Taphophobia, Vivisepulture, and Safety Coffins

                                http://bookswelove.net/authorsw/stover-mystery-romance


         a Hood Canal Mystery           a Tacoma, Washington Mystery   a historical romance/mysery

                                                                 BY KARLA STOVER

Vivisepulture is the act of being buried alive.  Taphrophobia is fear of that act, and safety coffins were just that--burial cases designed to prevent the prematurely-declared dead from being prematurely buried. Something of which the Victorians had a horrible fear.

In 1851, after Virginia MacDonald's death, her mother insisted the burial had been premature. She argued with her family so long and so hard, they finally agreed to have Virginia's coffin open. To their horror, Virginia was no longer laying on her back but had shifted to her side and her fingers were chewed.

In 1896, the day after the burial of a Madame Blunden in Basingstoke, England, boys playing near her vault heard noises. They ran for their teacher who ran for the sexton. Her vault and coffin were opened just in time for Madame Blunden to take her last breath. She had torn at her face and bitten off her finger nails.

Southern General Robert E. Lee’s mother died on June 29, 1829. However, she was known to suffer from catalepsy and it is believed she went into a lengthy coma and was actually buried the first time in 1806. A slave working near her grave heard noises and ran for help. Her coffin was opened, and she was found to be still alive. The future general was born a year later.

A Google search will bring up other exaamples. Suffice it to say, a safety coffin was a must, and here are specifications on part of patent request #81,847, dated August 25, 1868:

On the portion of coffin lid directly over the body’s face, there is a square tube which “extends from the coffin up, through and over the surface of the grave, said cord containing a ladder and a cord, one end of the cord being placed in the hand of the “deceased” and "the other being attached to a bell on top of the square tube.” If consciousness returns, the person interred can either open the coffin and use the ladder to climb out or ring the bell. Depending on the circumstances, part or all of the “Improved Burial-Case” can be used again.

In literature, authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, and Sir Author Conan Doyle, among many others made use of the cataleptic condition. Likewise, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman, and The Fisher King are just a few of movies and television shows which worked the condition into the plotline.

Embalming is an ancient practice which caught on in the western world around the time of the Civil War. A Scottish surgeon named William Hunter was among the first to use “the art of embalming as part of mortuary practice.” 

One of his followers was the dentist Martin Van Butchell. When Butchell’s wife Mary died on January 14, 1775, he decided to have her embalmed and turn her into an attraction in order to draw customers. Mary’s body was injected “with preservatives, and color additives to give her cheeks a glow." Glass eyes replaced her real ones, and she was dressed in a fine lace gown. The body was then embedded in a layer of plaster-of-paris, nicely paid out in a glass-topped coffin, and put in the window of his home. It was saaid that "many Londoners came to see it" (or her). However, Butchell was criticized for his gruesome display. “A rumor, possibly started by Butchell himself, claimed that his wife's marriage certificate had specified that her husband would only have control over her estate after her death for as long as her body was kept unburied.”

When Butchell remarried, his new wife, Elizabeth, demanded that that Mary be removed from the window. “Butchell gave the body to Dr. Hunter's brother for his own museum. However, Mary eventually ended up in the Royal College of Surgeons' museum.

Unfortunately, the embalming proved to be ineffective and deteroriation set in. In May 1941, the body of Mary Butchell was finally destroyed in a German bombing raid.”


Under “15 Corpses You Can Still See Today” are Kim Jong-II, Mao Zedong, Ferdinand Marcos, St. Bernadette, the child, Rosalia Lombardo (an optical illusion make it see as if her eyes open and close), the English philosopher and social reformer,  Jeremy Bentham (on display sitting up in a cabinet at the University London College, and, of course, Lenin (so far his upkeep has cost $210,000).  Joseph Stalin used to be on display next to Lenin but due to de-Stalinization, he was removed. Also, there are a lot of mummies around (we have one in Tacoma, a museum favorite) but for purposes of this article, they don’t count.