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Date: April 9, 1744
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Grace Pett's Combustion
The Legend:
On April 9, 1744, 60-year-old Grace Pett, wife of a fishmonger of the parish of St. Clement, Ipswich, England, burst into flames in front of her daughter who later described it as 'like a log of wood consumed by fire.'
The Story from My Earliest Sources
Joyce Robins, in her book The World's Greatest Mysteries, is the main source for the legend as given above. As a witnessed event of Spontaneous Human Combustion, this case would be an extremely positive evidence for the existence of this phenomena. Unfortunately, it is not a witnessed event; that detail is a modern addition to this story, and I am trying to track who was the first to describe this event as such.
John Knott in a 1905 article on spontaneous combustion presents material printed by the Royal Society of London in the year 1744 concerning this case. The Society had received three letters from three different authors in that same year, dated June 28, July 25, and September 2. The text of the first letter, written by Mr. R. Love of Ipswitch to his brother and from which Knott quotes, states:
"That it appeared, upon the coroner's inquest concerning the death of this woman (at which he attended), that she having gone up stairs with her daughter to bed, went down again from her, half undressed, and that, the next morning early, her body was found quite burnt, lying upon the brick hearth in the kitchen, where no fire had been, with the candlestick standing by her, and the candle burnt out, with which she had lighted herself down1, and that the daughter could assign no reason for her going down, unless it were to smoak a pipe; but said she was not addicted to drink gin2. The jury brought it in accidental death."
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So the event was not witnessed by the daughter, had several hours in which to occur, and several possible outside sources of ignition -- a candle, possibly a pipe, and possibly a fire in the hearth.
Knott nexts quotes a lengthy passage concerning the study of the last two letters, each written by people who interviewed the witnesses of the case, including Pett's daughter and two other people who were living in the house at the time, both by the last name of Boyden. These interviews indicated that Pett was in the habit for some years of going back downstairs half dressed each night, to get some time to herself; she often smoked her pipe at this time. On April 9, 1744, she went back downstairs after her daughter fell asleep; her daughter found her mother's body early on April 10.
Pett's body was lying on its right side across the hearth, with the head against the grate and legs on the floor. The whole body had been burned, but the truck had been most severely damaged, looking "like an heap of charcoal covered with white ashes". There were no flames, but the body was burning at a glowing smolder. Pett's daughter dowsed the body with water, which produced thick smoke. Other witnesses had arrived by this time, responding to the daughter's cries for help.
According to the Royal Society's version of the case, Pett had been drinking to excess on the night of the ninth to celebrate another daughter's return from Gibralter. The case seems mystifying to the Society for three reasons. First, the candle was burned out and the hearth had no fire in it, so the obvious sources of ignition were ruled out as possible causes... but this assuption ignored the possibility that either one or both were lit earlier and then burned out before the body was found. Second, there were children's clothes on one side of the remains and a paper screen on the other, and both were unburned; but since there were no open flames on the remains when they were found, it's possible that the body smoldered most of the night with no open flames... and while a smolder will generate a high heat at the source of the burn, it does not radiate enough heat to ignite nearby materials. Third, although her body fat had melted into the hearth and caked the interior so "as not to be scoured out", the floor itself had not been singed or even discolored... but only her legs were on the floor; her trunk, which was the most severely burned part of her body and the main repository of fat in the human body, was lying across the hearth, so the main burning took place on the hearth, not the floor.
These details also largely agree with an account of Pett's death that George Henry Lewes presents in his general article on spontaneous combustion, written for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1861, and that Joe Nickell presents in his book, Secrets of the Supernatural. Nickell claims his version of the account is compiled from versions given in the Annual Register #6 (Pg. 95) from 1763, and Theodric and John Becks' Elements of Medical Jurisprudence from 1835. Given the present details -- and I will track copies of all the original accounts to double-check -- I have to agree with both Nickell's and Lewes' assessments of the event: that Pett had gotten drunk, and then later accidently set her cloths on fire and was unable to deal with the situation before it killed her. Her body then continued to burn until discovered hours later.
Variations
George Henry Lewes, in his article "Spontaneous Combustion" (printed in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine #89 of April 1861), gives Pett's name as "Kett". He does not state what his specific source for this was, but does have a long list of possible sources. I will attempt to track and check them all.
Michael Harrison, in his book Fire From Heaven, gives very little detail about this event, simply saying Pett "went up in smoke"; he does add that Pett was "dedicated to drunkenness".
In Secrets of the Supernatural, Joe Nickell gives two alternative last names for Pett as possibly being either "Kett" or "Pitt." He gives two sources for his version of the account -- Annual Register v.6, Pg. 95 (1763), and Theodric and John Becks' Elements of Medical Jurisprudence (1835). I will try to track down a copy of Becks' book, but I have been able to find a copy of the Annual Register, with help from Mr. Nickell, and will add it's information to this page at the next update [I need time to read it, after all!].
In the meantime, however, I also know that Nickell had a copy of the Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine article by Lewes mentioned above, because he references it for several other spontaneous combustion cases in his book; so it is perhaps his source for Pett's name as "Kett." Also, another detail that Nickell adds to the case is a claim that there was a fatty stain on the floor.
Sources:
- Now available on Request.
See Also:
