Sir Thomas More in his book Utopia made one of the earliest references to euthanasia in 1516:
They console the incurably ill by sitting and talking with them and by alleviating whatever pain they can. Should life become unbearable for these incurables the magistrates and priests do not hesitate to prescribe euthanasia ... When the sick have been persuaded of this, they end their lives willingly either by starvation or drugs, that dissolve their lives without any sensation of death. Still, the Utopians do not do away with anyone without his permission, nor lessen any of their duties to him.
Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) believed that the duty of the physician was not only to improve the health of people but also to ‘mitigate pain and dolours; and not only when such mitigation may conduce to recovery, but when it may serve a fair and easy passage’. David Hume in his essay On Suicide argued: ‘death alone can put a full period to misery … that a man who [is] tired of life, and hunted by pain and misery, bravely overcomes all the natural terrors of death, and makes his escape from this cruel scene.’
The history of cremation is a long one and it is referred to in the Book of Genesis. Pagan Anglo-Saxons practised cremation from the fifth and sixth centuries, but its occurrence as an official practice in Britain is more recent. The practice of cremation had been debated two hundred years earlier when Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), an English physician born in Cheapside, put forward the idea in 1658. One of the first recorded cremations in Britain was that of Honoretta Pratt in 1769. Pratt was the daughter of Sir John Brooks of York and the widow of the Hon. John Pratt, Treasurer of Ireland. She was burnt in an open grave at St George’s Burial Ground, Hanover Square in London, at her own request. A stone was erected in the burial ground with the following inscription:
This worthy woman believed that the vapours arising from graves in church yards in populous cities must prove hurtful to the inhabitants and resolving to extend to future times, as far as she was able, that charity and benevolence which distinguished her through her life, ordered that her body should be burnt in the hope that others would follow the example, a thing too hastily censured by those who did not enquire the motive.
Debates, essays and writings about euthanasia were generated from the seventeenth century, and interest continued down until the nineteenth century. From the mid-nineteenth century there were significant changes relating to death. Reforms in public health were contributing to the fall in the death rate and a decline in Christian faith affected changes in mourning as well as witnessing the beginnings of a growth in cremations.
It was between 1873 and 1875 that two particular developments influenced the beginnings of cremation in Britain. The first of these involved Sir Henry Thompson, Surgeon to Queen Victoria, who had been influenced by a visit to the Vienna exhibition where he saw a demonstration of equipment used for carrying out cremations. On his return to England he wrote a paper in The Contemporary Review entitled, ‘The Treatment of the Body after Death.’ Thompson became an enthusiastic spokesman of cremation arguing that it was a ‘necessary sanitary precaution against the propagation of disease among a population daily growing larger.’ There were other arguments in favour of the practice, such as the prevention of premature burial and the fact that cremation would be cheaper than burials. Thompson’s article generated much support as well as criticism, particularly religious bigotry. Sir Henry was so encouraged by the degree of support for his idea that he called a meeting at his house at No. 35 Wimpole Street in Marylebone on 13 January 1874. He, along with a number of friends, drew up a declaration which read:
We, the undersigned, disapprove the present custom of burying the dead, and we desire to substitute some mode which shall rapidly resolve the body into its component elements, by a process which cannot offend the living, and shall render the remains perfectly innocuous. Until some better method is devised we desire to adopt that usually known as cremation.
Amongst the signatures were those of John Everett Millais and Anthony Trollope. As a result of this gathering, the Cremation Society of England came into existence. It later purchased land from the London Necropolis Company next to the cemetery in Woking with the intention of building a crematorium. However, the Society soon faced objections from some locals led by their vicar who resented such a practice taking place on their doorstep. In addition, the Society also faced legal obstacles. The Home Secretary, Sir Richard Cross, refused to endorse the practice until Parliament had given legal authorisation.
