One little-known fact of the Victorian era was their overwhelming phobia of being buried alive. Victorians had many death rituals that to a modern person appear morbid…yet fascinating. When someone died in the 19th century, it was a common practice to let the body lay out on the bed for a few days. This served as a sort of in-home wake, as well as giving the body a chance to…revive.
Because of
limited medical knowledge even among learned doctors, it was possible for
someone to be declare dead when really they had only lapsed into a coma. Some people revived much to the shock,
relief…and sometimes annoyance of their grieving relatives.
The result of this phenomena was the creation of things
like Bateson’s Device, a pulley-bell contraption rigged to underground coffins;
the Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive (also known as the
S.P.P.B.B.A); and in the case of those annoyed relatives not wanting their relatives making a
comeback tour of the land of the living, special coffins with fragile glass
poison caplets that would finish the job should a relative try to unbury
themselves.
Considering that Victorians’ obsession with death is
perhaps second to none but Ancient Egyptians throughout history, Poe at the
time was possibly not seen as creepy as he is by contemporary readers.
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