The Arthur’s Seat Coffins – shades of Burke and Hare?

Tags

1836, Arthur's Seat, bodysnatchers, burke and hare, coffins, Edinburgh, fairy coffins, folklore, Lilliputian coffins, magic, memorial, Menefee, miniature, National Museum of Scotland, seventeen, Simpson, sympathetic magic, West port murders, witches

Edinburgh Castle viewed from the Grassmarket.

Edinburgh. The elegant New Town, the Athens of the North, home to writers, philosophers and surgeons – the cradle of the Scottish Enlightenment.  But entwined with this respectable façade there is also the Old Town, with its narrow wynds and closes, rife with tales of squalor, plague and sudden death.  And looming in the distance, the ancient extinct volcano called Arthur’s seat.

A Strange Discovery

Salisbury Crags and Arthurs Seat.

Late June, 1836, a group of lads out rabbiting made their way up the North East flank of Arthur’s Seat. Poking about in the undergrowth they came upon a small cave or recess, blocked by three slate slabs.  Intrigued, they removed the slates and found within, 17 miniature coffins laid out in three rows – two rows of eight and a top row, apparently just begun, comprising one coffin.  Boys being boys, as opposed to trained archaeologists, they then began to pelt each other with the mysterious little coffins.  Despite this rough treatment, enough of the coffins made it down from their resting place and into safer hands.

The Arthur’s Seat Coffins

The find was described by The Scotsman newspaper, at the time:

” [Each coffin] contained a miniature figure of the human form cut out in wood, the faces in particular being pretty well executed. They were dressed from head to foot in cotton clothes, and decently laid out with a mimic representation of all the funereal trappings which usually form the last habiliments of the dead. The coffins are about three or four inches in length, regularly shaped, and cut out from a single piece of wood, with the exception of the lids, which are nailed down with wire sprigs or common brass pins. The lid and sides of each are profusely studded with ornaments, formed with small pieces of tin, and inserted in the wood with great care and regularity.”

The discovery of the Arthur’s Seat coffins gripped the public imagination as both local and national newspapers began to speculate as to who put them there? How long had they been there? What was their purpose?

Media speculation and public fascination

16th Century woodcut of witches. Public Domain[?]

At some point shortly after discovery the boys had relinquished their treasure and the coffins eventually went on display in a private museum, run by Robert Frazier an Edinburgh Jeweller.  Although sealed when originally found, they were soon opened and it was  discovered that each neatly made coffin, contained a carved wooden figure, individually dressed – care had clearly gone into the construction of the strange artefacts.  It was noted that some of the coffins in the lower rows appeared more decayed, some of the grave-clothes were completely missing, and this seemed to infer that they had been laid down over a considerable period of time.  Theories were quickly developed as to the possible meaning of the ‘fairy ‘coffins.

The First newspaper report was in The Scotsman, 16 July 1836, which while managing to maintain an air of rationalistic superiority at the very idea of such superstitious nonsense as witchcraft or demons, at the same time seemed to revel in giving the paying public exactly the sensationalism that they wanted:

“Our own opinion would be – had we not some years ago abjured witchcraft and demonology – that there are still some of the weird sisters hovering about the Mushat’s Cairn or the Windy Gowl, who retain their ancient power to work spells of death by entombing the likenesses of those they wish to destroy.”

Sensing a good story, other newspapers followed suit offering their own, slightly more restrained, theories:

The Edinburgh Evening Post suggested the coffins could be an example of a tradition, found in Saxony, of symbolically burying those who died overseas.  While the Caledonian Mercury suggested the origin was a tradition for family members to provide a ‘Christian Burial’ to sailors lost at sea.  [1]  This theory was supported, in the 1970’s, by Walter Havernick of the Museum of Hamburg who also proposed that the Arthur’s Seat Coffins represented a stockpile of such charms, stored there by a merchant for later retrieval.[2]  However, this would seem to me to be rather an extreme measure to take in storing merchandise that did not appear to have any real monetary value, in addition to which, the place of concealment was not even weatherproof resulting in damage to some of the coffins.

Some coffins show signs of deterioration – a sign of age or just weathering?

The National Museum of Scotland boasts many examples of charms against witchcraft that have been found in Scotland, charms were in use as late as the nineteenth century.  Nevertheless the theories that the coffins were connected either with witchcraft or honorific burials for those who died abroad or were lost at sea, are hard to evidence in Scotland’s known folk traditions. [3]

Charms on display at the National Museum of Scotland.

Until recently though, two things did seem to be agreed upon: the coffins appeared to have been placed there over a period of time (differences in deterioration of individual coffins seemed to support this theory) and their most likely purpose was some sort of honorific burial.  These conclusions were supported by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (later the National Museum of Scotland), who were gifted the remaining eight coffins in 1901.

The West Port Murders and the Day of Last Judgement

One of the most compelling recent theories is that proposed by Professor Samuel Menefee and Dr Allen Simpson.  They studied the coffins in the 1990’s and although their published findings are hard to locate online, their work is quoted from extensively by Mike Dash in his detailed article on the Coffins, available on the Charles Fort Institute website (CFI).[4]

Details of the Arthur’s Seat coffins – tiny corpses both dressed and undressed.

Menefee and Simpson were able to identify that one or at most two individuals made the coffins (based on stylistic differences in coffin shape) and the tools used suggested the maker was a shoemaker, rather than a carpenter, as a sharp knife and not chisel was used to hollow out the coffins.  The tin decorations were of the type used in shoemaking or leather-making further strengthening this theory. Their findings also indicate that the figures themselves were probably originally toy soldiers dating from the late eighteenth century.  Perhaps the most important revelation from their study relates to the thread used in the clothing.  Three ply cotton thread was used to sew the grave-clothes for one of the figures, this thread was not in use in Scotland before 1830.  Other figures using one or two ply thread may have been earlier, but as Mike Dash suggests the date range could be as short at 1800-1830 – so it would seem that the infamous Scottish weather was to blame for the deterioration of some of the coffins, rather than the passage of time.

In fact Menefee and Simpson’s theory supposes a date after 1830 and they draw attention to the number of coffins in place as being a significant indicator that the placement of the coffins was event-driven, rather than part of a long-standing folk tradition. Dash provides the following quote from their work:

“It is arguable, that the problem with the various theories is their concentration on motivation, rather than on the even or events that caused the interments.  The former will always be open to argument, but if the burials were event-driven [..] the speculation would at least be built on demonstrable fact.  Stated another way, what we seek is an Edinburgh-related event or events, involving seventeen deaths, which occurred close to 1830 and certainly before 1836.  One obvious answer springs to mind – the West Port Murders by William Burke and William Hare in 1827 and 1828.” [5]

Burke and Hare. Image Source National Museum of Scotland.

Burke and Hare made a living out of death, selling bodies to the anatomist Dr Robert Knox a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.  They began their careers as opportunists following the death of Hare’s lodger, Old Donald.  Old Donald died owing a substantial amount of rent, so Hare and his friend Burke decided to sell his body to the local anatomists to recoup the loss.  So profitable was this enterprise that their initial opportunism soon blossomed into a full-scale murder spree, tallying sixteen victims before they were caught.  While Hare escaped the hangman’s noose by turning kings evidence, Burke was hanged for his crimes on 28 January 1829 and his body sent for public dissection.

Mort safe in Grey Friars Kirkyard.

What made both the work of the anatomist surgeons and the murders carried out by Burke and Hare so dreadful to people at the time, was they were in effect denying the deceased the chance of salvation at the Last Judgment.  Christians at the time held a strong belief that the dead would literally rise up on the final day of judgement.  So, if a loved one’s body was dissected and destroyed it was on the one hand a horror in the physical sense, but on the other hand, a deeper metaphysical horror at the spiritual consequences of the destruction of the body.  People went to great lengths to protect their departed relatives from this fate, as the mort-safes in Grey Friars Kirkyard attest.

Menefee and Simpson’s study suggests that the event that triggered the interment of the seventeen coffins on Arthur’s Seat was the West Port murders of Burke and Hare.  They propose that the coffins were a symbolic burial for those whose bodies were destroyed because of the actions of Burke and Hare.  A way that the dead could still stand for their last judgment. So although their scientific analysis of the material used to make the coffins explodes one theory (of their antiquity) they do support the long-held view that they represent honorific burial.[6]

Conclusion

So, were the coffins evidence of satanic rituals, witchcraft, protection for sailors on the high seas, or mock burials for those who died abroad?  Or a reminder of the grisly crimes of Burke and Hare?

It would seem that one of the earliest theories, that the coffins represented honorific burials, might not have been too far off the mark, even if the motivation for them was event driven rather than an ancient tradition.

If the crimes of Burke and Hare are the inspiration behind the Arthur’s Seat Coffins, some questions still remain: who made the coffins – a relative of one of the victims or someone who knew Burke and Hare and wished to make amends?  If they are related to the West Port Murders, then, as Min Bannister of the Edinburgh Fortean Society points out, why are they all male figures when the victims included twelve women?  Could this simply be because the offering was a token gesture and not meant to represent the actual individuals?  Is it also possible that the single coffin at the top represents the first ‘victim’ old Donald, whose death by natural causes gave Burke and Hare the idea for their terrible crimes?  Chances are we will never know for sure, but perhaps that is part of their enduring fascination…

The Arthur’s Seat Coffins are on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Sources and notes

Images – unless otherwise credited all images by Lenora.

http://www.nms.ac.uk/explore/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/mystery-of-the-miniature-coffins/ [1] [2] [3]

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/edinburghs-mysterious-miniature-coffins-22371426/

http://blogs.forteana.org/node/97  The Miniature coffins found on Arthur’s Seat by Mike Dash [4] [5] [6]

 

Memento Mori…Victorian post-mortem photography

Tags

ambrotype, carte de visite, daguerrotype, death, death photos, early photography, fakes, funerals, mourning, post mortem photography, rituals, the good death, the myth of the standing corpse, tintype, Victorian

~A note to the faint-hearted: this post contains photographs of dead people ~

The Victorian celebration of death

It has been noted by many other writers, that today when a loved one passes over, we celebrate their life, often avoiding or glossing over the distressing fact that they have died… almost as if it would be rude to mention it.  Not so our Victorian ancestors, they positively revelled in rituals that celebrated death.  This was unsurprising as it was all around them – poverty, incurable diseases and insanitary housing meant that had you lived in early Victorian England (the 1830 and 40’s) you would have been lucky to make it to your late thirties; while a fifth of children born at that time would not reach the age of five.[1]

Highgate Cemetery

Yet despite these grim statistics, the Victorian fondness for funerals and funeral rituals grew out of more than just a pragmatic realisation that they would undoubtedly be attending an awful a lot of them.  It was far more than that, the spiritual and religious beliefs of Victorians lead them to the view that death was something to prepare for, and that the dead should be remembered, not just in their living but in the manner of their passing.  To have a ‘good death’ was important, to settle ones affairs not only materially, but spiritually as well, in preparation for the transition into the next phase of the souls existence.  One aspect of this tradition which can seem macabre and slightly voyeuristic to the modern eye, is that of post-mortem photography. But creating images of the dead was not invented in the nineteenth century.

How the dead were remembered: from oil paintings to Carte de visite

Lady Venetia Digby on her death-bed, by Van Dyke.

Preserving the memory of the dead has a long history (and pre-history). From the monumental (think pyramids, mausoleums and tombs) to the personal and portable (such as jewelry and images).  While we might find it odd to want an image of a loved one in death, in the past it was not unheard of. In the seventeenth century, when the beautiful Venetia Stanley, Lady Digby, died unexpectedly in her sleep, her distraught husband had her final portrait painted, post-mortem, by non other that Sir Anthony Van Dyke. But such extravagant memento mori (translated as ‘remember that you have to die’) were the preserve of the wealthy upper classes…until, that is, the advent of photography.

Capturing the soul

Post Mortem photography was popular in the UK, USA and Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, its popularity peaking in the 1860’s and 70’s. Its rise began in the 1840’s with the birth of photography.

Louis Daguerre, one of the fathers of photography, developed his eponymous Daguerreotype in 1839.  Daguerreotype images were produced on treated silver-plated copper sheets, protected by glass.  The images are strange to look at and change from positive to negative, depending on the angle.  The process was expensive and time-consuming – it could take up to 15 minutes to develop an exposure, and the images created were fragile (often having to be protected in cases or frames).[2][3] Nevertheless it wasn’t long before they were being used to capture the likenesses of the deceased.

Post Mortem Daguerreotype. 1862. Source Astronomy Pictures.

In 1850 the cheaper Ambrotype method superseded the Daguerreotype.  This process created a positive image on glass.  As with the daguerreotype, the finished product was fragile and each image was unique and could only be reproduced by the camera.[4]

Victorian Post Mortem Ambrotype displayed in a case. Source unknown.

The 1860’s and 1870’s brought the tintype photograph to prominence, which as the name suggested was created on a thin sheet of metal.  This method easy to produce and was popular with itinerant photographers on the move.  So the photographer was able to extend beyond the studio setting to other arenas…such the open battlefield, or the private deathbed.[5]

Tintype post-mortem photograph. Source unknown.

The biggest revolution in democratizing photography was the Carte de Visite method, patented by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri in 1854.  His method produced small images made up of albumen prints on card.  The truly revolutionary aspect of this method was that he developed a way of producing up to eight negatives on one plate, thereby driving down costs.[5] This meant that images could more easily be shared amongst family and friends.  With post-mortem images, it allowed family members who were not able to be present at the deathbed or funeral, to have a final image of their loved one.

Carte de visite post-mortem image. Paul Frecker collection.

Post Mortem Photography and The Good Death

In the early and mid-Victorian period, evangelical Christianity had a strong influence on attitudes towards death and dying.  Professor Sir Richard Evans noted in his lecture The Victorians: Life and Death, that the emphasis was on a ‘good death’ – ideally a peaceful and gentle transition in to the afterlife, witnessed by family and friends; where a deathbed struggle with fever or delusion occurred, it could be seen as a metaphor for the Christian struggle for redemption.  Post mortem photography represents part of this tradition, offering a memento mori – an object of reflection to the yet living – as well as, more prosaically, providing symbol of social status because not everyone could afford them.

That is not to say that all Victorians were comfortable with the idea of snapping images the dearly departed – far from it.  As Catharine Arnold notes in Necropolis, photographic images such ‘Fading Away’, created by Henry Peach Robinson in 1858, which used actors to depict the death of a beautiful young girl, were not universally praised.[6] Unlike the tasteful and idealised deathbed scenes depicted in oils, the disturbing intimacy and realism created by the medium of photography seemed to intrude on the very personal and private realm of grief.

