General Chat

UNBURIED FOR NINETEEN YEARS

ANNUAL REGISTER

July 11 1768

A woman was buried In St. George, Hanover Square, who had been dead 19 years. The reason of her being so long unburied was some years ago a near relation of hers died, and left her 25 pounds per annum as long as she remained upon earth as expressed in the will. Her surviving husband rented a little room over a stable near South Audley Street for 5 per annum, and there she has remained in a very decent coffin all that time.

The husband being dead, the landlord of the room wanted to make an alteration upon which the coffin was discovered.

Thus the husband had 20 pounds per annum for keeping a dead and quiet wife upon earth.

I found this article from Time 1941


( from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,766139,00.html )


In a Liverpool convalescent home last week death came to a trim little Briton named Alfred Charles Nunez Arnold, who had apparently lived 112 years. Alfred Arnold could never prove his age. There were no such things as birth certificates when he was born. He himself admitted that the only evidence he had was a book an uncle had inscribed to him "on his twelfth birthday, Nov. 9, 1840." But people who knew Alfred Arnold never questioned this evidence. For one thing, Alfred Arnold never tried to capitalize on his age. He had much else to do. His life was as full as it was long.

Orphaned when a few months old, Alfred Arnold was raised by a London uncle, a diamond merchant. In 1838 the uncle took ten-year-old Alfred to see the coronation procession of slim young Queen Victoria. Little Alfred, who never grew to be five feet, was bowled over by a surging crowd near the old Temple Bar. Around this time, also, the uncle took Alfred to tea with Charles Dickens and Disraeli; while still very young the boy also met Jenny Lind and Lord Macaulay.


Alfred intended to be a singer, studied with Jenny Lind's great teacher, Manuel Garcia, who lived to be 101. But instead Alfred shunted into newspaper reporting. He spent many years newsgathering on the Continent. Then he returned to England and spent many more years in light opera on the road.


As dewy youth passed and Alfred approached 60, he began thinking of foreign parts again. In the early '90s he went to Malaya to edit a paper, moved on to Japan to become European editor of Tokyo's Japan Times. In 1899, just after the beginning of Philippine-U.S. hostilities, Alfred arrived in Manila. Filipinos arrested the ambitious newshawk of 71 as a spy, left him bound and stripped in the jungle to be slowly devoured by flies. U.S. troops rescued him. Later he went to the U.S., worked on a San Francisco paper.


In 1902 Alfred went to India. In Benares he met an eminent yogi, Chakananda Swami, who was then 147 and who taught Alfred the hoary Hatha-Yoga secrets of vitality. These stimulated Alfred to an even more intrepid period of reporting. During World War I, a ripened newsman of 86, he entered Germany on a forged neutral passport, was arrested at Frankfort on the Main, was saved by the sportsmanship of the consul of the country from which Alfred supposedly came. In 1926 the mature reporter of 98 was arrested in Portugal, condemned to death, thrown into a dungeon. He escaped with a jailer's help and got back to England.


As middle age passed, Alfred settled down to quieter labors. He made translations (he had learned six languages). In 1933, at 104, he appeared as a fireman in a British film. At 106 he said: "I have always been a boy. I am still a boy. How old do I look? Forty? Perhaps fifty. . . . If I had not met a great Indian Yoga teacher in Benares ... I should not even have reached my century."


A few years ago he found it convenient to live in London's St. Pancras Hospital. At no, when World War II began, he took singing lessons again "in order to entertain the soldiers, since they won't let me fight." Sometimes he found it helpful to wear spectacles. His hair began to grey. Said he: "I smoke, drink and stay up late and always shall."

September 25th, 1941 THE TIMES

The death is reported of Britain's oldest man, Mr. Alfred Charles Arnold at Woolton, near Liverpool, and his age is given as 112. Five years ago (when he told me he was 105) he several times came to tea with me in Victoria Street and we had frequent other communications. In build he was quite on the small side, thin, active, alert, and in manner most independent, in no way showing any sign of age, still less of great age; his sight and hearing were quite good; he had a nice voice and was full of conversation and pleasing to talk with.

I gathered that he lived quite alone in a room near St. Mark's, Marylebone; how existing I could not learn; he scorned the idea of an old-age pension, but welcomed gifts of oranges. He was specially keen to get rooms in the Bond Street area so that he could receive and instruct persons who would wish to consult him on the Yoga system to which he personally felt he owed so very much; he could not get help to do this and that depressed him. C. B. GABB.

DR Maurice Ernst, of the Centenarian Club, was scornful of the alleged age of Arnold. He said he saw him about ten years before his death, and then he judged him to be no more than 65.

A leading article in The Times intimated *a mild incredulity*. It is evident that neither Dr Ernst nor The Times leader writer had seen a pamphlet which the author of London in the News found on a second-hand bookstall. In this it is stated that he was baptised in St George's Church, Bloomsbury, in 1829. The entry is in its baptismal register.


