A Vault to Prevent Death by Premature Burial

I had an interesting experience during recent research on a strange Victorian obsession–premature burial. This situation occurred when people fell into a coma or coma-like state that fooled doctors into believing they had died. Apparently, “corpses” revived at their own funerals (or unfortunately, afterward) just often enough to keep people wary that it might happen to them. When graves were re-opened for some reason, gruesome evidence of a mistakenly buried victim’s frantic attempts to escape made for great news copy and kept the public terribly aware of the horror they might endure from the same mistake.

People invented various devices to alert the living to such a disaster. These generally consisted of bells and alarms that a buried person could ring, and shovels were sometimes buried with people so they could work their way out of the grave. A person’s family might also check on the body via tubes in specialized caskets, that allowed them to see the corpse. Once decomposition set in, the survivors could feel assured that their loved one was really dead.

One device I have read about–and even seen mentioned in reference materials–was called a Bateson Revival Device or more commonly a Bateson’s Belfry. This device, “of proven efficacy, in countless instances in this country and abroad” according to its advertisements, relied on a sturdy metal bell mounted on the lid of the casket. The bell was connected to the dead person’s hand by a cord that went through the casket; the slightest movement would set off an alarm to alert the living that the “corpse” had awakened.

The information about this device and its mechanism was similar to other so-called “safety coffins” on the market. The problem is, the Bateson Revival Device is completely fictional. Michael Chrichton invented it for his novel, The Great Train Robbery, and did such a convincing job that researchers relying on secondary sources have been taken in. The Bateson device is mentioned as fact, simply because many writers did not trouble to find a primary (original) source of information about it.

This huge mistake shows how historical misinformation can be perpetuated as fact.