Ten years later a particular event helped their cause. The eccentric Dr William Price (1803–1893) of Llantrisant was a vegetarian, republican, ex-Chartist, anti-smoker and had rejected the institution of marriage for much of his life. At the age of eighty-three he took Gwenllian Llewellyn of Llanworno, who was in her twenties, as his ‘lawful wedded wife’. His eccentricity can be gauged by the fact that he thought nothing of taking walks in the nude. When he wasn’t naked he often wore a fox pelt on his head, a green pixie-like jacket and trousers and a sash and sword. Prince claimed to be the Archdruid of a lost Celtic tribe. He cremated his five-month-old son, Jesus Christ, on a local hillside (he also had two more children before he died at the age of ninety-two). Conducting his own defence at Cardiff Assizes, Price was acquitted of the charges against him. Cremation was deemed lawful, provided that it did not constitute a public nuisance. This important ruling opened the way for the legalisation of cremation. Another historic precedent came the following year at Woking in 1885 when Mrs Jeannette Pickersgill became the first official cremation.
The first provincial crematorium was built in Manchester in 1892, and was followed by Glasgow (1895) and Liverpool (1896). The Council of the Cremation Society after searching for land in north London, eventually found a site for a crematorium adjacent to Hampstead Heath and in 1900 the London Cremation Company Limited was founded. Funds were raised to buy and develop the site and architect Sir Ernest George was appointed to plan the famous crematorium at Golders Green. It opened in 1902. Significantly, Sir Henry Thompson performed the opening ceremony. Amongst those whose ashes are kept at Golders Green are Sigmund Freud, Ivor Novello, H.G.Wells, Bram Stoker, Alexander Korda, Sid James, Peter Sellers and Kingsley Amis. From the turn of the century cremation became more acceptable but it was still far from the desired choice of the vast majority of the population.
Cremation was given a higher public profile when well-known people chose to be cremated, such as the Duchess of Connaught in 1917 who was the first member of the Royal Family to be cremated. Nonetheless, the move to cremation was slow with about 800 cremations per year in 1908 and less than one per cent of corpses being cremated in 1918. The number of crematoria rose from one in 1885, to 249 in 2005. Between 1902 and 2005 Golders Green has had more than 300,000 cremations – more than any other crematorium in the UK.
4
Bizarre Deaths
One of London’s fascinating aspects is its diversity. This is reflected in the death of its citizens and this chapter considers a range of curious or otherwise interesting cases and ways in which Londoners have died.
Smithfield was one of many sites in London where executions formerly took place. One who died there in a particularly excruciating manner was Richard Rose, a cook in the household of the Bishop of Rochester. In 1532, he was blamed for the death of two people who consumed gruel that he had prepared. His punishment, designed to fit the crime, was to be boiled to death in a cauldron of water suspended over a fire.
A number of religious offenders went to their death at Smithfield. One such heretic was a man named Collins who, in 1538, mimicked the officiating priest when he elevated the host during a service of worship. Collins lifted his pet dog above his head. This incident came to the notice of the authorities and in spite of the fact that Collins was clearly deranged, he was condemned to be burnt as a heretic. His accomplice the dog died with him, by no means the first or last occasion on which animals have been judicially executed for their alleged criminal offences.
Edwin Bartlett was something of an eccentric. He had his own distinctive view of the hallowed institution of marriage which held that a man should be allowed two wives. One should be a companion, the other should be there for his sexual delectation. Bartlett’s wife, Adelaide, was French and a woman of considerable beauty, but she soon discovered to her chagrin that she had been cast in the ‘companion’ category. Bartlett, however, showed no sign of being in a hurry to go off in search of a woman to perform the sexual role. In 1885 the Bartletts became friendly with a young Methodist Minister named Dyson. They discussed all sorts of matters including Bartlett’s views on matrimony. During one of these chats, Bartlett revealed that if he was to die, he would like Adelaide and Dyson to marry. He went further: he encouraged them first of all to kiss and cuddle and then to have sex while he watched. Dyson fell head over heels in love with the lovely Adelaide. On 1 June 1886, Bartlett was found dead in the lodgings he shared with Adelaide in the Pimlico district of London. The post-mortem revealed death by chloroform poisoning. What a can of worms now opened up. Just as Dyson was falling for Adelaide, Bartlett for the first time had started taking a sexual interest in her as well. This made Dyson insanely jealous and police enquiries showed that he had bought a considerable amount of chloroform. In court Adelaide insisted that the chloroform was taken regularly by her husband to help him to get to sleep. A murder trial followed and Adelaide and Dyson clearly had both the motive and the means. What was never established was whether Bartlett was actually murdered. If it was suicide or poisoning by mistake, how had he managed to swallow such a large amount of the fiery poison? When Adelaide was acquitted, pathologist Sir James Paget remarked that she really ought to reveal how she did it, even if only in the interests of science. But she didn’t.
