The Evidence is Equally Thin

Could this have happened both in Yorkshire and in Tasmania?

The headmistress of a school in Yorkshire had asked for the inscription “She was Thine”. Unfortunately the e was omitted from Thine, so the inscription read “She was Thin”. The stonemason’s apprentice was blamed for this error. He was told to go and put the missing “E” on the gravestone. This he did, and being a Yorkshireman he put the “E” at the beginning of the inscription with the result that the stone epitaph then read; “E, She was Thin”. [Link]

But wait, maybe it happened in America:

A small headstone in the western part of Pennsylvania is pointed out to visitors as one of the sights of the neighborhood. It was placed over the grave by a widower who, while not lacking in love for the departed one, was penurious to a degree. He ordered a small stone because it was cheap, and told the mason to engrave on it this inscription:

"Sarah Hackett. Aged ninety years. Lord, she was Thine."

The stonecutter said there was too much inscription for so small a surface, but was told to go ahead and "squeeze it on somehow." Here is the inscription as squeezed:

"Sarah Hackett. Aged 90. Lord, she was Thin." [Link]

Here's one more version in which the phrase appears on a floral arrangement at a funeral.

Merv Signs Off

Merv Griffin's headstone has been placed, and is drawing crowds at Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

As one of his final wishes, the late talk show king asked that his granite grave stone bear this tongue-in-cheek inscription: "I will not be right back after this message." [Link]

A Wench and Her Bench

Nancy Millar—author of The Final Word: The Book of Canadian Epitaphs—says that tombstones are no place to settle scores.

"You cannot step over certain lines and call your wife a bitch or anything like that."

One of her favourite examples of an epitaph done right -- one she describes as "a friendly agreement between husband and wife" -- is a monument along an old logging road in Grand Forks, N.D.

The top inscription reads, 'Here sits the bench of a Viking wench.' Upon the woman's companion's death, a subsequent inscription was added: 'Now the Viking wench has company on her bench.' [Link]

A Most Mysterious Memorial

BBC History Magazine has named a winner in its Mysterious Memorials contest. Sarah Johnson's epitaph recounts "the 28 times the
deceased was drained of fluid in her abdomen – the treatment for ascites, which is related to liver disease." It's thought that this was an "early example of brazen advertising" by the doctors mentioned on the stone. (If so, this was the worst advertising campaign ever. Sure, it makes me want to have a few hundred gallons of fluid drained from my abdomen, but not by these quacks.)

You can read Sarah's medical memorial and runners-up here (pdf), and all the "Shortlisted Entries" here.

No Rubbing Required

Here's an account of Yang Cai's tombstone-reading software in action.

"This is just kind of a fun project ... but I think it's very meaningful to have something where people feel excited," said Cai, director of Carnegie Mellon CyLab's ambient intelligence lab, as research assistants cloaked in black focused a beam of light and a digital camera on Isabelle Seville's weathered gravestone. "We take this as a combination of science, art, technology and culture."

The Rev. Richard Davies couldn't read the worn indentations in Seville's tombstone. Charcoal or crayon rubbings revealed little. But Cai's technology constructed a 3-D image, complete with Seville's name, and her place and date of birth -- London, 1781. [Link]

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]

Look It Up Yourself!

An article in Sunday's Washington Post mentions some of the more interesting stones in Congressional Cemetery, now celebrating its 200th anniversary.

Even the more recent deceased, such as historian Ruth Ann Overbeck, who died in 2000, lie under tombstones that make you think. Under Overbeck's name are no birth and burial dates, just an admonition and a life's philosophy: "Look it up!" [Link]

Okay, I did. She died April 2, 2000, at Sibley Memorial Hospital at age 64 years, survived by husband Robert J. Hughes.

The King Is Gone, but He's Not Forgotten

John at Transylvanian Dutch had help deciphering an old family joke from the tombstone of his great-grandmother's father.

Whenever you invoked his Hebrew name, Moshe Leyb, you were always supposed to follow it with, "the King". She never explained why.

We left it as a quirky inside joke we would probably never understand completely.

And then I found his tombstone, and discovered the answer was written on it.

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]

An Epitaph in Need of an Editor

Evergreen Cemetery in Owego, New York, is running out of room—and no wonder, given that it's home to an inscription "which at 135 words, is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for longest epitaph."

