In all times and countries there have been queer notions about
burial. We here offer to our readers a few instances of this kind of
eccentricity.
Mr Wilkinson, one of the founders of the iron manufacture in Great
Britain, loved iron so well that he resolved to carry it to the grave
with him. He had himself buried in his garden in an iron coffin, over
which was an iron tomb of twenty tons' weight. In order to make all
right and secure, he caused the coffin and tomb to be constructed
while he was yet alive; he delighted to shew them to his friends and
visitors--possibly more to his pleasure than theirs. But there were
sundry little tribulations to encounter. When he died, it was found
that the coffin was too small; he was temporarily laid in the ground
while a new one was made; when buried, it was decided that the coffin
was too near the surface, and it was therefore transferred to a cavity
dug in a rock; lastly, when the estate was sold many years afterwards,
the family directed the coffin to be transferred to the churchyard.
Thus Mr Wilkinson had the exceptional honour of being buried three or
four times over. Mr Smiles tells us that, in 1862, a man was living who
had assisted at all these interments. Mr Wilkinson was quite pleased
to make presents of iron coffins to any friends who wished to possess
such mementos of death and iron. In a granite county such as Cornwall,
it is not surprising to read that the Rev. John Pomeroy, of St Kew, was
buried in a granite coffin which he had caused to be made.
Some persons have had a singular taste for providing their coffins
long beforehand, and keeping them as objects pleasant to look at, or
morally profitable as reminders of the fate of all, or useful for
everyday purposes until the last and solemn use supervenes. A slater
in Fifeshire, about forty years ago, made his own coffin, decorated it
with shells, and displayed it among other fancy shell-work in a room
he called his grotto. Another North Briton, a cartwright, made his own
coffin, and used it for a long time to hold his working tools; it
was filled with sliding shelves, and the lid turned upon hinges. It
is said that many instances are met with in Scotland of working men
constructing their own coffins 'in leisure hours.' Alderman Jones of
Gloucester, about the close of the seventeenth century, had his coffin
and his monument constructed beforehand; not liking the shape of the
nose carved on his effigy on the latter, he had a new one cut--just in
time, for he died immediately after it was finished. One John Wheatley
of Nottingham bought a coffin, and filled it with clove cordial; but he
brought himself into bad repute by getting drunk too frequently, for
his coffin became to him a sort of dram-shop. A young navy surgeon, who
accompanied the Duke of Clarence (afterwards King William IV.) when he
first went to sea as a royal middy, rose in after-life to an important
position at Portsmouth; he had a favourite boat converted into a
coffin, with the stern-piece fixed at its head, and kept it under his
bed for many years. A married couple in Prussia provided themselves
with coffins beforehand, and kept them in a stable, where they were
utilised as cupboards for the reception of various kinds of food;
but the final appropriation of the coffins was marked by a singular
_contre-temps_. The man died; the widow packed the contents of both
coffins into one; while the body was deposited in the other. By some
mishap, the coffin full of eatables was lowered into the grave. Next
day the widow opening the lid of the (supposed) cupboard, was scared at
finding the dead body of her husband. Of course the interment had to be
done all over again, with an interchange of coffins.
The custom of being buried in an erect position has been frequently
carried out. Ben Jonson was buried upright in Westminster Abbey,
a circumstance which gave occasion for the following lines in the
_Ingoldsby Legends_:
Even rare Ben Jonson, that famous wight,
I am told is interred there bolt upright,
In just such a posture, beneath his bust,
As Tray used to sit in to beg for a crust.
Military heroes have in more cases than one been buried by their men
in upright positions on the battle-field, sometimes lance or spear
in hand. One such was found at the Curragh of Kildare; on opening
an earthen tumulus, the skeleton of an old Irish chieftain was seen
upright, with a barbed spear in or near one hand.
It is of course quite easy to bury in an upright posture, by setting up
the coffin on end; but where, as in many recorded instances, the body
is placed in sitting posture, coffins were of necessity inadmissible.
