The Bonfire of Ballet Girls

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America, Ballerina, Ballet, bobbinet, burns, Clara Webster, continental theatre, dance, dance history, dancers, death, Drury Lane, Emma Livry, England, fire, flame-proof, footlights, france, health and safety, Machine woven lace, Paris Opera, Philadelphia, Romantic, The Gale Sisters, tulle, US, William Wheatley

In the nineteenth century the epitome of grace and elegance – and sexual frisson – was to be found in the Romantic Ballet.

Ballet had originally developed in sixteenth century Italy as a ritualised Court pass time and was adopted by royal courts through out Europe.  Early ballet costumes reflected the elaborate styles of the day.[1]

Industrial developments in the nineteenth century saw a revolution in fabric manufacture, allowing for lighter more gauzy fabrics to be mass produced.  This manufacturing development caused a revolution in ballet costumes.

Many of these ethereal dancers became feted stars of the day, but the glamour and fame of these ballet girls came at a high price and it could  sometimes be fatal.

The Romantic Ballet

Marie Taglioni.  V&A collection.

1832 Marie Taglioni brought the house down when she performed La Sylphide in a frothy concoction of white tulle.  Her performance cemented the gauzy white tutu as the derigueur costume of the Romantic Ballet.  It was an ideal fabric for depicting the typical dryads, nymphs and other supernatural creatures that populated the ballet blanche in the nineteenth century, and it also looked divine by gaslight.

The new costume was made of much lighter fabric and revealed more of the ballet dancer’s legs.  But this change from the earlier, heavier, corseted and more restrictive costumes of earlier centuries was not caused by vanity – it was necessitated by the higher jumps and pointe work that ballet dancers were now expected to perform as the technique had evolved.[2][3]

Ballet dress 1781 by James Roberts. V&A Collection.

Alison Matthews David notes that the changes were considered highly scandalous, and many men attended the ballet for less than artistic reasons – after all, these aerial sylphs were all sexually available, for the right price.   The sexual market-place aspect of the ballet had the knock on effect of pushing ballerinas to the front of the stage, nearer to the footlights and their potential patrons, and inadvertently placing them much closer to danger.

Despite the other-worldly, untouchable quality of Romantic Era ballerinas, the cold hard truth was that ballet girls were often lower class girls sold by their parents to ballet companies.  They were underfed, over-worked and often sexually exploited. Yet they dared not complain about their dangerous and exploitative conditions or risk their livelihoods. [4]

Dancing with Death

Skeleton Ballerina. Source Pinterest. Artist unknown.

Consequently ballerinas danced with death on a daily basis, so much so that they regularly incinerated both themselves and their audiences in truly incendiary performances.  The combination ballet and firey death was so ingrained in the popular imagination that tickets to the ballet were macabrely nick-named ‘tickets to the tomb’ due to the risk of death by fire, smoke inhalation or toxic gases [5].  Perhaps this was one of the aspects of the ballet that appealed to the well developed sense of morbidity of the Victorians – ballet at its extreme could encompass both sex and death, an alluring combination.

Media and literature of the day also took a morbid, and at times misogynistic, delight in reporting fatal tragedies when they struck, often lingering on the terrible injuries of the unfortunate girls.

In 1856 Theophile Gautier’s novel Jettatura described the death of a ballerina:

“The dancer brushed that row of fire which in the theatre separates the ideal world from the real; her light sylphide costume fluttered like the wings of a dove about to take flight.  A gas jet shot out its blue and white tongue and touched the flimsy material.  In a moment the girl was enveloped in flame; for a few seconds she danced like a firefly in a red glow, and then darted towards the wings, frantic, crazy with terror, consumed alive by her burning costume.”

Clara Webster by John Brandard.

This is no artistic flight of fancy, Gautier was inspired by the death of real life ballerina Clara Vestris Webster at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, in 1844.

Clara had been playing Zelika, a royal slave, in the ballet The Revolt of the Harem.  In a playful and erotic harem bath scene, she had been throwing water over other ballerinas, when her skirts caught fire on one of the sunken lights being used to represent the bath.  Terrified, the other dancers did nothing to help – fearing the same fate.  Gautier, writing her obituary for the Paris papers, in a spectacular display of misogyny and callousness said:

“it was said that she would recover, but her beautiful hair had blazed about her red cheeks, and her pure profile had been disfigured.  So it was for the best that she died.”

The Media also revelled in the gory details of the girl’s death,  reporting that:

“The body was so much burnt that when it was put into the coffin, the flesh in parts came off in the hands of the persons who were lifting it, and on the same account it could not be dressed.” [6]

As with many similar cases, the inquest found the death to be an accident and attached no blame to the theatre, even though the fire buckets by the stage had been empty.

Clara’s death did encourage more research into the fire-proofing of dresses.  Queen Victoria also helped instigate research into flame-proofing fabrics even putting the royal laundry at the disposal of Dr Alphons Oppenheim and Mr F Versmann.  They found that treating fabrics with Tungstate of Soda and Sulphate of Ammonia solution made fabrics safer.  However there were drawbacks: once washed, the fabrics had to be re-treated.  Despite these promising findings, no safety legislation or regulations were enacted in Britain.

Famous Ballerinas of the Romantic Age. Lithograph by AE Challon

In 1861 the beautiful Gale sisters, Ruth, Cecilia (known as Zela), Hannah and Abeona (know as Adeline), took the USA by storm.  The English ballerinas toured the states wowing audiences wherever they went; however it was their final venue that has made them famous: The Continental Theatre in Philadelphia.

In August 1861 Actor Manager William Wheatley leased the theatre on Walnut Street.  He spared no expense going so far as importing a special effects expert and the beautiful Gale sisters from England.  The Ballerinas had their dressing room directly above the stage, it was fitted out with mirrors with gas jets next to them, in order to maximise the light they gave off.

On the evening of the 14 September 1861 an audience of 1500 people filled the Continental Theatre for the first night performance: Shakespeare’s The Tempest, adapted as a ballet.   Many no doubt hoping for a glimpse of the fine legs of the beautiful Gale sisters as they floated about the set, the audience was unprepared for the horror about to unfold just off stage.

At the end of Act one, the Gale sisters and the corps de ballet had to flit up the narrow staircase to their dressing room 50 feet above the stage – a quick change was required for the next scene.  While the show continued beneath them, the Gale sisters began to change costumes.  Ruth climbed upon a settee to retrieve her gauzy tarletan costume, but the hem caught on the gas jet and within seconds Ruth was ablaze.  In terror, Ruth ran through the dressing room and dashed herself into a plate glass mirror, adding to her horrific injuries.  Her sisters, in trying to help her were caught up in the blaze. [7]

The Gale Sisters on fire at the Continental Theatre. 1861. Frank Leslie Illustrated News 28 Sept 1861

In the panic and confusion they flung themselves from the window onto the street below.  A Miss McBride ran flaming on to the stage and fell into the orchestra pit, where she was eventually put out by stagehands.

Initially Wheatley had called for the curtain to fall and asked the audience to remain seated, however he soon realised the severity of the unfolding tragedy and ordered an evacuation.  It is remarkable that no members of the audience were killed during the fire.

That was not the case with the ballerinas.  Burned and broken ballerinas littered the streets outside the theatre as police, doctors and bystanders desperately tried to help.  Harper’s Weekly described the scenes as ‘most piteous and agonising’.  The burnt ballerinas were taken to taverns and hotels, and eventually by carriage to the Pennsylvania Hospital.  With little or no pain killers available, the journey must have been agony.  Over a four day period between six and nine ballerinas, including all of the Gale sisters, lost their lives. [8][9]

Burning Ballerinas fling them selves from the Continental Theatre. Frank Leslies Illustrated News 28 Sept 1861.

At the Coroner’s Inquest William Wheatley was cleared of all wrong-doing, and it must be said that he and his wife did all they could after the tragedy to pay medical bills and funeral costs for the lost girls.  Wheatley also erected a memorial to them in Mount Moriah Cemetery.   However, one wonders, in his no-expenses spared refit of the Continental, how much expense was spared for safety measures? [10]

The dangers faced by ballerinas in their highly flammable costumes was not entirely ignored by the authorities, in France an Imperial Decree was issued in 1858 which attempted to introduce flame-retardant fabrics for ballet dancers.  When the fabrics were treated it had the unfortunate side-effect of rendering the formerly ethereal white tutu heavy, dingy and stiff.  The safer tutu, where it was available, was often rejected outright by those it was intended to protect, as the case of Emma Livry shows.

