Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?

Subject: RE: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 09:00 AM

Well, if you read the story carefully, you will notice that it is NOT a 'coffin' but a 'mausoleum' - thus not 'buried under the ground' - but 'laid out on a slab' - thus easily able to breathe for many hours at a reduced rate thru the linen shroud...

If someone tried to cut off one of my body parts, I'd probably have a strong desire to wake up too...

Subject: RE: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: GUEST,Ian cookieless
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 08:52 AM

Now wondering if the English Florence Wyndham story is the origin of the USA story told to Tim Eriksen - or if both are a common story that has appeared in various places. If so, are there any other examples?

I wonder if there are any Mudcat doctors, surgeons or nurses who could say if there could possibly be any truth to the story. I know that some medical conditions make a pulse difficult or impossible to detect (don't know what the condition/s is/are). There was a story a few years ago on the news (proper news - BBC TV and radio - not internet rumours) of a woman in the UK who was on a mortuary drawer and a technician thought he saw her eyes move. It turned out that he did: having been pronounced dead she revived and went home. So it seems that being mistakenly taken as dead does happen (however rarely). (BTW, I tried to find this story on the net but drew a blank, probably because I can't remember any more details than I've just given.) In such a state, would the shock of a severed finger ever jolt the 'dead' person into life? Or would it finish the person off?! Any qualified medical opinions, Mudcatters?

Subject: RE: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 08:40 AM

But it is a damn good story...

:-)

... and would make a good introduction to the song...

Subject: RE: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: Grab
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 08:27 AM

"Saved by the bell" and "dead ringer"
"Graveyard shift" and "wake"

I'm also very suspicious of "dead drunk". Acute lead poisoning isn't something you recover from in that way, and anyone can easily tell the difference between being unconscious from booze and being dead. This goes double for back then, given that around half of all children died before adulthood, and adults died pretty easy too. Back then, you'd have had plenty of experience of what a dead body looked like. Anyway, the metaphor is so blindingly obvious, I don't see how it needs any further explanation, any more than "sleep like the dead" would.

And checking the family history of Walter Scott shows no such story.

In other words, Muttley, it looks like you've been taken in by yet another piece of internet fakelore spam. :-/

Graham.

Subject: RE: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 08:15 AM

Do you have a source for this extraordinary story in relation to Sir Walter Scott? I've just looked at a number of biographical notes on Scott on-line and there's no mention of it ...

Subject: RE: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: Muttley
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 07:01 AM

While i've not heard of Florence Wyndham before today; there is another tale that parallels hers and can be verified. it is best related with thethe subjects un-named at first to add to the finale.

In very similar circumstances to that of Florence, this tale hails from Scotland and comes a couple of hundred years later (1770/71, to be exact.

In about mid Bovember of 1770, the beloved wife of a wealthy and influential Edinburgh solicitor took ill and slipped into a coma. Having money for the best of treatments, no expense was spared to save the woman's life. However, she slipped further into coma and apparently passed away in her bed.

A lavish funeral was held and the body conveyed to a mausoleum in St. Cuthbert's Burial Ground - though some stories place it in Greyfriars Kirkyard; there was no mention of this particular family's interments there in the tour I took 18 months ago.

That night her mausoleum was broken into and the thieves began divesting her of jewellery and rings buried with her and according to some reports she sat up while one was tugging rings from her fingers, other tales say she awoke and screamed when a finger was cut.
(Though this was some 50 years before the notorious pairing of William Burke and William Hare - the 'profession' of "body snatching" and robbing the wealthy dead was well-established and can still be evidenced by the parapeted watchtowers or guardposts sited around the walls of St.Cuthbert's and manned for a term after each burial.)

As per the normal run of this tale; she awoke fully and taking the lantern walked home. As it turned out the reason for the Lady's illness was (diagnosed in retrospect as) a form of Early Pregnancy Hypotension. The lady in question duly improved in health after her 'resurrection' and in due course went into labour in August of the following year. After many hours of labour she at last gave birth to a baby boy whom she named Walter.

The boy grew up and financed by his wealthy father attended the best schools and ultimately Edinburgh University where he (unsurprisingly) studied Law. However, it is for his writing rather than his legalistic skills his life and unconventional birth are remembered and we can thank those two grave robbers for the likes of:
Ivanhoe,
Rob Roy,
The Lady of the Lake,
Waverley and
The Heart of Midlothian.

The child who "sprang from the womb of a dead mother" was none other than the famous Scots writer Sir Walter Scott.

However, it is unsurprising that so many tales of this sort tend to float around as it was actually not very uncommon for the comatose or cataleptic to be prematurely interred even as late as the 19th Century. In fact many modern terms we use spring from this very situation.

You see ale and spirits were most frequently imbibed from pewter jacks and cups. The problem is that alcohol leeched lead salts from pewter - modern pewter is safe due to a stabilising chemical; but pewter from the 19th century and older leeched freely and the stronger the alcohol the more the leeching occurred.

This led to mild to severe Lead Poisoning and a 'binge' might lead to a drinker becoming "DEAD DRUNK" - in other words, so drunk he could not be woken and presumed dead. His friends would cart him home where the relatives would wash the body and dress it in its best clothes. Knowing that some folks who "died" would rouse (and also keeping in mind the 3 days in which the Lord was buried) the body would be "laid out" on the table and the family would eat their meals around it for that time waiting for him to "WAKE" up - hence the 'wake' held after a modern funeral.

