Had Corner in Graves

1905

The Melbourne Women's hospital discovered lately that a local undertakers' ring had bought up nearly all the vacant plots in the general cemetery, and, having put up its prices for funerals at another cemetery, which has only been opened a short time. In order to divert trade to its own ground, it was retailing its corner in graves at a handsome profit.


A Grimly Suggestive Group

The minister and the doctor were riding down town in a Lexington avenue car, and had arrived at Madison square when their friend the undertaker joined them.

After riding with him two blocks the minister and doctor put the undertaker off the car, saying their appearance in trio looked too suggestive and would cause talk among their friends.


Dachshund Found His Mistress

Three years ago Mrs. A. M. McKee of Plainfield, N. J., made a visit at Glens Falls, N. Y., and on her return left her dog, a dachshund, with her Glens Falls friends. The other day the dog appeared at the old home in Plainfield and finding that his mistress had moved, searched the city until he located her present residence.


Freak of Nature in Kentucky

A peculiar freak of nature has shown up in the bluegrass. Wells that have been dry for weeks, springs that have long since ceased to flow, have burst forth, and some of the small creeks that were dry as a powder keg are now living, running streams — all this without rain. — Grayson Bugle-Herald.

Some Good About All Races

1900

"The Bright Side of Humanity," a new book by Dr. Edward Leigh Pell, is said to be the first serious attempt that has ever been made to present the characteristic noble traits of all races. In the preparation of his book Dr. Pell examined one thousand works of travel and although all of them set forth with considerable detail the vices and disagreeable traits of the people which they profess to describe, only two hundred dwelt at any length on their virtues. To supply the compensatory high lights in these dark pictures was a happy thought and must have been a pleasant task.


A Little of Everything

A Chicago tobacconist hands every cigarette purchaser a neighboring undertaker's card.

In the Black forest district of Germany are 1,400 master clockmakers and 6,000 workmen.

A church bell has an empty head and a long tongue, but it is discreet enough not to speak until tolled.

The sultan has forbidden the Turkish war department to use balloons or carrier-pigeons for army purposes.

A French naturalist asserts that nightingales devour the drones of a beehive, and never attack the workers.

A mint is to be established in Canada for the coinage of gold. Heretofore the coining of the metallic currency has been done in England.

An official map of Vesuvius on a scale of one in ten thousand has just been issued, being the first since 1876. A new plan in relief of the cone has also been made.

Man Sleeping By Tracks Declared Dead

Middletown, New York, 1914

"CHRISTY" WASN'T DEAD

But Everybody Thought He Was, and He Just Missed the Morgue

Christy Fisher, a well known resident of this city, felt tired this afternoon, and lay down alongside the Erie tracks and went to sleep. A little girl saw him and told her mother. The latter investigated and decided the man was dead. She notified police headquarters. Motorcycle Policeman Dopson investigated, and also pronounced the man dead.

Chief of Police McCoach, Coroner Harding, and an undertaker were called and the coroner was about to hold an inquest preparatory to taking the man to the morgue when Fisher opened his eyes and wanted to know "what in thunder was going on." He was informed that he was dead at which he scrambled to his feet and ran down the tracks, narrowly escaping being hit by a train as he got away. — Dispatch to New York Times.

Comes To Life In The Tomb

1910

Cleveland Woman Tells Weird Tale of Mother's Experience.

Cleveland, O., Nov. 25. — That Mrs. Anna Hubbell of Aurora, O., was buried and came forth alive from the tomb several hours later, is the story Mrs. Etta Winfield, a daughter of Mrs. Hubbell, tells.

Mrs. Winfield, who lives in Cleveland, says she was called to Aurora two weeks ago by the announcement that her mother had suddenly died. She says she believed Mrs. Hubbell was merely in a trance and so told the doctors and the undertaker. At her request the woman was placed in a cemetery vault and the sexton was told to watch the body.

About seven hours after burial the sexton discovered that the body had moved in the casket and notified the relatives of Mrs. Hubbell, who had the body removed, and physicians succeeded in apparently bringing the body back to life.

This is the story vouched for by Mrs. Winfield, but Mrs. Hubbell, who is at Aurora, declines to discuss the affair, as do others of the family living there. They admit that the woman was very ill, however.

—Coschocton Daily Age, Coshocton, Ohio, Nov. 25, 1910, p. 1.

Funeral Customs – Old Fashioned Woe Being Replaced

1903

Funeral Reforms Needed

Old Fashioned Parade of Woe Gives Way to Better Customs

It accorded with old beliefs, remarks the Brooklyn Eagle, that a funeral should be a scene and occasion of gloom — absolute, hopeless gloom. The front room, with its dismal ornament, its black hair cloth furniture chairs and "sofy," its framed wedding certificates, its wreaths of flowers preserved from other funerals, was reduced to darkness by the lowering of the shades and closing of the blinds, so that guests fell over one another's legs when they entered and fumbled their way to the chairs. The deceased was dressed in black, nailed into a black coffin that rested on a black bier, and all the company dressed in the blackest things they could dig up from their wardrobes. No light, no air, no color, and from the minister little comfort. His voice creaked for the occasion. Then the company went away in darkened carriages to a bleak burying ground where the last rites were as dismal as might be.

