Premature Burial- A justifiable Victorian fear

I walked through Rushton Spencer churchyard with a local group and came across the tombstone of Thomas Meaykin buried on 16^th July 1781 and as the inscription reads “ As a man falleth before united men so fell I” Two words in the Greek alphabet follow bia thanatos meaning to die violently. The story of Thomas is a terrible one according to Murray's Handbook for Staffordshire (1868 )

“This is a reference to a tragic story of a youth who dared to make love to his master's daughter, and was supposed to come to a sudden end hereby. At all events he was buried in the reverse of the usual way.”

The local legend is that he was giving a sleeping draught by the master which gave the appearance of death. Meakyn was buried initially in Stone, but when he was re-interred at Rushton and the full horror that he had been entombed prematurely was revealed.

Premature burial! The fear of being buried alive was a real one given the inexactness of medical science then. As the 19^th century progressed , the possibility of premature burial increased. In the poorer urban areas doctors were hard pressed to keep control especially during an epidemic. When a patient was seriously ill or obviously dying they were happy to issue death certificates on application of the relative without seeing the corpse. The leading medical journal of the time outlined the fear in dramatic prose

“The last footfall departs from the churchyard, leaving the entranced sleeper behind in his hideous shell soon to awaken to consciousness and to a benumbed half- suffocated existence for a few minutes or else , more horrible still, there he lies beneath the ground conscious of what he has been and what he still is”

During a panic in the 1880s, doctors received much correspondence from people who had narrowly avoided this fate. One man was about to be screwed down in his coffin . He was aware of what was happening to him, but could not communicate to the undertaker. It was only when someone noticed that the “corpse” had broken out into a sweat that he was rescued.

As can be imagined many people took precautions against the possibility of being buried alive, The author Wilkie Collins left a letter that whoever found his body should call a doctor and make certain. Lady Burton provided for her heart to be pierced with a needle while the composer Meyerbeer arranged for bells to be tied to his extremities when he was dead.

By 1896 there were about 200 books on premature burial. It is not surprising that the superstitious believed that people who had been buried alive returned as vampires to take revenge on the living

Foxe Book of Martyrs and a local villain

It must have been a troubling time to be a church goer in England in the mid 16^th century as the country went on a roller coaster ride plunging between positions from the English Catholicism of Henry VIII , extreme Protestantism of Edward VI back to the fanatical Catholicism of Mary before the arrival of the Elizabethan Settlement and the establishment of the Church of England.

Of course, a wrong choice in the matter of religious belief could result in imprisonment, torture and at worse a gruesome execution. One book that chronicled the 300 or so Protestants who were executed during the reign of “Bloody” Mary was the “ Acts and Monuments” of John Foxe better known as the “Book of Martyrs”.

It was one of the most important books of its time whose graphic illustrations helped to frame the anti Catholicism of the country right up to the 20th century. The main message of the book that Catholics were cruel oppressors was so powerfully conveyed that a essential characteristic of “Englishness” up to fairly recent times could be defined as not being Catholic. One account in the Book of Martyrs features as a villain a local man Anthony Draycott, a native of Draycott- in- the- Moors, a prelate at Lichfield Cathedral and a zealous Catholic. He was determined to root out heresy locally. Draycott had also been Rector of Grindon and was well known in the area. He and the Bishop of Lichfield Baines began to eagerly conduct trials of Protestants after 1555. The case of Joan Waste, a young blind woman from Derby, came to their attention. A Protestant convert she had objected to the services now being read in Latin. She was sentenced for buying a New Testament in English which she asked friends to read to her.

 Waste also denied the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and held that the bread and wine were only that. She was quickly found guilty and condemned to die at the stake in Derby. Foxe takes up the story

“Sentence was then adjudged, and Dr. Draycott appointed to preach her condemned sermon, which took place August 1, 1556, the day of her martyrdom. His fulminating discourse being finished, the poor, sightless object was taken to a place called Windmill Pit, near the town, where she for a time held her brother by the hand, and then prepared herself for the fire, calling upon the pitying multitude to pray with her, and upon Christ to have mercy upon her, until the glorious light of the everlasting Sun of righteousness beamed upon her departed spirit”.  It said that after the burning Draycott calmly ate a meal.