‘Fading Away’ by Henry Peach Robinson, 1858. The Royal Photographic Society at the National Media Museum, Bradford.

In the case of ‘Fading Away’, the image was saved from censure when Prince Albert bought a copy, thereby ensuring its popular appeal. It’s a good thing he liked images of deathbeds, because Queen Victoria commissioned both a painting and a photograph of him on his own deathbed, in 1861.  These images are available to view in the Royal Collection (See links at the end of this article).

Styles of post-mortem photography ranged throughout the nineteenth century and varied from the UK and Europe to the USA.  Broadly speaking the earlier images focused on head shots and close ups, with the subject apparently ‘asleep’, later more ‘naturalist’ poses were adopted -where the subject was posed as if in life, and later still the funeral group – with the family gathered round for one last photo with the dearly departed in their coffin – became popular.  However the significant difference between these images and images such as ‘Fading Away’, is that post-mortem photography was intended to be viewed in the private sphere, whereas Peach Robinson’s staged image was clearly for public consumption.

Mirrors with Memories [7]

Deceased man in a naturalist pose c1860. Source Wikipedia.

So, why did the Victorians do it? Why have a stranger come into your home, while you are grieving, and interfere with your loved one, simply in order to take a photo?  Well, it seems that a number of factors collided to produce the right climate for it: evangelical Christianity, with its concept of the good death, technological developments, and the rise of the middle classes, along with a large dash of Victorian morbidity.

In some cases, these images may have been the only images taken of the individual, this is particularly possible with images of babies and young children. And, practically speaking, they were a way of sharing the death of a loved one with relatives unable to attend the actual deathbed.

Deceased child surrounded by flowers. Image Source Wikipedia.

However, as well as a personal remembrance of the individual, they were also used as a way to reflect upon death – demonstrating Victorian preoccupations with both piety and morbidity. The images allowed for a dialogue between the living and the dead – a reconciliation that the viewer too will die.  A Victorian viewing these images would have been able to ‘read’ them in a very different way than we do now -identifying the spiritual narrative, shared social values, the moral lessons in these images.

Jo Smoke, writing in Beyond the Dark Veil,[8]suggested that as well as a moral and spiritual purpose, Memento Mori can also be seen as expressing class goals by equating ‘taste and beauty as metaphors for status and style’ – after all these images were often displayed in beautiful and expensive frames or jeweled cases and not every one could afford them.

He concluded that post mortem photography successfully encompassed both the spiritual and the consumerist nature of Victorian society, stating that they ‘symbolised tangibility by stretching the inevitability of human decay into the future by investing memory into materials of great physicality’.[9]

Identifying Post Mortem Photography

Today, the internet is flooded with images purporting to be Victorian post mortem photographs. Sometimes a sort of ‘check-list’ is deployed to identify them and although one can probably assume that an individual depicted in a coffin, is almost certainly dead, other signs such as closed or painted eyes, blank expressions, visible standing frames, or strange posture aren’t necessarily proof-positive of a post mortem photograph.

The tradition of depicting the deceased as though living, often accompanied by living relatives and children, has created even more difficulty in differentiating between what may simply be an awkward and uncomfortable looking living individual and a posed corpse.

Deceased young girl with her parents. Source BBC.

In the above post mortem image, the dead girl is propped up by her parents, with her head on one side.  She appears notably sharper than her living parents who appear slightly blurred. Even when developments in photography led to reduced exposure times, it was still difficult to remain still during the process (unless of course, you were dead).  This was such a problem that the living were often supported with apparatus, such as a Brady Stand.  The use of these stands has led to what some call the ‘Myth of the standing corpse’ [10] – whereby any images of a slightly suspect individual, where a stand is visible, may be identified as post mortem (a particular problem on commercial selling sites).

This man has decidedly odd eyes and is supported by a Stand – but is he dead? Source: hchronicles blog.

This image has often been described as a post mortem photo, demonstrating the use of the stand – but the jury is out. Image source – unknown.

However there seems to be a strong argument against the possibility that the Brady stand, or any other stand (even combined with wires), could have ever actually support the dead-weight (pardon the pun) of a corpse, in anything approaching a natural manner. [11][12 – see the video at the foot of this post for more on this debate.]

The girl in the middle is said to be dead. Petrolia Archive Collection.

The image above, originally from the Petrolia Archive, appears on many sites online as a post mortem photograph. The young girl in the middle is supposed to be dead – her painted on eyes are cited as evidence for it. However, given the ease at which a photograph could be spoiled by a sudden twitch or blink during the long exposure time, it can be argued that this is not necessarily certain proof that the subject is dead. [13] And in fact, this could explain a lot of the blank, dead-eyed stares that gaze out from us from some of these photographs.

Other images are more obviously photo-shopped, such as this fabulously gruesome image of two sisters, which would stretch even the Victorians capacity for morbidity!

Image often cited as Victorian Post Mortem, but actually an art project from about 2009. [Artist unknown]

The original picture before manipulation [Source Unknown]

 Changing attitudes

It has been said that the advent of the Kodak box brownie, allowing families to document entire lives from birth to death, caused the Post Mortem Photograph to fall out of favour, [14] but there was more to its decline than technical innovation.  By the end of the Victorian period and beginning of the Edwardian, there was a fundamental shift in attitudes to death. For one, evangelical Christianity, with its particular interpretation of the ‘good death’, had waned. By the Edwardian period a ‘good death’ had transformed into one more familiar to us today – a death without suffering or one that took the subject unawares, such as in their sleep.  As such, conversations about death and dying became less acceptable than they had been in the early and mid-Victorian periods.  Catastrophic conflicts such as the First World War, also played their part in changing attitudes.  Such brutal conflicts took death away from the intimate family setting, and while death could be presented as a patriotic sacrifice to the state, it often occurred violently, or to far from home to allow for a photographic memento mori to be either desirable or practically possible.

In this modern world, where we have become desensitized to the graphic images of death reported in the media, we have shut death out, except in its most extreme and impersonal form.  In contrast, these quiet, contemplative and very personal images of the dead offer us the opportunity to open a dialogue with death, and to reflect on that great leveler.  And of course, they also provide an ever so  gentle reminder that we too will die.

Memento Mori.

Post Mortem Images on the net

Anne Longmore-Etheridge Collection:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/60861613@N00/albums/72157629160486891/with/23906381332/

Petrolia Heritage

http://www.petroliaheritage.com/people.html

Royal Collection:

https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/2506826/prince-albert-on-his-deathbed-december-1861

The Burns Archive:

http://www.burnsarchive.com/Explore/Historical/Memorial/index.html

The Thanatos Archive:

http://thanatos.net/preview/

Sources and notes

Arnold, Catharine, ‘Necropolis: London and its dead’ 2007, Simon and Schuster [3] [6]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36389581

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/overview_victorians_01.shtml [1]

Evans, Professor Sir Richard, https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-victorians-life-and-death

http://metro.co.uk/2014/11/26/victorian-post-mortem-photographs-are-as-creepy-as-they-sound-4963836/ [this article contains some disputed post mortem photographs]

http://mourningportraits.blogspot.co.uk/p/hoaxes-scams-ebay-optimism.html [13]

Mord, Jack, ‘Beyond the Dark Veil’, 2013, Grand Central Press [7][8][9][14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrotype [4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carte_de_visite [5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype [2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintype [5]

https://dealer042.wixsite.com/post-mortem-photos The Myth of the stand alone corpse [10][11][12]

 

 

Thomas Skelton: the murderous jester of Muncaster Castle

Tags

competition, Court Jester, Cumbria, evil clowns, Fool, Foolery, Ghosts, Hauntings, Jesters, King lear, Muncaster Castle, Murder, murderous jester, Pennington, seventeenth century, Thomas, Tom Fool, Tom Fools will, Tom Skelton

Evil Clowns

Coulrophobia – the fear of clowns.  From fictional phantoms such as Stephen King’s Pennywise to serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s alter-ego Pogo the Clown, and even the current trend for ‘killer clowns’ sweeping the US and UK,  clowns have developed a somewhat sinister reputation of late.  Their painted faces and over-sized clothes intended to convey innocent humour can, to some people, appear both uncanny and disturbing.   But evil killer clowns are not an entirely modern phenomenon – if the stories about Thomas Skelton, the last jester of Muncaster Castle – are to be believed.  Thomas Skelton is thought by some to be the original Tom Fool from Shakespeare’s King Lear, but his  ‘Last Will and Testament’  may hint at a much darker side to this comedian.

My personal favourite: Twisty the Clown, from American Horror Story: Freak Show.

Who was Thomas Skelton?

Thomas Skelton is famous for being the last jester of Muncaster Castle, a stately pile near the village of Ravenglass, Cumbria, in the north-west of England.  We know this because he is the named subject of a famous full length portrait that hangs in the castle.  The picture depicts a ruddy-faced middle-aged man, dressed in jester’s motley, holding a staff of office in one hand, and a document written in doggerel, attested to be his will, hangs beside him.

Thomas Skelton last jester of Muncaster Castle. Image via BBC website.

That a portrait was painted of a family retainer must indicate that he was a beloved family servant.  His attire is masterfully comic – his patchwork robe, staff of office and scroll and mock privy seal all act to parody the pompous badges of office of high officialdom, and rather than listing his titles and achievements the scroll offers up what purports to be Tom Fools last will and testament. He even mocks the noble gallant, with the name of his lady pinned into his hatband, aping the fashions of the day, whilst wearing his jesters motley.

Interestingly, the portrait at Muncaster Castle isn’t the only portrait of Tom Skelton. EW Ives in his article for the Shakespeare Survey [1] focuses his research on a second portrait, purchased by the Shakespeare Society in 1957 from the Haigh Hall Collection of the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres. It is by examining this portrait and the text of the will, that EW Ives has attempted to pin-point exactly when and where Tom Fool lived.

Dating Tom Fool

Thomas Skelton’s Will

Ives uses references to well-known local individuals named in the will, cross checked with burial records from Wigan, to build a picture of the movements and the dates for Tom Skelton.  He proposes that although Tom Skelton was originally the jester at Muncaster Castle, upon the death of Lord Pennington, Tom accompanied the young heir when he was sent to live with his relatives, the Bradshaugh’s, at Haigh Hall in Wigan.  At Haigh Hall, sometime between 1659 – 1665, a portrait of Tom was painted. Sir Roger Bradshaw’s wife was a Pennington, and may have known Tom Fool as a child. Ives suggests that when the heir reached his majority and wished to return to Muncaster, he wanted to take the portrait of the much-loved jester with him.  As Tom Fool had been a well-loved family servant, at both Muncaster castle and Haigh Hall, a copy of the portrait was commissioned to remain at Haigh Hall (possibly completed in the 1680’s) while the original returned with the heir to Muncaster. Ives states that there is no evidence that Skelton returned to Muncaster after 1659, while the young heir was away, so it would seem likely Tom died at Haigh Hall [2].

The current incumbent of Muncaster Castle, Peter Frost-Pennington, confirms that evidence for Thomas Skelton’s life in the historical record is hard to find.  He was, after all, just a servant, even if he was one esteemed enough to have his likeness captured in oils.  Frost-Pennington keeps his margins wide quoting ‘1600 give or take 50 years’ [3],  a possible references to him comes from a letter dating to the reign of Henry VIII, while another could put him as far back as the late fifteenth century.  However if the research by EW Ives is correct, then unfortunately Tom Skelton could not be the model for Shakespeare’s Tom Fool in King Lear which dates from about 1605/6.

“King Lear and the Fool in the Storm” by William Dyce (1806–1864) (c) National Galleries of Scotland; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

A Killer Sense of Humour

There were two mains types of fool or jester,  the natural fool – one with a physical or intellectual disability; and the artificial fool – an entertainer or comedian. Fools and jesters were often part of a royal court or noble family and by virtue of their position could often speak harsh truths to their ‘betters’ in the guise of drollery.  Shakespeare often uses the fool as the voice of common sense and wisdom, in Twelfth Night the jester is remarked to be ‘wise enough to play the fool’ [4] It is not clear from the scant historical record, or the portrait, which kind of fool Tom Skelton was, but whether natural or artificial, some of his favourite antics have come down to us.

Mr Claypole from Children’s TV Series Rent-a-ghost.

Like many fools and jesters, Tom was a valued and trusted servant of the Pennington family, entertaining them with a mixture of practical jokes and wit.  He is famed for such clownish antics as cutting off a branch while he sat upon it; greasing up banisters on the staircase to annoy guests, then when asked who was responsible, quipped that he thought ‘everyone had a hand in it’.  

However things take a more sinister turn in the anecdotes relating to Tom Skelton reported in ‘The Remains of John Briggs a compilation of tales and essays’ published in the Westmorland Gazette and Lonsdale Magazine in 1825.

Briggs relates what purports to be oral tradition surrounding a murder committed by Thomas Skelton at the behest of one Sir Ferdinand Hoddleston, of Millum Castle. It all began when Helwise, the lovely daughter of Sir Alan Pennington of Muncaster Castle, had disguised herself as a shepherdess and attended the May Day festivities in order to meet her secret lover, Richard the Carpenter.  Wild Will of Whitbeck, a local ruffian, had fancied his chances but was rejected by Helwise.  To to get his revenge on the lovers he spilled the beans to Sir Ferdinand (yet another wannabe suitor for Helwise).

May Day by William Collins, Wikimedia.

Angered at losing out to a humble carpenter, Sir Ferdinand went to Muncaster Castle bent on informing Sir Alan Pennington of his daughter’s low connection.  However as chance would have it, first he met with Tom Fool, aka Thomas Skelton, and had the following conversation in which Tom recounted a nasty trick he played on ‘Lord Lucy’s Footman’.  This seems to have given Sir Ferdinand an idea of Tom’s homicidal potential…

“‘he asked me’ said Tom, ‘if the river was passable; and I told him it was for nine of our family had just gone over. – They were geese’ whispered Tom; ‘but I did not tell him that.-the fool set into the river, and would have drowned, I believe, if I had not helped him out'”. 

Briggs goes on to recount that Tom also had a personal grudge against Dick the Carpenter –

“‘[..]I put those three shillings which you gave me into a hole, and I found them weezend everytime I went to look at them; and now they are only three silver pennies.  I have just found it out that Dick has weezend them.’
‘Kill him Tom, with his own axe, when he is asleep sometime – and I’ll see that thou takest no harm for it.’ Replied Sir Ferdinand.
‘He deserves it, and I’ll do it,’ said Tom.
[..]
And the next day while the unsuspecting carpenter was taking an after dinner nap, and dreaming probably of the incomparable beauties of his adorable Helwise, Tom entered the shed, and with one blow of the axe severed the carpenters head from his body. ‘There,’ said Tom to the servants,’I have hid Dick’s head under a heap of shavings; and he will not find that so easily, when he awakes, as he did my shillings.'”