This was the Yankee way. Some other people did differently. The wakes held over the remains were comforting to the survivors and added much to the reputation of the departed for hospitality. And the German fashion of going to a hotel after a burial and ordering unlimited beer proved that there was still a few solaces left on earth. Americans reverence their dead too much to make a funeral a scene of festivity; but they are mitigating the gloom of these occasions to a degree. Flowers and music take the edge from grief, and it is no longer necessary to darken the windows. White is more and more used in place of black for dress and decoration, and in placing the body in the casket — or, better, on a couch — there is avoidance of the stiffness of attitude that suggests a pose before the old fashioned photographer.

Reform in these matters comes, in part, through the holding of funerals in other places than the home. Some undertakers have mortuary chapels as part of their establishments. Cemeteries have buildings for a similar purpose. Mount Auburn, in particular, has a beautiful little chapel, near the gate which replaces the gothic structure in the middle of the grounds, now become a crematory. In this chapel, with its organ, carved oak roof, stained windows and electroliers in the form of funeral torches, the bier is so easily movable that it can be turned by a single hand: hence much of the struggle to place and carry away the casket is foregone.

But what especially marks the difference between the funeral here and the home funeral, between the now fashion and the old, is the lack of mourning emblems and the presence of plants and palms. The chancel is a mass of green — kentias, rubber trees, oleanders, and smaller plants, in rows and groups, so that the casket, with its usual burden of flowers in the center, suggests a great bloom itself in a whorl of leaves than the depository of a dead body. The clergyman delivers his address from a pulpit at one side, and if he is a wise clergyman it is a hopeful and encouraging address; in preference to the old fashioned threnody. When that is over there is music form the organ — a fine instrument — and the company files out into the sunlight. It is far better than the old fashioned funeral — that type of absolute woe.

Undertaker Locked in Tomb With Many Corpses

1920

Locked in Tomb With Many Corpses, Undertaker Has Thrilling Half Hour

MILFORD, Mass. — Locked in a tomb with a score of corpses about, in a cemetery far removed from habitation and almost submerged in snow and ice, and without any apparent means of escape, was the horrifying experience of Walter W. Watson, a local undertaker.

For nearly half an hour, alternately shouting in a desperate but vain effort to attract help and trying with an iron bar to pry open the tomb door, Mr. Watson said he was confronted with a situation that sorely tried his soul and gave him a thrill whose memory will always stay with him.

It was 2 o'clock in the afternoon when Mr. Watson went to the receiving tomb in Vernon Grove Cemetery. He had to work in the chamber for some little time, and thought to draw the door nearly to its fastenings, the better to be protected from the cold. To draw the heavy door over the blocking ice he threw all his strength into the pull, and to his amazement the door closed and the strong latch fell into its catch.

Watson looked about for means to force the door. When he espied a heavy iron bar he thought luck was with him. But all his efforts failed to stir open the door. Vigorously he applied the iron bar, but to no avail. Then he shouted through a 10-inch-wide ventilator in the rear of the vault. The only answer that came to him was the echo of his own voice.

With hope abandoned from this quarter, Watson determined to force his body through the small opening in the wall. A stout, well-built man, he has much difficulty in driving his shoulder through the ventilator. But persistent effort finally, after a labor of about thirty minutes, brought him safely to the outside of the tomb.

"Not for all the money in the movies would I again go through such an experience' said Mr. Watson when his thrilling experience became known to his fellow citizens.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 20, 1920, page 1.

Man Charged With Insulting Women

Centralia, Washington, 1913
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CHARGED WITH INSULTING WOMAN

A warrant was sworn out Thursday by Justice Jones at Morton for the arrest of S. W. Jordan for alledged discourtesies applied to the wife of R. L. Shepherd, a brakeman living in West Morton. Owing to the absence of Jordan no hearing has as yet been secured. Public sentiment in the town is divided in regard to the matter.

--Daily Chronicle-Examiner, Centralia, Washington, August 16, 1913, page 6.


The Letters Undertakers Get
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Chehalis, Washington, 1921
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The Sticklin Undertaking Company reports that every week letters continue to arrive from all parts of the country asking for pictures and descriptions of the young boy who was killed in the Chehalis railroad yards in August, following the night of the Palmer Bros. circus being in the city, and whose remains were buried here. Only a few days ago a woman came from Portland to look at the pictures of the boy, hoping against hope that it might be her lost son. A letter arrived a few days ago from a small California town, asking for information. Evidently none of us realize how many aching mother hearts there are in this country, yearning for news of an absent son.

--The Chehalis Bee-Nugget, Chehalis, Washington, October 28, 1921, page 4.