Dorcas Hutchinson, of St. Anne, Soho (will proved June 3, 1761), was content with a less drastic method. “I mean by my desire above written not to be enclosed in any coffin whatever within seven days after my decease; that my corpse be laid upon a bed during that time, and may not be put into any covered coffin until the eighth day. My will is that Edward Havel my present servant may take care that the above request is literally complied with, and for that purpose may stay in the house till I am buried, and upon his so doing I do bequeath him the sum of £50.” For such a method there is much to be said, if after apparent death a prolongation of life be desired, but the method is unfortunately not conclusive. “Everybody has heard,” writes John Timbs, “of the lady who was buried, being supposed dead, and who bearing with her to the tomb, on her finger, a ring of rare price, this was the means of her being rescued from her charnel prison-house. A butler in the family of the lady, having his cupidity excited, entered the vault at midnight in order to possess himself of the ring, and in removing it from the finger the body was restored to consciousness and made her way in her grave-clothes to her mansion. She lived many years afterwards before she was finally consigned to the vault.” On Saturday, October 29, 1808, Elizabeth Emma Thomas was buried at Islington, and on Monday this inscription was raised:— “In Memory Of Mrs. Elizabeth Emma Thomas Who died the 28th October, 1808, Aged 27 years. She had no fault save what travellers give the moon: Her light was lovely, but she died too soon.” Suspicion was aroused from the rapidity of her burial, the grave opened, and the body removed into the church for inspection. Suspicion seemed justified when a large wire pin was found thrust through her left side and fixed in her heart. But it appeared from the evidence that this was done at her own desire, to prevent the possibility of being buried alive, and the jury returned a verdict accordingly: “Died by the visitation of God.” But the preceding is a digression on the way to simplicity. With such an expression as “I commit ... my body to the deep or any convenient place, it’s immaterial where,” we reach down to the minimum, and must ascend again. “To them,” says Jeremy Taylor, “it is all one, whether they be carried forth upon a chariot or a wooden bier; whether they rot in the air or on the earth; whether they be devoured by fishes or by worms, by birds or by sepulchral dogs, by water or by fire, or by delay”; but man is often in nothing so eccentric as in his desires for the disposal of his remains, or in the accompaniments and accoutrements he asks for his obsequies.