PREMATURE BURIAL.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 317, 5 December 1929, Page 5

PREMATURE BURIAL.

CREMATIONS INCREASE. People who are afraid of being buried alive seem to be becoming more numerous. And the British Society for the Prevention of Premature Burial is hoping for public interest in the building of a large mortuary where bodies can lie until there can be no doubt of death. Eerie tales of people who have been proved to have moved in their coffins have caused such anxiety that many are leaving instructions that after death—or supposed death —they shall be cremated. It is felt that premature cremation would be preferable to premature burial.

Movement Rings Bell. It is to make impossible either burial or cremation alive that the society advocates such a mortuary. “They have a similar one at Munich,” *Mr Maxwell Johnson, the secretary of the society told a London Evening News reporter recently. “ Attached to each body is a cord connected with a system of bells, which would ring at the slightest movement of the body. “ Attendants are on duty day and night, and if a bell rings they dash for a doctor. Many nervous people think that nobody should be buried within a week of supposed death. Astonishing precautions are sometimes taken by people to make sure that they shall not be buried alive. They have ordered that a stiletto shall be thrust through them, a vein severed, or that they shall be decapitated or buried at sea.”