Emma Livry. Last star of the Romantic Ballet. Wikimedia.

Emma Livry, the illegitimate daughter of a ballet dancer and a baron,  was the last great star of the Paris Opera Ballet from her debut in 1858 until her death in 1863.

She had been offered a drab flame retardant dress, but Emma simply refused to wear it.  Her attitude may seem blase, but it cannot have been uninformed.  There were too many high profile cases for Emma not to have been aware of the very real dangers faced by ballerinas in their flimsy tulle tutus.

Emma’s unintended final performance was on 15th November 1862, during rehearsals for the ballet opera La Muette de Portia. Sitting down, she raised her tutu above her head to prevent crushing the delicate fabric, the rush of air this created caused a nearby gas light to flame and this set light to her tutu.  The fire blazed to three times her height.  Engulfed in flames, she ran across the stage several times before she was finally caught, and the fire put out.

Her injuries were catastrophic, Emma suffered 40% burns, her stays were burned on to her, although her face was untouched.  She survived for eight months eventually dying on 26th July 1863 of Septicaemia caused by her burns.  She was barely 21.  Shortly before her death she was still unrepentant,  saying of the flame-retardant materials, “Yes, they are, as you say, less dangerous, but should I ever return to the stage, I would never think of wearing them – they are so ugly.” [11]

Bonfire of Vanities

The Gale sisters. Harpers Weekly.

It is important to remember that there were a lot of reasons for Emma, and others like her, to have made such a fatal choice of costume.  It is disingenuous and a little to easy to attribute it to the vanity of these girls.

Flame-proofed tutus were stiffer and dull looking. Tulle tutus looked celestial, glowed softly in the low lights of the theatre, and made the dancers look like sylphlike creatures from another world. Dancers were poor girls, worked to exhaustion for minimal wages.  They depended upon captivating the audience, in particular wealthy men who might become their patrons and lovers, they needed to look stunning to be marketable. If they did not bring in paying punters, there was a real chance they would end up back in the gutter, starving.  The irony is that they risked their lives in order to survive.

Responsibility must also rest with governments who either did not bother with health and safety legislation, or where they did so, they failed to enforce it or hold anyone to account.  More could have been done to make theatres safer places for ballerinas, fire blankets and fire buckets are simple measures but could have been effective safety measures, but too often these measures were overlooked with catastrophic consequences.

Sarcophagus containing Emma Livry’s burnt tutu. Paris Bibliotechque National via Fashion Victims.

Epilogue

The Tragic Gale sisters found their final resting place in Mount Moriah Cemetery.  Though their grave stone is worn and faded now, the New York Clipper reproduced the text of their memorial:

“Over the deep broad grave in Mount Moriah Cemetery, Philadelphia, in which repose in eternal silence the four sisters Gale, a memorial tablet has been erected by the subscription of many kind friends who knew the poor girls in their pure life. And upon it has been graven the following inscriptions :

On one side –

With a mother’s tearful blessing They sleep beneath the sod, Her dearest earthly treasures Restored again to God!

And upon the other –

IN MEMORIAM Stranger, who through the city of the dead With thoughtful soul and feeling heart may tread, Pause here a moment – those who sleep below With careless ear ne’er heard a tale of woe: Four sisters fair and young together rest In saddest slumber on earth’s kindly breast; Torn out of life in one disastrous hour, The rose unfolded and the budding flower: Life did not part them – Death might not divide They lived – they loved – they perished, side by side. O’er doom like theatre let gentle pity shed The softest tears that mourn the early fled, For whom – lost children of another land! This marble raised by weeping friendship’s hand To us, to future time remains to tell How even in death they loved each other well.”

Memorial to the Gale Sisters. Image from Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery website.

Sources and Notes

https://bellanta.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/this-holocaust-of-ballet-girls/ [8]

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/flames-in-gauze-and-crinolines-the-gale-sisters-last-dance-together-sept-14-1861.140489/  

(The above includes extracts from Frank Leslie’s 1861 editorial on the Gale sisters demise). [[7] [11]

http://friendsofmountmoriahcemetery.org/cecilia-ruth-adeline-and-hannah-gale-ballerinas/

Daily Dispatch, October 1 1861, The recent terrible accident at the Continental Theatre in Philadelphia, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2006.05.0285%3Aarticle%3Dpos%D11

Matthews David, Alison, 2015, ‘Fashion Victims The Dangers of Dress Past and Present’ [4]-[6] [9]

http://www.ozy.com/flashback/the-ballet-girls-who-burned-to-death/71244 [11]

https://tidingsofyore.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/ballerinas-on-fire-1861/

The Public Ledger, 18 March 1845 Shocking Death of Miss Clara Webster: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=59&dat=18450318&id=cSA1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=GicDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6310,1978758&hl=en

http://www.tutuetoile.com/ballet-costume-history/ [1]

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/o/origins-of-ballet/ [2][3]

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/r/romantic-ballet/ [2][3]

 

 

Toxic Socks and other Fashion Fatalities

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accessories, aniline, arsenic, carroting, clothing, clothing workers, crinolines, dresses, dyes, Emerald, fashion, fleur du mal, flowers of death, garment workers, hair ornaments, hat makers, Matilda Scheurer, mercury, Paris, pigment, Poison, poisoning, Scheele's Green, socks

The nineteenth century may have seen the grim and grimy Industrial Age take hold of Britain and other industrial nations, painting the world grey as it went, but it was also a time when vibrant colour blossomed, and the fashion industry thrived, unchecked by government regulation.

Fashion plate from Godey’s Ladies Book 1839.

In earlier centuries the fashion conscious had had to make do with traditional animal and mineral dyes which were expensive and involved a complex dying process, as well as (Quelle Horreur!) not holding their colour. Colours such as green were especially hard to create, and required a compound of blue and yellow dyes; while the best quality men’s hats were made from very expensive beaver fur.  Clothing and hat manufacture was often a small scale, artisanal process, and fashion was usually affordable only to wealthier section of society. But in the nineteenth century new chemical and industrial processes began bring fashion to a wider audience.

A Victorian Soiree, possibly American. Source unknown.

Tiger Feet

Stripy socks c1850. The Met Museum.

One of the more noticeable trends of the nineteenth century, and one that all classes could easily participate in, was colourful socks.  Stripes and checks in a plethora of colours became all the rage.  Fuschine and Coraline striped socks created ‘rainbow spanned ankles’ according to the Lady’s Newspaper in 1861.  But such glorious footware was not for everyone, soon reports came in of terrible reactions – one member of parliament was laid up for months because of ‘painful eruptions of the feet’; while an unfortunate Frenchman, proud owner of a pair of British socks in bright red, suffered ‘pustulent, inflamed feet and ankles with acute and painful eczema in red transverse stripes’. [1]  In the case of the unfortunate Frenchman, the cause was the Fuschine dye, aggravated by the socks having  been worn, unwashed, directly on the skin for a stupendous 12 days in a row! Similar reactions were reported in 1871, when a pair of prized purple and yellow socks  left a gentleman’s feet resembling ‘an inflammatory tiger’ [2].

The British Sock trade was a thriving industry and although the Lancet and other journals did report on the phenomena, and some factories returned to more natural dying processes, manufacturers were largely unreceptive to the dangers.

Red, orange and purple dyes seemed to be the most inflammatory, but not everyone was affected.  Studies by William Crookes in 1868, eventually discovered that certain factors increased a person’s risk of chemical burns from these ‘chromatic torpedoes’, these were:

Cotton-silk socks, mid 19C. Met Museum.

• Not washing them before wearing
• Heat – the dye could leech from silk or cotton sock to the skin
• Wearing wool socks in very tight, hot shoes in summer increased risk
• Individual sweat chemistry

The impact on some sock-wearers may have been bad, but the impact on workers in sock factories was dire. In 1868 Crookes found that workers using a new orange dye, mixed with magenta, often had to give up work after only six months.  They  were debilitated by the corrosive effect of the dye, which left their arms covered in open sores.  [3]

My Chemical Romance

Mid 19C green dress. Bowes Museum. Lenora.

