Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented

CHAPTER XX.

CREMATION AS A PREVENTIVE OF PREMATURE BURIAL.

SUGGESTIONS FOR PREVENTION.

SIR HENRY THOMPSON’S OPINION.

Amongst the numerous suggestions made by correspondents in the press with a view of preventing live sepulture, none has been more frequently put forward than that of cremation. Sir Henry Thompson, the president of the Cremation Society of England, in the second edition of his admirable volume, “Modern Cremation: Its History and Practice,” p. 41, observes:—“There is a source of very painful dread—as I have reason to know—little talked of, it is true, but keenly felt by many persons at some time or another, the horror of which to some is inexpressible. It is the dread of a premature burial—the fear lest some deep trance should be mistaken for death, and that the awakening should take place too late. Happily such occurrences must be exceedingly rare, especially in this country, where the interval between death and burial is considerable, and the fear is almost a groundless one. Still, the conviction that such a fate is possible—which cannot be altogether denied—will always be a source of severe trial to some. With cremation no such catastrophe could ever occur; and the completeness of a properly-conducted process would render death instantaneous and painless if by any unhappy chance an individual so circumstanced were submitted to it. But the guarantee against this danger would be doubled, since inspection of the entire body must of necessity immediately precede the act of cremation, no such inspection being possible under the present system.” While agreeing with this distinguished authority as to the advantages of cremation from the sanitary and Æsthetic point of view, which he dwells upon in the treatise referred to, and admitting that a certain amount of protection against live burial is obtainable by means of the dual medical inspection, we cannot agree that this protection is absolute. Cases of trance are on record where some half a dozen doctors, after careful examinations, have pronounced a cataleptic patient to be dead, and the patient, in defiance of their united opinion, has recovered consciousness, and been restored to health.

Dr. Franz Hartmann, in his “Premature Burial,” quotes the two following cases amongst many others:—

“Madame de P——, aged eighteen years, and subject to hysteria, apparently died, and for forty hours she presented all the signs of real death. All possible means of restoring her to life were taken, but proved of no avail. Five physicians of Lyons were called in, and they finally agreed, positively, that the lady was really dead. The funeral preparations were made; but owing to the supplications of a sister of the deceased the burial was delayed, when after a while the patient recovered. She said that she had been all the time aware of all that was going on, without being able to give a sign, and without even being desirous of attempting it.” (F. Kempner, p. 38.)

“In 1842 a remarkable affair occupied the attention of the court at the city of Nantes. A man apparently died, and his death was certified to both by the attending physicians and the medical inspector; he was put into a coffin, and the religious ceremonies were performed in good style. At the end of the funeral service, and as he was about to be buried, he awoke from his trance. The clergy and the undertakers sent in their accounts for the funeral expenses; but he refused to pay them, giving as his reason that he had not ordered them; whereupon he was sued for the money.” (F. Kempner, p. 39.)

Neither can we share the optimistic views of Sir Henry Thompson as to the rarity of premature interment. The results of searching and independent inquiries and study in various countries by each of the authors of this treatise all point the other way, and the various authorities whose names and opinions are cited elsewhere in this volume confess their astonishment at the number of cases brought to light during their investigations. The Rev. H. R. Haweis also, in his work “Ashes to Ashes: A Cremation Prelude” (London, 1895, now out of print), advocates cremation on the ground of preventing living burial, and quotes several cases of persons buried while in a state of trance. During a discussion on the merits and demerits of cremation in the Birmingham Gazette, September 17, 1895, Lieutenant-General Phelps, an able and judicious observer, advocated cremation for similar reasons, and said that “the use of a crematorium would entirely prevent that ghastly accident, the burial of the living. There is no room to doubt that this frightful catastrophe is of continual occurrence. The phenomena of trance are little understood, and a certificate of death is held by most of us to justify the burial of the ‘corpse,’ dead or alive. Those of us who object to the risk of being buried alive should do all in our power to promote the success of this sanitary contrivance for disposing of our dead.”

The writer of the following communication, which appeared in the Sunday Times, September 6, 1896, has substantial reasons for preferring cremation to the risks of burial:—

“BURIAL DANGER AND ITS PREVENTION.

COMMUNICATION TO THE “SUNDAY TIMES.”

