Is It True?

[Donna McCreary]

(12-09-2015 02:58 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Moving on to another fact or fiction topic: In the process of finding an appropriate Victorian theme for the 2016 Christmas displays at Surratt House, the subject of BELLS came up. One of my staff members said that the only thing she knew about Victorian bells was the history of bells being rigged up outside a grave so that if someone was buried alive, a small chain attached inside the coffin could be pulled to ring for help outside.

That reminded me of a story that had been told to me while I was in elementary school. My grandmother did the telling and said that she had learned it from a guide at Robert E. Lee's birthplace (fantastic Stratford Hall in Virginia) several decades before (ca. 1930). Years later, I mentioned it while on tour at Stratford Hall - and thought I would get kicked off the property the way the guide acted!

Anyhow, my staff member went looking for sources of the story. Result is here https://www.lewrockwell.com/2005/01/gail...ied-alive/ Despite some protests from historians, I'm sticking to the family story and its shades of Edgar Allen Poe!

Safety coffins were invented so that if need be, a person buried alive could ring a bell that would be heard throughout the cemetery.
Gives a whole new interpretation to a Christmas bell choir . . .