However, he quickly fell foul of the new Queen Elizabeth and was imprisoned in London before being allowed to return to North Staffordshire dying at the family home Painsley Hall near Cheadle in 1572.

For Independence Day- a Reepsmoor born Oregon Pioneer of 1848

The Staffordshire Advertiser of April 1851 carried a letter sent to Robert Ball from his brother Isaac which detailed a harrowing account of his journey to Oregon Territory three years before. Isaac Ball was born in Reepsmoor in 1812 and in his early 20s crossed the Atlantic seeking a new life in the States. He settled at first in New York working as a brick maker then gradually moving westward, he married Abigail who would eventually bear him 8 children. Along with over 60 wagons they set off for the new land in March 1848 from St Joseph, Missouri . North of the Platt River, in what is now Nebraska, calamity struck when Isaac broke a leg when he was run over by oxen. He was in a dire predicament as he wrote to Robert back in Reepsmoor

“Think of my condition dear brother 500 miles from a settlement in Missouri and 1,700 miles from Oregon with a wife and six children” A seventh child was born in the wagon. They crossed the Rockies and Isaac describes the wondrous sight of Cascade Mountain before arriving in Yam County, Oregon in September. The family were destitute during their first winter and Isaac was walking with the use of a crutch. ( A later biographer states that Isaac Ball limped for the rest of his life). In February 1849 he sold the team of oxen and the wagon and staked everything on becoming a gold miner in the Californian Gold Rush. He did well and made around $800 in the 40 days he was prospecting. An 1893 account describes Isaac as returning from the mines

“ he settled on his present property, and here he has since been engaged in farming, stock-raising and brick-making. When the rail road was built, the company gave him a station, and in honour of home named it Ballston. Here a nice little village has sprung up, which is destined to become an important one and which will perpetuate the name of this worthy pioneer. Mr. Ball has divided a portion of his homestead and sold a number of village lots. He has also sold 100 acres of land to one of his grandsons. He still owns 540 acres of land, a part of it his old donation claim and the rest  lands which he has since purchased”.

Isaac was a deeply religious man who founded Methodist Chapels and Schools in the locality. Sadly Ballston is a ghost town now A late 1950s guide book unflatteringly describes Ballston as “flat bellied as a ballet dancer, pungent as a cow barn and as productive as a queen bee”

Cross dressing at Biddulph Moor- a 19th century "singularity"

The following “singular” case appeared in the Morning Post in the autumn of 1848 concerning a Biddulph Moor woman. On the 16^th September Doctor Bland ,a physician in the Macclesfield work house was asked to attend a man dying from dysentery who lived in a lodge house in the town. He thought that the man who was aged about 60 looked decidedly feminine around the face. The man named John Smith also had a womanly voice. He spoke to Smith's wife who was with some of her eleven children. She was not married to him, but had met him 14 years ago in New Mills, Derbyshire. Smith worked as an itinerant knife grinder and spoon maker. His wife said that he was a supportive husband. Some days later John Smith died and Bland returned to sign the death certificate. His suspicions were correct and Smith was female. His wife told the doctor that she had only found out the day before Smith's death that he was male when he had her implored to sew the body into a winding sheet. She told Bland that the 11 children had been fathered by her first husband. “John Smith” was buried in Christ Church and a great deal of interest was shown at the funeral.

After subsequent investigation Bland found that the dead woman had been born Sophie Locke in a cave at Croker Wood, Sutton and moved to live with her extended family who lived on Biddulph Moor. Sophie followed her father's occupation as a tinker and knife grinder. The Lockes were an itinerant lot and spent the year moving around the country, although they always wintered on the moor. From an early age she dressed as a male and often accompanied her brother around the pubs in Biddulph and Congleton where the two would dance and play the violin. She appeared to be a volatile soul and pretty handy with her fists. Sophie got involved in a massive punch up at Bolton Green in Lancashire and in the fight a breast was exposed. News of the incident got back to Biddulph and the community impressively kept the secret for the remainder of her life. Over the years whenever she met someone from the town she became very wary and withdrew from society although the concealment held. She rarely visited Biddulph Moor after the Lockes were accused of sheep stealing.