Detail of the beheading of Holofernes, by Caravaggio.

The conclusion of this unhappy tale was that heartbroken Helwise entered a nunnery, while the vengeful Sir Ferdinand met a bloody death fighting the Earl of Richmond (Henry Tudor) at Bosworth Field [5].  Which frankly, seems to place this tale much to early to be attributed to the seventeenth century Tom Skelton.

Other tales claim that Tom Fool would sit under a chestnut tree outside Muncaster Castle, watching travelers go past.  Should any traveler ask him for directions, they were at risk of being misdirected to dangerous quicksands near the River Esk [6]. May people consider that his will makes oblique reference to this murderous pass-time.

‘But let me not be carry’d o’er the brigg,
Lest fallin I in Duggas River ligg;’ [9]

Some tales even have Tom recovering the bodies, decapitating them and burying them under tree trunks.

Death from the Medieval Scapini Tarot. Image from SheWalksSoftly website.

All of this would seem to paint a picture of an evil and conscienceless individual.  But is there more to this than meets the eye?  The north-west of England was for hundreds of years,a remote and dangerous place.  Blood feuds, rough justice and robbery with violence were part and parcel of everyday life.  Could these local folk tales and stories have elided themselves onto half remembered anecdotes of the jolly japes and crude practical jokes of Thomas Skelton?  In the Middle Ages there was a tradition in the Tarot of showing death in the garb of the Fool, death having the last laugh (of course) and some traditions also associate the Fool with the trickster and with vice [7&8].  Could these earlier darker traditions, coupled with bloody local legends have become associated with the portrait of Tom Skelton.  Once the immediate family who knew him died out, the portrait, with its slightly menacing air could easily have attracted macabre tales in a similar way that some Screaming Skull legends may have developed.

The punchline…

Tom Skelton was the last jester of Muncaster Castle, and probably of Haigh Hall as well.  Jesters fell out of fashion with the restoration of Charles II to the throne (and I can’t imagine the puritans would have had much use for Jesters either!)  During his lifetime Skelton appears to have been a much valued family retainer, so much so that not one but two portraits were commissioned of him.  Even now, his legend as an entertainer has been revived, and Muncaster Castle hosts an annual Jester Competition in honour of Tom Skelton.

But was Tom Skelton the original Tom Fool from Shakespeare’s King Lear? Well probably not, the dating evidence seems to be against it. And more pressingly, was Skelton an evil killer clown?  His troubled spirit is said to haunt Muncaster Castle to this day – his heavy tread and the sound of a body (the unfortunate carpenter?) being dragged up the stairs have been reported by several witnesses…is he doomed to walk the earth for eternity re-living his heinous crimes? On that, I will leave you to make up your own mind.

If you want to view the portrait of Thomas Skelton you can visit Muncaster Castle, they even offer paranormal ghost tours so you might even get to meet him….

http://www.muncaster.co.uk/castle-and-gardens/castle-overview/

Sources and notes

BBC Cumbria, ‘Muncaster Castle jester competition reveals dark past’ [3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-22704190

Bob, ‘The History of the Fool’ http://www.foolsforhire.com/info/history.html

Briggs, John, The remains of John Briggs, Kirkby Lonsdale, Foster, 1825 available via https://archive.org/stream/remainsofjohnbri00brigiala#page/154/mode/2up/search/jester   [5]

Ives, E.W. ‘Tom Skelton – A Seventeenth-Century Jester’ , Shakespeare Survey 13, 1960 (partial article available via Google books)  [1] [2]

Jadewik, ‘A Little Bit of Tom Foolery’, the Witching Hour, 2011 https://4girlsandaghost.wordpress.com/tag/tom-foolery/ [1] [2]

Jones, Paul Anthony, ‘Tom Skelton: The Serial Killer Court Jester’, 2015, http://mentalfloss.com/article/68443/tom-skelton-serial-killer-court-jester [6]

Lipscombe, Suzannah, ‘All the Kings’s Fools’, History Today, 2011 http://www.historytoday.com/suzannah-lipscomb/all-king%E2%80%99s-fools

Mason, Emma, ‘Playing the fool: Tudor jesters’, History Extra, 2015 http://www.historyextra.com/feature/playing-fool-tudor-jesters

Past Presented, ‘Tom Skelton’s Foolish Will’ http://www.pastpresented.ukart.com/eskdale/tomfool3.htm (includes full text of the will) [1] [2] [9]

http://www.mythandimage.com/fool.html [8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester [4][8]

Screaming Skulls – folklore, fact and fiction

Tags

Ambrose Barlow, Anne Griffiths, apotropaic, Apotropaic tradition, Bettiscombe Manor, British folklore, Burton Agnes Hall, celtic, Celts, Dickie, English folklore, english stately homes, Ghosts, Guardian Spirits, haunted houses, haunted objects, Hauntings, Head Cults, mememto mori, Owd Nance, Pinney, Screaming skulls, Wardely Hall

Screaming Skulls – a very British Tradition

Screaming Skull, 1958, director Alex Nicol. Wikimedia

Tales of screaming skulls punctuate both the folklore and the ghost literature of the British Isles. From benevolent guardian spirits bringing luck to the household to vengeful spirits tied to a location for all eternity, promising doom and destruction should their mortal remains ever be disturbed. England, is dotted with many manor houses and farmsteads with such tales -but what is their origin?  Are they comparatively recent – many tales cite the seventeenth century for their origin – or do they have more ancient antecedents?  The tales were both relished and embellished by the Gothic-loving Victorians and later writers – how much influence have those literary tales of screaming skulls had in shaping the living folk tradition?

How to spot a screaming skull

So, what exactly is a screaming skull and what are their defining characteristics?

Firstly the term screaming skull, with all its supernatural and dramatic connotations, is unsurprisingly the product of literature. In folklore they are categorised as guardian skulls – the embodiment of the luck of a household or family – which, frankly, sounds a lot less sensational and a lot more, well, protective.

David Clarke in his PhD thesis on Head Cults [1] proposes the following characteristics, common to most traditions:

1. A Dwelling place has a human skull which has been kept for hundreds of years in an important part of the house, in a specially made wall niche, on a prominent windowsill, or beside a hearth;

2. The origin of the skull in unclear, but in oral tradition the date when it took up residence is often placed outside living memory, between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, usually as the result of violence, for example murder or execution;

3. Under no circumstances must the skull be removed from its resting place in the building, this being emphasised in all the stories as the most important theme;

4. If the skull is disturbed then outbreaks of paranormal, poltergeist-like phenomena will plague the residents of the house until the skull is replaced in its favourite place.

Three tales of screaming skulls: Anne Griffiths, ‘Owd Nance’ of Burton Agnes Hall, Yorkshire

Burton Agnes Hall. Image by Lenora.

I have to admit that my first introduction to Screaming Skull folklore came from a Misty annual in the 1980’s- and it resulted in me pestering my dad until he took me to Burton Agnes Hall.  I still have the old guide-book and one solitary grainy old photograph I took at the time (see above) as well as a lingering sense of disappointment that I didn’t get to see the infamous skull itself, which is walled up in a secret location within the hall.

Anne Griffiths, by Geehearts (Burton Agnes Hall).

Folklore has it that the three Griffiths sisters, Frances, Margaret and Catherine (known by her baptismal name as Anne), caused Burton Agnes Hall to be built during the closing years of the reign of Elizabeth I.  Just before the hall was completed, the youngest sister, Anne, was returning from a visit to a family in a nearby village when she was attacked and left for dead by a gang of ruffians.  Brought back to her beloved hall, her dying wish was to remain there after death; she claimed to her sisters that she would not rest ‘unless I, or part of me at least, remain here in our beautiful home as long as it lasts’[2]. She pressed her sisters to agree that once she had died, they would remove her head and keep it on a table in the hall.  However, unsurprisingly, they buried her intact in the local churchyard.

Shortly afterwards, strange things began to happen within the Hall, loud crashes and bangs were heard, poltergeist activity erupted in the depths of the night. The family was terrified and recalling their broken promise to Anne, they set out to make amends.  The coffin was duly opened and what they found shocked them – Anne had preempted them. Although her body remained well-preserved, to their horror they found that her head was now detached and bare of all flesh – only a grinning skull remained.   Anne had her will in the end, and her skull was set upon a table in her beloved hall. Peace reigned once again at Burton Agnes Hall…..well, for most of the time – it is said that Anne, also known as Owd Nance, still walks in October, the month of her supposed demise, and her presence is often felt in the Queens Chamber at Burton Agnes Hall, to this very day.

The Vengeful Slave of Bettiscombe Manor, Dorset

Bettiscombe Manor. Image source: British History.ac.uk website.

Bettiscombe Manor is the ancestral home of the Pinney family, and is built on very ancient ground.   The story goes that one Azaiah Pinney was due to be hanged drawn and quartered for his part in the failed Monmouth Rebellion of 1685.  A swift bribe ensured he was instead whisked away to the colonies, to be an indentured servant in the Caribbean.  Clearly being a man of sterner stuff, Azaiah eventually became a rich plantation owner on the Isle of Nevis.  Many years later a descendant of Azaiah,   returned to Bettiscombe in the company of a negro slave.

The Bettiscombe skull beneath the gaze of a Pinney. Image from Rusmea.com.

The slave, used to tropical climes, was not much taken with the wind and rain-swept Dorset landscape and was soon on his deathbed.  His dying wish was that his remains be returned home for burial and added to this entreaty was a warning not to fail him ‘if his wish were to be ignored, then the house would have no peace.’ [3].  Well, the canny Pinney family were not about to go to the expense of repatriating the remains of a negro slave, and the man was duly buried in the local churchyard.

Soon the dark chambers of Bettiscombe were disturbed by unearthly screams and unexplained happenings, something was terribly amiss.   The broken promise was recalled and the unfortunate slave’s remains dug up.  His bones were brought to the hall and at once the disturbing phenomena ceased.  Only his skull now remains, and was set in a niche in a chimney up in the attic.  Should anyone be foolish enough to try to remove it from its favourite resting place –

‘it is said to scream and cause agricultural disaster if taken out of the house and also causes the death, within a year, of the person who commits the deed.’ [4]

 A rake or a martyr – Wardley Hall near Manchester

Old Postcard of Wardley Hall.

Two stories exist to explain the mysterious skull of Wardley Hall, and they could not be more different.  The first claims that in the reign of Charles the II, one Roger Downes was a notorious rake and libertine.   One night in 1676, Downes was walking on London Bridge with some acquaintances, when he boasted that he would attack the next person he met – he was as good as his word, killing an innocent tailor.  Unfortunately for the young blade, his next intended victim, a Thames water man, was no pushover and not only got the better of Downes, but succeeded in decapitating him and tossing his body into the Thames.  In a macabre twist, his severed head was returned to his sister at Wardley Hall (one can’t help imagining her reaction upon opening the parcel…).

Rakes duelling. Image source uncertain.

The head was duly buried but then the boisterous bachelor took haunting the hall in order to convey his displeasure at being displaced.  Consequently his skull found a permanent resting place in a niche on the stairs – and harmony returned to Wardley.

However in 1799 when Roger Downes coffin was opened – his head was found to be firmly attached to his body!

The alternative origin story of the Wardley Hall skull, is that is belongs to one Father Ambrose Barlow, a Catholic Martyr – and this is the view of the Catholic Church.  Wardley Hall is now the home to the Catholic Bishop of Salford.  Perhaps this is why the story of the libertine Roger Downes exists – as cover for the real provenance of the skull as a Catholic relic?

Skull of St Ambrose.  Source: Visit Salford website.

During the seventeenth century, what with the Reformation and the gunpowder plot,  it was not such a good thing to be seen to be a Catholic.  However, certain parts of the country still held enclaves, Lancashire being one.   Ambrose Barlow was said to have been conducting a Catholic Mass on  Sunday 25th of April when a mob, lead by a protestant preacher, carried him off to gaol.  He was hanged, drawn and quartered on 10 September 1641.  As was the custom, his head was displayed (as a warning to the others) and was set upon a spike in Manchester.   Eventually the head was saved from this ignominious fate by a Catholic sympathizer and returned to Wardley Hall, to be revered as a holy relic.  It was lost for a time, then rediscovered in the 1740’s and the screaming skull legend swiftly began. In 1782 Thomas Barritt wrote:

‘From time out of mind the occupiers of Wardley Hall have had a superstitious veneration for the skull, not permitting it to be removed from its place on the topmost step of the staircase.  There is a tradition that if removed or ill-used, some uncommon screaming and lamenting is heard, and disturbances take place in many parts of the house.’ [5]

In order to ensure that the skull was secure in its tenure, its continued presence was even a condition of the lease [6]. All of which shows how quickly Skull legends could arise, as Clarke notes, the thirty years between the rediscovery in the 1740’s to the recording of the account in 1782, is hardly ‘time out of mind’!

From Guardian Skulls to Screaming Skulls

The origin of the skulls is often lost in the mists of time, and as the Wardley Hall Skull demonstrates, there may even be conflicting stories associated with them within the oral tradition.  Tradition places the origin for most of them as between the fifteenth and seventeenth century – with the Civil War being oft cited.

The Screaming Skull and other Mysteries by Peter Haining

As far as written accounts go, it would seem that the phenomenon was first recorded by Antiquarians in the seventeenth century.  Further accounts were recorded in the eighteenth century, but it was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that Screaming Skull legends became part of the popular culture. Writers such as Judge Udal’s 1872 work ‘Notes and Queries’ first brought the Bettiscombe skull to popular attention and inspired a number of other writers to follow suit.   Often these accounts were inaccurate (three sisters did not build Burton Agnes Hall, and it is even doubtful as tp whether Anne Griffiths actually existed) and rather on the dramatic side, emphasizing the supernatural phenomena associated with the skulls.  It was from these accounts that the ‘classic screaming skull’ story became fixed in the public imagination and in the literature. Including that of F Marion Crawford whose supernatural tale ‘ The Screaming Skull’, published in 1911, was inspired by the Bettiscombe Skull.

