AmyStrange.org and the UNeXpLaiNed ©Copyrighted by Dave Ayotte & Caty Bergman
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THIS DAY IN HISTORY (TDIH)
JAN-12 <<<< JAN-13 >>>> JAN-14
LOCATION:
Marylebone, London, UK
WHAT HAPPENED:
The FOURTH AND LAST day of
Wright
household incidents relating to Spontaneous Human Combustion
(SHC)
occurred today.
On or about this date, Mrs. Wright was hospitalized with severe burns from which she was not expected to recover.
She was sitting in another room when her son heard her screaming. He rushed in and saw her in flames. A ten-old-year maid, Elizabeth Barnes, had just left the room.
Mrs. Wright sent for her daughter, who came over to help look after her. The family blamed the child servant, but Mrs. Wright believed the girl wasn't responsible, and that something supernatural was going on instead.
She then later went to the kitchen, where the girl was, and Mrs. Wright promptly caught fire again. This time she was so badly burned she was put to bed. When she had gone to sleep, her son and daughter left the room, only to return almost immediately when they heard her screams, and found that she had caught fire again. This, we assume, was when she was hospitalized and not expected to recover.
Elizabeth Barnes, a ten-year-old, who was working at the Wright house as a maid, was told to leave, she did, and there were no more flames. This seemed conclusive to Mr Wright and caused her to be arrested and appear in court before a magistrate, where she was accused by John Wright of being able to repeatedly, by "some extraordinary means," set fire to his mother's clothing.
The magistrate believed the girl was guilty, but did not want to pronounce sentence before Mrs. Wright had a chance to recover and then give testimony.
Continued from
JAN-05-1820 [WED],
JAN-07-1820 [FRI], and
JAN-12-1820 [WED].
RESEARCH NOTES:
We found three sources for all of these incidents. Two of them agree
with who Mrs. Wright is (Mr. Wright's mother)[1] [2], while the third[3]
disagreed (Mrs. Wright was Mr. Wrights wife). The source that
disagreed was,
The Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomena.
We chose to go with the majority and define Mrs. Wright as Mr.
Wright's mother, rather than his wife. We also chose to include more
information than less which is why we also included the following,
even though not all three of our sources mention them.
The other interesting aspect of these accounts is that we never learn what Barnes is charged with in court, nor the final outcome of the case, and we also never learn whether Mrs. Wright dies because of the last incident, or not. It was alluded to by each source, but because the magistrate ruled that he would not pronounce sentence until Mrs. Wright recovered and was able to testify. This begs the question, why would the magistrate do that if Mrs. Wright was not expected to recover? All three of our sources leave us hanging there, but the incidents are still interesting, in and of themselves.
Also, only our second source[2], Mysteries of the Unexplained, mentions that Mrs. Wright is actually hospitalized.
Our next step is to find the original source from which Charles Fort got his information, the Annual Register (1820-13). If that source doesn't pan out, our third source[3] writes it up as Annual Register (1830-13) and that's where our research will turn to next if we don't find it in the 1820-13 issue.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
[1] Page 83 from
Mysteries of the Unexplained, Reader's Digest
[2] Pages 927-928 from
Complete Books Of Charles Fort, The
[3] Page 153 from
The Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomena
RELATED SUBJECTS:
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SHC > Spontaneous Human Combustion
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE AmyStrange.org > UNX > SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION WEBPAGE
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE AmyStrange.org > UNX > SHC WEBPAGE
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