Not Even the Regular Army Was Regular

Jennifer at Rainy Day Genealogy Readings asks How Did That Civil War Soldier Really Die? The most likely answer will not be found carved on his gravestone.

Stones Tell Stories

The October issue of BBC History Magazine will feature Britain's strangest epitaphs, including:

Robert Millthorp, died December 13, 1826, aged 19

Epitaph: He lost his life by inadvertently throwing this Stone upon himself.

Location: All Saints Church in Darfield, near Barnsley

Little is known about the farm labourer, except that the stone which killed him was turned into his tombstone by his employer.

Edward Purdey, died August 9, 1743, aged 35

Epitaph: The debt I ow'd that Caused all the strife Was very small to cost me my Sweet life

Location: St John the Baptist Church, near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire

Purdey had been drinking at his local inn but when it came to pay the bill he was a halfpenny short. The landlady apparently threatened to bewitch him if he did not pay up - and then her dog savaged him to death. [Link]

Colonial Women Not Combustible

J. L. Bell at Boston 1775 says that colonial women didn't catch on fire as easily as one might think.

I have a pet theory that the danger of open cooking fires was played up in the 19th century by people with a financial incentive to do so: stove manufacturers. But like so many pet theories, I don’t have any evidence to back it up.

Mysterious Memorials Contest

The National Archive of Memorial Inscriptions and BBC History Magazine have launched a Mysterious Memorials contest to find the "most surprising, enigmatic or bizarre historical gravestone epitaph in Britain."

Contenders so far include one from Eshness in the Shetlands that reads: "Donald Robertson, born 14th January 1785. Died 14th June aged 63. He was a peaceable, quiet man, and to all appearances a sincere Christian. His death was much regretted which was caused by the stupidity of Laurence Tulloch of Clothister (Sullom) who sold him nitre instead of Epsom Salts by which he was killed in the space of five hours after taking a dose of it."

Another from All Saints Church, Darfield, Barnsley, states simply: "The mortal remains of Robert Millthorp who died September 13th 1826 aged 19 years. He lost his life by inadvertently throwing this stone upon himself whilst in the service of James Raywood or Ardsley, who erected it in his memory". [Link]

Don't Drive While Loaded

Higgins at mental_floss shares five things he learned at the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center:

2. Emigrants didn’t know how to handle their guns. According to several exhibits, accidental gunfire was a leading cause of death on the Oregon Trail (and I seem to remember this from the Oregon Trail video game). The issue was that emigrants brought muzzle-loading rifles which required a laborious loading procedure — involving a piece of wetted cotton, a lead ball, a ramrod, a firing cap, and a few minutes of fiddling — which was deemed too time-consuming if the weapon was needed in a hurry. As a result, wagons were trundling along the plains with loaded rifles in them. Of course, when a wagon hit a big enough bump, the weapon would discharge, often with tragic results. (Later invention of the breech-loading rifle largely eliminated this problem.)

Whenever I played the Oregon Trail video game I died from malnutrition before I got the chance to shoot myself.

Better to Have Loved and Lost a Goat...

The guy in Sudan who was forced to marry a goat is now a widower.

Rose, black and white, is believed to have died after choking on a plastic bag she swallowed as she was eating scraps on the streets of Juba. [Link]

Into the Lion's Den

Seventy years after his death, the family of Harold Davidson, the Rector of Stiffkey, is still trying to clear his name. He was accused of misbehaving with the "fallen women" he tirelessly tried to rescue.

At the ensuing church trial, in 1932, only one of the 40 witnesses, Barbara Harris, a 17-year-old prostitute bribed with money and alcohol, testified against him. Nevertheless, the Rector was found guilty of "systematic misbehaviour" and "removed, deposed and degraded" by his nemesis, the Bishop of Norwich. [Link]

His trial was a cause célèbre and spawned a media circus, but it was the story of his bizarre death that interested me most. Having been defrocked, he took a job at Skegness playing the part of "A modern Daniel in the lion's den." Standing in a lion's cage, he preached from the Bible and spoke about the injustice he had suffered. On July 28, 1937, his co-star Freddie grew tired of his act and knocked him to the floor.

