An 18th Century NDE
Sep. 29th, 2023 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo In 1782, John Haynes, a housebreaker, was hanged at Tyburn and his body taken to the house of an anatomist to be dissected. There, before he could be cut up, he revived and made a full recovery. When asked what he remembered about his execution he replied, "The last thing I recollect was going up Holborn Hill in a cart. I thought then that I was in a beautiful green field; and that is alI I remember till I found myself in your honour's dissecting room."
Beautiful green fields are often reported by those who come back from a near death experience. It's also not uncommon for them to say they left their bodies before the actual moment of death- especially if that death was going to be traumatic. NDEs are as common as daisies in the 21st century but this is the first I've happened across from the 18th.
Peter Ackroyd, from whose London book I've lifted the story (he seems to have taken it from a fuller account in Old and New London- a multi-volume work published in 1878 and now available online) isn't concerned with NDEs but, being a literary gent, links Haynes's vision to that of Sir John Falstaff who "babbled of green fields" on his deathbed. Did Shakespeare know about NDEs then? I wouldn't put it past him; he seems to have known about most things both exoteric and esoteric.
Neither of my sources tell us what happened to Haynes next. Was he reprieved? Or did he get carted back to Tyburn to be dispatched to his beautiful green field for good and all?
Beautiful green fields are often reported by those who come back from a near death experience. It's also not uncommon for them to say they left their bodies before the actual moment of death- especially if that death was going to be traumatic. NDEs are as common as daisies in the 21st century but this is the first I've happened across from the 18th.
Peter Ackroyd, from whose London book I've lifted the story (he seems to have taken it from a fuller account in Old and New London- a multi-volume work published in 1878 and now available online) isn't concerned with NDEs but, being a literary gent, links Haynes's vision to that of Sir John Falstaff who "babbled of green fields" on his deathbed. Did Shakespeare know about NDEs then? I wouldn't put it past him; he seems to have known about most things both exoteric and esoteric.
Neither of my sources tell us what happened to Haynes next. Was he reprieved? Or did he get carted back to Tyburn to be dispatched to his beautiful green field for good and all?
