Tales from the crypt

I’m down in the lab at the moment and have found a few moments away from the slab to type out these words of blog. My computer here runs off the server of the British Petroleum Oil Company. When they threw the dice of internet restrictions at BP it landed on blog photo albums – so I can’t look at albums here, including my own – nor for that matter can I post them. I can though get into blogs alright and post pictures within a blog strangely. So instead of a ramble about my wanderings in the financial heart of the country to accompany a great heap of picture of the gerkin and Bank Of England (which you may still get at a later date), I’m just going to say a few words about my trip down a narrow lane just off Fleet Street and underground into the crypt of St Brides Church.

What this!, Sandy gone all gothic horror on us. No not really, I suspect I would be sorely shown up by the masters of the genre and I should stick to wittering as if I could do with a dose of verbal Imodium which is my forte. The undercroft at St Brides church is actually well lit and not at all scarey (I say is but I am typing this at half six at night and by this time the lights will have been put off and it might be quite scarey by now).It contains a couple of small chapels and a bit of a museum built around centuries of rubble. This church, like any self respecting London church it seems, was burnt down in 1666, built by Wren, blown up by the Germans and rebuilt and they have bits of wall labelled up to demonstrate the different eras. A little more interesting at the end is a mirror positioned so that a piece of Roman pavement can be seen (clearly labelled with a label which must in real life be back to front). Just in front of that is table set out as an alter which is rather badly charred – I think this is probably a near survivor from the great fire, why else would they keep such a damaged table but nobody seems to have thought to put a notice anywhere to signify this.

Tucked in the corner of the crypt is an iron coffin. We are not told if this coffin once contained a person but I think not. The coffin here is of a design patented by one Edward Bridgman who looked to increase the "safety of the dead". Until the mid 19th century the only bodies available for medical research were of executed prisoners so the crime of grave robbing sprang up to try and make suppy meet demand (at between 8 and 14 pound it could be well worth while) so iron coffins with special locking mechanisms were developed. In 1820 the churchwardens of St Andrews, Holburn refused to bury an iron coffin and in the following lawsuit it was decided that they could no longer refuse them but since an iron coffin would take longer to disintegrate in the ground they would be allowed to charge more for an iron coffin than they would for a wooden one. Of course, back up north, the enteprising Scots, Messrs Burke and Hare, managed to circumvent the iron coffin, indeed the coffin at all, by not bothering to wait for dead person to die.

 

 

On the way out of the crypt hangs the following newspaper report of despicable behaviour from 1830, which I have typed out in full here for you amusement.

Yesterday a decently dressed man, who gave his name George Gunn, was charged with disturbing the congregation at St Brides Church on Sunday morning Last, by snoring so loudly as to prevent all those who happened to be near him from hearing a single word uttered by the minister.

 One of the beadles said that the defendant entered the church soon after the commencement of the service, in a state of intoxification, and placed himself on a seat that was only calculated to accommodate two persons, and was already occupied by that number. He, however, refused to move , and, to avoid a disturbance, he was left in peaceable possession of the seat; but he had not occupied it two minutes before he fell asleep, and began to snore in the loudest and least harmonious manner possible, so as to distract the attention of all around him from the service that was going on. He made several attempts to rouse him, but with very indifferent sucecess, and he was at last obliged to station himself at his elbow and continue waking him from time to time, in order, if possible, to prevent him from seriously annoying the congregation. In this agreeable manner he was occupied for some time, but at legth the evil reached such a height that he was compelled to remove the defendant and take him to the watch-house.

 Sir John Perring said he thought this was hardly a case within his jurisdiction. As the offence was committed in a church, the defendant ought, perhaps, to be handed over to the Ecclesiatical Court.

 Here Mr. Michael Scales, the Common Councilman, who was waiting in the office, held up his hands in an imploring manner and said, “Oh, pray don’t, Sir John; I can assure you you had much better hang him at once.”

 Sir John appeared to be induced, by Mr. Scales’s entreaties, not to transfer the defendant to a place where such frightful consequences were to be apprehended: and asked Mr. Gunn what he had now to say in his defence?

 Mr. Gunn said that neither the education he had received, nor his habits subsequentialy, had been such as to dispose him to be guilty of any impropriety in a church. He was very much fatigued, as he had walked to town, from Sydenham, that morning; but he had denied that he could have been intoxicated, as all the liquor he had had on the way was one glass of ale, which he had got at the Edinburgh Castle.

 The Alderman considered that a night’s imprisonment in the watch-house was sufficient punishment for snoring even in a church, and the defendant was discharged.

 As he was leaving the bar, Mr. Scales advised him to be cautious how he went to church in the future.