Eccentric Fears

Born in 1710, Hannah Beswick harbored an overwhelming fear of being buried alive, a sensation common in her time due to medical uncertainties about death.

• In 1758, upon her death, her physician, Dr. Charles White, took drastic measures to prevent this fate.
• Rather than burying her, he embedded her in a mixture of tar and plaster, turning her into a mummy and placing her upright inside a grandfather clock.

A Century of Preservation

For 110 years, Beswick remained a macabre curiosity, attracting fascinated visitors who paid to see her preserved body.

• Her unique post-death arrangement challenges societal views on mortality and the obsession with the undead, offering a peculiar slice of 18th-century English life.
• Beswick's preservation was ultimately a tragic reflection of societal anxieties regarding death, serving as a unique historical anecdote.