Earlier accounts had focused on the Skulls apotropaic qualities, their protective magic or ‘luck’ for a certain location or family, later tales focused on a more purposeful and romantic ideal of vengeful spirits of those who died violently. Such examples as those at Burton Agnes Hall and Bettiscombe Manor fit the ‘classic’ mold perfectly, with their wronged spirits tied to a place for eternity – and their noisy disapproval if anyone should dare to move them.  It has been noted by Gillian Bennett that once these tales were recorded, they became fixed and immutable, unlike the living oral tradition that had been repeated and elaborated on for many centuries.  Nevertheless because these artifacts do indisputably exist, they still form part of a living folk tradition.  Examples of this can be found at the Pack Horse Inn, Bury, Lancs, where Skull behind the bar (origin unknown) has, in recent years, developed a reputation for being cursed and causing supernatural events.

Celtic stone head. Image via Wikimedia.

In 1996 Clarke recorded a gazette of 32 English Guardian Skull legends, noting that although many were missing, and 7 (including the Burton Agnes skull) had been walled up, 10 remained on display.  Such visible reminders of our own mortality coupled with their link to supernatural phenomenon make them a magnet for stories and legends.

However, considering that the actual evidence for supernatural events, and the famed screaming, is relatively hard to pin down, it might be that the skulls do represent some earlier tradition.  Possibly not stretching back to Celtic head cults as has been suggested (Jennifer Westwood cited in Clarke) –  there is little surviving evidence for Guardian/screaming Skulls in Celtic regions of the British Isles (baring outliers) [8].  Nevertheless such an early origin cannot be entirely discounted – Mysterious Britain also cites some evidence of ancient Celtic traditions surviving in remote communities. In addition to this, two of the skulls, Dickie of Tunstead Farm and the Bettiscombe Skull have been dated to prehistory, and are likely female not male.  Clarke has suggested that it is possible some remnant of a Guardian Skull/Genius Loci concept lingered in certain parts of England.  He cites evidence in that many areas where the legends occur, place names have Celtic origins. And he points to the specific places skulls are often displayed – facing doors, on window sills, at hearths or rafters.  Liminal places and entry points for  malevolent spirits.

It is also hard to ignore the veneration of skulls and bones in Christianity as demonstrated in the reverence for saints relics, a more acceptable form of ancestor worship to the Church, perhaps.

An alternative, could be more metaphysical than supernatural.  Many of the Skulls are said to date from the sixteenth century.  In the late Elizabethan and Jacobean world there was a flowering of metaphysical contemplation of mortality and the vanities of life, both in art and literature.  Could some of these skulls represent Memento Mori from the Jacobean Cult of Melancholy?  The skull was certainly a popular emblem at the time. Is it possible, that once the the original contemplative purpose of the skull was forgotten, stories and legends of a more supernatural bent grew up around these objects?  People have long been fascinated with human skulls, as the seat of the soul and offering a possible link to the other world.

‘Vanitas’ c1671 by Philippe de Champaigne – Public Domain, via Wikimedia.

What ever their true origin, and it could well be a blend of ancient and more modern traditions, the Screaming Skull remains an evocative element of British folklore.

For a classic take on the screaming skull legend in literature, you can read F Marion Crawford’s ‘The Screaming Skull’, inspired by the screaming skull of Bettiscombe Manor….

Sources and Notes

Clarke, David (1999) The head cult : tradition and folklore surrounding the symbol of the severed human head in the British Isles. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield. <http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3472/> [1]-[5] and [7]

http://www.darkdorset.co.uk/bettiscombe_screaming_skull [4]

http://www.mjwayland.com/index.php/screaming-skull/

http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/hauntings/screaming-skulls-an-introduction.html [8]

http://www.pitlanemagazine.com/cultures/the-history-of-screaming-skulls.html [6]

http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/scremskl.htm – F Marion Crawford 1911

A little something for Halloween: Last (Dolls) House on the left

Tags

baby house, creepy toys, crime scene, Cursed dolls, dolls houses, forensic diorama, Frances Glessner Lee, Ghost stories, HAPS, haunted dolls house, haunted nurseries, legal medicine, miniatures, mother lee, mr james, murder house, murder in a nutshell, nutshell studies, Queen Mary's dolls house, unexplained death

As I won’t be in reach of the internet on the night itself – here is my slightly early offering for Halloween.  Enjoy…

‘Strawberry Hill Gothic’ style dolls house. Image adapted by Lenora.

There has always been something innately creepy about the trappings of childhood – from cursed dolls to self-propelling rocking horses – the contents of the nursery has more often than not been the stuff of nightmare and horror.  Perhaps it is the ease with which such objects of innocence can transform themselves, with only a change in the quality of light or a sense of unobserved movement, into the uncanny or sinister.

Image by Lenora

Dolls houses have always held a particular fascination for me, perhaps it is because peering in at the windows of the world in miniature, you cannot help but imagine what dreadful stories might be unfolding behind the twee facade.  I have to admit that as a child, I set macabre tales of grisly murder and haunting in my own dolls house.  Even today, although it is rather a regular sort of faux Georgian dolls house, I still occasionally have the urge to set up seances in the parlour.

Image by Lenora

Household management in miniature

The Stromer House 1639. Image source marinni.livejournal.com

Originally dolls houses, or baby houses were not for the grubby fingers of childhood, but rather were used as intricate and exquisite objects of display and prestige by royalty and the elite.  Earliest German examples date from the mid sixteenth century, Albert V of Bavaria had one – clearly demonstrating that boys like dolls houses just as much as girls.  By the eighteenth century every self-respecting (or should that read ‘self-aggrandizing’) grandee had a doll’s house.  The more extravagant and palatial the better.  Examples such as ‘Mon Plaisir’ the eighty room mansion created for the Princess Augusta Dorothea of Schwarzburg-Arnstadt were the height of luxury and, costing a fortune, were only ‘completed’ when the money ran out.

As well as ostentatious display many of these baby houses and cabinet houses also had a more practical and educational role in that they represented the ideal of what a well run home should look like.  They were often used as tools to train up wives and maids in household management.  Houses such as the Stromer House, dating from 1639, now housed in the Germanisches National Museum, have an almost time-capsule quality, showing how people lived (or aspired to live) at that period in history.

Creepy children

The nineteenth century saw children finally get their sticky hands on Dolls houses in a big way, and the creep factor shot up significantly.  However, rather than dwelling on the possessed playthings of whey-faced and sinister Victorian children (far too obvious!) I would like, instead, to introduce possibly the most disturbing incarnation of the dolls’ house that I for one have ever come across….

Frances Glessner Lee – The Original Jessica Fletcher…

Frances Glessner Lee. Image source: Frances Glessner Lee Museum

The twee little old lady with her bun and her spectacles, pictured above making dainty little miniatures, has more in common with Miss Marple than Mary Poppins.  The miniature masterpieces she put together were most definitely not for the nursery.  Frances Glessner Lee, a wealthy socialite born with a silver spoon in her mouth, found fame in a most unladylike manner by creating the most macabre miniature diorama’s of death, in meticulous detail.  In so doing she helped to pioneer the importance of legal medicine and forensic crime scene investigation.

The dark bathroom. Image source Death in Diorama

Born in 1878 in Chicago, daughter of the co-founder of the International Harvester Company, Frances Glessner was brought up to be a gentile young lady.  Trained in feminine arts and the skills required to be a society hostess.  Her wish to go to university was thwarted because it was not considered ladylike.  Her brother went to Harvard, and it was one of his friends, George Burgess Magrath, who fired Frances’ interest in Legal Medicine (what we would not call forensic medicine).

The hanging farmer. Image source Death in Diorama

In the first part of the twentieth century coroners did not have to be medically trained and the police were largely ignorant of crime-scene investigation techniques.    As a result many murderers were never brought to justice.  As an avid fan of Sherlock Holmes and no shrinking Violet, the indomitable Frances, and her good friend Magrath, set about addressing this problem.   This was made significantly easier for Frances as by 1930’s she had come into her own, well, she inherited her fortune thereby allowing her to pursue her own ambitions, rather than bend to the will of her family.  And of course, being a grand society hostess and a well brought up lady, she managed to fuse her more gentile talents: such a miniature making and dinner party management, with the retraining of the police force in methods of forensic crime-scene investigation.

In the 1930’s she founded the Harvard Department of Legal Medicine, in 1942 was the first woman to be made Captain of the New Hampshire State Police, and as if that wasn’t enough, by 1945 she had instituted Harvard Seminars in Homicide Investigation for leading crime-scene investigators  (it was later renamed Harvard Associates in Police Science (HAPS)). This is where the dinner party skills came in handy – the end of the week-long course was celebrated at the Ritz Carlton with a swanky dinner.  No doubt the grande dame enjoyed being the centre of attention.

Murder in Miniature – the Nutshell Studies of Frances Glessner Lee

Frances Glessner Lee firmly believed that the purpose of crime-scene investigation was to “convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell,”  and she must have realised that practical experience counts for much more than a week of lectures on the subject.  With this in mind from the she made use of her skills as a miniaturist and her money, to create 20 precise and deadly murder diorama’s, of which 18 still survive in the collection of the Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office.

The Kitchen. Image source: Corinne Botz via 99percentinvisible

Lee used a combination of actual cases, witness statements, court records and even literature to create individual and obsessively detailed crime scenes in the scale of one foot to one inch.  Jerry Dziecichowicz, interviewed in the Telegraph, stated that Lee had a solution to each scenario in mind, however the importance of the diorama’s goes beyond a mere who dunnit.  They are about a methodical approach to observation – Lee favoured a clockwise spiral of observation – and identifying clues as to the nature of the death: was it murder, suicide, and accident?  It was as important to clear the innocent as to convict the guilty and the lesson was how to read the crime scene effectively.

Three room dwelling. Image source: Sarah Fask via Baltimore Fishbowl

She worked with her carpenter at her New Hampshire farm, The Rocks,  to make the nutshells.  Although she sourced some mass-produced materials, often she made the items herself, often going to obsessive lengths to get them just right.  She put together the dolls and is known to have hand knitted stockings for them using straight dress makers pins.  She also carefully painted their flesh in just the right colours of putrefaction to match the time of their death.

Murder at the parsonage – complete with knife in ribs, bite marks and decomposing flesh. Image source: death in diorama

Those who attended the seminars, and invitations were highly sought after, were given only 90 minutes to study each scene,  the only tools being a flashlight and a magnifying glass.  Some of the clues were tiny or only observable if you moved items, in one scene, a lady dead in bed can be discerned to have been smothered by a tiny smudge of lipstick on a pillow.  In another, the Cabin, a tiny bullet lodged in a beam is the key to guilt or innocence.  Lee understood the importance of these clues in identifying what the nature of the scene was – looking beyond the obvious to identify whether it was murder, suicide or an accident.

Red Bedroom – a murdered prostitute. Image source – Death in Diorama

Dark Bathroom, detail of vodka bottle and single glass. Image source: Death in Diorama

As much as the nutshell’s were intended to educate, they also inform – about Frances Glessner Lee herself.  They are almost obsessively detailed, she included things that anyone else would have left out – a fire escape and hidden window at the back of the Pink Bathroom are mentioned by Bruce Goldfarb,  assistant to the Chief Medical Examiner at Maryland, and curator of the Nutshells.  Further indications of Lee’s biases are noted by Laura J Miller in her article for Harvard Magazine: most of the victims are white, the majority women, and of the lower classes.  The crime scenes may be objective but the decor and trappings are indicative of Lee’s view of the tawdry lives lead by those marginalised by society who inhabited rented rooms and cheap lodgings.  Alcohol, drugs and prostitution go hand in hand with these brutal deaths.  Miller goes on to say that Lee “disclosed the dark side of domesticity and its potentially deleterious effects: many victims were women ‘led astray’ from the cocoon-like security of the home – by men, misfortune, or their own unchecked desires”

If you want to explore the nutshell studies in more detail I have added a link to the excellent Death in Diorama website below – it is well worth a visit.

From murder in the doll house to a Haunted Dolls House

Queen Mary’s Dolls house under construction. Image source The Royal Collection.

Queen Mary, wife of King George V of England, didn’t have a lot in common with Frances Glessner Lee, but one passion they both shared was miniatures.  In the 1920’s Edward Lutyens, the famous architect, was commissioned to create the palatial dolls house, now know simply as Queen Mary’s dolls house, for the lucky monarch.

Perfect in every detail, cram packed with every luxury an early twentieth century royal could want: running water, flushing toilets, and a fully stocked wine cellar, it also boasted an extensive library.  And of course the doll’s house has a dark secret….a murder and a haunting!  Well, no not really, unless you believe MR James who wrote his Haunted Dolls House tale for the Royal dolls enjoyment, knew something we don’t! Based on the Mezzotint, the Haunted Dolls House tells of an avaricious collector who (rather too cheaply) obtains a lovely old dolls house in ‘Strawberry Hill Gothic’ style that harbours a nasty secret.  And he soon finds himself the helpless witness to a murder and a haunting.

If you fancy a little Halloween ghost story, links to the text and a short film adaptation of MR James Haunted Doll’s House can be found below.

A little something extra for Halloween…

For Frances Glassner Lee’s murder diorama’s under the magnifying glass, visit: http://www.deathindiorama.com/

Also the website of Corinne Botz, who is behind most of the excellent photographs of the Nutshell Studies out there, and who produced a book on them:  http://www.corinnebotz.com/Corinne_May_Botz/Nutshell_Studies.html

For a tour of Queen Mary’s Doll’s house, inspiration for MR James Haunted Dolls House, visit: http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/queenmarysdollshouse/book.html

MR James ghost story The Haunted Dolls House can be found in the Portmanteau of Terror

You can find a dramatization of the Haunted Doll’s House, directed by Stephen Grey and starring Steven Dolton, on You Tube.  Rather like a scary version of Trumpton – this short ‘no-budget’ adaptation is well worth a watch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBdWwhMse1M

Happy Halloween!

Sources

Diorama Photo’s – most of the photos of the Nutshells used in this post were taken from Death In Diorama, but I’m not who the photographer was.  Diorama operate the following licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Pasierbska, Halina, Dolls’ Houses, Shire, 1991

Ramsland, Katherine, ‘The Nutshell Studies of Francesl Glessner Lee’, PDF sourced from the internet.

http://brucegoldfarb.com/the-nutshell-studies-of-unexplained-death

Miller, Laura J, http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/09/frances-glessner-lee-html

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/visibleproofs/galleries/biographies/lee.html

http://www.thin-ghost.org/items/show/142

Richardson, Nigel, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11370223/Nutshell-Studies-the-extraordinary-miniature-crime-scenes-US-police-use-to-train-detectives.html

Roman, http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-nutshell-studies/

 

Dead Gorgeous: the life and death of Venetia Stanley, Lady Digby

Tags

Brief Lives, cosmetics, death portraits, died in bed, in praise of venetia, John Aubrey, memento mori, Poison, private memoirs, seventeenth century, Sir Kenelm Digby, stelliana, Van Dyck, Van Dyke, Venetia Digby, Venetia Stanley, Viper Wine

Stelliana

“…if she had been in those times when men committed idolatry, the world would certainly have renounced the sun, the stars and all other devotions and with one consent have adored her for their goddess.”[1]

As an acknowledged beauty of the Stuart Age, with a slightly suspect reputation, it was to be expected that scandal and gossip clung to Venetia Stanley’s name. However it was her mysterious demise – which led to suggestions of suicide and allegations of murder, and the obsessionally morbid devotion displayed by her husband after her death, that would ensure her lasting fame.