“Madam,—When I was about five years old, my paternal home was one day plunged into a state of great consternation, through the sudden apparent death of my father, who had been sitting up during a part of the previous night occupied with some literary work, without a fire (it was in January), which brought on a death-like numbness, in which he was found the next morning. The family doctor, who was sent for at once, declared life to be extinct, but said he could not tell the cause of death until after the opening of the dead body. My mother, however, who did not see any reason why a young man of thirty-six should have died without any previous illness, caused the body of my father to be rubbed for about two hours, which renewed its circulation and brought it to life again. My father lived thirty-two years after that memorable day. Without the prudence of my mother, he would either have been dissected or buried alive. About twenty years after that occurrence, I visited the cemetery of PÈre La Chaise (Paris), accompanied by some friends. While inspecting the monuments of some musical celebrities we heard a noise from another part of the cemetery, whereto we proceeded without delay. When we had arrived there we found a strong body of policemen surrounding an open grave. But in answer to our inquiring ‘what had happened,’ we were simply requested to leave the cemetery at once, which, of course, we had to do. Neither the portier nor any other person connected with the burial-ground would give any satisfactory answer to our questions. We left puzzled. But a week after, a young lady, who had been of our party the week before, went again to the PÈre La Chaise, determined to penetrate the mystery, in which endeavour she succeeded, partly through persuasion and partly through the gift of a twenty-franc piece to a grave-digger, who then told her the following story:—A poor young man of twenty-one years had been buried on the day of our visit. When the mourners had left the cemetery the grave-digger, who was occupied in filling up the grave, heard some noise coming from below. He hastened to the superintendent of the cemetery, imploring him to have the coffin opened, which, however, the superintendent could not do without the permission and the presence of the Commissaire de Police of that district. When the Commissaire appeared at last with his men, all was silent in the grave. But he had the coffin opened, nevertheless, ‘to appease the mind of that poor grave-digger,’ as he mockingly said. But great was the horror of the Commissaire de Police and his followers when the coffin was opened. The unfortunate young man (who was now quite dead) had been buried alive, recovered consciousness in his grave, scratched his face, bitten off the tips of his fingers, and turned around in his coffin, until suffocation put an end to his sufferings, which, if not long, must have been terrible. The Parisian newspapers did not mention the case. They were probably forbidden by the French Government to do so. But would it not have been wiser to let the whole world know of it, and thereby prevent repetitions of such dreadful occurrences? A similar case of live sepulture occurred in a village near Wiesbaden some thirty years ago, where a girl of sixteen was found with the same signs of suffocation in her coffin as those of that unfortunate young man in Paris. We are assured by a German authority that thousands of people are buried alive every year. But why should this be the case? If people must be buried before they begin to show signs of putrefaction (which seems to be the only reliable proof that life is really extinct), why not shorten their sufferings, in case of resuscitation, by opening an artery before they are buried? There is still much prejudice against the cremation of dead bodies, although two great facts are decidedly in its favour—viz., the impossibility of recovering consciousness when once inserted in the crematory oven, and the prevention of the unhealthiness which the slow process of putrefaction must entail.—Yours, etc.,

“J. H. BONAWITZ.

“London.”

Professor Alexander Wilder, M.D., in his “Perils of Premature Burial,” 1895, p. 16, says:—“I have often wished that the old Oriental practice of cremation was in fashion among us. There would then be at least the comfortable reflection of no liability to suffocation in a coffin. The application of fire, however, will generally rouse the cataleptic person to some manifestation of life.”

CREMATION SOCIETY OF ENGLAND.

Having regard to the importance of the subject the author wrote to the hon. secretary of the Cremation Society of England, and received the following reply, dated 8 New Cavendish Street, London, W.:—

“With reference to your inquiry as to the steps adopted to prevent a person in a trance being cremated, I may say that this society has not made any special provision in that respect. You will notice, however, that before a cremation can be carried out, the cause of death must be certified without the slightest shadow of doubt by two duly qualified medical men. This being so, I think there is less likelihood of a person who is simply in a trance being cremated than buried, one doctor’s certificate being sufficient in the latter case.

“(Signed)——————T. C. Swinburne-Hanham.”