When the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa opened the tomb of Charlemagne at
Aix-la-Chapelle, he found the body of the great man seated on a kind of
throne, as if alive, clad in imperial robes, bearing his sceptre in one
hand and a copy of the Bible on his knees. At Shoreditch churchyard,
some years ago, a tomb could be seen from the high-road, placed there
by a quack doctor named Dr John Gardiner. Or rather it was a high
head-stone, with an inscription denoting that the inclosed spot was his
'last and best bedroom;' he had the tomb and the inscription prepared
some years before his death, and was (so rumour stated) buried in a
sitting posture; but on this last point the evidence is not clear.
Some folks have been buried with a mere apology for a coffin. Such was
the fate of Mrs Fisher Dilke, during the time of the Commonwealth. Her
husband, Mr Dilke, did not seem to regard her remains as deserving of
a very high expenditure. He caused a coffin to be made from boards
which lined his barn. He bargained with a sexton to make a grave in the
churchyard for one groat; two groats cheaper than if it had been in
the church. He invited eight neighbours to act as bearers, for whom he
provided three twopenny cakes and a bottle of claret. He read a chapter
of Job to them while all was being got ready; then the cakes and wine
were partaken of, and the body carried to the churchyard; they put
her in the grave, each threw in a spadeful of earth; and the bereaved
husband and his neighbours retraced their steps. Another instance of
an apology for coffins was that near Horsham, in an old mansion which
had been a nunnery; when, on one occasion, the kitchen floor was taken
up, there were found twelve skeletons all in a row, each between two
planks; they were supposed to have been nuns.
And some folks have been buried without any coffin at all. A military
officer, some half-century or so ago, directed by his will that his
body should be opened by medical men, bound round with cere-cloth, and
interred without a coffin in a particular part of his park. Acorns were
to be sown on the spot, the most promising plant from which was to be
allowed to grow there, 'in order,' as he said, 'that his remains might
be useful in nourishing a sturdy British oak.' He left a legacy to his
gardener to weed and water the plant. A goodly-sized oak-tree now marks
the spot. This reminds one of the strange burial, or rather absence
of burial, in the case of Jeremy Bentham, the celebrated jurist and
philosopher. In accordance with his will, a head of wax was affixed to
his skeleton (after dissection); the figure was stuffed to the proper
size, and clad in Bentham's own garments; he was placed seated in his
own arm-chair, with his own walking-stick in one hand. A wag made a
very whimsical anagram out of this, by simply transposing two letters
in Jeremy Bentham's name--'Jeer my bent ham.'
Miscellaneous instances crowd upon us of burial without coffins. There
is a parish in the Isle of Thanet the register of which contains
entries of eightpence for burying in a coffin, and sixpence without
a coffin; and in the register of an adjoining parish (more than two
centuries back), eightpence 'in a coffined grave,' and sixpence 'in a
sheet.' About a century ago, in Dorset, a gentleman directed that his
uncoffined remains should be buried ten feet deep in a particular field
lying near his house, and the field to be then thoroughly ploughed
over, as if to obliterate him as completely as could well be the case.
The family of the St Clairs of Rosslyn were for many generations (the
men at anyrate) buried without coffins. The latest of such burials took
place towards the close of the seventeenth century. When the vault
was next opened, the body of Sir William St Clair was seen lying in
his armour with a red velvet cap on his head; nothing was decayed but
a part of the white fur-edging to the cap. In some parts of Ireland
it was at one time customary to carry the body to the grave-side in a
coffin, upon which the body was taken out and reverently deposited in
the earth. There was one Augustinian abbey graveyard in particular,
near Enniscorthy, in which certain families were generally buried in
this fashion, the graves being scrupulously prepared with boards,
earth, sods, and grass. It is said that the Superior of the first
Cistercian abbey founded in England since the Reformation lies buried
in this fashion in the chapter-house of the abbey in one of the midland
counties. Mr Thomas Cooke, a merchant who had well befriended Morden
College, Blackheath, directed that his body should be buried in a
winding-sheet, _minus_ coffin, in the college grounds.
