Victorian
Hannah Beswick's Clock
Tomb
After her death, heiress Hannah Beswick was mummified and placed inside a grandfather clock to remain above ground, showcasing a bizarre Victorian obsession with death.
About this Place
Hannah Beswick, a wealthy heiress from Manchester, had a peculiar fear: she was terrified of being buried alive. Upon her death in 1758, her physician, Dr. Charles White, indulged this anxiety by mummifying her body with tar and placing it upright inside a grandfather clock. This macabre arrangement allowed her to remain above ground, and for 110 years, she was encased in this eerie timepiece as a form of morbid preservation. The grandfather clock, a quirky testament to 18th-century notions of death and preservation, became a bizarre landmark of Victorian fascination with mummification and the afterlife. Visitors were both horrified and intrigued, making the clock an object of morbid curiosity at the time—elevating Hannah's tomb to a unique narrative within the history of unusual burial practices.
Sources
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/23/hannah-beswick/ https://www.manchesterhistory.net/
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Connected Strange History
Hannah Beswick
Hannah Beswick, an 18th-century heiress, went to extraordinary lengths to avoid being buried alive, resulting in her being preserved and displayed inside a grandfather clock for over a century.
Dr. Charles White
Dr. Charles White is known for his unusual practice of preserving the body of Hannah Beswick, a wealthy heiress, in a clock case after her death. His fascinating yet disturbing method highlighted the anxiety about being buried alive during his time.