Spontaneous Human Combustion

"In the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, April, 1894, is an account of a case of 'spontaneous combustion of human bodies.' The account is by Dr.Adrian Hava, not as observed by him, but as reported by his father. In Science, 10-100, is quoted a paper that was read by Dr.B.H.Hartwell, of Ayer, Mass., before the Massachusetts Medico-Legal Society. It was Dr.Hartwell's statement that, upon May 12, 1890, while driving through a forest, near Ayer, he had been called, and, going into the wood, saw, in a clearing, the crouched form of a woman. Fire which was not from clothing, was consuming the shoulders, both sides of the abdomen, and both legs. See Dr.Dixon Mann's Forensic Medicine (edition of 1922), p.216. Here, cases are told of and are accepted as veritable--- such as the case of a woman, consumed so by fire that on the floor of her room there was only a pile of calcined bones left of her. The fire, if in an ordinary sense it was fire, must have been of the intensity of a furnace: but a table cloth, only three feet from the pile of cinders, was unscorched. There are other such records." (Pages 661-662)
     " I think that our data relate, not to 'spontaneous combustion of human bodies,' but to things, or beings, that, with a flaming process, consume men and women, but, like werewolves, or alleged werewolves, mostly pick out women. Occurrences of this winter of 1904--05 again. Early in February, in London, a woman, who was sitting asleep, before a fire in a grate, awoke, finding herself flaming. A commonplace explanation would seem to be sufficient: nevertheless it is a story of 'mysterious burns,' as worded in Lloyd's Weekly News, February 5. A coroner had expressed an inability to understand. In commenting upon the case, the coroner had said that a cinder might have shot from the grate, igniting this woman's clothes, but that she had been sitting, facing the fire, and that the burns were on her back." (Page 662)
     "Upon the morning of February 26th (Hampshire Advertiser, March 4) at Butlock Heath, near Southampton, neighbors of an old couple, named Kiley, heard a scratching sound. They entered the house, and found it in flames, inside. Kiley was found, burned to death, on the floor. Mrs.Kiley, burned to death, was sitting in a chair, in the same room, 'badly charred, but recognizable.' A table was overturned, and a broken lamp was on the floor. So there seems to be an obvious explanation. But, at the inquest, it was said that an examination of this lamp showed that it could not have caused the fire. The verdict was: 'Accidental death, but by what means, they (the jury) were unable to determine.' Both bodies had been fully dressed, 'judging by fragments of clothes.' This indicated that the Kiley's had been burned before their time for going to bed. Hours later, the house was in flames. At the inquest, the mystery was that two persons, neither of whom had cried for help, presumably not asleep in an ordinary sense, should have been burned to death in a fire that did not manifest as a general fire until hours later. Something had overturned the table. A lamp was broken." (Pages 662-663)