The Creation of Safety Coffins

The setting was July 15, 1674 in England. Alice Blunden had been drinking poppy water, which contains opiates. Her husband had been away, and Alice took the advantage to drink more than usual. After awhile, she fell unconscious.

Alice’s body was found soon after, while she was still unconscious, and a doctor was brought in to investigate her condition. The doctor held a mirror up to Mrs. Blunden’s nose and mouth to observe if she was breathing. When he noticed no fog on the mirror, he pronounced the woman dead, and sent a message to her husband.

Alice’s Funeral

Mr. Blunden requested that the funeral wait until he returned. However, their family had other plans.

They decided to proceed with Alice’s burial. She was said to be a large woman, and her family was forced to squeeze her tightly into the coffin. Alice barely fit into the wooden box, and would not be able to move, if she were capable of it.

But she could in fact move. Two days after she was buried, a group of children had been playing within the same graveyard as Alice. They heard screams and faint cries coming from beneath the ground. The children listened closer, and could hear a woman begging for them to help. Frightened, the children ran off to alert the authorities.

The Mistake

The headmaster of the graveyard initially dismissed the children’s claims as mere lies. He waited until the following day to investigate Mrs. Blunden’s grave. When he finally arrived, however, he found the children to have been right. The headmaster quickly got the authority to dig up and free Alice.

Once dug up, the woman rose from her coffin, bloodied and bruised from attempting to escape. Her family gazed upon her as she was being freed, and noticed how near death she already was.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Blunden, her family decided that she was so close to dying that they forced her back into the coffin. Alice was buried alive once again, this time dying within the scratched-up box.

Fear Spreads

Stories such as Alice Blunden’s led to the fear of being buried alive spreading in popularity. Known as taphophobia, it became a widespread fear among various cultures. Throughout the 17th century, this fear spread rapidly as many people genuinely feared that they may be buried alive.

The Blunden story was not the only, as there are many similar to it. The fact is that, during the 16th and 17th centuries, many people were falling unconscious due to diseases (or poppy water), but not dying. And since medical practices were not as advanced as today, many doctors would mistakenly pronounce these people dead.

The spread of taphophobia eventually led to the demand for a coffin that could save someone from being buried alive. Thus, the safety coffin was created.

Safety Coffins

From the 17th to 19th centuries, safety coffins became popular as taphophobia continued to spread throughout communities. These coffins were especially popular among the wealthy.

Safety coffins allowed people who were buried alive to ring a bell from within the coffin and notify people that they were still alive. However, since its creation, there are very few reports of safety coffins actually saving a life.

Conclusion

In some places of the world, safety coffins are still available to purchase and use. This can be attributed to the 17th through 19th centuries, when the fear of being buried alive was widespread.

A legacy was created around safety coffins, and they even found their way into well-known literature. In 1844, famous author Edgar Allan Poe wrote about taphophobia in “Premature Burial“. In the story, the narrator suffers from the fear of being buried alive, and takes many preventative actions to avoid it.