Hellish Fiends, and Brutish Men

The following story was reported in the Bristol Mirror on Saturday, 3 August 1816.

Miss Burrowes of Red Lion Street, Clerkenwell, was to be buried in the afternoon of Wednesday, 31 July 1816, at St. James’ church.
The gravediggers were instructed to dig the grave to a depth of twenty feet to thwart resurrectionists. When Miss Burrowes’ coffin was lowered into the ground, ‘the Undertaker found some fault with the depth, and the grave-digger and his assistant went down to throw up a few more shovels of the earth.’
The two men started enlarging the grave as the mourners stood at the graveside watching on when ‘owing to the great pressure of the people…the shores gave way, and the earth fell in, and buried them under its weight; several men were immediately set about shovelling away the earth.’
As the rescuers dug away the earth from atop the two buried men, more soil would fall into the grave. It took an hour of digging to clear the earth from the body of one of the missing men. His name was Butcher, and it was believed he was dead.
Dead or not, Butcher was ‘carried home, and by the means prescribed for restoring persons apparently suffocated, he was restored to life, and at nine o’clock last night there were great hopes entertained of his recovery.’
The Mirror added that the ‘body of the other man was not then, dug out although there were several navigators employed in shovelling away the earth.’
A large crowd had gathered to watch the rescue of the gravediggers, and the ‘constables were not able to keep them away.’
The body of Miss Burrowes, who had been somewhat forgotten about in all the tumult, was ‘deposited in a vault under the church.’
Presumably, the second grave digger’s body had been retrieved when Miss Burrowes was interred, possibly at a depth of less than twenty feet.

©Mark Young 2024

Source

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-bristol-mirror-dreadful-accident/148170512/