In the present state of medical knowledge on an occult subject not usually taught in the medical schools, and regarding phenomena as to which a large number of medical men are sceptical, to say the least, we fail to see how the fact of death, in the absence of putrefaction, can be certified “beyond the slightest shadow of doubt.” Many of the cases cited in this volume are those regarding which the examining medical practitioners have been most sure. The Rev. John Page Hopps, in Light, July 4, 1896, says:—

“We are told that respect for the dead urges to burial as against cremation, but many are now very keenly feeling the reverse of this. They can bring the mind to bear the liberation of the body by one swift act of disintegration and purifying, but cannot overcome the shrinking from subjecting it to the foul and lingering processes of the grave—or, perchance, to the horror of recovering consciousness in the grave.”

We take the occasion, however, to express on general grounds our cordial adherence to the cremation movement. Mr. Hopps further states one of the strongest arguments thus:—

“Respect for the living, too, is an urgent motive. The highest authorities tell us that the air we breathe and the water we drink are often contaminated by the emanations of graves. It cannot be right that London, for instance, with all its inevitable impurities, should add to its foulnesses that of trying to live in company with thousands upon thousands of decaying bodies in its very midst.”

To dispose of the dead decently, and at the same time without injury to the living, is one of the first obligations of civilised communities, and cremation seems best calculated to fulfil the conditions. Zymotic diseases, such as typhus, scarlatina, and the plague, have been traced in certain instances to emanations from burial-grounds.

Dr. Charles Creighton, in his “History of Epidemics in Britain,” vol. i., p. 336, says:—“The grand provocative of plague was no obvious nuisance above ground, but the loading of the soil, generation after generation, with an immense quantity of cadaveric matters, which were diffused in the pores of the ground under the feet of the living, to rise in emanations more deadly in one season than in another.”

It would seem from these experiences as though there was quite as much truth as poetry in Shakespeare when he said, “Grave-yards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion on the world.” Before many years it is not unlikely that cremation in this as in some other countries will be made obligatory in cases of death from all infectious diseases. As the late Bishop of Manchester observed, “The earth is not for the dead, but for the living.” During the thirteen years ending 1890 there were three hundred and three thousand four hundred and sixty-six deaths from cholera in Japan, and all the bodies of these persons were cremated. In India, as we have already shown, cremation is practised under most of the religious systems, as it is believed that the soul is not free from its earthly tenement until the body is reduced to ashes. The method of burning is slow and cumbersome as compared with that adopted in Europe; but during the author’s last visit to Ceylon, in the early part of the present year (1896), there was some talk of establishing a crematorium.

THE LONDON BURIAL-GROUNDS.

In “The London Burial-Grounds,” by Mrs. Basil Holmes, 1896, p. 269, the question is asked:—“Are we ever to allow England to be divided like a chess-board into towns and burial-places? What we have to consider is how to dispose of the dead without taking so much valuable space from the living. In the metropolitan area alone we have almost filled (and in some places over-filled) twenty-four new cemeteries within sixty years, with an area of above six hundred acres; and this is as nothing compared with the huge extent of land used for interments just outside the limits of the metropolis. If the cemeteries are not to extend indefinitely they must in time be built upon, or they must be used for burial over and over again, or the ground must revert to its original state as agricultural land, or we must turn our parks and commons into cemeteries, and let our cemeteries be our only recreation grounds, which heaven forbid!”

According to Dr. Ebenezer Duncan eight thousand bodies are buried yearly in Glasgow and its neighbourhood, poisoning both air and water, and endangering the public health. The same state of things has existed in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and other large towns. The following resolution was unanimously adopted in the Preventive Medicine Department of a Health Congress, Glasgow, in July, 1896:—

“That in the opinion of this Congress cremation of the dead, especially in cases of infectious disease, is a natural and very desirable hygienic process, and that this Congress of the British Institute of Public Health use all proper means to urge upon the Government the desirability of their promoting a measure to enable sanitary authorities, if they so desire, to build crematoria and to conduct them under proper superintendence.”

It must be allowed, however, that cremation, in spite of its obvious advantages, is not one of those movements which advance by leaps and bounds. The recent annual report of the Cremation Society of England states that during the last year there were two hundred and eight cremations in the United Kingdom—viz., one hundred and fifty at Woking, and fifty-eight at Manchester. Crematoria have recently been established at Glasgow and Liverpool.

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