Daily Strange's Toxic Thursday A Hidden Fire: State of Combustion

Daily Strange's Hidden Fire: State of Combustion

In 1847 a French couple was indicted for murdering the man’s father and burning his body to conceal the crime. They claimed that the 71-year-old man was found in a “state of combustion” in his bed on January 6 of that year. According to the account given in court:

The chamber was filled with a cloud of dense smoke, and one of the witnesses asserted that he saw playing around the body of the deceased, a small whitish flame, which receded from him as he approached. The clothes of the deceased, and the coverings of the bed were almost entirely consumed, but the wood was only partially burnt. There were no ashes and only a small quantity of vegetable charcoal; there was, however, a kind of mixed residue, altered by fire, and some pieces of animal charcoal, which had evidently been derived from the articulations.

The victim’s son and daughter-in-law declared that the deceased, according to his usual practice, had a hot brick placed at his feet when he went to bed the previous evening. When they passed his door two hours later, they noticed nothing out of the ordinary. However, early the next morning the victim’s grandson entered his grandfather’s room and found the old man burning up as described.

The inquest established that the victim was not addicted to drunkenness and that he had been in the habit of carrying “Lucifer” matches (an early type of friction match) in his waistcoat pocket. A Dr. Masson, who was commissioned to investigate the case, had the body exhumed and examined. A partially burned cravat was found around the neck, and part of the sleeve of his nightshirt was intact. His burned hands were attached to the forearms only by some carbonized tendons, which gave way when touched. The legs were detached from the torso and looked as though they had been deliberately cut off, except for the presence of some charring around their edges.

The doctor gave evidence to the effect that he thought it's impossible for the victim to have died of accidental burning or as a result of having been deliberately set on fire after he had been killed. He concluded that the burning resulted from “some inherent cause in the individual” and that perhaps the hot brick had touched something off. All in all, Dr. Masson could not put the facts together as they stood. The case was, as far as he could tell, to be classed as one of spontaneous combustion. The son and daughter-in-law were acquitted.

SOURCE:

Theodoric R. and John B. Beck, Elements of Medical Jurisprudence, 10th ed., Vol.3 2, pp.104-05

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