She lived as a husband to several women including one whom she married in Winster Church in Derbyshire. The story is that a serving girl became pregnant after a liaison with a local squire. Sophie was encouraged to marry the woman and bring the child up as the “father” and this relationship lasted some years. The woman that Doctor Bland met had lived with Sophie for about 14 years and spent the year travelling around the country with Locke and her large brood of children. Taking part in the hop picking in Worcestershire every autumn was something that the family enjoyed.

As I said earlier Sophie gained enjoyment from challenging men to fight. On one occasion at Bosley she was making a noise in a local pub. She was defying a room full of men when in walked a hawker from Biddulph that she knew. She exchanged compliments with the man and then left.

She was described as being dark haired, of wiry build and very swarthy ( that sounds very “Saracen “ to me). The writer of the “Morning Post article remarked “ that she would draw the attention of many admirer of the gypsy picturesque”.

The early aeronauts- an experience with a balloon in Cheadle 1784

A new phenomenon was seen above the skies of Britain in the 1780s. One summer day in 1785 the celebrated naturalist and writer Gilbert White roused the locals to view a balloon as it floated above Shelbourne Church in Hampshire. It was all a new and wondrous development. The first manned flight took place in June 1783 when the Montgolfier brothers launched a hot air balloon from Paris. In the early days unmanned craft were launched. In February 1784 one such unmanned craft launched in Birmingham landed in Cheadle. The locals were unaware of the explosive nature of hydrogen gas which soon became apparent. The Bristol Journal takes up the story

“The farmers took it into a two pair of stairs room, and attempted to blow it up by use of bellows, during which one of the company approached too closely with a lighted candle. The remaining inflammable air tore off the wainscot, broke all the furniture and drove the casement to a considerable distance, but did no damage to the bystanders, except singeing their hair.”

The first successful manned flight in Britain took place the following September. A large crowd , including the Prince of Wales, gathered at Chelsea to see an Italian Vincenzo Lunardi set off along with a dog, cat and pigeon. The flight took him to Hertfordshire where he landed near to what is now South Mimms service station.

Closer to home a daring aeronaut named Harper took off from Birmingham rising to over 4,000 feet. He flew over Trentham Hall descending to ask a farm labourer where he was, talking to the startled man by way of a speaking trumpet. Eventually he crashed at Newcastle and was rescued by a blacksmith as his basket crashed through bushes.

Fairly soon records were being established in terms of altitude and distance by balloonist. In 1784 the first balloon to cross the Channel landed in France piloted by Blanchard and an American Jeffries

One of the first uses of the new form of transport was military. The French used balloons as platforms to observe troop deployment at the Battle of Fleurus in 1794. Among the troops present that day was Jean Baptiste Brunet who much later as General Brunet would become the most senior officer imprisoned in Leek during the Napoleonic War.

One myth probably needs questioning and concerns a balloon that is supposed to have landed at Gun Hill in the 1820s frightening the locals who took it for a devil I am sure that people of Leek would have been very familiar with balloons from the earliest days of flight.                                        

He should have a long spoon who sups with the devil

1386 CHAUCER Therefore bilhoueth hire a full long spoon that shall eat with a feend. 1539 TAVENER He  neede to haue a longe spoone that shal ete with thee deuyl. 1592-3 SHAKESPEARE Comedy of Errors Marry, he must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil 1611-2 Tempest This is the devil and no monster. I will leave him : and I have no long spoon. 1641 FERGUSSON He should have a long shafted spoon that sups kail with the devil.


http://allafrica.com/stories/201306211302.html

Hell is broke loose

1577 Misogonus I thinke all hell broke loose when thou gatest this poste. 1593 GREENE Friar Bacon Hell's broke loose: your Head speaks; and there is such a thunder and lightening that I warrant all Oxford is up in arms. 1611-12 SHAKESPEARE Tempest Hell is empty and all the devils are here1623 JONSON  Time Vind How now! What's here ! Is hell broke loose, 1733 SWIFT Hey what a clattering is here! One would think all hell had broken loose.

http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/06/05/civ-worker-on-afghanistan-id-give-it-18-months-before-all-hell-breaks-loose/