It was a pharmaceutrical chemist called Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786) who began the revolution in colour.  In 1778 Scheele developed a brilliant green pigment, known as Scheele’s or Schloss Green.  Scheele created the pigment from copper arsenite or acidic copper arsenite.  Scheele’s Green was later improved and superseded by a slightly more stable pigment called Paris or Emerald Green.[4]  It was a huge success, green, formerly a most illusive colour to capture, was soon to be found everywhere: from wallpaper, candles, children’s toys and of course, fashionable garments and accessories.  As Alison Matthews David points out, in her excellent and thought provoking book Fashion Victims The Dangers of Dress Past and Present, one of the things that made Scheele’s and Emerald Green so fashionable was that the vibrant chemical pigment looked good in both daylight, and by gaslight.

However, this green revolution was not without it’s victims.  The pigment was made from arsenic and while arsenic was available over the counter for much of the nineteenth century, and used for many household chores, it’s toxicity was not unknown. As a small indicator of how toxic it could be, Wikipedia reports that it was used as an insecticide until the 1930’s.  Newspapers reported on the toxicity of the emerald green and tarlatane gowns worn by fashionable young ladies. Dr AW Hoffman, writing in the London Times in February 1862, reported that ‘[..] green tarletanes so much of late in vogue for ball dresses’ contained half their weight in arsenic. Matthews David calculated that a 20 yard gown could contain up to 900 grains of arsenic – while mere five grains is usually lethal to an adult. Public outrage at the ladies wearing these fashions intensified, in 1862 the British Medical Journal wrote:

‘Well may the fascinating wearer of it [green] be called a killing creature.  She actually carries in her skirts poison enough to slay the whole of the admirers she may meet with in half a dozen ball-rooms.’ 

The Arsenic Waltz, Punch Magazine, 1862. Wellcome Collection.

Foliate head-dresses were also very popular at this time, bringing nature and greenery into the dull drab Victorian cities. Ladies often adorned their hair with nymph-like wreaths and artificial flowers.  Hoffman’s report in the Times concluded that each headdress contained enough poison to kill twenty people.

Soon the plight of poisoned garment workers became headline news. While fashionable green-clad ladies might suffer from occasional rashes or allergic reactions on their decolete or hands from from wearing green gowns and gloves, for the most, they were separated from the poisonous fabric by petticoats and lining materials.  Flowermakers on the other hand, had no such protections.  Often pressing the pigment, in the form of coloured dust, into the fabric, they inhaled the white arsenic on a daily basis and suffered terrible sometimes fatal consequences.[5]

Fleur du Mal – foliate Headdresses, mid 19C. Ryerson Ca.

In November 1861, Matilda Scheurer died an agonising and colourful death. She was nineteen and worked ‘fluffing’ artificial leaves with green powder.  Breathing it in and eating it with her food on a daily basis.  She suffered convulsions, vomited green water from the mouth nose and eyes, the whites of her eyes went green and it affected her vision in that she reported that everything looked green.  After much suffering she eventually died.[6]

Other workers suffered from bleeding sores on their hands and faces, and had their vision severely affected.

Effects of green arsenic. 1859. Wellcome Collection.

The Press, Ladies Societies, and various medical reports began to turn the tide against the green pigment.  Despite fashionable ladies often being treated as the villains of the piece, it is important to remember that societies such as the Ladies Sanitary Association did a lot to help raise awareness of the dangers of green. French Studies also provided evidence of the danger of working conditions for flower makers -finding that no cats or rats survived in the factories, and that workers suffered from scabs, ulcerations, loss of skin and cancerous scars on their legs. [7]

Emerald Green Pigment. Jane Austen World Blog.

Such findings eventually led to countries like Germany and France legislating against dangerous pigments, but Britain did nothing. However, the popularity of green had been irreparably damaged and Matthews David suggests that the fashion for pure white gowns that took hold at the end of the century was partially a reaction to the dangers of colour pigments such as Scheele’s Green.

Mad hatters

The Mad Hatter by Tenniel. 1858. Public domain via Wikimedia.

Hatters have always held a place in the public imagination, ever since Lewis Carol created the memorable Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.  Whether this literary creation was intended to show the effects of mercury poisoning on hat manufacturers or not (and there is some debate on this), his erratic behaviour and shakey demeaner do seem close to the effects suffered by hat makers.

Men’s hats have formed an elaborate and often expensive part of etiquette and social status for centuries.  In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries beaver was the luxury material that the best hats were made from.  Beaver pelts could be felted without addition of dangerous chemicals such as mercury. Once felted, they could be moulded into what ever shape was currently fashionable: tricorne, bicorne, cone, topper, whatever.  However, their popularity was their downfall, and by the late sixteenth century beaver was extinct in Europe and only available via North American trade routes.  Eventually that source also dried up, and by the eighteenth century inferior local materials such as rabbit or hare were being used.  These pelts, being rougher, required a mercury and acid solution to break down the keratin in them and achieve felting.  The process caused the fur to turn orange, so it became know as carrotting. [8][9]

Fur Industry hat manufacture. 1858. Public Domain via Wikimedia.

There are a number of legends as to how hatters discovered the benefits of mercury, one memorable (if probably apocryphal tale) explains that hatters routinely added their own urine to the heated kettles containing the acidic liquids used in the process.  It was found that one worker’s urine was apparently more effacious than his colleagues – he explained that had been receiving mercury treatment for syphilis (a syringe of mercury to his penis) and thus the benefits of Mercury were revealed to the hatting trade! [10]

Hatting guilds had tried to ban Mercury from the process in 1716, in order to protect quality, the trade was losing its artisanal status as the process became more industrialised, but the defiance was short lived.  Hatters suffered as a consequence.  Mercury is incredibly toxic and a 1925 study by the Bureau International du Travail found that its impaired the neuromotor system. Hatters suffered from trembling and shaking. Evidence could be found in their very shaky signatures.

Medical text books and wax models in the Musee des Moulanges at Hopital Saint-Louis in Paris showed typical symptoms to include clubbed, stained and bulging nails, possibly indicative of underlying heart or lung problems and chronic oxygen deprivation.  They also suffered from erratic behaviour. Hatters wore no protective gloves, they ingested mercury through their lungs and skin on a daily basis and the effects were permanent.

Even today, some museums such as the Victoria and Albert, have to mark these hats as toxic.

Jean-Jaques Grandville satirized the dangers of the hatters trade well, in his illustration ‘La Mode’ – showing a wheel (an agonising French execution device).

Ashes to ashes

Wearing a crinoline. Mid nineteenth century. Source unknown.

Poisonous chemicals were not the only way that fashion could be fatal in the nineteenth century.  Changes to the textiles favoured by fashion could also be catastrophic.  In earlier centuries fabrics such as brocades and heavy silks and velvets were favoured. However the nineteenth century saw new fabrics such as muslins, cottons, and bobbinet/tulle (machine woven lace), often stiffened and made more flammable with starch, become popular.  Such diaphanous, ethereal costumes, that looked delightful by gas light, were much less fire safe than the heavier fabrics of old.

In addition to this structural garments such as the steel crinoline, a prime example of how industrialisation influenced fashion, could be very combustible.  The Crinoline was a large bell shaped structure that trapped air beneath it, thereby creating a chimney or funnel effect that could swiftly incinerate the careless wearer.

Between 1858 – 1864 nearly five million crinolines were manufactured by two Peugeot factories alone – illustrating the impact of industrialisation on production.[11]  Every woman, at every age and level of society wore them.  Some crinolines had  cirumferences of 8 feet.  While they definitely gave ladies presence and allowed them to own the space they occupied, they came with great risks.

Crinoline manufacture 1860. Public domain [?]

One such unfortunate lady, the 18 year old Archduchess Mathilde of Austria, was caught smoking an illicit cigarette by her father.  Trying to hid the offending article behind her, her skirts caught fire and the hapless Archduchess burned to death in front of her horrified father. [12]

A lady goes up in flames. 1860. Wellcome Collection.

