I was sent for to dress her and lay her out. He touched her twice. He made no hesitation about doing it. I also swore before the justice that it was observed by other people in the house.”[1163] This is perhaps the latest instance in which bier-right has figured in regular judicial proceedings, but the popular belief in it is by no means eradicated. In 1860 the Philadelphia journals mention a case in which the relatives of a deceased person, suspecting foul play, vainly importuned the coroner, six weeks after the interment, to have the body exhumed in order that it might be touched by a person whom they regarded as concerned in his death. In 1868 at Verdiersville, Virginia, a suspected murderer was compelled to touch the body of a woman found murdered in a wood; and in 1869, at Lebanon, Illinois, the bodies of two murdered persons were exhumed and two hundred of the neighbors were marched past and made to touch them in the hope of identifying the criminals.[1164] In Germany, in the seventeenth century, there was a recognized formula for the administration of the ordeal. The corpse was exposed to the open air for some hours, with breast and stomach bare to insure the thorough coagulation of the blood. The person suspected was then brought forward and required to repeat certain adjurations read to him, and then he was made to touch with two fingers the mouth, the navel, and the wounds, if there were any. If the corpse manifested any signs of sensation, if there was frothing at the mouth, or bleeding from any orifices or wounds it was considered an evidence of guilt.[1165] The trial was not a mere popular experiment, but was a judicial proceeding, under the order of a magistrate.