Sexual adventuress or secret bride?

Venetia Stanley had had an effect on men from the moment she was born. She was born in 1600, in Tong Castle in Shropshire, into a well-connected family. Her father was Lord Edward Stanley and her mother Lady Lucy Percy, co-heiress to the vast Percy fortune. When Lucy tragically died, Lord Stanley had the young Venetia sent away rather than have her presence a constant reminder of his lost love, Lucy.

Growing up in the countryside, at Enston Abbey in Oxfordshire [2], the young Venetia’s star burned bright.  Gossipy polymath John Aubrey, writing several decades after Venetia’s death, wrote of her early life:

“..it seems her beauty could not lie hid. The young Eagles has espied her, and she was sanguine and tractable, and of much suavity (which to abuse was a great pittie)”[3]

I’m no expert on the idioms of seventeenth century speech but it sounds rather like Aubrey is suggesting that the young Venetia might just have been a bit of a flirt.

Venetia Stanley, Lady Digby. By Henri Toutin, painted in 1637 (after her death). Via Wikimedia

After Oxfordshire, she decamped to London where she continued to make a stir everywhere she went. In the debauched Stuart Court beauty was everything and young Venetia had it all – perfectly meeting the ideal of the Stuart age with her fine dark locks, alabaster complexion, languid ‘come to bed’ eyes, and as Aubrey so nicely puts it, her ‘bona roba’, her curvaceous figure.

The Stuart Court was a place of great sexual license, but barring one or two privileged exceptions (such as the notorious Countess of Somerset) that license tended to be issued to men only: randy cavaliers could bed whom they pleased with little fear of tarnishing their reputation. The sexual politics of the time was not quite so tolerant of female rakes; money and social standing could offer some protection to a young adventuress but gossip and scandal could be cruel bedfellows.  Venetia was not immune to slander, both during her life and even decades after her death.

Aubrey, generally the most quoted source for her life, claimed that Venetia was the mistress of Richard Sackville, Earl of Dorset, and had children by him.  In his Brief Lives, Aubrey states that Sackville paid her £500 annually – no mean sum. However, Aubrey is not necessarily the most reliable source, writing decades after her death and often reporting gossip and hearsay as fact. Another possibility is that Venetia’s reputation as a courtesan may be in part due to the fact that her marriage to Sir Kenelm Digby in c1625 was kept secret until after their first child was born [4].

The Ornament of England

Sir Kenelm Digby, c1632, after Van Dyck. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Kenelm was the son of Sir Everard Digby who was executed following the Gun Powder Plot.  He was a scholar, philosopher, courtier,alchemist, privateer, and general all round clever-dick given the somewhat pompous epithet “the ornament of England”.

“Sir Kenelme Digby was held to be the most accomplished cavalier of his time. [..] He was such a goodly handsome person, gigantique and great voice, and had so gracefull Elocution and noble address, etc., that had he been drop’t out of the Clowdes in any part of the World, he would have made himself respected.  But the Jesuites spake spitefully, and sayd ’twas true, but then he must not stay there above six weeks.'”[5]

I can’t help but think that Aubrey seems to take sly delight in spiking this unctuous description with a little acid.

Theories as to why the pair might have kept their marriage a secret abound: from Sir Kenelm’s mother disapproving of her prospective daughter-in-law’s libertine life-style or considering her a penniless gold-digger to fears that Venetia would be cut off from her father’s will should she marry against her family’s wishes.

Chastity crushing Cupid, Anthony Van Dyck, National Portrait Gallery.

Whatever the truth behind the rumours, Sir Kenelm appears to have loved Venetia deeply and she him.  He commissioned many portraits of Venetia, both during her life and after her death. One such portrait entitled  ‘Chastity crushing Cupid’ – could be perhaps interpreted as a bit of PR for his wife’s reputation as a sexual adventuress.  Aubrey suggests Sir Kenelm was well aware of the gossip surrounding his wife’s (lack of) virtue and claims he said “..a wiseman, and a lusty could make an honest woman of a brothell-house” [6].  For a man who went on to write incessantly about his love for Stelliana, aka Venetia, in his Private Memoirs, it would seem quite a harsh thing for him to say of her.

Even Aubrey concedes that Venetia transformed from mad-for-it party girl to virtuous wife and mother with ease. However the slight twist in the tale of the stolid church-going matron.  Venetia was an avid, and it would seem, successful gambler, and it is alleged she funded many of her good works through her winnings…so perhaps a little of the wild-child remained after her marriage.

Lead Powder and Viper Wine

Lady Elizabeth Pope, c1615,  sporting pale complexion and rouged lips and cheeks, and a vast amount of bosom. Robert Peake, via wikimedia.

Several years of happy and uneventful marriage ensued, Venetia and Sir Kenelm had four sons and seemed ready to slide into comfortable middle age.  Hermione Eyre, author of Viper Wine, a novel about Venetia, suggests that far from being a time of placid contemplation of impending old age, Venetia may have found the transition from youth to middle age extremely difficult.

As a celebrated beauty seeing her charms fade as the years passed, living in a society that judged women on their looks (sound familiar, anyone?), she could easily have fallen back on cosmetics and potions in a desperate bid to preserve her looks.

Certainly the fashionable women (and men) of the Stuart Court were not shy about slapping on the make-up.  Pale complexions and acres of bare bosoms were enhanced and perfected with ceruse a mixture of finely ground lead powder and vinegar. A tracery of pale blue veins might be drawn on to imitate the translucent skin of youth, a lead comb could darken the eye brows. Spanish wool, or Spanish paper (a cloth impregnated with cochineal) was used to colour the lips and cheeks [7] and all of this could have been held in place with a varnish of egg white.  The look would seem to be porcelain doll… with a whiff of omelette…

Ladies might go further than the surface and could take any number of miracle beauty preserving potions…such as Viper wine…filled with such hearty ingredients as baked viscera of vipers (yummy) such concoctions could claim near miraculous effects:

“This quintessence is of extraordinary good virtue for the purifying of the flesh, blood and skin” and “preserves from grey hairs, renews youth, etc” [8]

As Hermione Eyre points out, ladies regularly using lead as their cosmetic of choice would quickly ruin their complexions and must have been willing to try pretty much anything to improve them.   Venetia was certainly a big fan of Viper wine and had been drinking it, so Aubrey claims, at the behest of her husband for a number of years.

Sleeping Beauty….is dead

On the morning of the 1 May 1633 Lady Digby’s maid entered her bed chamber to wake her mistress for her morning ride.  Sir Kenelm had spent the night tinkering in his laboratory until the early hours, he had slept there rather than disturb his wife.  It was he who was disturbed however, by  “That shrill and baleful sound expressing her heavy plight struck my eares.” when the maid screamed in horror upon finding her mistress dead in her bed.  She was only 33.

Sir Kenelm was distraught, Venetia lay in her bed exactly as she had laid down to sleep the night before, a faint blush on her cheek, looking as though she might wake up at any moment.  What he did next may seem strange…he called an artist.  Within two days of Venetia’s death he had Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599 -1641) come and sketch the corpse of his wife, as it lay, in her bed.  He also had casts taken of her head, hands and feet.

Portrait of Death: Lady Digby on her Deathbed

Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s portrait is either tender and seductive, or slightly creepy and stalker-ish depending on your view-point. Portraits of the newly deceased were not unheard of in the Stuart Age, and later, the Victorians were famous for their morbid family portraits of dead relatives. But from a modern perspective at least, the realisation that the subject is in fact dead, is enough to jar the senses and the sensibility. In the modern age we have become so separated from death and the dead, seeing their images mainly in news footage and usually connected with violent or tragic events. This is different, this is not a celebration of the corpse, or a quick snap-shot for the family album, it is a meditation upon death. Sleeping beauty has entered into that long good night that beckons us all.

Suicide, Murder or Misadventure?

Even in the seventeenth century, an age when death came regularly to the young and apparently healthy, suspicions were raised about Venetia’s sudden and mysterious demise.  Poison was suspected but was it suicide, murder or over indulgence in viper wine?  Aubrey reports that gossips said:

“Spiteful women would say it was a ‘viper husband’, who was jealous of her, that she would steal a leap.” (have an affair).

There was also the curious suggestion that Digby was given a letter by the maid, just before Venetia’s death, in which Venetia had enclosed paper that might be of interest to him…what that paper may have been has never been discovered [9].

Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne(?). Via Wikimedia

An autopsy was ordered by Royal Command, and the famously rotund Dr Theodore de Mayerne was called in.  Digby insisted she had always been healthy, but did take Viper wine for headaches. Upon opening her head the good doctor found “but little brain” and it has been inferred from that, that the cause of death may have been a cerebral haemorrhage.  However due to the time that elapsed before the autopsy was carried out it is likely that the results may have been invalid [10].  Hermione Eyre proposes the theory that the viper wine itself may have killed Venetia.  She showed the recipe to a doctor who said:

“this type of “beauty potion” usually works, if it works, by blocking the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors, which can be toxic in the wrong doses. “Hence ‘deadly’ nightshade,” he said. Viper Wine’s herbal elements – not the snakes, which are incidental – could have been used to dilate the pupils, vasodilate the cheeks leading to a healthy blush, and promote euphoria, but if she drank too much, it could have been fatal.” [11].

So was it suicide, murder or misadventure? Personally I don’t think she committed suicide, she was a devout Catholic, attending Mass daily. She would surely have regarded suicide as a sin and a bar to heaven.  I don’t think the evidence supports the theory that that Sir Kenelm poisoned her. His eccentric and obsessive behavior after her death does not necessarily mean a guilty conscience, it could just have been how he coped with the such a devastating and unexpected loss.  On balance, I like the viper wine theory proposed by Hermione Eyre.  If not the Viper wine specifically, one of the other deadly cosmetic ingredients could easily have been the silent killer in this case. However after the passage of time, and the possibility that Venetia simply had some underlying medical condition, it would seem that the true cause of Venetia Stanley’s death will likely never be proven.

Epilogue

The final word should perhaps go to Sir Kenelm, unable to forget the beautiful wife whose sudden death shook his world to the foundation, he retreated to Gresham College and led the life of a scholarly hermit.  He kept the portrait with him for many years, until he lost it during English Civil War.

“This is the onely constant companion I now have…It standeth all day over against my chaire and table …and all night when I goe into my chamber I sett it close to my beds side, and by the faint light of the candle, me thinks I see her dead indeed.” [12]

Sources and notes

Aubrey, John, Brief Lives, available online via Gutenberg Press [1] [3] [5] [6]

Digby, Sir Kelemn, Private Memoirs/Stelliana available on Google Books [2]

Downing, Jane, 2012, Beauty and Cosmetics 1550 – 1950, Shire Library [7]

http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/explore-the-collection/151-200/venetia,-lady-digby,-on-her-deathbed/

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/great-works/van-dyck-sir-anthony-venetia-stanley-lady-digby-on-her-deathbed-1633-795383.html [11]

http://www.hermioneeyre.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10680346/Venetia-Stanley-did-viper-wine-kill-the-17th-century-beauty.html [8] [10][11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetia_Stanley [4] [9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenelm_Digby

 

 

The London Necropolis Company: A One Way Ticket to Ride

Tags

Brookwood Cemetery, coffin trains, funeral trains, London Necropolis, London Necropolis Railway, Necropolis company, Richard Broun, Richard Sprye, Victorian Death, Victorian funerals

Entrance to the London Necropolis Company’s cemetery station c1890. Source unknown.

Readers of this blog might have guessed that I have a bit of a fancy for graveyards and the macabre…surely not I, hear you say!  In my opinion, the Victorian’s definitely had the edge when it came to eccentric and OTT funerary practices.  The London Necropolis Company with its railway service was a prime example of how the Victorian’s used a modern technology to revolutionise funerals for rich and poor alike.

A surplus of bodies

Image by Lenora

London in the nineteenth century was a burgeoning industrial and commercial centre, attracting in-comers from all over the country and the empire.  Between 1801 – 1851 the population pretty much doubled.  With this increase in the living, there came also in increase in the dying and soon London’s limited burial grounds were packed to overflowing.  Reuse of burial plots resulted in bones and body parts being strewn about the cemeteries polluting the ground water and exacerbating the problem by increasing the risk of outbreaks of Typhoid, Measles, Smallpox and Cholera.  When 15,000 Londoners were carried off by Cholera in 1848/49 it was evident that something urgently needed to be done.

A man with a plan

Into this festering scene stepped Sir Richard Broun, an entrepreneur with an eye for new technology and a fast profit.  Sir Richard and his partner Richard Sprye had the innovative idea of out-of-town burials – a kind of suburbia for the dead.  They hit upon the innovative idea of using the new-fangled and somewhat controversial steam-train as the method for shipping the dead out of London to Woking in Surrey.

Image Source, The Brookwood Necropolis Railway, John Clarke

They had done their sums and projected that up to 50,000 people a year would use the service, rich and poor alike; profits, like the dead, were sure to pile up.  Their plan would help reduce the burial problem in London, hopefully reduce the risk of further outbreaks of Cholera, and help make funerals more affordable by basing them outside London.

There was some panic and frothing at the mouth amongst the steam-train phobic, who feared these noisy dirty mechanical thing-u-mabobs were hardly appropriate for the solemn dignity of a funeral service. Plus some objections from the privileged classes who feared their dearly departed might have to rub mouldering shoulders with the deceased hoi polloi; this was illustrated by Paul Slade in his article for the Fortean Times, where he quotes the Bishop of London, Charles Blomfield, in 1842,  harumphing that, “It may sometimes happen that persons of opposite characters might be carried in the same conveyance,” [..] “For instance, the body of some profligate spendthrift might be placed in a conveyance with the body of some respectable member of the church, which would shock the feelings of his friends.”  Quelle Horreur!

Nevertheless, despite the imminent fear of social anarchy propounded by the likes of the Bishop, Parliament gave the go-ahead and in 1852 The London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company was born.  Not a name to trip off the tongue it was swiftly changed to the more succinct London Necropolis Company.  The First Necropolis Train was puffing its way to Brookwood Cemetery by November 1854.