Ballerina’s also suffered – in huge numbers – from flammable fashion.  Favouring tulle for their ethereal costumes and dancing very close to the footlights (so the male theatre goers could ogle their legs) they regularly incinerated themselves and their audiences.  In the USA in 1861 Philadelphia’s Continental Theatre saw one such fatal blaze that claimed the lives of 8 (possibly 9) ballerinas [14]. Drury Lane Theatre in London saw the firey demise of the star Ballerina Clara Webster in 1844 and perhaps the most famous victim of the fashion for flimsy tutu’s was Emma Livry star of the Paris Opera Ballet.  Considered the last great star of the Romantic Ballet tradition she had a suitably tragic end, when choosing to reject a dingy and stiff flame retardant tutu in favour of her ethereal tulle, she suffered the consequences, dying 8 months after her tutu caught fire during a rehearsal.

Fire at the Continental Theatre. Frank Leslie Illustrated News 28 Sept 1861.

In 1860, the height of the crinonline’s popularity, the Lancet medical journal estimated that 3000 women a year burned to death. [13]

Fashion Victim

Suddenly, in the nineteenth century to be a la mode was no longer the preserve of the rich; everyone from the society beauty to the scullery maid could participate in this newly democratised world of fashion, however, there was a heavy price to pay.

While the ladies and gentlemen of fashion, as the wearers of these garments, may well have been affected by them, far more victims were of the lower and disenfranchised classes. Ballerinas worked in highly flammable costumes, garment trade workers and mill workers worked in a largely unregulated industry, slaves worked in exploitative conditions on cotton plantations.  The fashion industry in the nineteenth century had a wide and deadly reach.

A lot has improved since then, with stricter regulation of chemicals, and improvements in working conditions and workers rights in the West.  However, headline grabbing incidents such as fires in Bangladeshi sweatshops and Chinese workers at risk of Silicosis from sandblasting jeans, [15][16] is a reminder that continued demand for cheap, fashionable clothing may have simply hidden the problem from us, by transferring manufacture to less regulated areas of the globe. Until these global issues are addressed, fashion will still claim it’s sacrifices amongst the poor.

The Wellcome Collection.

Sources and notes

https://hyperallergic.com/133571/fatal-victorian-fashion-and-the-allure-of-the-poison-garment/

Matthews David, Alison, 2015, ‘Fashion Victims The Dangers of Dress Past and Present’ [1]-[3], [5]-[8],[10]-[13], [16]

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/dress-hat-fashion-clothing-mercury-arsenic-poison-history/ [15]

https://www.racked.com/2017/12/19/16710276/burning-dresses-history

https://thepragmaticcostumer.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/drop-dead-gorgeous-a-tldr-tale-of-arsenic-in-victorian-life/

https://tidingsofyore.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/ballerinas-on-fire-1861/ [14]

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheele%27s_Green

 

 

 

Enon Chapel – Dancing on the dead in Victorian London

Tags

body bugs, burial, Burial Act, Burial reform, Cemeteries, churchyard, crypts, dancing on the dead, Enon Chapel, George Graveyard Walker, London, Mr Howse, open sewer, pyramid of bones, vaults, Victorian

Slums, sewers, corpses, a corrupt clergyman, a pyramid of bones, and …dancing on the dead. Sometimes the Victorian’s failed, quite spectacularly, to live up to their prim and proper reputation.

Bunhill Fields burial Ground, London.

London’s burial grounds: a mass of putrefaction

London in the mid nineteenth century had a problem: a burgeoning industrial and commercial centre with a population pushing at 2.5 million living souls, it also had an ever growing population of the dead. Inner city burial had been carried out in London for centuries -it has been observed that London, even today, is one huge grave, if you only know where to look. But by the mid nineteenth century fears of disease spread by the miasma from inner city graveyards and a fashion for wealthier people to be buried in suburban cemeteries, meant that London’s remaining inner city burial grounds were often terribly overcrowded and unsanitary. One such place, the ‘Green Ground’ on Portugal Street, a burial ground for the nearby workhouse, was described by George Walker as:

‘[A] mass of putrefaction’ and ‘The soil of this ground is saturated, absolutely saturated, with human putrescence,’ the author noting that ‘The living here breathe on all sides an atmosphere impregnated by the odour of the dead.’ [1]

It was not uncommon for gravediggers to chop into or even discard earlier burials in order to cram new ones into overcrowded graveyards:

‘What a horrid place is St Giles Churchyard! It is full of coffins up to the surface. Coffins are broken up before they are decayed, and bodies are removed to the “bonehouse” before they are sufficiently decayed to make removal decent’

So reported the Weekly Despatch in September 1838.

No wonder that women rarely attended burials. Yet these places were often the only resort open to the poor. One scandalous case that provided a catalyst for a change was the infamous Enon Chapel….

Dudley Street Slums, London, 1872. Image source Public domain [?]

Enon Chapel – undercutting the competition

Close to the Strand, on the west side of St Clement’s lane, an insalubrious neighbourhood was to be found. Accessed via a narrow court, Carey Street offered slum housing and overcrowding to the poorest of the poor. It was here in 1822, that an enterprising and cynical Baptist minister, Mr W Howse, founded his ministry: saving souls and selling burials. Enon Chapel itself, fitted into this down at heel locale, sited, as it was, above an open sewer which ran though its vault.

Image by Hogarth. Public domain [?]

In 1822, fear of the resurrection men was still strong. Burke and Hare had yet to set up their fearsome murder trade north of the Border, but before them were others, stealing fresh corpses from graveyards for the anatomists table. This popular fear may have been one of the factors in Mr Howse’s calculations in setting up his burial business at Enon. It had a vault. At barely 59 feet by 12 feet it wasn’t a large vault, but Mr Howse was an enterprising individual and knew how to spin a profit from almost nothing. In 1823 Enon was licensed for burials.

Burials in the vault at Enon Chapel were a mere 15 shillings. This compared very favourably to the competitors – close by at St Clement Danes it cost £1.17s2d for an adult burial, and £1.10.2d to bury a child – and that only covered a churchyard burial.[2] At a time when poor families would often have to warehouse their dead in their homes until they had saved enough for burial, Enon Chapel had a clear advantage over the competition: offering both secure and, more importantly, affordable burials.

Things went well for Mr Howse for a number of years, if people marvelled at how capacious the tiny vault was, nobody asked any awkward questions. Even when worshippers retched into their hankerchieves or fell unconscious at the noxious stink that was rife in the chapel, especially in warm weather, they said nothing. It may have been harder to ignore the long black flies that emerged from the decaying coffins, or the ‘body bugs’ that would infest worshippers hair and clothes, and neighbours of the chapel noted that meat, if left out, would putrefy within an hour or two. By the 1830’s rumours were beginning to circulate, but still nobody suspected the true scale of the horror beneath their feet.

A Modern Golgotha uncovered

In 1839, following some concerns with goings on at Enon, the Commissioner of Sewers inspected the open sewer under the Chapel with the view that it should be covered or vaulted. However, their investigations took a grusome turn when they discovered human remains, some of them mutilated, discarded in the sewer – whether by design or accident, it was not clear. Oddly enough, despite the sheer horror of this discovery, the remains were not removed and burials did not stop. Mr Howse continued his profitable venture burying up to 500 people a year in the vault until his death in 1842. In total around12,000 people were buried in a vault measuring only 59 feet by 12.

In part, he appears to have managed to cram so many corpses into so limited a space because he discarded the coffins (he and his wife used them for firewood).  This would no doubt have increased the stench exponentially – Julian Litten, in his book The English Way of Death, notes that intramural vault burials usually required a triple encasing for the corpse, in both wood and soldered lead, so as to ensure that the coffin was water-tight and air-tight [3].  Discarding the outer shell of the coffin, Howse disposed of the occupants in deep pits filled with quicklime to help the bodies decompose.

It was also said that extensive building work, such as at Waterloo Bridge, allowed Howse to secretly remove upwards of sixty cart loads of decomposed human remains for use as landfill and bone-meal in the building trade; other remains were unceremoniously dumped in the Thames. It said that it was not uncommon to find a disembodied skull rolling down the streets around Enon Chapel.[4]

Dancing on the dead

Contemporary image of Enon Chapel’s notorious ‘Dancing on the Dead’. Image Source: Wellcome Images.