Short-bladed, sharp-edged weapons have frequently been used for the purpose of murder; but cases involving swords are less common. However, in the 1880s, London found itself rapt with interest in one such murder case. The marriage of Mr and Mrs Sweet had had its ups and downs and they constantly rowed about all manner of apparently trivial issues. Things literally came to a head when Mrs Sweet told her husband, who unluckily for him had been christened Sylvanus, that she objected to his habit of anointing his hair with pomade. What exactly happened next was never fully established, but the outcome was all too evident. Mr Sweet ran his wife right through the head and out the other side with a sword. The defence was able to convince the court that Sweet had committed the offence whilst suffering an epileptic fit.
Thankfully it is only rarely that someone is killed by a coffin. Henry Taylor managed this unusual achievement in 1872, although he was obviously unable to enjoy the celebrity that might have gone with it. He was a pallbearer at a funeral at Kensal Green Cemetery. The coffin and its contents were unusually heavy and the ground was slippery after excessive rain. When the funeral party approached the grave, Thomson suddenly stumbled and his fellow pallbearers had no option but to drop the coffin. Unfortunately it fell on his head and chest, inflicting fatal injuries.
Thomas Britton (1644–1714), a coal-merchant, stands foursquare with many of London’s unsung minor celebrities. For many years he ran a shop in Jerusalem Passage in Clerkenwell, above which he held musical events which attracted figures as prestigious as the composer Handel. Something of a polymath, Britton also studied chemistry and the occult and was one of the founders of the Harleian Collection of the British Library. In spite of the fact that he continued to trudge the streets hawking coal, Britton hobnobbed with well-known aristocrats and even went on expeditions with them looking for bargains in antiquarian bookshops. An inoffensive man, he was deeply superstitious and died prematurely as a result of a practical joke. A new acquaintance of his, a ventriloquist, tried out his skills on the unsuspecting Britton. A voice apparently boomed forth from a sack of coal telling him that he would die within a few hours if he did not immediately fall on his knees and say the Lord’s Prayer. Clearly terrified, Britton sank to his knees to do exactly as the voice instructed. Traumatised by this experience, the poor man died a few days later.
In April 1782, a Mrs Fitzherbert from Northamptonshire was visiting London and decided to take in a performance of The Beggar’s Opera at the Drury Lane Theatre. This highly popular work combined burlesque of Italian opera with political satire and some scenes of genuine pathos. It was perhaps gently comical in places but Mrs Fitzherbert found the work so irresistibly funny that she had to leave the theatre before the performance was over with tears coursing down her face and she proceeded down the street howling and wailing in transports of uncontrollable and manic hilarity. These outbursts continued unabated until terminated abruptly by her death less than forty-eight hours later.
In the late nineteenth century, a publican in Clerkenwell achieved the dubious distinction of being burnt to death by his own whisky. He was down in the cellar tapping a large cask of this liquor when the bung came loose and the contents shot out over the walls and over everything else including him. It was then that he made the fatal mistake of lighting a candle so that he could get a better idea of how much damage had been caused by the leak.
