Dismemberment

“ The ancient method of burial is not so certain—many cases have come to light where people, supposed to be dead, revived after interment. Imagine the horror of the situation. Can any human experience be more dreadful than this one? Many cases have come to light in the nineteenth century proving beyond a shadow of doubt that unfortunate men and women had been buried alive. In graves opened many weeks after burial the scratched face, torn hair and imprint of terror upon the features told only too plainly what had happened and of the final anguish of the unfortunate one. ”

“ In cases where the crime is doubtful, or unjustly imputed, those who are thus visited come out, and laying their right hand upon the coffin, protest their innocence of the blood of the deceased, calling God to witness the truth of their asseverations; but, in cases where the crime is clearly proved against the murderer, the door is either closed, the ceremony repelled by violence, or the house abandoned by the inmates until the funeral passes.*
* Many of these striking and startling old customs have nearly disappeared, and indeed it is better that they should. ”

“ It would be supremely foolish to object to the burning of the dead on the score of its being completely a heathen practice, and as if burial in the ground was not at one time open to the same objection. ”

“ The tale that hangs thereby is illustrative of the carelessness and ignorance of man alike. The grave has been at all times a kind of box of Pandora, with this difference,—it did not require unclosing: unopened, the grave sent forth its children—pestilence 71and death—to decimate the ranks of the population of the globe. But all calamities caused by burial have been endured by people with perfect indifference, and it was not until modern times that any reforms were attempted at all. But in spite of these so-called reforms, the murder of the living by the dead has continued. ”

“ How many mutilated corpses lie prostrate on the ground with their dilated eyes staring at the sky—and among them, the happy, the enviable! how many living, groaning, bleeding men, writhing with pain, unable to raise their mutilated bodies from the gory bed of torture and death! ”

“ Kidnapping persons, and selling them for slaves, is punished with blows and banishment. The disturbing of graves, is visited with the same infliction; and whoever mutilates, or throws away the unburied corpse of an elder relative shall be beheaded. ”

“ The amputated limbs and the dissevered body were united to the bloodless head of the murdered woman, and every injury by you inflicted after death has afforded the means of proving by comparison, beyond doubt, that the wound on the eye was inflicted by you while your victim was in life, and strength, and health. Horrible and revolting to humanity as was the spectacle presented by the mutilated trunk and mangled remains, fresh details and discoveries suggested both the means and manner by which you accomplished the destruction of the deceased. ”

“ The corpse of every one guilty of felo-de-se should be buried either in a remote spot not customarily used as a place of burial, or near to a cross road; but if the relatives of any such unhappy person insist on having the remains interred in the ordinary [Pg 397] place of sepulchre, they are expected to carry the corpse over the burying-ground wall, and inter it after sunset. It is believed that if a person die unseen, they who first discover the body will meet his death in a similar manner. ”

“ Not that alone, but cremation removed from earth the most horrible experience that can be endured by mortal man and that is premature burial. The practice of burying bodies is a relic of barbarism. Its horrors and possibilities are [166] without limit. No civilized community should tolerate it. Custom and tradition are the forces that maintain it. It does not possess a single point in its favor, while, on the other hand, there are scores of sound arguments against it.
No person who ever spent a minute in the fierce temperature of a crematory ever Can’t Bury them Alive. ”

“ I believe, and before Heaven and your country you must assert the same, that the remains we have uncovered are all that is left us of your lost mother; the clandestine burial at once declares the guilt of murder ”

“ Bodies of stalwart workmen lie beside the remains of refined ladies, many of whom are still decked with costly earrings and have jewels glittering on the fingers. Rich and poor throng these quarters and gaze with awe-struck faces at the masses of mutilations in the hope of recognizing a missing one, so as to accord the body a decent burial. ”

“ The chief work on the subject hitherto published in America is that of Professor Frazer, [166] and must have considerably enlightened the nation as to the true merits of cremation. It is not very long since a Persian gentleman in an Eastern State, who wished to burn the remains of his dead wife, was personally assaulted by an ignorant mob and compelled to resort to ordinary burial. [167] But several cases of cremation of human bodies have been performed in America. [168]
In England several attempts have been made from time to time to popularise the idea of burning the dead. ”

“ No more grave robberies in the twentieth century. The old style of burial becomes a back number. Popular errors about Cremation removed. Undertakers at a discount. Costly funerals discouraged. Funeral etiquette in 1999. No person buried alive in the twentieth century. Sacred memories of the dead still jealously treasured. “Rented graves” and other burial abominations of the nineteenth century are forever banished.
The great innovation of the twentieth century which long rankled within the human breast, but finally uprooted and conquered prejudice, was cremation. ”

“ How can they do that dreadful, deliberate murder—for I can call it nothing else—when the defenceless man stands by his coffin on the brink of his open grave, and the hands of his comrades send to his bosom the deadly messengers! It is not right to take life away ”

“ Put yourself into my hands, and it will go hard but you will be a free man in an hour’s time. Refuse my aid, and in less than three weeks from now you will be lying, a strangled corpse, in a murderer’s grave. ”

“ The practice of mutilating the corpse of a murdered man by cutting off his hands and feet and fastening them round his waist, seems to have been looked on as rendering him powerless to seek for vengeance. Comp. Soph. Elect. v. 437. This kind of mutilation, and not mere wanton outrage, is what the Chorus refer to.
430. As in v. 351 the loss of honour among the dead was represented as one consequence of the absence of funereal rites from those who loved the dead, so here the restoration of the children to their rights appears as the condition without which that dishonour must continue. ”

