Matthew Wall was a resident of Braughing, a village in Hertfordshire. He died in 1571 and was in his coffin on the way to his funeral on October 2nd when the bearers slipped on wet leaves and the coffin was dropped, jolting Matthew and bringing him back to consciousness.
When he eventually died - over twenty years later - he left a bequest in his will and asked that the village commemorate the anniversary of the non-burial.
And so, on this day each year the villagers gather outside the Golden Fleece pub, where the vicar tells the story of the dramatic event, Then they ask the current resident of Matthew Wall’s cottage to pay an annual rent of £1, as per instructions laid down in the will.
The church bells are rung and the lane to the church (Fleece Lane) is swept by the vicar and local children. This seems an odd thing to do as it was an unswept leaf-littered ground that saved Matthew's life. However, this then culminates in Matthew’s grave being tended. Prayers are said, songs are sung by the children, and sweets are distributed for later.
It's a lovely eccentric ceremony and, as Quentin Cooper and Paul Sullivan quip in their excellent book Maypoles, Martyrs and Mayhem, 'Matthew Wall is thus the only charitable zombie in British folklore.'
The local name for the custom is Old Man’s Day as Matthew lived to a ripe old age before he died. Again.
I heard a lot of stories similar to Matthew Wall's when I wrote for Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity.
In Series 5, one of the guests was Dr Jan Bondeson who had just written a book about historical cases of people being buried alive. Thankfully, such cases were rare ... that we know of. And it's certainly something we don't have to worry about today. Western medicine is pretty good and the problem, if it still exists, is likely to only affect poorer Third World countries with a lack of medical practitioners.
But, as Jan explained, even before the invention of things like ECGs and stethoscopes, doctors had methods to check for signs of life. They included:
- Putting horseradish near the patient’s nose, or tickling the nostrils with a feather.
- Thrusting a pencil up the corpse’s nose, or putting needles under the toenails.
- Rubbing the gums with garlic, or stimulating the skin with nettles.
- Putting a crawling insect in the ear, or pouring vinegar (or urine, if there’s no vinegar available) into the patient’s mouth.
Many towns also had what the Germans call a Leichenhaus, a building in which corpses were kept on beds for several days before burial to ensure they were dead. The posher ones attached bells to the bodies that would respond to the slightest movement and summon an attendant.
Meanwhile, people with money could invest in so-called 'security coffins'. The first use of these that we know of was by Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick who, in 1792, ordered a coffin equipped with a window that let in light, an airhole to prevent suffocation and a lid with a lock and key mechanism with the keys put in a special pocket in the shroud. Elsewhere, a German priest called Pessler suggested attaching a rope from inside the coffin to the church bells, while a colleague, Pastor Beck, made the much more sensible suggestion of a smaller bell and string system (see below). This is not, despite occasional claims, the origin of the phrase ‘saved by the bell’ which almost certainly comes from boxing. Another priest suggested that each coffin could have a tube which could be sniffed each day to ensure that putrefaction was taking place.
The first practical security coffin was invented by physician Adolf Gutsmuth in 1822. His coffin had a long tube attaching the deceased to the world through which food or drink could be administered if necessary. He tested the coffin himself by being buried alive and on one occasion gave a speech about his product, whilst interred, to a group of spectators standing around the tube.
In the second half of the 19th century, up to 30 patents were issued for security coffins. Richard Strauss (not that one) replaced bells with firecrackers and another inventor included a firework in the coffin which would be fired through a tube.
The fear of being buried alive is called taphephobia. Hans Christian Anderson was so afraid of being buried alive that he left a handwritten note saying ‘I only appear to be dead’ on his bedside table, while the famous clown Grimaldi was so frightened of being buried alive that he specified his head must be cut off first, which his family duly arranged.
The fear is so great that, to this day, many people ask to be buried with a mobile phone.
Though I'm not sure what the signal would be like six feet under.
I can't even get a signal in my local Co-Op.
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