Robert Naysmith died in 1906 in an Islington workhouse, alone and penniless. Born into a well-off Scottish family, he was the ‘black sheep’ who went off the rails and made some sort of a career for himself as a travelling showman with the stage name of ‘The Human Ostrich’. His act lacked subtlety, consisting as it did simply of swallowing hatpins, marbles, small pieces of glassware, stones and other generally unpalatable items. Unsurprisingly, making a living in this way took a severe physical toll and Naysmith was forced to retire from the stage. With no qualifications, he tried a new career selling bootlaces but poverty and sickness forced him into the workhouse. Doctors called to attend him thought he was joking when he told them about his stage career and they only took him seriously when he developed an abscess which burst revealing the cause to have been a small brass nail. Naysmith’s health deteriorated very quickly and he died aged just thirty-four. A post-mortem revealed over thirty items that he had swallowed while doing his acts and which had lodged in his liver, kidneys and intestines. His death was certified as being due to gastritis and peritonitis. A verdict of death by misadventure was passed on the unfortunate ‘Human Ostrich’.
Commercial Road was opened in 1803 having been built through the East End to provide a direct route from the East and West India Docks to the City. It was always busy and cosmopolitan, as befitted the districts through which it passed and many apparently exotic sights were to be glimpsed by those who used it regularly. In 1875 bystanders and others were treated to the extraordinary spectacle of a full-grown tiger stalking along Commercial Road in the sensuously feline yet infinitely threatening manner of such creatures if they are on the loose. A crowd gathered and, following at a respectful distance, watched aghast as the beast picked up a small boy and carried him off, presumably looking for a suitable spot in which to make a meal of him. The child, obviously a gutsy little East End street-urchin, was screaming blue murder and was determined not to go down without a fight. One zealous spectator, doubtless full of good intentions, picked up a crowbar hoping to prize the tiger’s jaws open and thereby allow the infant to escape. His good intentions came to naught because in wielding the crowbar he managed to deal the luckless infant a fatal blow. The tiger, incidentally, had escaped from a shop for exotic pets on the nearby Ratcliff Highway.
To the twenty-first-century mind, there can be few activities that seem more futile than duelling for the sake of honour. If a man of rank had been publicly slighted before the seventeenth century, redress would probably have been achieved by hiring a few thugs to give the offender a thorough going-over. If the insult was deeply felt, a slit throat or a knife in the ribs would probably have done the trick. In the early seventeenth century, however, the idea emerged that a more honourable way of settling such issues among those who now saw themselves as ‘gentlemen’ was by means of a fair fight in the presence of seconds. O
ne of the earliest recorded duels of so-called honour was that fought at Islington in 1609 between two courtiers who were favourites of James I. The cause of the duel is not recorded, but with supreme skill they managed to kill each other. The King was saddened and somewhat irked when he heard of the affair and decreed that they be buried in one grave. It can still be seen in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Islington.
After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, duelling became very prevalent, especially among the more violently-inclined younger members of the gentry. Covent Garden and Lincoln’s Inn Fields became favoured places for the settling of differences. Hyde Park also had its moments, including the famous duel between Lord Mohun and the Duke of Hamilton in 1712. Mohun was widely regarded as a blackguard and few mourned his passing. Both assailants received many frightful wounds which proved to be fatal.
Shortly afterwards an unsuccessful attempt was made in Parliament to make duelling illegal. Some people condemned the practice of duelling outright, while others felt that each duel should be evaluated according to the seriousness of the slur or slight involved. Duelling was given an almost respectable veneer when in 1809 two Cabinet ministers, George Canning and Lord Castlereagh, fought with pistols on Putney Heath, in this case without fatal consequences. In certain circles it was felt that a young gentleman had not proved his manhood until he had fought a duel or two. In 1829 even the Duke of Wellington fought a duel, in this case in Battersea Fields. He survived.
The years 1763, 1764 and 1765 marked a high-point for duels. The irascible John Wilkes fought Samuel Martin in Hyde Park over the issue of how the phrase ‘cowardly scoundrel’ should be interpreted. Wilkes received an injury coyly described as being ‘below his navel’. Later a surgeon was shot dead also in Hyde Park by an officer of the marines. Soon afterwards, Epping Forest was the scene for a duel between an army captain and a military chaplain who died later from the wounds he sustained. The fifth Lord Byron, related to the famous poet, killed William Chaworth in a duel arising out of a drunken brawl. This was in the back room of a tavern in Pall Mall in January 1765.
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