When Howse died in 1842, burials ceased and Enon Chapel was closed. The new tenant, Mr Fitzpatrick, took up residence in 1844. Despite making the surprising discovery of a large quantity of human bones buried under his kitchen floor, he was not put off, and simply reburied them in the chapel. Later tenants, a sect of Teetotallers, went one better. In the true spirit of Victorian enterprise, combined with a large and profitable dash of Victorian ghoulishness, they reopened Enon Chapel for dances using the great marketing tagline of  ‘Dancing on the dead’:

‘Enon Chapel – Dancing on the Dead – Admission Threepence. No lady or gentleman admitted unless wearing shoes and stockings’

Who says teetotallers don’t know how to have fun!

The Poor Man’s Guardian, somewhat disdainfully, reported on these events in 1847:

‘Quadrilles, waltzes, country-dances, gallopades, reels are danced over the masses of mortality in the cellar beneath”

The dances seem to have been very popular, proving that even the Victorian poor, many of whom may have known people interred beneath them, had a dark sense of humour. That, or a pragmatic view of their own mortality and the fleeting nature of pleasure.

George ‘Graveyard’ Walker

George ‘Graveyard’ Walker. Image source: Wellcome Institute.

Not everyone appreciated this grim humour.  George ‘Graveyard’ Walker, a surgeon whose practice was in the vicinity of Enon Chapel, and who had a side-line as a public health campaigner, was Not Amused. And with good reason, he had had the misfortune to have viewed Enon Chapel vault in all its gory glory, first hand. In his book, Gatherings from grave yards, a survey of 47 London burial grounds,  published in 1839, Walker described it thus:

‘This building is situated about midway on the western side of Clement’s Lane; it is surrounded on all sides by houses, crowded by inhabitants, principally of the poorer class. The upper part of this building was opened for the purposes of public worship about 1823; it is separated from the lower part by a boarded floor: this is used as a burying place, and is crowded at one end, even to the top of the ceiling, with dead. It is entered from the inside of the chapel by a trap door; the rafters supporting the floor are not even covered with the usual defence – lath and plaster. Vast numbers of bodies have been placed here in pits, dug for the purpose, the uppermost of which were covered only by a few inches of earth….Soon after interments were made, a peculiarly long narrow black fly was observed to crawl out of many of the coffins; this insect, a product of the putrefaction of the bodies, was observed on the following season to be succeeded by another, which had the appearance of a common bug with wings. The children attending the Sunday School, held in this chapel, in which these insects were to be seen crawling and flying, in vast numbers, during the summer months, called them “body bugs”..’ [5]

As well as a genuine disgust at the way material gain had trumped over moral and religious scruples at Enon Chapel, Walker, and many others at that time, considered the proximity of these putrefying burial grounds to human habitation to be injurious to public health.  It was believed that, similar to sewage, badly overcrowded burial grounds were giving off a deadly graveyard miasma. Walker, himself, had a flair for the dramatic, describing the miasma as ‘the pestiferous exhalations of the dead’.

This miasma was believed to cause diseases such as cholera and typhoid. Gravediggers and those living close by cemeteries were at particular risk, but the threat was to the population as a whole.

Victorian Image showing a slum court, with the living and the dead side by side.

The public scandal of Enon Chapel and its ilk, along with the tireless campaigning of philanthropists such as George Walker and reformer Edwin Chadwick, led to a Parliamentary Select Committee being set up in 1842. The committee was tasked to look at improving London’s overcrowded and unsanitary burial places. The law took it’s time, but pressure from Walker and The National Society for the Abolition of Burials in Towns eventually forced the government into action. The Burial Act of 1852 would seal the fate of London’s overcrowded inner city burial places, allowing the government to close them down. It also and allowed the creation of suburban garden cemeteries such as Highgate and Brookwood. Cemeteries that were designed as much to be enjoyed by visitors, as to bury the dead.

Roll up, Roll up – for the gravest show on earth!

There was to be one last macabre act in the tale of Enon Chapel. In 1848 Walker purchased the Chapel with the promise that he would give the inhabitants of the vault a decent burial, at his own expense, at Norwood Cemetery. This philanthropic gesture however, was somewhat marred by Walkers morbid sense of theatre. Rather than discretely disinterring the bodies and having them respectfully removed to their final resting place, he chose to open the event to the public. To drum up interest he had attendants strolling up and down the street holding skulls, a sure fire way to entice in the average Victorian death lover. And the public came in their droves – upwards of 6000 came to tour Enon Chapel and to view the immense pyramid of bones unearthed by Walker.

A Pyramid of Bones. Image source: John Sullivan public domain.

Despite criticism, Walker defended his approach in a typically Victorian way, he emphasised that the spectacle was educational (the same argument used by Madame Tussaud to elevate her Chamber of Horrors to a moral level) and he wasn’t precisely selling tickets – but he did accept contributions from visitors. Less educational and more sensational was the highlight of the Enon tour. Visitors came face to shrivelled face, with the long-dead proprietor Mr Howse. ‘A stark and stiff and shrivelled corpse’ identified by his ‘screw foot’ [6]

A case of poetic justice, the greedy speculator responsible for the desecration of so many of the deceased, found his own final resting place disturbed in the most unseemly way.

Footnote – it’s all in a name

It is interesting to note, as Catherine Arnold does in her fascinating book Necropolis, London and its dead, that if you look beyond the traditional explanation for the name Enon (the place near Salim where John the Baptist baptized converts), a far darker etymology emerges. Arnold points to Hitchcock’s Bible Names Dictionary which provides one possible meaning for Enon as ‘Mass of darkness’ – how very, very apt.

Enon Chapel is long since gone, the London School of Economics sits on its site now and the bones of the dead lie in an unmarked communal grave at Norwood.

If you want to find out more about London’s hidden dead, see the excellent and funny You Tube video by Caitlin Doughty and Dr Lindsay Fitzharris at the end of the sources section)

Sources and notes

Images by Lenora unless otherwise credited.

Arnold, Catharine, Necropolis: London and its dead, 2007 [1] [2] [4]

Cochrane, Alex

http://www.unofficialbritain.com/enon-chapel-death-horror-and-dancing-in-victorian-london/

Fitzharris, Dr Lindsay

https://thechirurgeonsapprentice.com/2014/06/17/public-health-victorian-cemetery-reform/

Gibbon, Andrea,

https://writingcities.com/2015/04/08/the-deathly-surprise-on-portugal-street/ [5]

Jackson, Lee

http://blog.yalebooks.com/2014/10/31/dirty-old-london-graveyards/ [6]

Jackson, Lee

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/22/death-city-grisly-secrets-victorian-london-dead

Litten, Julian, ‘The English Way of Death, the Common Funeral since 1450’,1992 [3]

Valentine, Carla,

http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/enon-chapel-londons-victorian-golgotha

Find out where the secret burials of London are with Caitlin Doughty and Dr Lindsay Fitzharris:

 

Part Two: Thomas Edison: The Wizard of Menlo Park and his ‘spirit phone’

Tags

Edison's Diary, engineers, hoax, inventions, inventor, pact, Spirit phone, spiritual communication, Spiritualism, Thomas Edison, Walter Dinwiddie

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Click here to read Part One

A telephone line to the dead?

Thomas Edison with his phonograph. Source CNN.

“…I am now at work on the most sensitive apparatus I have ever undertaken to build, and I await the results with the keenest interest.”[13]

Many people believe that Edison was working on a device to contact the spirit world up until his own death in 1931. As to what the device was opinions differ. Edison never mentioned in any articles or in interviews that he was trying to create a ‘spirit phone’. The term ‘spirit phone’ was first devised in the 1940s and the term seems to have been applied to Edison’s experiment retrospectively. It may have been because for many people Edison’s name is intrinsically linked with the development and refinement of the telephone.

Whenever Edison does refer to a device, which would have the potential to contact the dead, in either an interview of in an essay he invariably described it as a valve and not a telephone. This valve he claimed would have to be so sensitive that it would respond to the very slightest movement and record and amplify the barest whisper of the life units.

