Loading your reading…

The danger of premature interment : $b Proved from many remarkable instances of people who have recovered after being laid out for dead, and of others entombed alive, for want of being properly examined prior to intermentTaylor, Joseph

History

The danger of premature interment : $b Proved from many remarkable instances of people who have recovered after being laid out for dead, and of others entombed alive, for want of being properly examined prior to interment

Name: The danger of premature interment : $b Proved from many remarkable instances of people who have recovered after being laid out for dead, and of others entombed alive, for want of being properly examined prior to interment
Author: Taylor, Joseph

Taylor, Joseph

Burial, Premature; Funeral rites and ceremonies

I was greatly affected at the melancholy accident which had just
happened; but my mother was almost distracted at being obliged to break
a promise she had so solemnly made, and which would have proved so
consonant to the wishes of her old friend.

I have often wondered that humanity, exclusive of affection, does not
prevent those, who have a regard for persons during their lives, from
leaving them in their last moments, through a false tenderness, to the
care of nurses and servants, who are usually insensible to every claim
but those of their own ease or interest. Too susceptible of pain, from
beholding the expiring pangs of a beloved object, they hasten from it;
whereas, that ought to be the strongest motive for their stay, as these
would stimulate them to unremitted assiduity in administering every
needful assistance whilst life remains, and to a due attention to the
body till its interment.


                                 XVII.

  _The following Story is related by a Traveller, who translated the
                 particulars from a foreign monument._

The heroine of this event was named Retchmuth Adoleh. She was the wife
of a merchant of Cologne, and is said to have died of the plague,
which destroyed the greatest part of that city in 1571. She was
speedily interred, and a ring of great value was suffered to remain on
her finger, which tempted the cupidity of the grave-digger. The night
was the time he had planned for the plunder. On going to the grave,
opening the same, and attempting to take the ring from off the finger
of the lady, she came to herself and so terrified the sacrilegious
thief, that he scampered away with speed, and left his lanthorn behind
him. The lady took advantage of his fright, and, with the assistance of
the lanthorn, found her way home, and lived afterwards to be the mother
of three children. After her real decease, she was buried near the door
of the same church, and a tomb was erected over her sepulchre, from
whence this record is taken.


                                XVIII.

   _The following account of reanimation is extracted from the first
 volume of the_ Causes Célebres, _and was the subject of a serious law
                            suit in Paris._

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The danger of premature interment : $b Proved from many remarkable instances of people who have recovered after being laid out for dead, and of others entombed alive, for want of being properly examined prior to interment

No reviews yet