Year: 1875

the results-N. b. Homestead.


-<s -


Not Buried Alive.
A FEW days ago l read in Boston
daily paper a fearful account of the
burial of a woman alive at Westfield,
Mass. The description said that "the
lady was buried year and a half ago,
and was recently exhumed for burial in
another lot. Some persons present had
the curiosity to open the coffin, and dis
covered to their horror that the corpse
was turned over, and the hands of the
dead woman were clutched into the hair
of her head, while her burial clothing
was torn to shreds in many places.
There would seem to be little doubt that
she was buried alive, and that she met
horrible death in her grave"


have seen so many of these or very
similar statements, all of which have
proved, on inquiry, to be fictitious, wick
ed fabricatiot1s that | took the trouble to
cut the account from the paper and to
send it by mail to gentleman in West
field, asking him if the facts are as there
in stated.


The return of mail brought me letter
from him, saying that the account is
sheer fabrication; not particle of truth
in it except that the lady was buried
year or two ago. All the rest is mere
invention to make a sensational para
graph. A graceless scamp wrote the ac-
count and published it in village paper,
from which it found its way into the
city papers. 1t was Immediately denied
in the Westtield NelosIetter, which also
stated that the lady who was said to
have been buried alive was made the
subject of a post naOTtem examination,
was then inferred and has not been dis
turbed since. The whole community is
so thoroughly indignant at the author of
the hoax that it is said if che ever per-
petrates another such outrage upon the
feelings of this community he need Dor.
row no trouble about turning over in his
coffin after he is put under ground, for
he will be thoroughly dead before his
burial"


But in not one of the many papers in
which the original lie was published
have seen the denial, and hundreds of
thousands of people will believe, as
long as they live, that in the year 1874 a
woman was accidentally buried alive in
Westfield, Mass. Twenty and thirty
years hence it win be quoted as one of
the instances of premature burial which
shock the scnsibilities of the timid and
nervous.


Again and again l have taken pains to
ascertain the truth of stories of this
kind, and in no one case, in thirty-tive
years of constant watchfulness of the
press, have l learned that there was
particle of truth in the report. And, if
the opinion of an expert in news is worth
anything, have no hesitation in saying
that do not believe there is any authen-
ticated case on record, in this country,
of person having been accidentally
buried while yet alive.


In times of great epidemiCs, when the
dead are buried into ready-made graves,
it may be possible that inevitable death
has been anticipated by mistaking for it
the coma that precedes it But even
those cases must be very rare, and they
are never discovered. But in the or
dinary course of civilized and Christian
experience, where the decent customs of
society are observed, the probability of a
person being buried alive is not as one to
millions.


In many places on the continent of
Europe there has existed in years past,
and doubtless the practice is notyet aban-
doncd, of depositing all the dead in a
house of waiting, adjoining the GENE.
terry, where, by simple process, test of
life is applied. One of the houses for
this purpose was in use at Weimar when
l was there in 1858. 1t was closed when
| / applied for admission and was obliged
| to be content with looking through a
glass window into the royal tomb, a
chamber or vault, in which was the
| body of the Grand Duke in the center,
| in his coffin, while in one corner were the
coffins and bodies of the poets Goethe
and Schiller. The Grand Duke had or
dered that the poets should be laid one
on each side of him in this comfortable
bed-chamber, but royal etiquette forbade
that such inferior clay as poets are made
of should sleep by the side of King,
and so they were put into corner, while
the Grand Duke lies cold and alone in
the middle.


At Halle, where everything seemed to
be dead, though it has its university with
more than thousand students, and its
Orphan House of Frdnke with more than
1000 children, l went to the cemetery
where is the grave of Gesenius, and there
found house with the simple apparatus
for testing the presence of life in death
In one room was a little couch for the
body to Tepose on, with all the comforts
of an invalid chamber. On each finger
of the person is placed a thimble, anC
from each thimble extends thread t
one that passes into an adjoining room
and fastened to a delicately-adjusted bell
Here sits or lies an attendant, in whosC
ear this bell will tinkle if one of the fin
gers of the body in the other room stir
ever so gently. About seventy persons
every year are thus testdd, and the sex
ton told me that not even tradition tell
Of one person thus tested ever being
found alive in Halle.


1t is obvious that the habit of using
such test tends to the neglect of som'
of those precautions which affection anC
humanity always dictate elsewhere. Ant


as they fail to find any of the livinl


among the dead by the tests we ma


well believe that the burial of the livin
is about as unlikely in our country a


that leopard should change his spots o
an Ethiopian his skin. .-Ireneus, in Me-


York Observer.


n IL. H.. 4,