Article from the Times, 1854, image via John Clarke.

Brookwood Cemetery – London’s Necropolis

London Necropolis Station Westminster Bridge Road. Image by David M Pye, Wikimedia

Broun and Sprye had bought huge tracts of Woking Common and created Brookwood Cemetery, at 500 acres it was the biggest cemetery in the country.  Brookwood cemetery was integral to the London Necropolis Railway.  The railway utilised the existing Waterloo to Southampton Railway Line, owned by the London and South Western Railway Company, and added a private branch line that went right into Brookwood Cemetery.

Londoners, both alive and dead, could alight the train at its own discreet private platform at Waterloo Station.  Initially at York Street, with easy access to the Thames transport links, it was later moved to Westminster Bridge Road.  The Station had to be moved to make way for the expansion of Waterloo Station, but it also allowed for a revamp of the Necropolis station to suit more modern tastes and to update its facilities such as mortuaries and to add a chapel of rest.

A Ticket to Ride

The Bishop of London need not have feared for his delicate sensibilities, the classes were tastefully kept apart and the distinction of rank preserved with both living and dead divided by religion and by class:  Conformist (Anglican) and Non-conformist (everyone else); and first, second and third class.

A first class one way coffin ticket, priced at a princely £2.10 shillings, allowed the purchaser access to choose their own plot of land with a permanent marker.

A second class ticket cost £1 and allowed some choice of plot, and for an extra 10 shillings, the family could erect a permanent marker.  The slight downside was that the London Necropolis Company could decide to reuse the plot.

A Coffin Ticket – one way (obviously!). Image via John Clarke

A third class ticket cost only a couple of shillings and was often used by paupers and those being buried ‘on the parish’, they had no choice of plot, and no marker, but they did get an individual plot which was more than they could expect elsewhere.  The LNC usually threw in a couple of free tickets for mourners as well (return of course – unlike the coffin).

In the station itself, First and Second Class patrons were also treated with distinction.  They were given a grand entrance hall and staircase, elevators, and avenues lined with bay and palm trees.  They also had the use of 5 private waiting rooms and were permitted to view the coffins being loaded onto the hearse car of the train.

Mourners at the station, image taken from http://www.avictorian.com

The poor had to make do with a shared waiting room and they were not permitted to watch their loved ones being put on the train.  Funeral cars were themselves divided by class, the more elaborate and decorated the more expensive the ticket.

Once at Brookwood Cemetery there were two stops, one for conformists on the sunny side of the cemetery and one on the north side for non conformists.

One of the interesting things is that the service had refreshment rooms that served spirits (but of course!)  The living also seemed to have enjoyed this perk, often taking fortified refreshments while waiting for the return train. There are reports of some quite riotous behaviour on the return journey (I wonder which class was the worst?)  The occasional driver got a bit to merry to operate the train, until the company introduced a free lunch and pint of beer as part of the drivers benefits in an attempt to keep them from the local pubs.

Death of the Necropolis Railway

Clarke indicates that the train service, right from the outset was never quite as popular or profitable as Broun and Sprye hoped.  He notes that between 1854-1874 it fell far short of the estimate of 50,000 funerals per year, only managing about 3200, which Clarke calculates to be about 6.5% of the annual deaths in London.  The London Necropolis Company had competitors in the form of other mortuary trains, and new cemeteries (such as Highgate Cemetery) that were built around the same time to alleviate the burial problem.

Another unforseen problem was that by the early 1900’s 1st class return tickets on the Necropolis Train were significantly cheaper than on the regular train – 6 shillings as opposed to 8.  This was because Necropolis ticket prices had been set by parliament in 1854 an not amended. Clarke and Slade note that this led to many canny London Golfers dressing as mourners to get a cheap day out to their club near Brookwood.

Eventually the timetable was reviewed, Sunday trains were cut, then it reduced from daily to twice weekly.  The decline was initially slow, but the final end of the London Necropolis Railway was dramatic and devastating.  On 16 April 1941 in the worst night of the Blitz it was destroyed.

The end of the line for the London Necropolis Railway, source unknown

Reinforcing class divisions or democratizing death?

The London Necropolis Company was created to alleviate a very real social problem of burial space in a metropolis that barely had room for its living inhabitants.  It used a revolutionary new technology – steam power – in an attempt to create a mass market funeral industry that aimed to monopolise the profits on death by capturing a huge inner city market.

It did not achieve its aims, other cemeteries built in London depleted its market share so it was never as profitable as intended.  It probably did help to reduce health hazards in London, but so did the other new cemeteries.

What it did seem to do though, was offer the poor the opportunity to have a decent burial.  They may not have been given all of the perks and privileges of the first and second class patrons:  no private waiting rooms or coffin viewings and no permanent grave markers for the them; but they did get an affordable funeral and an individual plot rather than a communal pit.  Plus, for the living, two return tickets for mourners were part of the package, as well as the added bonus that funerals could be held on a Sunday (until Sunday service were discontinued in 1900) so poor mourners did not have to lose a days wages if they wanted to attend a funeral.

As an example of Victorian entrepreneurship, innovative use of  modern industrial technology, and with a dash of philanthropy, and a whole heap of snobbery, the London Necropolis Company and its Commuter coffin service stands out as a proud example of eccentric and morbidly practical Victorian ingenuity.

Necropolis Train, Image from John Clarke via Fortean Times

A Note on Notes & Sources

I first came across the London Necropolis Railway in Robert Wilkins wonderful ‘The Fireside Book of Death’, however as my beloved Wilkins tome is tucked away in a packing crate at the moment, I took myself to the internet and came across a plethora of articles on the London Necropolis Company – most of which used as their main source, works by the acknowledged expert on Brookwood Cemetery and the London Necropolis, John Clarke, author of ‘The Brookwood Necropolis Railway’ and ‘London’s Necropolis – a guide to Brookwood Cemetery’.

I also found the Fortean Times article by Paul Slade (who cites Clarke in his article) of great use in putting together this post.

As it seems that a great deal of the articles about this topic appear to rely on John Clarke’s research, I have not cited any sources directly in the post other than Clarke.  However I have provided a list of the websites I visited.

 

Articles on the London Necropolis Railway

http://www.avictorian.com/death_mourning.html
http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/20/clarke.php
http://channelvoyager.com/forgotten-the-london-necropolis-railway/
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/171/londons_necropolis_train.html
http://www.john-clarke.co.uk/brookwoodnecropolis.html
http://www.tbcs.org.uk/railway.htm

Body-snatchers; and hints on how to stay buried when you’re dead

Tags

Anatomy Act 1832, Body snatchers, burke and hare, cemetery guns, coffin collars, coffin torpedoes, Mort safes, Newcastle, resurrectionists, Turf Hotel

Having already discussed the perils of Premature Burial and provided some hints on how not to get buried alive in an earlier post, I thought I would turn my attentions to body-snatchers and provide some hints and tips on how to stay buried when you are dead…enjoy

Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis disposing of a body (1)

1825: the year in which porters at the Turf Hotel started to get a little nervous…..

In late Georgian Britain Newcastle was not only a burgeoning industrial and commercial centre but, before the advent of the railway, it was also one of the main staging posts for the London to Edinburgh coach.

The Turf Hotel was one of Newcastle’s most famous coaching inns.  It once stood on Collingwood Street and it was one of the main drop off/pick up points for both people and goods travelling north and south.  It also gained a certain infamy as the transport hub of the ghoulish trade in corpses destined for the anatomy schools in Scotland and London.

The Turf Hotel Coaching Inn, Newcastle, image from Martins Bank Archive.

As with any busy transport hub, sometimes both people and parcels missed their connection.  This was a particular problem at the weekend as coaches did not run on Sundays, so anybody missing the last coach on Saturday would have to wait until Monday to continue their journey.

On an ordinary Saturday in September 1825 a man deposited a large wooden chest at the booking office of the Turf, but for whatever reason, the chest missed the last coach and had to be stored at the booking office over the weekend.  By Monday the porters were becoming anxious because of the foul smell and strange ooze emanating from the container.  Police and a magistrate were called and the box opened.  Inside was the body of a teenage girl, apparently dead of natural causes, and destined, it would seem, for the anatomists table in Edinburgh.

There were several other similar occurrences over the next few years, making the job of porter at the Turf Hotel one filled with unwelcome surprises.  In 1828 a Mr James Aitcheson  of Edinburgh was arrested for depositing a chest at the Turf that contained a body.  He was later acquitted of any crime after claiming he had been an innocent dupe with no knowledge of the content of the box (this later proved to be a lie as a shop keeper recognised him as having bought wood from him to build the box in the first place!) however by that time, Mr A had absconded.

Eventually the porters became so fed up with having to investigate vile-smelling boxes containing nasty surprises that when a suspect package bound for Edinburgh arrived from York in November 1828, the porters simply refused to unpack it and sent it straight back to York.  Unfortunately at York, the equally suspicious and squeamish porters also refused to unpack it and sent it trundling back up to Newcastle!  The boxes peregrinations were eventually ended when, as local legend has it, the porters at the Turf solved the matter to their own satisfaction by throwing it into the River Tyne (lets hope it wasn’t just a student sending their dirty laundry home!).

Supply and Demand

18C anatomy lesson, image by Hogarth, public domain

So why the brisk trade in bodies?  Well, in the early nineteenth century anatomy schools, which were at that time  unlicensed, were springing up at an increasing rate: with famous schools in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow and London.  Advances in medical science required more and more subjects for the dissection tables but demand far outstripped supply.

In 1752 legislation stipulated that, as an additional ‘post mortem’ punishment, the bodies of hanged murderers could be handed over to the anatomists.  By the early nineteenth century as few as 55 or so bodies per year became available to anatomy schools by this legitimate method [2]. In addition to this, because refrigeration had yet to be invented, schools had now way of storing corpses so were in constant need of fresh ones.

Bodysnatchers, resurrectionists, Sack ’em up men or Burkers sought to fill this gap and line their pockets (the going rate appears to have been about 4 guineas for an adult, and by length for children: 6 shillings for the first foot then 9 pence for every inch thereafter [3]).  Although medical students were not averse to occasionally sourcing their own material, more often it was the criminal class, working hand in glove with the elite medical men of the day, who supplied the corpses that would used to train up the future  eminent doctors and surgeons of the nineteenth century.

Body Snatching in Theory and Practice

Resurrection Men – by Thomas Rowlandson 1756 – 1827

So how did they go about their trade?  Well there were a number of methods and preparation seems to have been paramount.

Resurrectionists or their wives would attend funerals in order to scout out the position of the corpse and any potential threats.  They might even take up the spade and masquerade as grave diggers themselves.

Once a likely corpse had been identified the resurrectionist would return to the cemetery at night, having suitably bribed any low paid cemetery attendants to leave the gates open.  If they had horses they would be shod in leather to deaden the hoofbeats, and they opened graves using wooden shovels to minimise noise.

Methods of extracting corpses could differ.  One popular way was for the grave-digger/resurrectionist whilst out of sight at the bottom of the grave, to sack up the occupant, and as the grave filled with soil the coffin would remain 6ft under, whilst the bagged up corpse slowly rose towards the surface where it could be retrieved with minimum effort later.

By far the most common method appears to have been to dig straight down to the approximate position of the head of the corpse, cover the coffin end with cloth to deaden the noise, wrench it off, and sling a rope around the cadavers head and haul it to the surface.

One commonly quoted method, devious in the extreme, was for a patch of turf to be cut many feet from the target grave, a tunnel would then be dug to the coffin and a child or small adult would then open the end of the coffin and dragg the corpse back along the shaft where the turf would be replaced.  The family would be none the wiser because the grave itself would be undisturbed.  Ingenious as this method appears, Wilkins in his Fireside Book of Death, doubts its practical application:  it would have been hard to correctly guess the level of the coffin and shore up the tunnel to avoid collapse.

Once the corpse was extracted the next thing to do was to remove any possessions such as jewelry, shroud etc in order to avoid being charged with a felony if caught.  Oddly enough, corpses were not considered property so punishment was often only a fine or prison, whereas theft could lead to the gallows or transportation.

Then it was a simple matter to dress the corpse in an old coat, and stagger off into the night pretending they were ‘dead’ drunk, or pack them up into your gig for delivery to the nearest anatomy school in the morning.  In fact, the presence of strangers at funerals in rural parishes, especially if they had a gig, was enough to lead to riots on occasion as gigs were inextricable linked to resurrectionists in the public imagination [4].

How to stay buried when you are dead

Now you might think that the resurrectionists had it all their own way, plundering graveyards, with minimal legal consequences and making a packet into the bargain.  But fear of having your loved one’s grave desecrated by sack ’em up men lead to the general public taking some serious precautions to avoid ending up on the dissecting table. And if they caught a resurrectionist they would meet out their own kind of justice on him.

The very poor might only have recourse to arranging stones or shells on a grave in order to tell if it had been disturbed, but there were other more complex methods available (for a price).  These methods are very often found in graveyards that are in close proximity to anatomy schools – I wonder why?  Here are some of the most notable found in England, Scotland and the USA :

1. Watch-clubs and Watchtowers

Watchtower at Dalkeith Cemetery. Image via Wikimedia

The most basic precautions were railings around cemeteries and posting a guard on graves.  Often loved ones would camp out for two or three weeks to guard a fresh burial.  Once putrefaction had time to set in the corpse was no longer a viable commodity.

Watch-clubs were also formed, Glasgow watching society had 2000 members.  To make things more comfortable for watchers, especially in winter, watch houses or watch towers were built.  Some were quite impressive like the one at Dalkeith Cemetery, dating from 1827, near Edinburgh.

2.Mortstones and Mortsafes

Mortsafe at Logeriat Church. Image by Judy Willson via Wikimedia

The next sensible thing to do was to make it as difficult as possible for resurrectionists to get to your coffin.  In Scotland stones and branches were added to grave fill to make digging harder, and mortstones were used.  Mortstones were huge heavy slabs of stone placed over the grave to prevent disturbance.  They could be rented out and reused.

The only drawback with mortstones was that resurrectionists soon learned to simply dig at the head of the stone to find the end of the coffin and thereby extract the corpse!

Mortsafes were a more sophisticated version of mortstones, heavy stone slabs with a complex wire cage structure about them.  Placed over the coffin they effectively barred the way to resurrectionists.  They too, could be rented out and reused again and again (so the body-snatchers were not the only ones making a profit here).

3. Coffin Collars

Coffin collar from Kingskettle Graveyard

In between mortstones and mortsafes come coffin collars.  These simple but effective devices were a response to the fact that resurrectionists could easily pull corpses out of the end of a coffin despite the mort stone atop the grave.  The metal collar was fixed around the neck of the corpse and then nailed to the bottom of the coffin.

