DO DEAD PEOPLE TURN IN THEIR COFFINS?

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1136, 1 September 1882, Page 2

DO DEAD PEOPLE TURN IN THEIR COFFINS?

A corhespoxdext of a Bath newspaper stated the following singular circumstance a tew weeks ago:—Having occasion last week to, inspect a grave in one of the parishes in this city, in which two or three memlters of my family had been buried some years since, and which lay in very damp ground, I observed that the upper part of the coffin was rotted away, and had left the head and bones of the skull exposed to view. On enquiring of the grave-digger how it came to pass that I did not observe the usual sockets of the eyes in the skull, he replied that what I saw was the hind part of the head, (called the occiput, I believe, by anatomists) and that the face was turned, as usual, to the earth ! Not exactly understanding the phrase “ as usual,” I enquired if the body had been buried with the face upwards, as in the ordinary way ; to which he replied, to my astonishment, in the affirmative, ami adding that in the course of decomposition the face of every individual turns to the earth ; and that in the experience of three-and-twenty years in his situation, he had never known more than one instance to the contrary. A writer in Notes and Queries, commenting on the strange story, says that “ notwithstanding his three-and-twenty years’ experience, the worthy grave-digger must have been mistaken, unless there Is something peculiar in the bodies of Bath people. But if the face turns down in any instance, as asserted, it would bo right to ascertain the cause, and why this change is not general.