page_title: Premature burial
section_title: Attempts at prevention
hierarchical_section_title: Premature burial / Types / Unintentional / Attempts at prevention
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of a burial vault built circa 1890 to protect against premature burial. Caption said: "Premature burial is impossible when this vault is used. A person could live for hours in one of the compartments, or, at any rate, long enough to open the cover by turning the handwheel"
context_page_description: Premature burial, also known as live burial, burial alive, or vivisepulture, means to be buried while still alive.
  Animals or humans may be buried alive accidentally on the mistaken assumption that they are dead, or intentionally as a form of torture, murder, or execution. It may also occur with consent of the victim as a part of a stunt, with the intention to escape.
  Fear of being buried alive is reported to be among the most common phobias.
context_section_description: According to the history of Nicephorus and perhaps because of the legend of Zeno's premature entombment, or perhaps for other reasons, the Proconnesian marble sarcophagus of the 7th-century emperor Heraclius was left open, on his own instructions, for three days after his interment in the Church of the Holy Apostles's Mausoleum of Justinian.
  Robert Robinson died in Manchester in 1791. A movable glass pane was inserted in his coffin, and the mausoleum had a door for purposes of inspection by a watchman, who was to see if he breathed on the glass. He instructed his relatives to visit his grave periodically to check that he was actually dead.
  Safety coffins were devised to prevent premature burial, although there is no evidence that any have ever been successfully used to save an accidentally buried person. On 5 December 1882, J. G. Krichbaum received U.S. Patent 268,693 for his "Device For Life In Buried Persons". It consisted of a movable periscope-like pipe which provided air and, when rotated or pushed by the person interred, indicated to passersby that someone was buried alive. The patent text refers to "that class of devices for indicating life in buried persons", suggesting that such inventions were common at the time.
  In 1890, a family designed and built a burial vault at the Wildwood Cemetery in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, with an internal hatch to allow the victim of accidental premature burial to escape. The vault had an air supply and was lined in felt to protect a panic-stricken victim from self-inflicted injury before the escape. Bodies were to be removed from the casket before interment.
  The London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial was co-founded in 1896 by William Tebb and Walter Hadwen.
caption: A burial vault built c. 1890 with internal escape hatches to allow the victim of accidental premature burial to escape.
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