4. Mort houses

The Morthouse Udny Green, image by Martin Gorman via Wikimedia

The rich have always had the edge on avoiding body-snatchers, they can afford burial inside churches, vaults, mausolea.  Not so the poor, not until mort houses were conceived.  Often set up by public subscription bodies could remain in the locked and secure mort house until they decayed and then be buried in the grave yard.

Udny Green mort house in Aberdeenshire is a circular fortress of decay uniquely designed with a turntable.  A body was added, the turntable moved, and another was added, by the time the original body was at the opening again it was sufficiently decayed to be taken out for burial in the graveyard.  Unfortunately, Udny Green was built in 1832 the year the Anatomy Act came into force so it was almost immediately obsolete.

5. Cemetery Guns and Coffin Torpedoes

Mr P Clover’s Patented Coffin Torpedo

Cemetery Guns have a long history and were used in Britain until they were finally outlawed in 1827.  Mr Clementshaw designed a bell mouthed flintlock complete with trip wires that could defend a cemetery at night, and be unloaded and made safe when the sexton returned in the morning.  Needless to say there were accidental fatalities usually involving drunken revellers wandering through graveyards at night.

Not to be outdone, the American’s developed coffin torpedoes.  After the Civil War there was a rise in the number of anatomy schools in the US and this brought with it an increase in grave robbing.  In 1878 Mr P Clover of Columbus Ohio developed a shortened gun to fit under the coffin lid which would be primed to fire in the face of anyone foolish enough to desecrate the grave.  Just curious, but I wonder how many of these are still lurking in US cemeteries to this day…best to tread carefully I would say!

The Anatomy Act 1832 – how the poor paid the price

Burke and Hare were by far the most notorious resurrectionists, the Edinburgh based duo decided that all that digging was far to much like hard work and instead they murdered their victims (Hare was allegedly in Newcastle in 1828 and may just have had a hand in setting up the cross-country cadaver network uncovered at the Turf Hotel[5]).  Their trial in 1828 created such outrage that a Parliamentary Select Committee was set up to look into legally increasing the supply of corpses to anatomy schools.

After a few amendments the new Anatomy Act 1832 was passed and the problem appeared to be resolved,  resurrectionists were officially out of a job and anatomy schools had to be licenced.  Section 7 changed the law to allow that anyone lawfully in possession of a corpse could permit it to undergo anatomical examination providing no relatives objected; while section 16 abolished the requirement for bodies of criminals to be dissected.  All good and well you might think, but the Act was open to abuse.

What the changes to the law meant in practice was that unscrupulous work house owners and even hospitals could make a ‘killing’ out of their inmates (and they had ways of ensuring that circumstances did not allow for any relatives to raise objections).  Some medical schools went as far as too hang around outside workhouses like vultures if they even had a whiff that an inmate was feeling a bit peaky and there were cases of hosptials burying patients then buying their bodies back for dissection.  I think that Ruth Richardson neatly sums up the impact of the Act on the poor in her book ‘Death, Dissection and the Destitute’

“What had for generations been a feared and hated punishment for murder became one for poverty.” [6]

The Act paved the way for anatomy schools to make significant advances in medicine however it should not be forgotten that the heaviest price for these advances was ultimately paid, as always, by the poorest in society.

Seasons Greetings!

Notes

1. Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis in Burke and Hare, 2010,  Dir John Landis; 2. Regina Jeffers; 3. Robert Wilkins; 4. Monthly Chronicle of North Country Lore and Legends;
5. Pamela Armstrong;6. Quoted in Robert Wilkins p83

Sources

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bodysnatchers/background.php

Armstrong, Pamela, 1990, Dark Tales of Old Newcastle, Bridge Studios

http://www.guns.com/2013/08/06/cemetery-guns-and-coffin-torpedoes/

Coffin Collars & Cemetery Guns: Fortifying the Dead against Bodysnatchers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortsafe

Wilkins, Robert, 1990, The Fireside Book of Death, Hale

Unattributed, 1990, The Body in the Bank: Famous Northern Murders, Coquet Editions

https://archive.org/stream/monthlychronicl02unkngoog#page/n342/mode/2up/search/Turf+Hotel  Monthly Chronicle of North Country Lore and  Legend

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrectionists_in_the_United_Kingdom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortsafe

http://reginajeffers.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/body-snatching-and-resurrectionists/

Udny green = Martyn Gorman [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia

George Selwyn – The Gentleman Sadist

Tags

blasphemy, Eccentrics, eighteenth century history, Engish History, Friars, George Selwyn, hangings, Hellfire club, Horace Walpole, Maria Fagiani, Mie Mie, Monks of Medmenham, necrophilia, tyburn

George Selwyn by Joshua Reynolds

“It is actually possible to become amateurs in suffering. I have heard of men who have travelled into countries where horrible executions were to be daily witnessed, for the sake of that excitement which the sight of suffering never fails to give, from the spectacle of a tragedy, or an auto-da-fe, down to the writhings of the meanest reptile on whom you can inflict torture, and feel that torture is the result of your own power. It is a species of feeling of which we never can divest ourselves.” (1)

So wrote Charles Maturin in his 1820 novel Melmoth the Wanderer – and the inspiration for this insight into the darker side of human nature?  George Selwyn (1719 -1791), heir to a fortune, kicked out of Oxford for Blasphemy, MP to a rotten borough (or two), rake, wit and notorious necrophile.

Drunken japes or bloody blasphemy?

George Selwyn, second son of a Gloucestershire gentleman farmer, was sent to Eton and Oxford as befitted his rank in society.  Here he met his lifelong friend the renowned wit and inveterate letter-writer Horace Walpole.  Although Horace Walpole would eventually become famous for his novel ‘The Castle of Otranto’ a novel that was the fore-runner of many a famous Gothic novel, at this early stage Selwyn seems to have had the edge on the darker-side of human nature.

In fact George’s Oxford career was cut rather short one drunken evening in July 1745.  Having somehow successfully blagged a local silversmith into to handing over a sacred chalice that was being repaired for a church, George set out to parody the Christian Holy Communion.  Gathering together his chums he filled the chalice with red wine and then “made signs as though he was blooding at one of his arms, did apply the neck of the bottle of wine into the said arm…”(2) Following this he uttered the blasphemous words “Drink this in remembrance of me.”(3)

In 1745 that was enough to have you drummed out of Oxford however drunk you claimed to be.  Even pandering to the anti-Catholic feelings of the day – by claiming to have been mocking transubstantiation – did not save Selwyn’s university career.  Not that he seemed to mind very much.

A Clubbable Man

White’s Club London, sited here since 1778. Image by Paul Farmer 2009 [via Wikimedia]

In the eighteenth century it was important for a man to be ‘clubbable’.  To be able to socialise amongst his peers with poise, elegance and wit.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the somewhat sleepily affable persona that Selwyn exuded he was a hit.  He soon became a well-known figure at clubs such as Brookes’ and White’s (White’s was so notorious for gambling that Hogarth satirised it as a club where if a man collapsed outside, his body would be dragged into the club so bets could be laid on whether he was dead or not). Like most of his peers he was a keen gambler (and the aforementioned wager would no doubt have appealed to Selwyn’s macabre side) and he also had a ready wit.  His Bon Mots were the talk of the town, and many a time ‘Selwyn’s last‘ was recorded for posterity by Horace Walpole.  One of my favourites is the following slightly saucy retort:

Princess Amellia, by Jean Baptiste Van Loo

“Asked if Princess Amelia would have a guard, he replied with some indelicacy ‘now and then one, I suppose'”  (4)

Wraxall described his style as: “eyes turned up, his mouth set primly, a look almost of melancholy on his whole fact.” (5) One can just imagine this lugubrious delivery just adding to its comedic effect.

He didn’t just restrict his membership to the more usual gaming and drinking clubs.  Selwyn was, according to Geoffrey Ashe, one of the fully paid up members of Sir Francis Dashwood’s Monks of Medmenham – otherwise know as the Hellfire Club.  (Of which more in future posts).

Selwyn didn’t let his political career get in the way of pursuing his favourite pass-times – in fact in 40 years as an MP he is not credited with a single political speech and his main contribution seems to have been in amusing his fellow MPs by ‘Snoring in unison with Lord North’(6)

However witty his Bon Mots were, and however uneventful his political career was, George Selwyn has come down through posterity as a necrophile and the model (along with Algernon Swinburne) for Edmond De Goncourt’s ‘Gentleman Sadist’ in his novel La Faustin – why was this?

A connoisseur of the macabre

The idle prentice hanged at Tyburn by Hogarth.

It was an age when it was not unusual for people to look forward to attending public hangings (even children were hanged).  So popular was this gruesome spectator sport that you could even buy premium ‘grandstand’ seats at Tyburn in  the so-called ‘Mother Proctor’s Pews’ – Roy Porter notes that for the hanging of the infamous Lord Ferrers (no relation to Katherine Ferrers of Wicked Lady fame) the pews raked in £500 in profit.  Yet despite this, George Selwyn’s well-known predilection for executions and death was considered somewhat extreme even in his own day – Walpole relates the following tale that illustrates Selwyn’s pre-eminence in the subject:

“[Selwyn] told him, as a most important communication, that Arthur Moore had had his coffin chained to that of his mistress. ‘Lord! how do you know?’ asked Horace. ‘Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at St. Giles’s.’ ‘Oh! Your servant, Mr. Selwyn,’ cried the man who showed the tombs at Westminster Abbey, ‘I expected to see you here the other day when the old Duke of Richmond’s body was taken up.'” 

The Wharton’s, in their book ‘The Wits and Beaux of Society’, point out that Selwyn was in some ways a man of contradictions – one minute the toast of polite society with his bon mots, the next rooting about in coffins and extorting confessions from criminals remarking of him that: “George Augustus Selwyn famous for his wit, and notorious for his love of horrors”

Lord Lovat, image Wikimedia

This mixture of wit and gloom came to the fore following the execution of Lord Lovat the captured Jacobite rebel.  Some ladies objected to his having witnessed the execution to which he replied:

“‘I made full amends, for I went to see it sewn on again.’ He had indeed done so, and given the company at the undertaker’s a touch of his favourite blasphemy, for when the man of coffins had done his work and laid the body in its box, Selwyn, imitating the voice of the Lord Chancellor at the trial, muttered, ‘My Lord Lovat, you may rise.'” (7)

Selwyn hated to miss an execution and often got friends to give him full reports of any that he was unable to attend – however he did have some scruples.  On being asked why he did not attend the hanging of a criminal named Charles Fox (the same name as his friend the Whig statesman Charles James Fox) he is reported to have said:

“I make it a point never to attend rehearsals.” (OUCH!)

The most famous and likely apocryphal story attached to George Selwyn is that he was mistaken for an executioner on a busman’s holiday when he was spotted at the execution of Damiens in 1757.  Damiens made a pretty feeble attempt on the life of King Louise XV of France and was sentenced to a gruesome death:  torture with red-hot pincers before being slowly ripped limb from limb by horses.  The whole process took hours (with the unfortunate Damiens being alive for a considerable part of it).  A sentimental lady is reported to have objected to the barbarity of the proceedings – because the horses were whipped. Who said only the British are animal lovers!

Selwyn was spotted pushing his way to the front of the crowd to get a ringside view of the torture when a gentleman spotted him.  He asked Selwyn if he was himself an executioner come to observe proceedings.  Selwyn made the unforgettable reply:

“No Monsieur, I have not that honour: I am but an amateur”

Damiens before the judges. 18C via Wikimedia

For all of his charm, wit and affable nature, there is something chilling in his love of watching the suffering of others and in his fondness for watching corpses exhumed.  It is likely that this particular story has simply attached itself to his legend (it is also told of others) and he was often the butt of fanciful tales spread about by his friends (and rivals) in wit.  Lord Chesterfield and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams have been cited by the Wharton’s as possible sources of this tale, and of the rumour that Selwyn sometimes dressed as a woman in order to attend executions incognito. Nevertheless it does not seem too far out of character for Selwyn that – given the chance – his connoisseurs palate would not have relished such a scene of horror as presented by Damien.

A slightly more amusing anecdote has Lord Holland, on his death-bed, advising a servant that:

“If Mr. Selwyn calls, let him in: if I am alive I shall be very glad to see him, and if I am dead he will be very glad to see me.”

Sometimes his friends were able to use his love of the death-bed and corpses to their own ends – one story associated with Selwyn’s time at Whites Club relates to the election of Sheridan as a member.  Selwyn did not want Sheridan, a mere theatrical, elected to a gentleman’s club.  The only way to stop him repeatedly black-balling Sheridan was for Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, in cahoots with Charles Fox, to trick him out of the club with the promise of a juicy death-bed to attend!

The twilight years

Mie Mie by George Romney

Although friends such as Walpole, the Duke of Queensberry and Lord Carlisle seemed to have esteemed Selwyn and thought him of good heart despite his foibles, one of his passions might seem a little off-putting to the modern reader.  Selwyn never married and claimed to have only slept with women seven times in his entire life, the last being when he was 29.  Instead he transferred his affections to children.

Two little girls were the focus of his attention:  Anne Coventry daughter of one of the beautiful Gunning sisters, and more lastingly Maria ‘Mie Mie’ Fagniani daughter of the high living Marchese Fagniani and the Duke of Queensberry.   Despite there being no question that he was not the father, he was so obsessed with Mie Mie (right from her infancy) that he succeeded in persuading the Marchese to leave her child with him when she returned to the continent.  By the late 1770’s she and Selwyn were embroiled in a bitter dispute over custody.  Eventually Selwyn seems to have won and spent the rest of his life fussing over Mie Mie, despite her eventual disdain for him.  In his will he left the girl £33,000 (which along with the £150,000 left to her by Queensberry made her a very eligible heiress).

George Selwyn was a feature in society long after it had come to view him as a bit of a relic.  His good friend the Duke of Queensberry provides this description of him at a society dinner:

“George Selwyn, (who lived for society and continued in it till he looked  really like the waxwork figure of a corpse)”

It seems a fitting epitaph for a man who loved death so much.  Selwyn finally succumbed of that most upper class of diseases: Gout, in 1791.

