Are there any records of 'Safety Coffins' actually saving anyone's life?

by saraww

I have been reading an article on safety coffins becoming popular in the 19th century. Were they a bit of a novelty or were they actually used. Did they ever save anyone that was buried alive?

jbdyer

No. While there was a flurry of experiments and patents, there is no evidence (past a few custom one-offs) safety coffins were ever used.

The idea of people thought to be dead not actually dead has been a concern for some time; in the village of Braughing in Hertfordshire, on October 2, they celebrate Old Man's Day. This is based on a story from the 1500s where Matthew Wall was being carried in a coffin towards a church, and one of the coffin-bearers slipped on a leaf and dropped the coffin; those present heard knocking inside. Matthew Wall was found alive (and stayed that way for 24 more years). Even if the story is apocryphal (although Matthew Wall's will seems to confirm it), this demonstrates the idea of being in a coffin while still alive has long been present.

In the late 18th century there started a phenomenon (mostly in Europe, although there was one in New York) of waiting mortriaries, places where bodies could be supervised before burial to make sure none were still alive.

Concurrent with this was the creation of "safety coffins"; the first by 1790 made by Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, having a tube for air supply and keys sewn into the burial shroud. (This is one of the "custom one-offs" I referred to; he did not rise from the dead.)

Through the 19th century there was a booming patent business, with Germans having 30 different designs, and varied American patents as well. In addition to air holes, there were also smelling tubes so people passing by could smell if the corpse was decaying, as well as a bell that could be rung from the inside.

Two of the other "custom one-offs" were a family vault in Pennsylvania built in 1890 with an escape hatch, and the crypt of Timothy Clark Smith where his face was placed visible under glass; visitors could watch his head to make sure it was, in fact, decomposing. You can, too, although it's too dark now to see anything.

(Note that neither of those are, technically, coffins.)

Perhaps the largest burst of enthusiasm -- and the closest a safety coffin came to being a success -- was for a device devised by the Russian Count Michel de Karnice-Karnicki in the late 1890s called Le Karnice. It was designed so a spring would trigger based on movement, opening the lid of the coffin and causing a bell to sound and flag to trigger. You can see a US patent filing here.

According to an (admittedly dubious) account at the time, "thousands" of French people specified in their wills they wanted Le Karnice. Yet, as I hinted at earlier, there is no evidence the device was ever really used, either historical or archaeological. Why?

First, one of the demonstrations went wrong; an assistant was buried alive with the coffin but was unable to trigger the mechanism. Le Karnice was savaged in the papers.

Additionally there was the contention (made by M.E. Vallin at the Académie de Médecine in Paris) that abdominal swelling during death could set the device off; in other words, it was too easy to go off falsely.

It still eventually made it to a showroom in New York (geared at funeral directors), but it was not a success, and there are no records that it moved any units at all.

It's hard to theorize why something didn't happen, but word from Europe had likely passed of the failed demonstration and that even when the device was working, any movement at all from the decomposing corpse could set off opening the lid.

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I'll qualify my above statements with one addition: I'm not sure about modern times. Safety coffins are still being developed; here's a 2014 patent, for instance. There are still cases where allegedly dead people have revived; here's a 2014 CNN story about a person waking up in a body bag. In general, though, medical professionals have a stronger understanding of when people are truly dead, the fear of been buried alive has passed among the public, so the combination of someone buying a safety coffin and getting to use it to save themselves is now highly unlikely.

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Bondeson, J. (2002). Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear. United Kingdom: Norton.

Jones-Baker, D. (1974). Old Hertfordshire Calendar. United Kingdom: Phillimore.

Lamers, W. M., Habenstein, R. W. (2014). The History of American Funeral Directing. United States: National Funeral Directors Association.

Springate, M. E. (2015). Coffin Hardware in Nineteenth Century America. United Kingdom: Left Coast Press.