Category Archives: Death

1280: Man killed in Newcastle football match

In the late 13th century, a man is killed during a game of football in Newcastle-upon-Tyne:

“Henry, son of William de Ellington, while playing at ball [football] at Ulkham on Trinity Sunday with David le Keu and many others… ran against David and received an accidental wound from David’s knife, of which he died on the following Friday. They were both running to the ball and ran against each other, and the knife hanging from David’s belt stuck out so that the point through the sheath struck against Henry’s belly… Henry was wounded right through the sheath and died by misadventure.”

Source: Calendar of Inquisitions, September 15th 1280. Cited in a volume dated 1916. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1777: Earl meets watery end in well; dog survives

Simon Harcourt was raised to the peerage in 1749 after his military service to George II. Thereafter the 1st Earl Harcourt, he served as an advisor to the future George III and an ambassador on the European continent, including four years in Paris.

Harcourt met a watery end in September 1777, aged 63. While walking on his estate in Oxfordshire, the earl apparently fell head-first into a well while trying to rescue his dog:

“The body of Earl Harcourt was found dead in a narrow well in his park, with the head downwards and nothing appearing above water but the feet and legs. It is imagined this melancholy accident was occasioned by his overreaching himself in endeavouring to save the life of a favourite dog, which was found in the well with him, standing on his lordship’s feet.”

Source: Pennsylvania Evening Post, December 30th 1777. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1669: Pepys has birthday, hugs and kisses a mummy

On February 23rd 1669, Samuel Pepys marks his 36th birthday by taking a stroll through Westminster Abbey with his wife and some young female relatives. In the abbey Pepys is granted a special viewing of the exposed mummy of Catherine of Valois, the wife of Henry V, who died in 1437:

“I now took them to Westminster Abbey, and there did show them all the tombs very finely… and here we did see, by particular favour, the body of Queen Katherine of Valois…”

To celebrate his birthday, Pepys gives the long-dead queen a hug and kiss:

“I had the upper part of her body in my hands, and I did kiss her mouth… this was my birth-day, 36 years old [and the day] I did first kiss a Queen.”

Source: The diary of Samuel Pepys, February 23rd 1669. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1941: Ugandan wizard dispatched with unripe bananas

Fabiano Kinene, Seperiano Kiwanuka and Albert Iseja all appeared before a Ugandan court in 1941, charged with murdering an old man in their village. According to the defendants, the victim was practising witchcraft and they were acting to defend the village.

Kinene claimed the victim was discovered in the middle of the night, “naked, with strange objects and acting surreptitiously”:

“They caught him performing an act which they genuinely believed to be an act of witchcraft… they killed him in the way which, in the olden times, was considered proper for the killing of a wizard… Death was caused by the forcible insertion of unripe bananas into the deceased’s bowel, through the anus…”

The court lowered the charge from murder to manslaughter, ruling that acts of attempted witchcraft might constitute a “grave and sudden provocation”.

Source: R v. Fabiano Kinene, 1941, cited in Ugandan Law Review. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1901: Human meatballs sold in China

At the turn of the 20th century, parts of rural China were ravaged by drought, leading to crop failures and famine. American journalist and Christian missionary Francis Nichols toured Xian province, where more than two million people had perished, and saw evidence of cannibalism in the sale of human meatballs:

“By and by, human flesh began to be sold in the suburbs of Xian. At first the traffic was carried on clandestinely, but after a time a horrible kind of meat ball, made from the bodies of human beings who had died of hunger, became a staple article of food, that was sold for about four American cents a pound.”

Many Chinese believed that foreign imperialism and the spread of Christianity were responsible for crop failures and famine. This anti-foreign sentiment fuelled the Boxer movement of the same period.

Source: Francis Nichols, New York Christian Herald, 1901. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1886: One rattlesnake kills three children in Alabama

In Covington County, southern Alabama, three children aged between two and six are tragically killed – apparently by bites from the same rattlesnake:

 

Source: The Lawrence Evening Tribune, September 30th 1886. Verified with other sources. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.