The Gresham Vault In Mount Jerome Cemetery - The Victorian Fear Of Being Buried Alive

Mount Jerome Cemetery and Crematorium: If you do decide to visit Mount Jerome watch out for the Gresham Vault where the pedestal on top of the tapered walls at one stage supported a bell with a chain running from it into the vault. This was erected with the purpose of allowing the lady who was interred (and who had a fear of being buried alive) to ring the bell if she awoke. [ I wonder if anyone would have come if she had in fact rang the bell ] The fear of being buried alive peaked during the cholera epidemics of the 18th and 19th centuries but accounts of live burial have been recorded further back. When his tomb was reopened, the philosopher John Duns Scotus (1266 – 1308) was reportedly found outside his coffin with his hands torn and bloody after attempting to escape. The fears of being buried alive were heightened by reports of doctors and accounts in literature and the newspapers. As well as dealing with the subject in "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Cask of Amontillado", Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Premature Burial", which was published in 1844. It contained accounts of supposedly genuine cases of premature burial as well as detailing the narrator's own (perceived) interment while still alive. The recovery of supposedly dead victims of cholera, as depicted in The Premature Burial by Antoine Wiertz, fuelled the demand for safety coffins. The general fear of premature burial led to the invention of many safety devices which could be incorporated into coffins. Most consisted of some type of device for communication to the outside world such as a cord attached to a bell that the interred person could ring should he revive after the burial. A safety coffin of this type appears in the 1979 film The First Great Train Robbery. Other variations on the bell included flags and pyrotechnics. Some designs included ladders, escape hatches, and even feeding tubes, but many forgot a method for providing air. The first recorded safety coffin was constructed on the orders of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick before his death in 1792. He had a window installed to allow light in, an air tube to provide a supply of fresh air, and instead of having the lid nailed down he had a lock fitted. In a special pocket of his shroud he had two keys, one for the coffin lid and a second for the tomb door.

Mount Jerome Cemetery & Crematorium is situated in Harold's Cross on the south side of Dublin, Ireland

Mount Jerome Cemetery & Crematorium is situated in Harold's Cross on the south side of Dublin, Ireland. Since its foundation in 1836, it has witnessed over 300,000 burials. Originally an exclusively Protestant cemetery, Roman Catholics have also been buried there since the 1920s. Often referred to as "Harold's Cross Cemetery" Mount Jerome is where wealthy Victorians established monuments to themselves. They couldn't take their wealth with them so they made sure they could still flaunt it for decades and centuries to come. In many cases their attempts to impress have succumbed to the passage of time as the majority of the physical memorials are in a state of decay while many (especially those made of sandstone) are rotting away at an alarming rate. In my opinion this decay only adds to the attractiveness of the place. If you do decide to visit the Gresham Vault where the pedestal on top of the tapered walls at one stage supported a bell with a chain running from it into the vault. This was erected with the purpose of allowing the lady who was interred (and who had a fear of being buried alive) to ring the bell if she awoke.

Mount Jerome Cemetery and Crematorium - Dublin Metropolitan Police (1884-1911)

The police force for the Dublin City which was established in 1786. This was a separate force, run independently from the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). Have a look at the inscription and see how young they were when they died. The Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) was the police force of Dublin, Ireland, from 1836 to 1925, when it amalgamated into the new Garda Síochána. As they were unarmed, the Dublin Metropolitan Police were confined to barracks and did not take the side of the British in the War of Independence as actively as did the RIC, and as such did not suffer the casualty rate of that force, although three men were killed and seven injured.The political "G" Division did not come off so lightly, and selected "G men" were first warned by the Irish Republican Army in April 1919, and the first was shot in July. Many DMP officers actively assisted the IRA, most famously Edward Broy, who passed valuable intelligence to Michael Collins throughout the conflict. Another DMP "G" Division spy for Collins was David Neligan. Five of the "G" Division were killed by the IRA. In the 1996 film Michael Collins, Broy is discovered and subsequently tortured and killed by the British. In reality he was not caught and went on to become the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána in the 1930s. After the creation of the Irish Free State, the DMP became known as "Políní Átha Cliath" (English: Police of Dublin) from 1922–1925, after which the force ceased to exist as a separate entity, and was absorbed into the Garda Síochána (English: Guardians of the Peace). Its last Commissioner was W.R.E. Murphy. "Dublin Metropolitan" is today a geographic region of the Garda Síochána's command structure. Unlike the RIC but in common with police forces in Great Britain, the DMP was an unarmed force. In this, it provided the inspiration for the first Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, who declared that the new force should also be unarmed.