A practical application

Some people claimed that Edison had said that he had made a pact with his engineer William Walter Dinwiddie that whoever died first would contact the other through the machine. Another story exists that Edison had stated that one of his employees who had been working on the device had died and that “he ought to be the first to use it if he is able to do so”[14]. For some these stories are all the proof they need for others it is an essay which appeared in 1933 in Modern Mechaix.

Thomas Edison in later life. Source [unknown].

The essay claims to depict an experiment which Edison undertook to try to contact the spirit world. This secret experiment was purported to have taken place in 1920 in Edison’s lab. The author also goes on to describe how Edison set up a beam projector and photoelectric receiver which were sensitive enough to register any movement across the beam. According to the paper, the experiment was a complete failure with the scientists sitting for hours waiting for something to happen[15].

It seems doubtful that the experiment ever took place as why did it take thirteen years for the article to be published and why was it only ever mentioned in one publication? Also the one man that could refute or confirm the article’s authenticity was no longer around.

A hoax on the world?

Thomas Edison – shining a light on the spirit world…or not? Source [unknown].

1920 Edison caused a media sensation when he told B.C. Forbes of American Magazine that he was working on a spiritual communication device. Other newspapers immediately jumped on the bandwagon and the story spread. The reaction to Edison’s statement was unprecedented. The editor of American Magazine received around 600 letters from members of the public. Gerald Falons, Museum Curator of Sound Recording at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park has grouped the letters under headings and summarised the content. The letters include offers of help with the design; people claiming that such a machine already existed; one man asking how to place a call once he had reached the afterlife (he apparently had not long to live); and people wondering whether they could purchase the machine early or would have to wait until it was in the shops. Some of the contents of the letters reveal panic among the newspaper’s readers such as those that thought that contacting the dead was going against religion whilst others were convinced that only evil spirits would answer. What is really interesting is that the most popular response was whole-hearted support for the machine’s creation and that three of these letters were from people from a science background who had been formally educated in the field. The furore that was caused is not surprising. Edison was a national hero, a man hailed as one of the most brilliant men to ever live and someone whom people trusted. It would never have occurred to the majority of people that Edison would have been teasing them or even worse deceiving them.

Edison in Scientific American. Source [?] on Pinterest.

A year later in an article in ‘The Scientific American’ Edison again referred to the subject stating that if personality survives death then it makes sense that those “… who leave the Earth would like to communicate with those they have left here…then, if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something.”[16] The article then went on to report that Edison had said that his apparatus was still in its experimental stage suggesting that he had already developed a prototype. The lack of details except for the fact that it was a valve does raise doubts about Edison’s research. Was it because Edison did not have a concrete idea on how to devise his instrument or did he simply want to keep his plans close to his chest or was it because he never had any intention of creating an instrument to communicate with ‘spirits’. The latter argument could be used to support Edison’s admission in an interview with the New York Times in 1926 that he had only said what he said to Forbes because “I really had nothing to tell him [Forbes], but I hated to disappoint him so I thought up this story about communicating with spirit is, but it was all a joke”.[17]

It seems strange that Edison would have made such a statement as a joke and let it fester for six years. If it was a prank was Edison really that bored or was it simply that he had been developing such a device but that it hadn’t worked. Is that why there are no pictures, plans or models or even a reference to the contraption in his diary? Or was it that Edison did invent a machine but could not get it to work and therefore embarrassed by his lack of success erased all evidence of his research, preferring instead to pretend it was said in jest rather than admit failure.

The missing evidence rediscovered?

For those who believe Edison did create or at least research the possibility of a ‘spirit communication device’ it is vital therefore to find some tangible evidence. In 1948 Edison’s book Diary and Sundry Observations detailing his research was published by the Edison Estate. It has often been cited that the last chapter comprising 80 or so pages detailing his spiritual investigation research were removed from the English version of the diary. In March 2015 an article published on the internet claimed that the French edition had been discovered with the missing pages intact. These pages were reprinted by Philippe Baudouin, a French radio presenter and philosopher in his book “Le Royaume de l’Au-dela” (The Kingdom of the Afterlife)[18]. Could these pages be authentic? I am not sure and I haven’t found any reviews yet on the book. I hope to read it soon but will have to wait until an English translation is available.

Edison’s Journal, to do list. Source Len Wilson website.

From beyond the grave: The last words

Years after Edison’s death, his ‘spirit phone’ was not forgotten. Despite the fact that Edison had little time for the work of mediums he seems to have on two separate occasions used their services. Participants at a séance in 1941 claimed that Edison had contacted them and told them that three of his assistants had the plans for his ‘spirit phone’. At another séance the participants reported that Edison had given instructions on how to improve the phone[19]. The thing which is strange is that if Edison was so successful at communicating through the mediums why was the ‘spirit phone’ even needed!

A deathbed confession?

Edison died at 9pm on the 18^th October 1931 at his home in New Jersey at the age of 84. He had been suffering from complications as a result of diabetes which had left him in a coma. Just before he passed away he awoke and said quietly to his wife, Mina “It is very beautiful over there”[20]. Was Edison dreaming or did he really see something? We will never know but it would be an ironic twist if this brilliant and unique man who had spent his life promoting science over the spiritual had at the very end changed his mind.

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So was Edison interested in creating a device to which would record the voices of the dead? In my opinion, yes it is more than likely he was. Did he build an instrument? He was an inventor, so again I think he probably did try. Did the device work? No, I am pretty sure it didn’t. Did Edison destroy his plans? Yes more than likely. Edison once said “A good idea is never lost. Even though its originator or possessor may die without publicizing it, it will someday be reborn in the mind of another”[21]. Edison was right! Ever since he made his announcement which astonished and frightened the world, people have been trying to create devices which can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the existence of the spirit world. Will anyone ever succeed? Maybe. Possibly a more pertinent question is, if they do succeed will they ever be believed?

A modern day Spirit Box, used by many paranormal investigators to attempt to contact the spirit world. Source Ghost Hunt Now website.

Biography

The Biography of Thomas Edison, http://www.thomasedison.com/biography.html

Thomas Edison, http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/thomas-edison

Thomas Edison, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

The religious and political views of Thomas Edison http://hollowverse.com/thomas-edison/

Thomas Edison, http://www.history.co.uk/biographies/thomas-edison

Thomas Edison’s Telephone to the Afterlife  http://institute4learning.com/blog/2012/08/21/thomas-edisons-telephone-to-the-afterlife/

Thomas Edison and His Mysterious Telephone to the Dead, http://itcvoices.org/thomas-edisons-telephone-to-the-dead-myth-or-fact/

Edison and the Ghost Machine, http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostaudiovideo/a/edison-ghost-machine.htm

Thomas Edison and the Ghost in the Machine, ww.paranormal-encyclopedia.com/e/thomas-edison/

How Thomas Edison Pranked the 1920s With His “Dead People” Phone http://gizmodo.com/5676604/how-thomas-edison-pranked-the-1920s-with-his-dead-people-phone

Inventions by Thomas Edison (That You’ve Never Heard Of), http://science.howstuffworks.com/10-inventions-thomas-edison10.htm

Edison’s ‘Lost’ Idea: A Device to Hear the Dead, http://www.seeker.com/edisons-lost-idea-a-device-to-hear-the-dead-1769577566.html

Edison’s Lost Plan To Record Voices Of Dead, http://news.sky.com/story/edisons-lost-plan-to-record-voices-of-dead-10368974

Edison’s forgotten ‘invention’: A phone that calls the dead http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/27212/Edison-invention-calls-dead

Notes

[13] Edison and the Ghost Machine, http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostaudiovideo/a/edison-ghost-machine.htm

[14] Edison and the Ghost Machine, http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostaudiovideo/a/edison-ghost-machine.htm

[15] Thomas Edison and His Mysterious Telephone to the Dead, http://itcvoices.org/thomas-edisons-telephone-to-the-dead-myth-or-fact/

[16] Thomas Edison’s Telephone to the Afterlife  http://institute4learning.com/blog/2012/08/21/thomas-edisons-telephone-to-the-afterlife/

[17] ibid

[18] Edison’s Lost Plan To Record Voices Of Dead, http://news.sky.com/story/edisons-lost-plan-to-record-voices-of-dead-10368974

[19] Inventions by Thomas Edison (That You’ve Never Heard Of), http://science.howstuffworks.com/10-inventions-thomas-edison10.htm

[20] The Biography of Thomas Edison, http://www.thomasedison.com/biography.html

[21]The Biography of Thomas Edison, http://www.thomasedison.com/biography.html

Part One: Thomas Edison: The Wizard of Menlo Park and his ‘spirit phone’

Tags

Burt Reese, ghost telephone, invention, inventor, Life Units, Mediums, Menlow Park, science, Spirit communication, Spirit phone, Spiritualism, taking to the dead, Thomas Edison

‘Addle-brained’ young Thomas Edison. Source Wikipedia. Public domain.

