Victorian Urban Legends: Coffin Games January 18, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
***Dedicated to Chris W***
Beach in his tiny hours of research ran across two accounts that feel like Victorian urban legends: a favourite theme of this blog. Note the lack of concrete references. These look as if they were included in a joke column and then recycled as news with some salacious details thrown in…
A Sheffield paper tells a story of the master of the Northampton workhouse having put a refractory boy into the dead house with a corpse for punishment. The boy dressed the corpse in his own clothes, reared it against the wall, and got into the coffin. The master coming in at dusk inquired if the prisoner would have any supper, whereupon the coffined youth exclaimed ‘If he won’t I will.’ The master rushed out of the place, and has since died of fright (27 Feb 1858, Sals Journal).
A bit of poetic justice here for the cruel ‘master’: just the kind of thing working class Yorkshire readers would have loved. Next:
Two youths of 17 have been committed for trial, charged with manslaughter. They tied a piece of string to a coffin which they were taking from the carpenter’s placed it in a footpath where some girls were coming, and hid themselves in a hedge. When the girls came up, they groaned, and moved the coffin with the string. The girls were excessively alarmed, and one died of fright.
Again, people do die of fright, but note the complete lack of geographical references here, in a column that normally took great care giving them. Here is, instead, the best of the bunch:
There is a well known but by no means authenticated story of a thief who broke into a vault to rob a corpse of the costly jewels that had been buried with it. The pearls were taken from the neck, the diamond drops from the ears, and the rings from the fingers – all save one that could not pass the joint. The thief drew his knife and cut off the finger. The cut awoke the lady from her trance: she started up with a scream, and so terrified the rascal that he turned to fly. He could not move: a hand strong as death held him fast, and in his fright he fell back dead from the sudden shock. His cloak had been caught by the falling coffin-lid, and his imagination did the rest. The narrator forgets to say how it was that the lady did not escape, but probably died of fright also. (30 Nov, Leeds Tim, 5)
When the vault was next opened two bodies were found to the bewilderment of all. Other coffin stories: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
Chris from Haunted Ohio Books with some coffin reflections, 23 Jan 2016:
That robber-cutting-off-the-corpse’s-ring story MUST have its own folklore motif number–it’s such a common tale! Very often the lady in the coffin recovers, returns home, and scares the living daylights out of the family, who think she is a ghost. Another common detail is for the lady to “die” while pregnant. The story is then told by the narrator, who–in an utterly unpredictable twist–is the child born after the mother’s providential rescue from premature burial. Here’s an example from 1835, although the lady was not pregnant at the time of the resurrection.
There is a remarkable circumstance connected with the history of Ralph Erskine, the author of this poem,—a fact as well authenticated in the part of Scotland where his family lived, as is the truth that the unfortunate Mary once reigned as Queen there. His mother ‘died and was buried,’ some years before he was born. She wore on her finger, at the time of her death, a rich gold ring, which, from some domestic cause or other, was much valued by the family. After the body was laid in the coffin, an attempt was made to remove the ring, but the hand and finger were so much swollen that it was found to be impossible. It was proposed to cut off the finger, but the husband’s feelings revolted at the idea. She was therefore buried with the ring upon her finger. The sexton, who was aware of the fact, formed a resolution to possess himself of the ring. Accordingly on the same night he opened the grave and coffin. Having no scruples about cutting off the finger of a dead woman, he provided himself with a sharp knife for the purpose. He lifted the stiff arm, and made an incision by the joint of the finger. The blood flowed,—and the woman arose and sat up in her coffin! The grave-digger fled with affright, while the lady made her way from her narrow tenement, and walked back to the door of her dwelling, where she stood without, and knocked for admittance. It was about eleven o’clock at night. Her husband, who was a minister, sat conversing with a friend. When the knock was repeated, he observed, ‘Were it not that my wife is in her grave, I should say that that was her knock.’ He arose hastily and opened the door. There stood his dear companion, wrapped in her grave-clothes, and her uplifted finger dropping blood. ‘My Margaret!’ he exclaimed. ‘The same,’ said she,—’ your dear wife, in her own proper person. Do not be alarmed.’ Many, very many, I firmly believe, have been buried alive, but few, like her, returned to tell the tale. The lady in question, however, lived seven or eight years after this occurrence, and became the mother of several children, among whom was the author of the poem given above.
There is also a very common story, told (I think) from the 18th c onward–it may be even older–that goes something like this.
A man’s wife died suddenly. He was not terribly broken up about it–she was the usual cliche-shrew of a wife. The undertaker’s men started to carry her down the stairs in her coffin, but there was a tight bend at the landing and they ran the coffin into the wall, jolting the “corpse” so that she (who had only been in a kind of trance) woke up! She lived for another 10 years, but eventually her husband found her well and truly dead in their bed. Once again, she was coffined and the undertaker’s men were about to carry the coffin down the stairs when the husband, sweating profusely, cautioned them to “watch out for that tight bend in the stairs!”
I just ran across this amusing coffin contretemps story:
Too Much for His Nerves—An Incident in a Moonlight Ride.
From the San Francisco (Cal.) Bulletin, Dec. 21.
Several nights ago, a young gentleman of this city invited a lady to accompany him on a moonlight ride. At the appointed time the wagon was at the door, and together they started for the Cliff House. During the ride the conversation turned on things supernatural, and the Donovan ghost was discussed at length. The gentleman professed to be free altogether from that dread of the mysterious unknown which deters some people from entering graveyards after nightfall, or sitting alone with the dead. He declared that he would even be willing to have a tete-a-tete interview with any ghostly visitant who might choose to make him a call in the still hours of night. After a couple of hours spent pleasantly at the Cliff, the horses’ heads were turned homeward. The road was deserted, the pleasure-seekers had all returned, and as they bowled along the smooth road, still they conversed on the supernatural. When a short distance beyond the toll-gate, the horses stopped suddenly and began to tremble and snort violently. The driver stood up in the wagon to find the cause, and lo! A coffin lay at the side of the road. The moonlight shone on the silver plate, and the courageous young man immediately let go the reins and dropped into the bottom of the wagon as if he had been shot. The lady fortunately caught the lines and thus prevented a runaway and probable disaster. As she was endeavoring to restore the presence of mind which had fled from her crouching companion, an undertaker’s cart drove up, and the driver dismounting, lifted the coffin into it. “et up,” said the lady. “Is that horrid thing gone?” groaned the gentleman, and ventured to peep out from the buggy robe in which he had wrapped his pallid face. It appeared that the undertaker was carrying the coffin to a house on Geary-street, when his wagon broke down, and he was compelled to leave it on the roadside while he returned for repairs. The gentleman drove meekly home, and has not since been heard to declare his indifference to ghostly visitations.
The New York Times 30 December 1872
