Death of a Climbing Boy

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Chimneysweep.png

Account of the death of a chimney sweep’s boy, taken in evidence before the Parliamentary Committee on Climbing Boys, 1817:

“On Monday morning, 29 March 1813, a chimney sweeper of the name of Griggs attended to sweep a small chimney in the brewhouse of Messrs Calvert and Co. in Upper Thames Street; he was accompanied by one of his boys, a lad of about eight years of age, of the name of Thomas Pitt.

“The fire had been lighted as early as 2 o’clock the same morning, and was burning on the arrival of Griggs and his little boy at eight. The fireplace was small, and an iron pipe projected from the grate some little way into the flue. This the master was acquainted with (having swept the chimneys in the brewhouse for some years), and therefore had a tile or two broken from the roof, in order that the boy might descend the chimney. He had no sooner extinguished the fire than he suffered the lad to go down; and the consequence, as might be expected, was his almost immediate death, in a state, no doubt, of inexpressible agony.

“The flue was of the narrowest description, and must have retained heat sufficient to have prevented the child’s return to the top, even supposing he had not approached the pipe belonging to the grate, which must have been nearly red hot; this however was not clearly ascertained on the inquest, though the appearance of the body would induce an opinion that he had been unavoidably pressed against the pipe.

“Soon after his descent, the master, who remained on the top, was apprehensive that something had happened, and therefore desired him to come up; the answer of the boy was, ‘I cannot come up, master, I must die here.’ An alarm was given in the brewhouse immediately that he had stuck in the chimney, and a bricklayer who was at work near the spot attended, and after knocking down part of the brickwork of the chimney, just above the fireplace, made a hole sufficiently large to draw him through. A surgeon attended, but all attempts to restore life were ineffectual.

“On inspecting the body, various burns appeared; the fleshy part of the legs and a great part of the feet more particularly were injured; those parts too by which climbing boys most effectually ascend or descend chimneys, viz. the elbows and knees, seemed burnt to the bone; from which it must be evident that the unhappy sufferer made some attempts to return as soon as the horrors of his situation became apparent.”

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R.I.P.

Epitaphs:

Joseph Palmer
Persecuted for
Wearing a Beard.

— Leominster, Mass., 1873

HE CALLED
BILL SMITH
A LIAR.

— Cripple Creek, Colo., c. 1875

DOROTHY CECIL
Unmarried as yet

— Wimbledon, England, c. 1900

Anna Wallace
The children of Israel wanted bread,
And the Lord he sent them manna,
Old Clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil he sent him Anna.

— Ribbesford, England, c. 1770

Here lies my wife,
Here lies she,
Hallelujah!
Hallelujee!

— Ulverston, England, c. 1750

Jared Bates
Sacred to the Memory of Mr.
Jared Bates who Died Aug. the 6th
1800. His Widow aged 24 who mourns
as one who can be comforted lives
at 7 Elm Street this village
and possesses every qualification
for a good wife.

— Lincoln, Maine, 1800

| Death · Humor

R.I.P.

Anne Spragge
Sacred to posterity,
In a vault, near this place, lies the body of
ANNE, the only daughter of
EDWARD CHAMBERLAYNE, LL.D.
Born in London, January 20, 1667,
Who,
For a considerable time, declined the matrimonial state,
And scheming many things
Superior to her sex and age,
On the 30th of June, 1690,
And under the command of her brother,
With arms and in the dress of a man,
She approv’d herself a true Virago,
By fighting undaunted in a fire ship against the French,
Upwards of six hours,
She might have given us a race of heroes,
Had not premature fate interposed.
She returned safe fromthe naval engagement,
And was married, in some months after, to
JOHN SPRAGGE, Esq.
With whom she lived half a year extremely happy,
But being delivered of a daughter, she died
A few days after,
October 30, 1692.
This monument, to his most dear and affectionate
wife, was erected by her most disconsolate
husband.

— Epitaph, London, 1692

| Death

Scene of the Crime

http://www.toronto-crimestoppers.com/pages/posters/AbuseCrimeSceneFeb05.htmlRecognize this hotel room? Then you should call the Toronto police: A 9-year-old girl was sexually abused here two or three years ago.

Even though she’s been airbrushed out of the photo, the room still has a haunted quality. The same girl was apparently photographed in an elevator, near a fountain, even in an arcade.

Stranger still are the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, dollhouse recreations of actual crime scenes. They were created in the 1930s by Frances Glessner Lee, a millionaire heiress who wanted to improve police skills in forensic pathology. Four puzzles are presented here, and the Baltimore medical examiner won’t reveal the solutions — he’s still using them in training seminars.

| Crime · Death · Society

Unusual Deaths

  • Sherwood Anderson swallowed a toothpick at a party and died of peritonitis.
  • Francis Bacon died of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken with snow.
  • Jack Daniel, the distillery founder, kicked his safe when he forgot its combination, injured his toe, and died of blood poisoning.
  • Actress Isadora Duncan broke her neck when her scarf caught in a car’s wheel.
  • Tour de France winner François Faber was in a trench in World War I when he learned his wife had given birth to a daughter. He cheered and a German sniper picked him off.
  • Jockey Frank Hayes died of a heart attack during a race in 1923. The horse finished first, making Hayes the only dead jockey ever to win a race.
  • Pope John XXI died when his scientific laboratory collapsed in 1277.

The all-time winner is still the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin, who survived being poisoned, shot multiple times in the head and torso, bludgeoned, mutilated, wrapped in a sheet and dropped in a frozen river. He was swimming to shore when he died of hypothermia.

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Dead or Alive?

Dead or Alive settles bar bets and morbid curiosity. Brooke Astor is still alive at 102, and Richie Valens was only 17 when his plane went down.

The data seem pretty accurate, overall, even the strange cases. Jimmy Hoffa is listed as “missing”; Deep Throat and D.B. Cooper are “unknown.” Fifty-seven people have died in the last six months. How on earth do they keep this thing up to date?

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