This is the first part of a two-part post by Miss Jessel, looking at the extraordinary Thomas Edison (1847-1931), inventor and freethinker.  Famous for developing everything from the phonograph to the light bulb, he was also instrumental in bringing a scientific approach to the investigation of the spirit world. Lenora.

Thomas Edison was born on the 11^th February in 1847 in Milan in Ohio, America. When he was seven his teacher described him as ‘addled-brained’ because of his constant questions and so a decision was taken to home school him. Edison’s mother believed her son’s unusual demeanour and appearance were due to his extraordinary intelligence. The lack of formal education meant that Edison was able to develop his own approach to learning which included the importance of practical applications to test scientific theories.

A turning point in Edison’s life was when at the age of 14 he saved the 3-year-old son of a station master from being killed on the railway tracks by an oncoming box car. As a thank you the station master taught Edison morse code and the workings of the telegraph and as a result Edison began a career as a telegraph operator.

Edison’s experiments on improving the telegraph system and the use of electricity formed the basis of all his later inventions. In his life Edison registered 1093 patents either singly or jointly. His most famous inventions included the first practical electric lightbulb; dictaphone; memeograph; fluoroscopy; alkaline storage battery; and motion picture camera, the kinetoscope. Edison also set up the first industrial research lab at Menlo Park in New Jersey in 1876. The success of Edison’s research and inventions led him to be dubbed ‘the father of the electrical age’, ‘the greatest inventor who ever lived’ and my personal favourite ‘The Wizard of Menlo Park’[1].

Replica of the Menlo Park Lab. Source Andrew Balet via Wikimedia.

Probably the most controversial of Edison’s inventions is a device which many believe he never invented and others that the plans and models of were destroyed. This invention was an instrument which could communicate with the souls of the dead.

Atheist, Free-thinker or Deist

Edison has been labelled at different times and depending on the sympathies of the author either an atheist, free-thinker or deist.

Thomas Edison c1922. Source Wikimedia.

On being accused of atheism, Edison replied that he had never made such as a denial but that “what you call god I call nature, the supreme intelligence that rules matter”[2]. Although Edison is often described as a free-thinker he seems to have shared a very similar viewpoint to Thomas Paine who in his book ‘The Age of Reason’ expresses his opposition to institutionalized religions and the Bible. Edison’s belief in deism and the idea that although a creator existed beyond that it was only the laws of nature that ruled the world, is clear when he stated “I do not believe in the god of theologians, but that there is a supreme intelligence I do not doubt”[3].

A New Sixth Sense

A story is told about Edison’s first introduction to someone who claimed to be a clairvoyant. A stranger came to Edison’s lab and asked to see him. Edison was a little concerned about the man and so asked his assistant to come into the room. The man asked the assistant to write down a number of names which he then proceeded to repeat perfectly without looking at the paper. Edison then wanted to test the man’s ability and asked if he could write down a question. The man agreed. His response was ‘No, there is nothing better’. The question was whether there was anything better for a storage battery than nickel hydroxide. The man then left and Edison never saw him again[4].

Burt Reese 1851 -1926, Medium. Source Wikimedia.

This event may have been why Edison was so keen to test the famous medium Dr Bert Reese. Reese’s ‘divination method’ involved asking members of his audience to write names on pieces of paper which he would then roll up into small balls and rub on his forehead. He would then ‘read’ the paper with his mind. His accuracy amazed people as he would reel off the names correctly. Reese was revealed to be a charlatan by Harry Houdini at a séance but Edison was firmly convinced that Reese was genuine since he himself had never seen any evidence of Reese cheating[5].

These two experiences convinced Edison that clairvoyance was not due to some form of magical power but was proof of a new sensory ability which anyone could develop. It may have also confirmed and cemented Edison’s standpoint that the afterlife could also be deciphered by science.

Spiritualism vs Science

“I believe that if we are to make any real progress in psychic investigation we must do it with scientific apparatus and in a scientific manner, just as we do in medicine, electricity, chemistry, and other fields.”[6]

The Victorian era was the age of invention. Ideas that would have been seen as impossible a few decades earlier were now becoming a reality. Science was disproving many long-held beliefs. This new reality left some people uncomfortable and frightened. The desire to reconcile religion and science was one of the reasons for the rise of spiritualism. Some scientists felt that by scientifically proving that spirits and the afterlife existed they could then justify why so many people felt the need for religion.

Séance, 1872. Source Wikimedia.

Although Edison himself had no tolerance for people who believed in an afterlife or in the supernatural, “Because we are as yet unable to understand it, we call it immortal. It is the ignorant, lazy man’s refuge. There are plenty of savages, you know, who still call fire immortal”[7] it would have been strange for someone with his questioning personality if he had not got caught up in the spiritualism debate. Therefore it makes sense that Edison would have wanted to find answers using technology and if they exist give ‘spirits’ a better opportunity “to express themselves than the tilting tables and raps and Ouija boards and mediums and the other crude methods now purported to be the only means of communication.” [8]

Edison was first and foremost a scientist and so it is impossible to think that he would have ever conceived of the spirit or soul in the same way theologians or spiritualists did. There is evidence to prove that he was in contact with other like-minded scientists such as the British inventor, Sir William Crookes who claimed to have captured spirit images on photographs but what Edison always demanded was “Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact.”[9] It may have been this need for proof which was behind him thinking about building a device which could allow the souls of the dead to communicate.

If Edison did try to create such a device, the ‘spirits’ which he would have envisaged would not have been what spiritualists and religions refer to as shades, ghosts, phantoms or manifestations but a very scientific version i.e. what Edison called life units[10].

Swarms of life units

Edison’s idea of how life existed was quite unusual. He thought that animate objects were made up of extremely tiny particles which he called life units. These life units were even smaller than electrons and had yet to be officially discovered. Edison’s theory was based on the scientific concept that energy was interchangeable and that the energy which made up all lifeforms could not be created or destroyed. Therefore when an animate object died these life units broke up into their respective individual units, left their human vessel, created swarms and joined another form[11].

Since these life units made up all human functions they would also naturally make up the Broca’s Area of the brain which Edison believed wrongly was responsible for both personality and memory. Therefore as life units could not be destroyed, a person’s memory and personality would continue to exist after death[12].

It was these life units that Edison if he did create an instrument would have tried to contact.

Swarms of life units… Original Image by Bin im Garten via Wikimedia. Altered by Lenora.