“ But if they had seen, as I have, the remains of men, women and innocent babes horribly mutilated, burnt, butchered, and hacked to pieces, they too, if they knew such a fate awaited them beyond the possibility of a doubt if captured alive, would unhesitatingly court death by their own hands, suddenly and immediately, rather than wait for the other, a few hours or days more remote, perhaps, but certain, and horrible in its prolonged agony. ”

“ Thus the dead naturally revive; and a corpse may give out its shadowy re-animation when not too deeply buried in the earth. Bodies corrupted in their graves have risen, particularly the murdered; for murderers are apt to bury their victims in a slight and hasty manner. ”

“ For some of them have been cut and chopped all to pieces, some have had their eyes bored through, some have been sodden, some roasted, some flayed alive, some buried quick, stoned, crucified, grinded betwixt millstones, drawn and hailed hither and thither unto execution, drowned in waters, strangled and hanged, torn in pieces, vexed with rebukes before their death, pined in prisons, and afflicted in bands. ”

“ The ghosts and their followers always took delight in torture, in cruel and unusual punishments. For the infraction of most of their laws, death was the penalty—death produced by stoning and by fire. Sometimes, when man committed only murder, he was allowed to flee to some city of refuge. Murder was a crime against man. ”

“ It is believed that people who have been executed for their crimes or who have met a violent death become nats and haunt the place where they so suddenly departed from this world, and this belief led to many cruel practices in former times. The burial of men and women alive under the gates of a city originated in this desire to protect its inhabitants, as these spirits wander around the place of their death, and bring disaster upon strangers who may come with evil intent. ”

“ He likewise that is found guilty of the crying Sin of Murder, is usually hang’d up in Chains, there to continue ’till his Body shall be consum’d, and this at or near the Place where the Fact was committed. Likewise we are accustom’d to bury such as lay violent Hands upon themselves, in or near the Highways, with a Stake thrust thro’ their Bodies, and this to terrifie all Passengers by that so infamous and reproachful Burial, not to make away with themselves. ”

“ The desire is almost universal, that, when summoned to lie down in the grave, the dead may never be disturbed, by the hand of man—that our remains may return quietly to dust—unobserved by mortal eye. There is no part of this humiliating process, that is not painful and revolting to the beholder. Of this the ancients had the same impression. Cremation and embalming set corruption and the worm at defiance. ”

“ For savages the practice of devouring dead kinsfolk is often regarded as the most respectful method of disposing of their remains. In a few cases this custom is combined with that of killing both the old and sick, but it is more often simply a form of burial. ”

“ The local and neighboring crematories, not being equal to the incineration of the dead, many of the mutilated bodies have been taken elsewhere. The cries and lamentations of the living that no more shall they behold the forms of their dear ones is pitiable in the extreme. ”

“ No one touched the grey-headed murderer, who knelt down—not to pray, but to look into his son's eyes—and to examine his lips—and to feel his left breast—and to search out all the symptoms of a fainting-fit, or to assure himself—and many a corpse had the plunderer handled on the field after hush of the noise of battle—that this was death. ”

“ Why such things should be is of less concern than the fact that criminal mutilation of the dead body is not confined to any age or country. Though more frequent in the last fifteen years, it takes up quite a space in the history of human cruelty. ”

“ Should he privately accept the offer, he is most careful to conceal his connivance at the deed of blood, lest he should draw down on his head the wrath of his murdered kinsman's ghost. So, when the deed is done and the murder is out, he works himself up into a state of virtuous sorrow and indignation, covers his head with the leaves of a certain plant, and chanting a dirge in tones of heart-rending grief, marches straight to the village of the murderers. ”

“ One most inhuman custom still prevails in this part of the kingdom, and that is, the sacrificing of a number of human victims at the burial of their dead, in testimony of the respect in which their memory is held. ”

“ To prevent this it used to be customary to cut off the criminal’s heels with a sword or to hamstring him as he was turned off.132.3 The intention of thus mutilating the body was no doubt to prevent the ghost from walking. How could he walk if he were hamstrung or had no heels? With precisely the same intention it has been customary with some peoples to maim in various ways the dead bodies not only of executed criminals but of other persons; for all ghosts are more or less dreaded. ”

“ We have been taught, that those graves are the least likely to be violated, in which are deposited little else than mortal remains. But, in a certain sense, the dead can no longer be said to carry nothing with them. ”

“ If the charges made by the anti-cremation party were true, incineration, if established, would offer facilities for the commission and concealment of hideous crimes. A victim could be destroyed by poison, the dead body carried to a furnace and reduced to a small heap of ashes in a short space of time, and the crime thus forever placed beyond the reach of detection. The cremator, then, would become the instrument and accomplice of the murderer. It is urged that the agents employed in the commonest form of secret murder—poisoning—are often of a novel, subtle, and various character. ”

“ What an inexpressible feeling of terror smote her breast, when she passed the grave of the murdered man!—Her limbs trembled so violently that it is surprising how she was enabled to support herself, and she mentally offered up an involuntary prayer for the repose of his soul, and that his barbarous assassins might be brought to punishment for their inhuman violation of the laws. ”

“ In burying a corpse, it is natural, and, so far as we are acquainted, universally the custom, to bury them with the face upwards. We can look upon our dead friends with a melancholy complacency—we cast a long and lingering look after them until they are completely shut from our view in the grave ”