Buried Standing Up July 22, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Medieval, Modern , trackback
In the rusty old filing cabinet that provides fodder for this blog there is somewhere a file on men being buried upright. However, Beach has failed to find said file for the last three years, so despairing he hands the problem over to his readers. Famous or not so famous people from history who decided to be buried standing up. Here are eight. Can anyone add others: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
The great Georges Clemenceau, savior of France and eternal enemy of Germany wanted to be buried facing east towards the Rhine. Note ‘wanted’, this wish was not honoured by his family: much to the disgust of one Winston Churchill who in the 1930s pointed out that the error could still be corrected.
Ben Johnson is buried in Westminster Abbey standing up, at least so all the guide books assure us: as does Westminster Abbey’s rather good site (suspicious). Supposedly he was asked whether he wanted six feet and said no that two feet would be quite enough: so he saved some valuable real estate for the nation.
One John Plesent Burton in Lawrence County, Indiana was buried standing up in the 1760s and far away from the family plot ‘in a grave eleven feet deep’. No explanation as to why. One Britt Bailey of Texas insisted, meanwhile, on being buried standing up (obit 1832) because he never wanted anyone saying ‘there lies Britt Bailey’. His ghost is said to haunt the area round about and curiously the legend of the ghost appears on the gravestone (or historical marker): something this blogger has not previously come across. [image from Untiedt, Death Lore]
Hrappr, the dangerous farmer of Laxdaela Saga asks to be buried in the kitchen doorway upright ‘so I’ll be able to keep a watchful eye over my home.’ This proved not to be a good idea as he also returned from the dead.
George Hancock, American federalist and lieutenant of George Washington is said in some sources to have been buried standing up. He was certainly put in a family vault and when a descendant went to check his remains in 1886 she found ‘On the floor a mass of crumbled bones and stones… Near the top of the heap was the skull of what she supposed was the last of the earthly remains of Colonel Hancock.’ She deduced that actually Hancock had been buried sitting up: many other sources conform to this version of his death rites.
Irish legend claims that the last pagan king of Connacht Eoghan Bel was buried upright facing towards his traditional enemies in Ulster, a spear in his hand. There are some other echoes of this practice in Irish myth (though nothing Beach has found from archaeology). Bizarrely an Irish Quaker Samuel Grubb insisted on this practice for himself in 1921. His grave can be visited at Bay Lough. Those warrior Quakers…
30 Jul 2017: Lisa L writes ‘Here’s an “upright burial” for you. It’s from the Seymour, Indiana “Tribune,” August 12, 1977. I probably have come across others, but this is the only one that comes to my mind at the moment. I’m a bit surprised vertical burials aren’t more common, now that I think of it. You’d have to dig a deeper grave, but it would certainly save cemetery space…
Bruce T. 30 Jul 2017: You might want to look at our military cemeteries. Arlington has had to expand several times due to demand, for example, with delays during the expansions. I believe upright burials have taken place out of necessity in those periods. I’ve heard the same about old churchyard graveyards along the East Coast where space is tight and you have the right surname to get in. We had an inverted local version. Violent criminals and habitual scoundrels used to get the treatment. The offended party(s) would slit the fellow’s throat and stick them headfirst down a privy. Not only was it symbolic, it sent an unmistakable message to others of that bent, it let the police know to stay out, this was a private matter that had been dealt with in the traditional way. The last time I remember it know of it happening was at rural beer joint in a nearby county, around 1978. I knew the fellow, he had it coming, he was in his late 50’s and had been a menace for decades. He was freshly released from a stint in jail and up to his old ways. It happened about this time of year, mid-summer and blazing hot. In those days, alcohol couldn’t be sold on Sundays. He’d likely been dispatched very early on Sunday morning, just after closing time that Saturday night. He wasn’t found until Monday afternoon when a customer walked out there to relieve himself. A friend who was a paramedic said the crew that was sent out to recover the body described it and the outhouse as being “ripe”. They burned their uniforms and boots in a barrel. Those guys pay for most of their uniform costs out of pocket, they don’t burn them unless they’re a lost cause. No one was prosecuted nor was there much of an investigation. As I said, he had it coming.
Chris from Haunted Ohio Books, 30 Jul 2017: Some unusual burial positions in this: Unless the corpse was still in rigor, it would have taken a considerable amount of propping and tying to keep a corpse from sliding into a heap at the bottom of the shaft grave, if buried without a coffin, and a patent corpse-belt to keep it from crumpling to the bottom of the coffin. Here’s one from 1879: Here are some of the difficulties involved in keeping a corpse on its feet: And a mystery from London: Those who are fond of speculating upon mysteries, will find food in a skeleton of a young lad, the history of which is comprised in the fact that it was found standing up in a vault of St. Botolph’s, Aldgate, old church, with remnants of clothes on it, in the year 1742. The last time the vault had been opened previously was during the year of the great plague in 1665, and the probability is that during an interment, he must have been fastened down in the vault by some oversight of the workmen—to take the most charitable view of what otherwise may appear a hint at a dark tragedy. Fruit Between the Leaves, Volume 1, Andrew Wynter, M.D. London Chapman and Hall 1875 pp 188-194.
Brian C, 30 Jul 2017: A couple of odds and ends. No. 1. Peter Lemesurier, The Nostradamus Encyclopedia (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 156. In view of the very slightest of hints in Nostradamus’s grave epitaph…that he might have been concerned lest posterity ever dig up his remains, it is perhaps not surprising that later legend should have attributed to him a curse on anybody who did…. ‘In the aftermath of the so-called presse des Cabans, similarly, it was said that the seer had cursed the rioting peasantry of the time with the unprepossessing words: Allez, méchants pieds poudreux, vous ne me les mettrez pas sur la gorge, ni pendant ma vie, ni après ma mort.[10] Logically, perhaps, it was therefore supposed that he had been buried upright, rather than lying down.’ “Clear off, you evil clod-hoppers: living or dead, you shan’t tread on my throat!”
No. 2
Jet, 25 April 1963, pp. 46, 47 (photo)
[The Rev. Andrew Stackhouse designed his own casket so he could be buried in a sitting position.]