In part two, Miss Jessel will look at whether Edison’s spirit phone was ever created, and evaluate the evidence as to whether Edison’s alleged invention was genuine or a hoax.  Click here to read Part Two.

biography

The Biography of Thomas Edison, http://www.thomasedison.com/biography.html

Thomas Edison, http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/thomas-edison

Thomas Edison, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

The religious and political views of Thomas Edison http://hollowverse.com/thomas-edison/

Thomas Edison, http://www.history.co.uk/biographies/thomas-edison

Thomas Edison’s Telephone to the Afterlife  http://institute4learning.com/blog/2012/08/21/thomas-edisons-telephone-to-the-afterlife/

Thomas Edison and His Mysterious Telephone to the Dead, http://itcvoices.org/thomas-edisons-telephone-to-the-dead-myth-or-fact/

Edison and the Ghost Machine, http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostaudiovideo/a/edison-ghost-machine.htm

Thomas Edison and the Ghost in the Machine, ww.paranormal-encyclopedia.com/e/thomas-edison/

How Thomas Edison Pranked the 1920s With His “Dead People” Phone http://gizmodo.com/5676604/how-thomas-edison-pranked-the-1920s-with-his-dead-people-phone

Inventions by Thomas Edison (That You’ve Never Heard Of), http://science.howstuffworks.com/10-inventions-thomas-edison10.htm

Edison’s ‘Lost’ Idea: A Device to Hear the Dead, http://www.seeker.com/edisons-lost-idea-a-device-to-hear-the-dead-1769577566.html

Edison’s Lost Plan To Record Voices Of Dead, http://news.sky.com/story/edisons-lost-plan-to-record-voices-of-dead-10368974

Edison’s forgotten ‘invention’: A phone that calls the dead http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/27212/Edison-invention-calls-dead

Notes

[1] The Biography of Thomas Edison, http://www.thomasedison.com/biography.html

[2] Thomas Edison, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

[3] Thomas Edison, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

[4] Thomas Edison and the Ghost in the Machine, ww.paranormal-encyclopedia.com/e/thomas-edison/

[5] Thomas Edison and the Ghost in the Machine, ww.paranormal-encyclopedia.com/e/thomas-edison/

[6] Edison and the Ghost Machine, http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostaudiovideo/a/edison-ghost-machine.htm

[7] The religious and political views of Thomas Edison http://hollowverse.com/thomas-edison/

[8] Edison and the Ghost Machine, http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostaudiovideo/a/edison-ghost-machine.htm

[9] The religious and political views of Thomas Edison http://hollowverse.com/thomas-edison/

[10] Thomas Edison and His Mysterious Telephone to the Dead, http://itcvoices.org/thomas-edisons-telephone-to-the-dead-myth-or-fact/

[11] Thomas Edison and His Mysterious Telephone to the Dead, http://itcvoices.org/thomas-edisons-telephone-to-the-dead-myth-or-fact/

[12] Thomas Edison and His Mysterious Telephone to the Dead, http://itcvoices.org/thomas-edisons-telephone-to-the-dead-myth-or-fact/

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]

 

 

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

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

Highgate Cemetery, Part Two: A Walk Amongst the Dead

Tags

Highgate Cemetery, Highgate Vampire, London Cemeteries, Victorian Cemeteries, Victorian Death

The Victorian Way of death

Pathway amidst the graves

It was a crisp March day when I found myself making may way down Swains Lane, the lane that cuts through West and East Cemeteries.  I had always wanted to visit Highgate Cemetery, it features in so many of my favorite old horror films such as Tales from the Crypt and From Beyond the Grave (and always appears in my imagination accompanied by an overblown 1970’s horror soundtrack and maybe the odd scream as well…)

You would be unwise to wonder around Highgate Cemetery alone, many of the graves and monuments are fragile and a wrong step off the path could lead the unwary to spending some time up close and personal with a cadaver in a lead-lined vault that could be up to 30 feet deep. The cemetery is vast and has many secluded spots so rescue, should it even come, could be slow indeed….

Don’t be put off by taking a guided tour, touristy it might be, but it is also informative and the cemetery doesn’t lose any of its magic, especially if the group isn’t too large.  The guides are knowledgeable about the famous and not so famous persons buried here, and can help decode the Victorian language of death which written all over their tombstones if you have eyes to see it.  You only have to look at some of the more morbid Victorian paintings (dead shepherds, pining loyal hounds etc) or remember that they often had one last family photo taken with the dearly departed, to know that their attitude to death was very different from our own.

The Circle of Lebanon

One of the first things that struck me about the cemetery was how different it was to modern cemeteries.  Now gravestones are in formal rows, with standardised inscriptions – compared to Victorian exuberance (all weeping angels, obelisks and broken columns) – our way of death seems clinical and regimented.  In a modern cemetery you would never get such a tragic description as that of Emma Wallace Gray who died in 1854 at the age of nineteen “From the effects of her dress having caught fire”.  Her inscription reads thus:

In bloom of youth, when others fondly cling
To life, I prayed, mid agonies for death
The only pang my bleeding heard endur’d
Was, thus so early doomed to leave behind on
Earth those whom I so dearly lov’d.

The architecture too is something you would never find in a modern cemetery, the

Entrance to the Egyptian Avenue

picturesque chaos of the tombstones and mossy angels hidden amongst the trees all overgrown with grasses and wild flowers.  And the monumental grandiose mausoleums; the eerie circle of Lebanon with its use of the natural landscape – the mausoleum is crowned by a Cedar of Lebanon; the austere Terrace of Catacombs cut into the hillside; and of course the fabulous Egyptian Avenue (and the Egyptians knew a thing or two about death).  Walking through the dramatic gateway into the dank alley’s of the Avenue I truly felt like I was walking into another world – a city of the dead.

Highgate and the Macabre

Elizabeth Siddal –
public domain image via Wikimedia Commons

No Victorian cemetery would be complete without some macabre tales, and the one that stuck me most was that of Elizabeth Siddall.  Elizabeth was the beautiful wife and muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the foremost Pre-Raphaelite painters, and herself a talented artist.  Elizabeth died tragically young, only 32, possibly as a result of addiction and depression.  She was buried in 1862 by a grief-stricken Dante Gabriel who tenderly placed a sheaf of manuscript poems by her cheek – how romantic.   But Elizabeth was not to rest in peace for long.  In 1869 Dante Gabriel must have been feeling considerably less grief-stricken and romantic because he ordered her exhumation in order that he could retrieve his manuscript….Hmm.

The Highgate Vampire

The Ham and High Gazette from March 1970

One thing that the tour did not mention was the legend of the Highgate Vampire.  This legend seems to have begun sometime in the late 1960’s, the cemetery was neglected and overgrown and attracted not only vandals but those interested in the occult.  There appears to have been some reports of strange goings on the cemetery and in Swains Lane: reports of dead foxes and of a tall dark figure with burning red eyes (Christopher Lee – I wonder?) scaring dog walkers and generally lurking in a sinister way.

In 1970 an occultist called David Farrant contacted the local newspaper the Ham and High Express and the legend was born…further sightings were recorded (although accounts often varied) and it was proclaimed by Farrant that the figure had Vampiric characteristics and that he and the British Occult Society that he was part of would exorcise it.  Another flamboyant figure, Sean Manchester, appeared at about this time.  The ‘Bishop of Glastonbury’*[please refer to comments section for more information] soon became a rival vampire hunter and a bitter enemy of Farrant (so much so that the best ‘hammer horror’ tradition he is alleged to have challenged his nemesis to a magical duel).

Whatever the truth of the legend, the impact was devastating. On the night of the ‘vampire hunt’ hundreds of ‘vampire hunters’ (many valiantly armed with cans of beer), stormed the police cordon around the cemetery and began basically trashing the place. Needless to say no vampire was found.

During the whole Highgate Vampire frenzy not only were monuments damaged but vaults were broken into, corpses attacked and even beheaded.  One gruesome story is that a local resident found a headless corpse sitting behind the steering wheel of his car.  This might sound funny, but really, it’s not, these desecrated corpses were not vampires or demons, just  ordinary people who had hoped to rest in peace.  Perhaps the real vampires of Highgate were Farrant and Manchester who fed off the media hype they  created.

A modern tragedy

Burials are still carried out in the Cemetery, and one of the modern interments the tour visited was that of Alexander Litvinenko the Russian exile and spy buried in 2006.  Litvinenko was poisoned using Polonium after taking tea with two of his Russian contacts, he died from the effects of the posion. I still remember the news footage showing him fighting for his life in his hospital bed.  He is buried here because the Victorian vaults are lead lined and therefore radiation proof.

His  story reminded me that everyone buried in Highgate, however long ago, was once a living breathing individual with their own personal story.  And that one day, despite our iphones and our apps we will all be dust just like them.

Epilogue

My final thoughts on Highgate Cemetery are best summed up by one if its famous incumbents, Christina Rossetti the poet.

Song

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Sources

http://lizziesiddal.com/portal/

http://www.highgate-cemetery.org/index.php/home

http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/greater-london/hauntings/the-highgate-vampire-how-it-all-began-by-david-farrant.html

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19647226

http://brinkofnada.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/highgate-vampire.html