The lion then grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and stalked around the small cage shaking the poor Harold back and forth. The audience thinking it was part of the act roared with laughter and therefore it was some time before help was called. Unfortunately it was too late for Harold Davidson and he died from wounds sustained a few days later. [Link]

When Comedy Kills

Just once I'd like to see "Fatal hilarity" written on a death certificate.

In 1660, the Scottish aristocrat, polymath and first translator of Rabelais into English, Thomas Urquhart, is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.

In 1782, a certain Mrs Fitzherbert is reported to have suffered from an attack of hilarity while she attended a performance of The Beggar's Opera. When Charles Bannister appeared on scene as Peachum, she burst into an uncontrollable laugh so loud that she had to be expelled from the theatre. She laughed continuously all night long and the day after and died early in the morning, the following day.

[Hat tip: xkcd]

A Slapstick Death

Benjamin Lott's 1910 death in New York City proves that there is a fine line between comedy and tragedy.

(Thanks, Teri!)

Beware the Scary Fairies

A burial register for the parish of Lamplugh in Cumbria reveals some interesting causes of death between the years 1656 and 1663.

The manuscript, a later copy of the original, was found in Whitehaven during a national local history campaign. It claims four people were “frighted to death by faries” while another died after being “led into a horse pond by a will of the whisp’.

A drunken duel “fought with frying pan and pitchforks” killed another man, while a second using “a 3-footed stool and a brown jug” as weapons claimed another. [Link]

Two deaths were attributed to "Mrs Lamplugh's cordial water," and eleven poor souls "took cold sleeping at church" and died (a dig, archivist Anne Rowe supposes, at the long-windedness of the rector).

Cure for Old Age Discovered in 1951

Among the "20 Things You Didn't Know About... Death" in the current issue of Discover were these two things I didn't know about death.

3 No American has died of old age since 1951.

4 That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates. [Link]

A more complete explanation may be found in Leonard Hayflick's 2002 essay titled, "Has Anyone Ever Died of Old Age?"

The cure resulted from a Public Health Conference on Records and Statistics in which all state and federal agencies were ordered to adopt a standard list of 130 contributing and underlying causes of death. In 1951, the list deleted a cause of death attributed to “old age.”

Thus, with a single stroke of a typewriter key, old age was cured as a cause of death in this country. [Link (pdf)]

What a Way to Go

The following causes of death turned up when Virginia's 1912-1939 vital records were transferred to "high-tech computer disks" in the early 1990s:

• Sat on an upturned milk pail and got a splinter which became infected.
• Found dead on a whorehouse floor.
• "[S]hot to death by Petter [sic] Underwood in a drunken row over a still tub and a mean woman."
• Fell from a tree, landed astride a lower limb, and developed gangrenous testicles.
• Given "too many cold meals" by his wife.

[Source: The Virginian-Pilot, Jan 10, 1993]

Cause of Death: Bureaucracy

From The (Surry Hills, NSW, Australia) Daily Telegraph:

Immigration blamed for elderly woman's death

August 24, 2005

IMMIGRATION officials are facing possible legal action after being accused of contributing to the death of an elderly Syrian woman seeking to extend a visitor visa due to ill health.

Melbourne GP Dr Chris Towie said 79-year-old Azize Agha died of a heart attack on August 10, two days after being forced by officials to travel 30 minutes into the city for a medical examination.

He said he had written to the department, warning it Ms Agha was unfit to travel.

"And so I wrote on her death certificate that the cause of her heart attack was being harassed by the department of immigration," he said.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Is Death Contagious?

From the Maine Farmer of Oct. 30, 1841:

A Singular Death — Mr Henry Coolidge of Framingham, a very worthy young man, died on Saturday last, in consequence, as his physicians suppose, of poison communicated to his blood by a razor with which he shaved himself soon after he had shaved the face of his deceased father.

The father was a patriot of the revolution, a pensioner, and advanced beyond the age of eighty, and in shaving the face of the corpse the razor drew a little blood. The son, without wiping the razor, made use of it to shave his own face, on which he also drew blood, and he made use of the same lather and brush which he had used on the corpse. Soon after his face became much swollen and he gradually grew worse for about two days, being much of that time in great torture, till he died.

It is certainly possible, and it seems probable, that a particle of the putrid matter from the face of the corpse was communicated to the blood of the living, and that it operated with as much malignity as the virus by which the small pox is propagated. — [copied from] Mass. Ploughman