If the unfortunate didn't wake up they would, after 3 days, be buried.

However, especially in small towns and villages, burial plots were at a premium; they could not afford to expand burial grounds into crop and stock grazing lands. Thus every 10 years or so, the older burials were disinterred, the remains carefully placed in an urn or wooden chest in an 'ossarium'in the church crypts and the plot re-used. However, about every 20 or so coffins raised were found to have scratch marks under the lids indicating a 'corpse' had awoken underground and then died anyway.
So, to avoid these mishaps, at the interment, a cord was placed around the wrist or hand and threaded through a pipe to the surface and attached to a bell mounted on a stand. If the 'deceased' woke up 'under the sod' they could tug the rope and alert the Vicar or Verger or whatever - there was always SOMEone within earshot of the churchyard during the day.
At night, however, there was no-one about and so a couple of trustworthy men would be hired to stand guard in the churchyard for up to 14 nights to listen for the bell between 'Vespers and Matins' as well as guard against body snatchers.

Now to those modern terms I mentioned earlier:

If a deceased rang the alarm and was disinterred alive, that person was forever known as a "DEAD RINGER" of himself and to have been "SAVED BY THE BELL".
The gents standing watch to listen for the bell and secondly, prevent body snatchers, were watching all night and said to be working the "GRAVEYARD SHIFT".

Interesting stuff, history - ain't it>Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley and The Heart of Midlothian.
?

Muttley

Subject: RE: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 06:04 AM

I believe he wrote it. It's quite an eerie song - one of the ones I play to my daughter when she disdainfully tells me that folk is all about twee stuff like rambling about in the countryside and getting knocked up by farm boys.

Subject: RE: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: GUEST,Ian cookieless
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 05:24 AM

Thanks again, Ruth. You must have been typing your Tim Laycock / Florence Wyndham message as I was typing mine and just got ahead. I have tracked this song down to his album Fine Colours. Do you know if this song traditional or did he write it (or pick it up from someone who did)?

Subject: RE: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: GUEST,Ian cookieless
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 05:19 AM

Wow! Thanks, Ruth. That's fantastic. I went to the URL you gave, and Florence had a monumental brass made in her honour in 1596, so this story is older than I imagined. I also assumed that Tim's story is from the USA. Maybe it is. Maybe this is a widely circulated story? Or was Florence the woman in question? I doubt that a farmer's wife would be Lady Wyndham! Or did she change to a farmer within the telling of the story when it travelled to the USA? Any clues, anyone?

Ruth, glad to hear that things are getting better with David now.

Subject: RE: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 05:10 AM

Of course, Tim Laycock sings a song called Floence Wyndham, based on this story.

Subject: RE: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 05:08 AM

From http://www.quantockonline.co.uk/quantocks/villages/watchet/watchet.html

"Florence Wyndham is famous locally she has even had a poem written about her. Her story is quite unusual. The legend goes that a year after her marriage she was taken ill, and died, she was taken to the church to be entombed in the family vault. That night the sexton, a poor man, crept up to the tomb and opened the lid to take the gold rings from her fingers, but he couldn't pull the rings off so he decided to cut the finger off. As he started cutting he was horrified to see blood, and her body move. He immediately fled the scene never to be seen in watchet again. Florence now wide awake picked up the lantern left by the sexton and walked down the path from the church to her house at Kentsford. It is said that she had great difficulty in persuading her household that she was not a ghost. Not long after this she gave birth to a son from whom the family has descended. The poem about this event was written by Lewis H Court a vicar of the church, he called it "Lady Wyndhams return". Here are a couple of verses

He seized the slender fingers white
And stiff in their repose
Then sought to file the circlet through;
When, to his horror, blood he drew,
And the fair sleeper rose

She sat a moment, gazed around ,
Then, great was her surprise,|
And sexton, startled, saw at a glance
This was not death, but a deep trance,
And madness leapt to his eyes.

The stagnant life steam in her veins
Again began to flow:
She felt the sudden quickening,
For her it was a joyous thing ,
For him a fearsome woe."

Subject: Origins: Buried alive - is this story true?
From: GUEST,Ian cookieless
Date: 21 Feb 07 - 05:04 AM

From the CD notes for a song by Tim Eriksen, Leave Your Light On, on his 2001 album, Tim Eriksen:

"From a true story told to me by Anna Maria Nygren about a farmer and his wife who lived in her area a few generations back. He really loved her, and was devastated when she died one cold day. She was buried promptly, and the farmer went home to try and get on with things. But that night, alone in the house, he heard a scratching at the window and a whisper – "let me in." He shouted "go away! It's not funny," but again a whisper, "let me in – it's me." He finally went to bed, pulled the covers over his head, and cried himself to sleep. In the morning he went out to the barn, and saw someone lying on the floor – it was her. She was nearly frozen, but breathing, and was missing a finger. Overwhelmed, he brought her inside. She revived, and eventually they pieced together what had happened. She had been mistaken for dead, buried prematurely and then, that night, unearthed by grave robbers. They couldn't get her wedding ring off, so they cut off her finger, at which point she suddenly woke up. No doubt surprised them. Somehow she found her way through the darkness and disorientation to her home and husband. They apparently lived a long time after that."

Tim doesn't give a place nor a precise (or even vague) date for the story, nor the names of the couple. I'd be really interested to know:

a. if anyone can verify this story in any way or give further details
b. if there are other similar stories circulating and, if so, what are their locations and origins? Could this be one variation on a rural myth (as it can't be an urban myth)?