George Selwyn, (standing), and friends by Henry Graves

George Selwyn’s legacy

George Selwyn was a wit and a necrophile.  He didn’t participate in any major events, he was hardly a mover and a shaker.  Nevertheless he did leave a legacy.  A somewhat unenviable one, based on his love of the macabre and his membership of the notorious Hellfire Club.  It is in literature that he is still remembered:  from Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, to Charles Johnstone’s Chrysal, Or the Adventures of a Guinea; to Edmond de Goncort’s La Faustin where he is fused with that other reputed sadist Algernon Swinburne. Although it is worth noting that despite selwyn’s love of  torture and executions this seems to have been a voyeuristic pleasure, and though this does seem to qualify him as a sadist there is at least no evidence to suggest he was a sexual sadist.  (Small mercies perhaps…?)

Whatever the modern take on George Selwyn, it is apparent that his willing embrace of the darker side of human nature holds an enduring fascination – whether we like to admit to ourselves or not.

I will leave the final words to a contemporary of Selwyn, a poet who thought that Selwyn would be a suitable successor for the Devil should Old Nick ever need a day off….

“The murmurs hush’d – the Herald straight proclaimed
S-l-n the witty next in order name’d
But he was gone to hear the dismal yells
Of tortur’d ghost and suffering criminals.
Tho’ summoned thrice, he chose not to return,
Charmed to behold the crackling culprits burn
With George all know ambition must give place
When there’s an execution in place” (8)

Finis Gloria Mundi by Juan de Valdes Leal c1670 via Wikimedia

Notes

1.  Maturin, Charles, Melmoth the Wanderer, 1820
2. White, T.H., The Age of Scandal, 1950
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Wharton, G and P, The Wits and Beaux of Society Vol2
6. ibid
7. ibid
8. Combe, William, The Diaboliad, 1777

Sources

Ashe, Geoffrey, The Hellfire Clubs, Sutton, 2005
http://www.bartleby.com/344/357.html
Gothic Labyrinth http://omni.sytes.net/selwyn.htm
Porter, Roy, Engish Society in the Eighteenth Century, Penguin, 1982
Wharton Grace and Philip, Ed Justin Huntley Mccarthy MP, The Wits and Beaux of Society Vol2, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10797 2004 ed
White, T.H, The Age of Scandal, Folio Society, 1993 ed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Augustus_Selwyn_%28politician%29

Premature Burial and helpful hints on how not to get buried alive

Tags

Burial Alive, Edgar Allen Poe, Emma Countess Mount Edgcumbe, premature burial, Safety Coffins, Taphophobia, Waiting Mortuaries

An unexpected guest

Emma, Countess Mount Edgcumbe, after Joshua Reynolds. National Portrait Gallery.

The family had repaired to the dining room, the gathering was a sombre one on this day of mourning.  As darkness gathered around the hall candles were lit, casting shadows on the dark panelling of the room, their dim flickering light seeming to accentuate the deepening gloom.  As they sat down to their sad repast, Earl Mount Edgcumbe, seated at the head of the table, rose to his feet planning perhaps to say a few words about his beloved wife, Emma, so recently laid to rest in the family vault.

All eyes turned expectantly towards him, he stood slowly and composed himself to speak, seconds passed but no words came.  His eyes grew wide and glassy, his mouth fell open in silent horror, slowly he raised his hand and indicated the source of his terror.  As each head tremulously turned in the direction he indicated, the room fell into a deathly silence.  Silence broken only by the sound of a delicate scratching – or was it tapping –  coming from the window and the dark night beyond.  There, standing in the moonlight wrapped in her shroud and pale as bone, stood Emma, Countess Mount Edgcumbe, returned from the grave.

This is my terribly hammy horror pastiche of part of the tale of unfortunate Emma, Countess Mount Edgcumbe. Emma married the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe in 1761 and legend says she was the victim of premature burial.  The story recounts that Emma died and was sealed up in the family vault at Maker Church, however a rapacious sexton had spied a rather valuable ring that he quite took a shine too.  Returning to the cover of darkness to retrieve the treasure, he unscrewed the Countess’s coffin and proceeded to pull the ring off her finger but found that it was stuck fast, nipping her finger rather hard he was horrified to find the ‘corpse’ suddenly sat up and asked where she was.  Understandably the Sexton left in a hurry (never to be seen again, one suspects) leaving the befuddled Emma, wrapped only in her burial shroud, to walk the half mile or so back to the old ancestral pile.  To this day the Mount Edgecumbe Estate has a ‘Countess’s Path’ commemorating Emma’s journey back to the land of the living – and to her startled family.  She died more permanently in 1807.

The lady with the ring

Image from Derby Museum collection via Wikimedia

But is it true? The story is current in the Devon/Cornwall area and was passed down the generations of the Mount Edgcumbe family.  However the whole story fits the popular folk-lore associated with tales of The Lady with the Ring rather too neatly. The earlier tales include that of Frau Reichmuth Adolch in sixteenth century Germany and other English variants such as Lady Wyndham.  These tales are common across Europe and found as far afield as North America.  Usual features are: the ring, the sexton and the moonlit walk from the burial ground, and the family mistaking the returned lady for a ghost (1).  The tales would seem to say more about our primal fear of premature burial than of actual events as virtually none can be proven beyond doubt.  Besides, if the tale of Emma is true then the Mount Edgcumbe family seem particularly unfortunate in this respect as in the preceding century another Countess Mount Edgcumbe, Anne, was said also to have suffered this fate!

Taphophobia

The Word comes from the Greek ‘fear of graves’ and describes a pathological fear of being buried alive and this fear may represent one of mankind’s most primeval fears.  From ancient times, people have told terrifying tales of those who were buried before life had expired. Inspiring one seventeenth century poet to write:

“Wisely they leave graves open for the dead
‘Cos some to early are brought to bed.” (2)

Hazel Court in Roger Corman’s 1962 film Premature Burial (American International Pictures)

So why is the fear of premature burial so common?  How likely is premature burial? And what can be done to avoid it?  Such questions plagued writers, doctors and plenty of ordinary people in the 18th and 19th Centuries.  It inspired literature (particularly Edgar Allen Poe: The Premature Burial and Ligeia and features in various other tales); it led to changes in the law surrounding burial; to ingenious methods of prevention and to vital scientific enquiry.

True Tales of premature burial?

Stories of ‘True’ premature burials abound.  One of the earliest was recorded by Pliny the Elder in the 1st Century AD, he recounted the tale of Consul Acilius who awoke with a scream as his funeral pyre began to burn; Thomas A’Kempis who died in 1471 was a candidate for canonisation until his coffin was opened and his corpse was found with splinters under the fingernails; apparently it wasn’t seemly for a potential saint to wish to postpone meeting his god!  Many other such tales were regularly recounted, both as oral traditions (such as the tale of Emma) and in newspapers and even medical journals such as the Lancet.

The Premature Burial, 1854, by Antoine Wiertz

Other evidence cited to support the prevalence of premature burial was found when Les Innocents Cemetery in Paris was moved, many skeletons were found to have shifted position in their coffins.  Cases where coffins had been opened to find corpses with bitten fingers, scratches and looks of horror on their faces all added to the popular fear.  A famous case reported in 1901 involved the pregnant Madame Bobin who ‘died’ of Yellow Fever on her return from Africa.  Her maid doubted the diagnosis and with the help of Madame Bobin’s father opened the coffin to find that the woman had turned over in her coffin and given birth to a foetus.

Add to this the regular outbreaks of contagious diseases such as Cholera, where corpses had to be despatched quickly and often without being viewed by a doctor, and the fear of going early into the grave was intensified.

Mortae Incertae Signa

Skull and crossbones, image by Lenora

The main problem seems to have been that despite that fact that people had been dying for simply ages, know one was actually sure how to tell if someone was not just a bit dead, but really dead.  This was first explored in ‘Mortae Incertae Signa’ (Uncertain Signs of Death) by Jaques Benigne Winslow in 1742.

This study which began to explore the problems surrounding identifying the ‘moment’ of death in amongst the process of dying resulted in changes in the law in some countries to reduce the chances of premature burial.  However, in hot countries burial remained of necessity swift (Petrarch the famous poet, was himself almost buried alive in Florence  in the fourteenth century, after falling into a trance).

Robert Wilkins in his wonderfully macabre and entertaining book ‘The Fireside Book of Death’ notes lists the signs of death as: insensibility, temperature, respiration, circulation, rigor mortis and putrefaction.  However relying on one of these features alone would not necessarily signify death – catalepsy might result in insensibility, coma patients are often cool to the touch (whilst Cholera victims might have a high temperature); the heart continues to beat for a time even after decapitation.  Wilkins also notes that in fact some of the signs of death might actually have been seen as signs of burial alive.

When death mimics life

Wilkins notes that much of the supporting evidence for burial alive can be dismissed as the natural actions of the corpse: cries for help become post-mortem belches, nibbled fingers and scratched faces are likely the result of ravenous rodents, bodies found outside coffins most likely blew themselves up as their gasses fermented – the strength of such gas could easily force a foetus from a womb and anguished expressions are caused by the muscle contractions of rigor mortis.

But of course for many centuries this was not know and the actual diagnosis of death was a very sketchy business and not even always carried out by a medical doctor (it was not always a legal requirement for a doctor to even view a corpse before certifying a death).

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were up to 30 different theories about how to definitively tell if a person was dead.  So much was this fundamental issue on medical minds that in 1837 a prize was set up for anyone who could establish death with any certainty.  In 1846 Eugene Bouchut won 1500 francs for suggested the use of the newly invented stethoscope – if the heartbeat was absent for 2 minutes then death was certain…strangely nobody had thought of this before.  Then in 1885 one Dr Maze suggested that the only certain sign of death was putrefaction….he was not the first to think this.  As early as 1788 Dr Joseph Frank had suggested keeping bodies 2 -3 days before burial and by 1792 the ‘Vitae Dubiae Asylum’ – The ‘hospital for doubtful life’ was set up in Weimar, Germany.

Waiting Mortuaries

For those concerned by the prospect of premature burial, Germany in the nineteenth century was probably the best place to expire.  Waiting Mortuaries were particularly popular in Germany lasting until the 1880’s. Munich had several such establishments, Munich Leichenhaus, where corpses of the newly departed were laid out until putrefaction set in.  They were displayed in zinc trays filled with antiseptic and decorated with scented flowers and could be visited by relatives keen to ensure that the dearly departed really were dead before they were interred.  Of course there were class distinctions even in death – with a luxury section for the exclusive use of the wealthy departed!

New York Bellevue Morgue, public domain image.

The Morgues were staffed 24 hours a day and each body was cunningly rigged up so that the slightest movement would trigger a bell.  After a mid-century Cholera epidemic it became compulsory for bodies to be taken to these mortuaries(3). Nevertheless, it is unknown if these precautions actually saved anyone – the QI website claims that between 1822 -1845 46500 people were taken to waiting mortuaries but none found to be living.

In fact, despite researchers such as Franz Hartmann collecting above 700 ‘true’ cases of premature burial in his much derided 1895 book, much of the medical establishment remained highly skeptical about the chances of it actually happening.  Dr Brouardel in his 1902 work ‘Death and Sudden Death’ was particularly dismissive of the claims that up to a  third of people may have been buried prior to true death.  Too many of the tales simply could not be verified or could be explained away by natural processes of decay.

Nevertheless, it pays to be on the safe side….

5 Tips on how not to be buried alive

Alice Eve, buried alive in James McTeigue’s 2012 film The Raven.

1. Join a premature burial society – no, not one that encourages it, one that tries to prevent it.  In 1896 the slightly unscrupulous Arthur Lovell set up the London Society for the Prevention of Premature Burial.  For a fee members were guaranteed a thorough going over by ‘experts’ upon their demise.  Wilkins’ notes that it was not only their bodies that would receive a thorough going over – if family members failed to notify the society of the death of a member, the departed’s entire estate was forfeited to them!

2. Seek proper medical advice.  Many of the cases of premature burial stem from untrained persons misdiagnosing death, doctors not necessarily being present.  Even doctors are not infallible – why not choose one with access to a Necrometer?  This handy device can tell even the most recently qualified medical person whether a patient is: alive, nearly dead, or completely dead.

3. Make sure you are really dead.  You can do this in a number of ways – both Wilkie Collins and Hans Christian Anderson carried around detailed instructions about this.  Grimaldi the famous clown went to the extreme of insisting on a post-mortem decapitation, so did Harriet Martineau the Victorian Author.  She also went a step further and declared if her wishes were not carried out her bequests would be null and void.

4. Try not to die in a hot country – hot countries tend to prefer swift burial for hygienic reasons as the unfortunate Dr Chew found out.  In 1874 Dr Chew ‘died’ in Calcutta where burial was usually within 24 hours.  But for his observant sister spotting some movement at the 20th hour, he would have met a grisly fate.

5. Invest in a safety coffin.  In 1893 the nervous John Wilmer of Stoke Newington set up an elaborate home-made alarm system. Buried in his garden, a switch was placed in his hand so that should he awake underground he could ring a bell in his house.

Safety Coffin – artist unknown source http://www.prairieghosts.com

The most famous safety coffin was that designed in 1896 by the wonderfully named Count Karnice-Karnicki Chancellor to the Tsar of Russia.  For the reasonable fee of 12 shillings you could rent his device – a tube running from the coffin to an airtight box above ground.  A glass sphere on the chest could detect the tiniest movement which would then set off a spring mechanism to open the tube to let and air and light.  The tube would also amplify cries for help – which would either bring swift assistance or scare the bejesus out of any passersby.

More up to date safety coffins are now available, courtesy of Fabrizio Caselli whose 1995 design included an alarm, intercom, breathing apparatus and a flash-light.   If you want to be really cutting edge, more contemporary designs now include mobile phones and computer games to while away the dull hours before rescue arrives.

Premature Burial Vault, Image source wikimedia

A final word…

If you think that the chance of premature burial is a thing of the past, think on this recent ‘near miss’ reported in the Daily Mail:

“…Maureen Jones, a 65-year-old grandmother from Yorkshire, who collapsed at home in 1996.

Her son called the GP, who decided that she had suffered a stroke and was dead. The undertakers were about to put her in a hearse when a policeman noticed her leg twitch and at once performed heart massage. Mrs Jones’s eyelids began fluttering and she opened her eyes.

She had been in a diabetic coma. She recovered, but four years later she was still having nightmares about being buried alive.” (4)

Cremation – anyone?

Notes

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_the_Ring

2. William Austin writing in c1627/8

3. Robert Wilkins

4. Read full article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2289355/Let-coffin-Im-alive-New-book-reveals-spine-chilling-true-stories-premature-burial.html#ixzz2gsE1GtDO

Sources

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2289355/Let-coffin-Im-alive-New-book-reveals-spine-chilling-true-stories-premature-burial.html

http://qi.com/infocloud/premature-burial

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_being_buried_alive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_the_Ring

Wilkins, Robert, 1990, The Fireside Book of Death, Robert Hale Pub