the premature burial

Antoine Joseph Wiertz, The Premature Burial, 1854. Musée Wiertz, Brussels. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The Premature Burial by Antoine Wiertz depicts a person horrified to find they’ve been, well, buried alive. Wiertz loved a touch of psychological trauma, adapting this subject from Edgar Allen Poe’s 1844 short horror of the same name.

Throughout the Victorian era, folk were convinced that being buried alive was a very real possibility, largely due to the limited ways of medically proving a death. Given how many were dying of cholera at the time, no one was getting too close to check either, in fear of contracting it themselves.

This was such a grave concern that the Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive was formed, and, if you were wealthy enough, you could have your coffin fitted out with an emergency device enabling you to call for help – my personal favourite being a little bell. The folklorist, Paul Barber has since argued that the actual incidence of premature burial has been exaggerated and that people were misinterpreting the normal effects of decomposition as signs of life. [1]

This image also doubles as a contemporary photograph of me emerging from my academic grave to embark on my PhD in Art History at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. Given that I’m starting this week, I’m now accepting any and all advice.

[1] Paul Barber. Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality. Yale University Press, 1988.