SHC in Popular Fiction
Up to 1834, the idea that the strange fire deaths were being caused by either internal combustion or preternatural combustion had merely been a debate in journals aimed for a relatively small number of educated gentlemen. In that year, however, popular author and Royal Navy Captain Frederick Marryat [1792-1848], published his book Jacob Faithful, in which the lead character describes his mother’s death by preternatural combustibility.
It’s clear from the text of the novel that Marryat must have read Pierre-aimi Lair’s study of the strange deaths, for the circumstances and demise of Jacob’s mother in the novel is a picture perfect version of Lair’s proposed preternatural combustibility -- she was old, intemperate, and fat enough that she had only rarely left her bed in the past two years. Though the unusual death of this background character doesn’t seem to have raised much of a public stir at the time, it was probably the first mention of these deaths and the debate about their causes that was presented to a larger group of readers in a popular fiction story. About twenty years later, spontaneous human combustion was once again presented in a popular writer’s work; but this time, it was not allowed to sneak by quietly.

Mr. Krook meets his end in Bleak House

In 1852, famous author Charles Dickens used spontaneous human combustion as a device to kill off a character in his novel Bleak House. Dickens had researched the subject of these strange deaths a little, and modeled Mr. Krook’s demise on the detailed account of the Countess Cornelia di Bandi’s death published by Giuseppe Bianchini in 1731. In the novel, the first sign that something was not right was a strange fatty soot that was floating in the air of the house Krook occupied along with other tenants. Next, the lead characters of the story found a nauseating, yellowish, oily substance on the inside windows of the house. A short time after this discovery, the lead characters went to Mr. Krook’s room downstairs for a pre-scheduled meeting, but found something wrong... his room was full of strange smoke, and where Mr. Krook was last seen standing a few hours earlier was what is described as a looking like “the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes;” Mr. Krook’s mortal remains.
It was an exciting way to kill off a villainous drunkard, but it brought a sharp response from Dickens’ friend, George Henry Lewes, then head editor of The Leader. The main gist of Lewes complaints -- published as editorials in his newspaper, and later in private letters to Dickens -- was simple; Lewes felt that the idea of spontaneous human combustion had already been completely disproven by the scientific minds of the day, and that by using this as a device within his story, Dickens was guilty of spreading a false and scientifically incorrect idea to a large audience that would now start to believe it could occur. Dickens’ response in the introduction of the completed volume of Bleak House, released in 1853, was straight to the point... he felt he wasn’t spreading a falsehood, and proceeded to quote more recent occurrences of the strange fire deaths. In a private letter to Lewes, not published publicly until 1955, Dickens had made his position even clearer; essentially, he states that while human combustions may or may not be spontaneous, the strange fire deaths had occurred, as evidenced by the numerous reports. Krook’s death in his novel was factually correct in description of what was known of these deaths to date, and he, as author, offered no other explanation for the event than would have been voiced by those examining it, whether or not that opinion would be scientifically valid.
As it turned out, Lewes was absolutely right; popular belief in the occurrence of spontaneous human combustion and preternatural combustibility were indeed greatly boosted by Dickens’ work... though, ironically, this may have been more due to the publicity Lewes’ letters gave to Dickens’ novel. At the same time, Lewes was also correct in stating that the scientists of his day for the most part no longer believed in the possibility of either spontaneous human combustion or preternatural combustibility.
Lewes’ opinion was mostly informed by the details of the death of the Countess of Goerlitz in Darmstadt in 1847, which resulted in a number of inquiries and experiments. The Countess had been found dead in her room on the evening of June 13, 1847, her head and upper body charred and blackened, her writing-desk smoldering a few feet away from her and another small fire smoldering in an ottoman much further away. Dr. Graff, the first doctor to observe the scene, immediately declared it a case of spontaneous human combustion... but the Countess’ husband was not fully convinced, nor were the police inspecting the matter. A fuller examination of the death was called for and a number of doctors and professors from the Hessian Medical College performed an autopsy, with the result that even Dr. Graff stated the case was not an occurrence of spontaneous human combustion, as the examination proved that all of the damage to the Countess’ body could have been caused by radiant heat from the burning desk. In fact, it was further determined that she had been murdered, either by strangulation or a blow to the head, and that the fire was an attempt to cover this fact up... and when some of the Countess’ missing jewelry turned up in association with the only servant who was in the house at the time of her death, and the facts were laid out, the servant made a full confession to the murder. People who didn’t believe in spontaneous human combustion, Lewes included, absolutely loved the news.
However, despite the end of the matter, the main reason the Countess’ death was ruled as not being caused by spontaneous human combustion was that her death didn’t fit either Rolli’s or Lair’s criteria for such deaths... the Countess was not an intemperate drinker, not of an advanced age, and, most importantly, had not been reduced to a pile of ashes. For these reasons alone other explanations were sought; and when the doctors and professors involved took the moment in the spotlight to state that they all felt that spontaneous human combustion was completely impossible, they failed to state why (Dr. Graff, by the way, was the only one who still stated that spontaneous human combustion might be possible). But it was a fact that the strange fire deaths had happened... and if these weren’t being caused by spontaneous human combustion or any other scientifically impossible process, then the problem became a matter of determining a scientifically acceptable way for these deaths to occur.
What neither Lewes nor the learned men from the Hessian Medical College knew was that a possible scientific explanation for the strange fire deaths had been proposed nearly seventy years previous to the publication of Bleak House in 1853.