PREMATURE BURIAL.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 788, 11 April 1910, Page 8

PREMATURE BURIAL.

REMABKABLE NAEEATTVE OS 1 . . AUTHENTIC CASES. - . ;- Weird. and creepy were some of tha , stories told at tlie amraai meeting ct£' the Association; for . the Prevention of Premature Burial, held in London recently. It was possible, said-one speaker for an individual to live 40 or 60 minutes in a closed coffin, after having been given up'for dead. . Dr. brindiey James related a case which came under his own personal es- . perierice. A man hanged himself in Bermondeey and was out down by the police as dead. Two medical men also certified tho man to be dead. Then 1 De. James made an examination and started using artificial means of respiration. At : the end of an hour and a Imlf the man commenced to breathe, and he was removed to Guy's Hospital, in which institution ho thoroughly recovered. Later he"was brought before the magistratea and censured for having attempted su> - cide. ■ • ..".'.

At one of the meetings of the. society, remarked Dr. W. R. Hadwen, a lady living in Holland Eoad, Kensington, had attended, carrying in her pocket her own death certificate. She had been, declared dead by her medical man, after careful examination. As she lay in a trance condition on the bed in the deathchamber, sho heard everything that had occurred, but she was powerless to move, even when the undertakers were taking her measurements for the coffiiL

Another person, a collector of curios, known intimately' to the speaker, has his own death certificate framed and hanging i,n, his drawing-room wall. 5 The ease with which a death certificate can bo obtained was remarked upon as the cause of a great deal of fraud. A case was investigated in Lancashire a few, years ago, it was stated, in which a woman had obtained no fewer than three death certificates m order to get insuiv ance money upon- the alleged death of hor child. In nine eases out of every, ten the medical man, it' was alleged, never sees the corpse which he certifies as dead; and in addition there were some J 0,000 deaths registered every year where the causes of death were never stated.