No doubt Arnold attributed his remarkable appearance for his years to Yoga. His age is given as 112 in the register of deaths at Somerset House. The cause of death is given as hypostatic pneumonia and senile decay. He was described as a retired journalist of 28 Ferme Park Road, Stroud Green, London.

A correspondent of the Evening Standard has drawn attention to the gravestone in Great Hockham Churchyard
(Norfolk): it bears the following inscription:

Sacred to the memory of
Joseph Ashton
who died Oct. 8th, 1881.

Aged 112 years.

The great age, however, cannot be considered as authentic as Arnold's, for there is no evidence as to date of birth.



NOTE:.....Well I can't find him on any of the census'....anyone else care to look? ( have tried the IGI ...nothing)

SUFFOCATED IN A GRAVE

ANNUAL REGISTER

September 7, 1838

An Inquest was held in the workhouse of St. Botolph, Aldgate, on the bodies of Thomas Oakes, the parish grave-digger, and Edward Luddett, a Billingsgate fish dealer, who lost their lives by suffocation from the foul air in a grave.

It had been the practice in the parish, for want of sufficient space, to dig very deep graves, and pile coffins in them one upon another till they were filled. The grave in question had only one coffin in it, and Oakes went down to put in another containing the body of a still-born infant. Not returning, he was searched for, and found lying insensible at the bottom.

Edward Luffett, supposing him to be in a fit, descended with ropes to
place under his arm so that he might be drawn up; but immediately on reaching the bottom, he fell, as one of the witnesses said, *as if struck by a cannon ball'.

Afterwards, by advice of a surgeon in the neighbourhood, chlorate of lime was thrown into the grave; and the poisonous quality of the air being destroyed the bodies were got out. A verdict of 'Accidental Death' was returned.

THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD

ANNUAL REGISTER

June 14, 1837

An extraordinary sensation has been created in East Street, Lambeth Walk, under the following circumstances.

For the last sixteen years two brothers and three sisters named Cunningham have resided at No. 129 East Street, and procured their living by mending china etc.

About three weeks since one of the sisters died and was buried by Mr. Gawler (the parish clerk of Lambeth) since which time the survivors have been in an ill state of health, and on Wednesday last one of the brothers died.

On Saturday evening Mrs. Moss, next door neighbour, inquired of the surviving female how her sister was, and when her brother was to be buried? She replied: My sister is a little better, but I have been so ill that I have not been able to go to the undertaker's to order the coffin.'

Mrs. Moss thought the answer a very strange one, and at once proceeded to Mr. Gawler to whom she stated the case, and he (Mr. Gawler), accompanied by a surgeon, instantly proceeded to the house. They knocked at the door several times, but not obtaining any answer the door was forced open, and Mrs. Moss, having procured a light, they proceeded upstairs, and found the corpse of a man in the back room, and that of a female in the front both representing a most horrible spectacle, being in a state of putrefaction.

On descending, a male and female were discovered in the back room, sitting on two chairs, apparently lifeless. A sedan chair was instantaneously sent for, in which they were conveyed to Lambeth Workhouse. They are still alive, but their recovery is very doubtful.

CRUELTY TO A CHILD

THE TIMES

September 21 1836

An instance of the fatal effects of terrifying children occurred last week at a ladies' seminary near Hackney, A little girl, between the age of 6 and 7, for some act of childish disobedience, was thrust into a dark cellar at some distance from the house, and suffered to remain there throughout the night; the dreadful sighs and screams which the child uttered produced no effect upon her inhuman preceptors, and when the door was opened in the morning the poor child was an idiot; a medical man who was instantly summoned, has pronounced her recovery extremely doubtful.

A WALKING CORPSE

ANNUAL REGISTER

February 1767

On Thursday died (as was supposed) Mrs. Margaret Carpenter, journeywoman to Mr. Smith, livery lace maker in Little Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields; and on Friday she was properly laid out, in order to be interred tomorrow; when on Friday night, to the astonishment and terror of the whole family, she came downstairs stark naked, having only been in a trance; as soon as the surprise was over, they put her into a warm bed, and gave her comfortable things for her refreshment; she said she was bitter cold; but her situation so : shocked her that she did not survive above a day or two.

VESTED INTERESTS

ANNUAL REGISTER

November 19 1766

The new temporary bridge was opened at Black-friars to the no small mortification of the water men who cannot help complaining of this precipitate expedient to deprive them of their bread at this hard time.
Many of us, say the old men, may be dead before the stone bridge can be finished, and it is hard to starve us before our time by a wooden one.

The opposition of watermen was largely responsible for the

extraordinary fact that London had only one bridge until 1750, when Westminster Bridge was erected.

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