In message <[email protected]>, Norman Lee <[email protected]> writes >Dear List > >I am interested to see Will's transcription of a problem on the unsolved >page. I have to confess not to having looked at this but, taking his reading >as correct, the main puzzlement for me is the delay in burying the body. I >understood that the first obligation of the executor(s) was to bury the body >of the deceased after which came payment of debts to the crown and the lord >of the manor followed by other debts of varying categories. Of course, this >doesn't sit very comfortably with the practice of lying in state for some >important deceased people and maybe this person was one such, whose body was >required by others to lie in state? Some people had a fear of being buried alive. perhaps because of being in a coma or in a deep narcotic induced sleep (opium being the only palliative they knew). It happened very rarely, but naturally, any cases of sudden recovery got maximum publicity and made sick folk panic that it could happen to them. Coffins being opened and found to have deep scratches where the 'body' had tried to escape were heard of (one occurrence, multiplied?). One man insisted on being buried with a bell in his coffin, another with a rope attached to a bell outside it. The 8 days delay was a practical time - if you had not come round in a week, then probably you were not going to. One farmer in Herts demanded to be placed in a coffin on the beams of his barn, for at least a year, which both gave him time to recover and reduced the offence to others. He was left for around 10 years than finally buried. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society