for a common thread in the cases. This common thread seemed to be alcohol. During this Victorian era, an evil of the Christian society was drink. SHC "...was viewed as a sort of a moral punishment for drunkenness" (Cohen 195). Since the cause of SHC was believed to be drinking, many had oral remedies for SHC. "In Germany the common people had great faith in liquid manure as a preventive for spontaneous combustion..." (Bondeson 7). If you lived in Scandinavia at that time you may have had heard of an even more unlikely preventive. "Swedish and Norwegian folklore prescribed human urine, preferably freshly voided by a woman, to be thrown into the mouth of a flowing drunkard..." (Bondeson 7). During this Victorian era SHC became popular in literature. Mark Twain was one writer who popularized SHC in his book, Life on the Mississippi, during early America. "Jimmy Finn was not burned in a calaboose, but died a natural death in a vat of a combination of delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion." (quoted in Cohen 192). Charles Dickens also wrote about SHC in his book, Bleak House, and he attributed it to alcohol. Dickens described the death of the drunken man, Krook, in the following manner:Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tender from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here is- is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal, O Horror, he is here! and this, from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him. (quoted in Cohen 193)Dickens was so avid about the topic that when the book was reprinted, a slip was added that quoted Dickens on his support of SHC. It can only be believed that alcohol would have only attributed to the death but did not directly cause it. There has been a lot of paranormal phenomenon that has b...