And as some people have been buried without coffins, so have there
been instances of coffins buried without people. Fraud, more or less,
may be suspected in such cases. About a dozen years ago the death of
a foreigner was entered in the register of an Essex parish on the
faith of a medical certificate, apparently authentic; a coffin was
bought; and a grave ordered to be dug in a Roman Catholic graveyard.
The funeral, or _a_ funeral, took place, all in decent order. A few
weeks afterwards a claim was put in by the widow for a hundred thousand
francs, due from an insurance office. The (alleged) deceased was known
to have been a fugitive fraudulent bankrupt. The aid of the detective
police being obtained, the grave and coffin were opened, and--no corpse
was there. The rascal had made out the certificate of his own death,
ordered his own grave and coffin, and followed his own coffin to its
last home as chief mourner!
With or without coffins, many persons have been buried in spots other
than churchyards or graveyards; such, for instance, as in their own
gardens, farms, parks, or plantations. There is a family residence
in Northamptonshire marked by the singularity of having a coffin
placed as it were a table in a summer-house. Sir William Temple,
before his death in 1700, ordered his heart to be inclosed in a silver
casket, and buried under a sun-dial in his own garden at Moor Park,
opposite a particular window. Where the body was interred we have
no record. William Liberty, a brickmaker in Herts, was buried in a
tomb constructed by himself at the side of a lonely footpath across a
field; and room was afterwards found in the same tomb for his widow.
Sir James Tillie, of Pentillie Castle, Cornwall, was at his own desire
laid under a tower in a summer-house in a favourite part of his park.
Baskerville the printer was buried under a windmill near his garden; a
dancing-master in a plantation near Macclesfield; a barrister beneath
a tower which he had built at Leith Hill, Surrey; a Yorkshire squire
in his own shrubbery, 'because he had passed some of the happiest
hours of his life there;' a shepherd of the Chiltern Hills on the
chalky slopes of the hills themselves, with an inscription cut in the
grassy covering. The wish of a captain in Cromwell's army to bury
his favourite charger in the churchyard of Houghton-le-Spring, was
frustrated; whereupon he had it buried in his own orchard, and left
orders that he himself was to be buried by the side of the horse. The
editor of a Newcastle journal was buried in his own garden; and a
Northumbrian gentleman under a tomb in his own orchard. Körner, the
German soldier-poet who fell at Gadebusch, was buried on the spot under
an old oak; and many military men have found a similar resting-place.
Many queer stories are extant, resting, however, on tolerably good
authority, of bodies being left unburied, or in some way or other kept
above-ground, in the hope of cunningly defeating some law or other.
The old stage-coachmen on the Great North Road, when driving through
Stevenage, were wont to point to a barn in which the body of a former
owner, Mr Trigg, was kept; it was inclosed in lead, and placed upon a
beam of the roof. The gossips of the neighbourhood had two theories to
explain this. One was to the effect that Trigg had expressed a desire
that his body should be kept there 'until the day of judgment;' the
other, that he believed he would return to life again thirty years
after his death, and left his property subject to this contingency.
He died in 1721. After the thirty years his representatives 'gave
him three days' grace,' then buried him, and finally disposed of his
property. Just about a century ago, a legacy of twenty-five pounds a
year was left to a woman 'so long as she remained above-ground.' Her
husband, on her death, put a crafty interpretation on these words; he
rented a small room in a neighbour's house, and kept the body there
in a coffin during the long period of nineteen years, receiving the
annuity because the woman was still 'above-ground.' A gentleman, rather
earlier in the same century, left orders that, when dead, he should be
placed in a coffin perched up on end in a cellar. He had bequeathed all
his property to charitable uses, and had a notion that his relatives
would try to defy the will unless his body were kept unburied; that is,
not actually interred in the ground.