BELL ON DEAD MAR’S WRIST.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3461, 28 February 1912, Page 8

BELL ON DEAD MAR’S WRIST.

PRECAUTIONS AGAINST PREMATURE BURIAL. Explicit directions for the avoidance of premature burial are contained in the will of Mr Thomas Douglas Murray, of Tver Place, Iver, Bucks, who died on November 1 Hast, aged /seventy years, leaving estate of the gross value of £28,288, with net personalty £23,G 52. He directed that on his apparent death his body shall be kept in a wellwarmed bed for thirty-six hours thereafter. His body shall then be placed in a coffin in a warm room with the windows partly opened, and watched for four days and nights or until definite signs of decomposition have set in. During this period the tests given in a pamphlet by Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, “The Signs and Proofs of Death,” shall he applied, and during this period a bell shall be attached to bis wrist which can be easily audible within and without the room. When decomposition has set in, a surgeon shall completely sever the spinal cord high up in the body, and the coffin may then be lightly fastened, but shall not he screwed down until the twelfth day after death. His remains shall then be cremated either on the downs near Stonehenge or the downs near Battlesbury Hill, Wilts, or on Seratchbury Hill, near Tisbury, Wilts, the ashes to be scattered to the four winds of Heaven.