Death by spontaneous combustion

[Alpha Hooligan]

'First Irish case' of death by spontaneous combustion

A man who burned to death in his home died as a result of spontaneous combustion, an Irish coroner has ruled.

It is believed to be the first case of its kind in Ireland.

West Galway coroner Dr Ciaran McLoughlin said it was the first time in 25 years of investigating deaths that he had returned such a verdict.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15032614

WTF? I'll be sleeping in the bath from now on...I thought this was a bit of myth, I didn't think it actually happened to folk.


AH

[trubble]

Spontaneous Combustion is so freaky that I can't tell whether it's real or not. I watched a programme about it that suggested drinking alcohol was a contributing factor. Spirits in particular. Stick to the Bud.

[aubrey]

You'll just explode with Bud.

I'm still mistrustful of the idea of SHC. Nobody's seen it happening, have they? Not like they (I think) do in Bleak House. The same effect can be got by slow burning, of an already dead body.

[Weyland]

Sept 23, 2011 18:02:29 GMT trubble said:

Spontaneous Combustion is so freaky that I can't tell whether it's real or not. I watched a programme about it that suggested drinking alcohol was a contributing factor. Spirits in particular. Stick to the Bud.

It's never happened to me, even with meths when I was a smoker. At least I never noticed and nobody said. Anyone ever wet their pants whilst drunk? Maybe that's nature's extinguisher.

[everso]

Sept 23, 2011 19:11:07 GMT Weyland said:

Sept 23, 2011 18:02:29 GMT trubble said:

Spontaneous Combustion is so freaky that I can't tell whether it's real or not. I watched a programme about it that suggested drinking alcohol was a contributing factor. Spirits in particular. Stick to the Bud.

It's never happened to me, even with meths when I was a smoker. At least I never noticed and nobody said. Anyone ever wet their pants whilst drunk? Maybe that's nature's extinguisher.

Never. In any case, I'd never admit to wetting my pants, drunk or no. Although I did once pass out and was carried up to bed with my head bumping on the wall at every other step. I slept in my contact lenses too. I've never had such a terrible hangover.

Ask any woman over the age of 50 if she ever thinks she's going to spontaniously combust. I well believe it's possible.

[Weyland]

Sept 23, 2011 19:47:36 GMT everso said:

Ask any woman over the age of 50 if she ever thinks she's going to spontaniously combust. I well believe it's possible.

I think I catch your drift. The Yanks call them hot flashes.

[tarzanontarmazepam]

I only do it in Friday Night Chat.

Which is why I gave it up. That's chat not spontaneously combusting...oops..



There I go again..it's so inconvenient.

Does Friday night chat still happen?

[jean]

Read this wonderful account of the death of Krook from Bleak House, and you will believe.

...Mr Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily draws his hand away.

“What, in the Devil’s name,” he says, “is this! Look at my fingers!”

A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch and sight, and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil, with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.

“What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of window?”

“I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been here!” cries the lodger.

And yet look here — and look here! When he brings the candle, here, from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away down the bricks; here, lies in a little thick nauseous pool.

“This is a horrible house,” says Mr Guppy, shutting down the window. “Give me some water, or I shall cut my hand off.”

He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy, and stood silently before the fire, when Saint Paul’s bell strikes twelve, and all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various heights in the dark air, and in their many tones. When all is quiet again, the lodger says:

“It’s the appointed time at last. Shall I go?”

Mr Guppy nods, and gives him a “lucky touch” on the back; but not with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.

He goes down-stairs; and Mr Guppy tries to compose himself, before the fire, for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the stairs creak, and Tony comes swiftly back.

“Have you got them?”

“Got them! No. The old man’s not there.”

He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval, that his terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him, and asks loudly, “What’s the matter?”

“I couldn’t make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked in. And the burning smell is there — and the soot is there, and the oil is there — and he is not there!” — Tony ends this with a groan.

Mr Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has retreated close to it, and stands snarling — not at them; at something on the ground, before the fire. There is a very little fire left in the grate, but there is a smouldering suffocating vapour in the room, and a dark greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as usual. On one chair-back, hang the old man’s hairy cap and coat.

“Look!” whispers the lodger, pointing his friend’s attention to these objects with a trembling finger. “I told you so. When I saw him last, he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung his cap on the back of the chair — his coat was there already, for he had pulled that off, before he went to put the shutters up — and I left him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumbled black thing is upon the floor.”

Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.

“See!” whispers Tony. “At the foot of the same chair, there lies a dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me, before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it fall.”

“What’s the matter with the cat?” says Mr Guppy: “Look at her!”

“Mad, I think. And no wonder, in this evil place.”

They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground, before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the light.

Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here is — is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? O Horror, he IS here! and this, from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him.

Help, help, help! come into this house for Heaven’s sake!

Plenty will come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that Court, true to his title in his last act, has died the death of all Lord Chancellors in all Courts, and of all authorities in all places under all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done. Call the death by any name Your Highness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally — inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only — Spontaneous Combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died.

[aubrey]

I read a lot of what can be called fantasy, Jean, and I believe it in the context of the story, but nowhere else. Same here.

Dickens has seen reports of a death or deaths that have been put down to spontaneous combustion, and dramatised them. He makes it seem real, but it isn't really.

[jean]

I know that really, aubrey.

But isn't it a wonderful metaphor for the court of Chancery, that eats itself and pollutes all it touches?

[everso]

Wonderful, wonderful Dickens.

Although I prefer The Pickwick Papers.

[aubrey]

Sept 27, 2011 20:56:49 GMT jean said:

I know that really, aubrey.

But isn't it a wonderful metaphor for the court of Chancery, that eats itself and pollutes all it touches?

I must have been half asleep, Jean, sorry.

It is a good metaphor, though.

I like the opening of the book best though, with the mud and the dinosaur.

[housesparrow]

Sept 23, 2011 18:02:29 GMT trubble said:

Spontaneous Combustion is so freaky that I can't tell whether it's real or not. I watched a programme about it that suggested drinking alcohol was a contributing factor. Spirits in particular. Stick to the Bud.

One of the reports stated that in all recorded cases, the victim was near an open fireplace.

That was a strange remark, I thought.

[trubble]

Yes, a bit like they were saying it was probably related to an external source of ignition...

Since a thread on MCL, I have realised that human death by spontaneous combustion is pure superstitious nonsense, no more supported by fact than the stork bringing the babies, no different than saying someone must have died by magic.

In the Irish case, read the reports and you'll see that the autopsy records no sign of carbon in the air passages, no sign of smoke inhalation, and the major organs of the body were too burnt to determine cause of death.

Translated, that means he was dead before the fire took place and any evidence of how that fire took place or of any other way of dying has been destroyed by fire.

Ergo, death unexplained.

But no support for spontaneous combustion.