[4889] Bath - Abbey Cemetery : Exhumation

Abbey Cemetery, Bath.

General George Dick.

General Dick was the third burial to take place in the new Abbey Cemetery.

 

He was a wealthy man, owning large parts of Clifton, Bristol. He lived with his two daughters in Bath. When he died, his son, also called George, had been living for several years in Calcutta with a wife and eight children. George sailed home and was shocked to discover that a new will had been made just before the General's death which entirely cut him out, and favoured only those living with the General. Angry and suspicious, George demanded the exhumation of the body, a post-mortem and a public coroner's inquest. A huge scandal broke out, fuelled by the letters which George and his sisters wrote to the press, accusing and counter-accusing each other. It became a news sensation. George accused his sisters of poisoning their father, bribing a doctor to issue a death certificate citing apoplexy as cause of death (and thereby avoiding an inquest), forging the new will, and intercepting and destroying his letters home from India to his father. The sisters counter accused George of having abandoned his father and now trying to extort money from them by ruining their repuations in public.

 

So at 3pm on 13 August 1845 there assembled in this corner of the cemetery, George, the Bath and Bristol coroners, various solicitors and doctors and a twelve man jury, plus the General's butler who had the unpleasant duty of identifying the body. The tomb was removed, the lead coffin raised and the General's body carried to the cemetery chapel where the post-mortem was crried out. Everyone expressed surprise at how little decomposed the body was after 17 months.

 

The following Saturday, Bath Guildhall was packed with spectators for the inquest, the Duke of Hamilton presiding. The evidence went on all day and centred on the post-mortem's finding of inflammation in the General's digestive tract. Could it have been caused by poison? Great debate as to the various symptoms of arsenic, prussic acid and strychnine. Who was with the General when he drank his last cup of chocolate? Why did his daughter give him peppermint water (a flatulence remedy) when she knew he hated it? Joseph Cuff the butler caused great drama by fainting in the witness box when asked an awkward question.

 

Then, to everyone's disappointment, the jury returned an ambiguous verdict : "died from inflammation of the stomach and bowels, but how such inflammation was produced there is no evidence to show".

 

Anticlimax. The press lost interest. George returned to Calcutta, and the General was once more laid to rest here.

Done