Here is a transcription of the lengthy epitaph penned by E. T. Gibson for his ancestors—taken from this too-small photograph:

Well, we got what was coming to us, and here in this burial plot we lie:—

We fourteen skeletons of Gibsons, Tinkhams, Drakes, Pixleys and Curtises, that once were clothed with flesh and lived and loved and laughed and danced and sang and suffered just like you till the God-created life-transmitting spark that had been passed down to us from its beginning died.

But we were not animals, or insects, or plants, which likewise have their life-transmitting sparks, but beings into whom at our birth had been breathed a soul-entity that came directly from God.

And to him our soul-entities have gone to be dealt with by Him as our treatment of others whom He created deserves.

What think you of these beliefs?

Erected in 1935 by E. T. G.

Done In By His Kitmagar

From The Daily Advocate of Newark, Ohio, Nov. 12, 1893:

There is a tombstone in the north part of England which bears the following epitaph:

Sacred to the memory of
The Rev. ——— ———.
Who, after twenty years' unremitting labor as a missionary was accidentally
shot by his Kitmagar.
"Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

A Corset, But No Corpse

From The Monessen (Pa.) Daily Independent of May 17, 1948:

READING, Pa. (UP)—Genealogists delving into the history of Reading and Berks County, Pa., for their bicentennial anniversary this year, have been puzzling over a curious epitaph recorded here.

The inscription reads: "Here lies the clothing of the living Anne B——," and has researchers bewildered to explain why anyone would want to bury the clothes of a living person.

With an eye to current styles in women's fashions, one genealogist hazarded the unscientific opinion that Annie B's husband may have taken the drastic step to express his displeasure with 18th century female dress.

I Told You I Was Sick

Here's the jacket blurb from Nigel Rees' new book, I Told You I Was Sick – A Grave Book of Curious Epitaphs — due out in the U.S. momentarily:

A guided tour of some 150 remarkable epitaphs that reveals that the graveyard and family vault are not so much places of the spooky terrors of the night…but of curiosity, fascination – and more than a little humour.

Author Nigel Rees brings to bear upon the strange and sometimes surprising world of the epitaph his formidable skills as an ‘archaeologist’ of the sources of quotation and phrases: each epitaph is explained and located, and its source and context described as fully as possible. I Told You I Was Sick continues the centuries-old custom of epitaph collecting and brings it right up to date.

From 1960’s rock star Jim Morrison’s much-visited grave in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, Paris, to a little-known memorial stone in the Church of the Holy Cross in Haltwhistle, Northumberland (which translates from the Latin as ‘After a short, difficult and useless life, Here rests in the Lord, Robert Tweddle’). And from the gravestone of a ‘tiny marmoset’ near Henley-on-Thames to the resting place of Maggie, an army mule somewhere in France (‘who in her time kicked two colonels, four majors, ten captains…and one Mills bomb’). Notably, the book discovers what happens when people like the comedian Spike Milligan expressed a wish that the joking words ‘I told you I was ill’ (or ‘sick’) should be put on their gravestones.

I Told You I Was Sick is a diverting selection that will both intrigue and entertain – a quirky Collection of Curious Epitaphs, including:

None could hold a candle to him
- John Edwards who perished in a fire 1904 (from the burial ground near Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral)


On the whole I’d rather be in Philadelphia
- W.C Fields (Suggested epitaph for himself)


Exit Burbage
- Elizabethan actor Richard Burbage


Dorothy Cecil Unmarried As Yet
- Epitaph for a spinster


Born a dog. Died a gentleman
- Victorian epitaph from an unidentified pet’s cemetery


Weif ov Mr Eizak Pitman Fonetik Printer
- Wife of Isaac Pitman, inventor of Pitman’s shorthand system

Leave 'em Laughing

From the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat of Aug. 7, 2005:

Parting shots: Save the best line for last

By Mark Hinson

FOR AMUSEMENT PURPOSES ONLY

[snip]

When the great Mel Blanc died, after spending his life lending his voice to Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig, he really had no choice but to put this on his tombstone: "That's All Folks!"

Benjamin Franklin also had a sense of humor when he composed his final zinger: "The Body of B. Franklin, Printer;/Like the Cover of an old Book/ Its Contents turn out/ And stript of its Lettering and Gilding/ Lies here, / Food for Worms./ But the Work shall not be wholly lost:/ For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more,/ In a new & more perfect Edition,/ Corrected and Amended. By the Author."

Alas, Franklin did not get the glib epitaph he'd wanted. His gravestone reads: "Benjamin and Deborah Franklin. 1790." A cooler headstone prevailed.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

My favorite remains this classic from Tombstone, Arizona: "Here lies / Lester Moore / Four slugs / from a 44 / no Les / no More."