marble. Then his eyes were half open, and, I imagined that he was watching me to see if I was doing the thing right. I got $2 for the first shave, but they couldn’t pay for the second. Said it was all one job. I didn’t kick. If they was too mean to pay I wasn’t mean enough to kick up a row, and a funeral going’ on.

I had one experience,” continued this man of queer experiences, as his razor swept over the customer’s chin, “that I’ll bet knocks out any barber in new York. I shaved a dead woman once!”

The grimace of incredulity on the listener’s face nearly turned the edge of the razor.

“That’s a frozen fact,” said the barber, solemnly, “and the family is living in New York city to-day. I know it sounds rather tart, but you ask any old barber and I’ll guarantee that he will tell you he has shaved living women often enough. I have shaved a dead one. Women don’t have beards? I know they don’t, as a rule. Neither do cows have two heads, nor are calves born with six legs every day in the week, but you’ll run across ‘em once and awhile, you must admit. Same way with human beings. There are lots of women who have hair on their faces, and either shave twice a day or use some sort of a powder. The number is small and the number who intrust the secret to a barber is smaller still. If five hundred women have beards, not more than three out of that five hundred would trust another person with the knowledge. Certainly not half a dozen. Sit up a little higher, please. Because a thing seems out of the usual run that doesn’t argue that it isn’t so, and this experience of mine, while it mightn’t be the experience of one barber in a thousand, is just as true as God made little apples.

SHAVING A DEAD WOMAN

“It was ten years ago last April. I was workin’ in a shop on the east side then, having been driven out of my own shop by family troubles. An undertaker who used to give me a good many odd jobs shaving the dead came to me and said, ‘Frank, I want you to come around to my place to-night and go out to Fifty-seventh street. I’ve got something for you to do.’ That was every word he said. Well, I takes that very identical razor you see there with the death’s head on it, and I reaches his undertaker’s shop about eight o’clock. He puts the icebox in the wagon and off we starts.

“When we gets to the house and old gentleman comes to the door and asks the undertaker if that was the barber—meaning me, of course. ‘I am the barber,” says I. ‘Well,’ says he, “I suppose you’ve got good common sense and don’t want to have the feelin’s of a respectable family hurt. I never want you to tell what you did in this house, and I’m going’ to pay you $10 for doin’ it. ‘All right,’ says I. ‘I think I know my business.’ Then the undertaker fetches me upstairs and takes me into a small bedroom. ‘Now it’s nothin’ to be scared about,’ says he, ‘but I want you to shave a woman.’

“Well, sir, you can depend—which side do you part on? You can depend I was surprised, but I said nothin’ at all. The undertaker pulled down the sheet and there I saw the body of a rather stout woman who looked to be forty or forty-five. Her hands were shut tight and her face was all drawn up and twisted. It looked horrible. I gets up a little closer and see that she has hair on her upper lip and chin, and I could tell by the stiffness that she had been shaved before.

SHE HAD BEEN CRAZY.

“While I was latherin’ up I asked the undertaker why the woman hadn’t shaved herself before she died. It was a month’s growth, I should judge, and I supposed—like most women with beards—she was her own barber. ‘Well,’ says the undertaker, ‘she was crazy for three months—clean gone, a maniac—and never still for a minute. She had shaved herself for more than twenty years and not a living soul outside of her family knew the secret. When she went out of her mind she forgot all about her beard and no one dared to use a razor on her. For the last three weeks she was strapped down in bed, but her head kept wagging from morning till night and from night till morning. Her people don’t want the world to know what has been so long concealed. Do you understand?’

“I just kept on latherin’ and when I got her lathered I shaved her, and when I shaved her I puts up my razor and says to the undertaker, ‘Excuse me, if you please. I don’t want any more such jobs as this. That corpse looks ready to jump out of bed. I’ll shave dead men, and all you want of ‘em, but when it comes to this kind of work, why, just leave me out. I think I can say that I’ve seen some things out of the common, can’t I? Of course, in a hundred dead men’s jobs you see ninety-nine dead bodies with a week’s beard on ‘em and nothing more. The hundredth case might be something strange.

“Shaving a dead man is easy enough, easier, in fact than shaving a living one. Death makes the flesh firm and the razor slides over the face just as if going over ice. Then, if you happen to make a slip there is no blood to tell on you, and a dead man never kicks about not being shaved close enough. Good day, sir.”

New York Herald 7 August 1888: p. 2