They Were Buried With a Bell, Just in Case

Munich, around 1830. A long, dim hall. Ten bodies lie on stone slabs, and each one has a thin string tied around a finger. The strings run up to the ceiling and across the room to a single bell. In the next room, a watchman sits awake all night, listening. Because the men on those slabs might not be dead yet. The building was called a waiting mortuary, and for about a century Europe was terrified of one very specific thing: being buried alive. It wasn't superstition. It was a medical problem. The stethoscope wasn't invented until 1816, a very weak pulse can be impossible to feel, and deep comas, catalepsy, cold and cholera can all make a living person look exactly like a dead one. Doctors tested for death by pinching skin, pushing needles under fingernails, holding mirrors to the mouth — and in the eighteenth century, by blowing tobacco smoke into the body. The only certain sign was the one nobody wanted to wait for. So people built safety coffins: air tubes, spring-loaded lids, ladders, flags, and bells mounted above the grave. Dozens of patents. Real money. And not one confirmed case of any of them saving a life. The bells did ring, though. Quite often. This video is about why — and about what actually ended the fear, which wasn't courage, and wasn't luck. Along the way: George Washington's last request in 1799, Edgar Allan Poe, and three phrases people always trace back to coffin bells — "saved by the bell", "dead ringer" and "graveyard shift" — none of which come from there at all. SOURCES AND FURTHER READING Jan Bondeson, Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear (2001) German waiting mortuaries (Leichenhäuser), Munich and Frankfurt, early 19th century Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick's coffin (1792); Christian Eisenbrandt's spring-lid patent (1843); Franz Vester's "Improved Burial Case" (1868) Edgar Allan Poe, "The Premature Burial" (1844) Accounts of George Washington's death (1799) Medical literature on the Lazarus phenomenon (autoresuscitation after failed CPR) No safety coffin is known to have saved anyone. The bells rang because bodies shift and settle after death — which, if you think about it, is worse. New video every week. #history #victorian #macabre