Okay, this is exactly what I get when I post (or forward) something I haven't Snoped first. In short, all BS. In length, below. Actually I find the debunking more interesting that the original. (Warning, quite lengthy.)
They also had lead cups and when they would drink their ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. They would be walking along the road and here would be someone knocked out and they thought they were dead. So they would pick them up and take them home and get them ready to bury. They realized if they were too slow about it, the person would wake up. Also, maybe not all of the people they were burying were dead. So they would lay them out on the kitchen table for a couple of days, the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. That's where the custom of holding a "wake" came from.
Waking the dead is an ancient custom that extends around the world and has existed in Europe for at least the past thousand years. The term refers to the practice of watching over the corpse during the period between death and burial. Partly, this had to do with making sure someone was always around in case the corpse woke up (see our Buried Alive page for numerous stories about premature interments), but the watchers were also there to make sure household animals and assorted vermin were kept off the deceased.
Some so feared the possibility of live burial that they left instructions for special tests to be performed on their bodies to make sure they were actually dead. Surgical incisions, the application of boiling hot liquids, touching red-hot irons to their flesh, stabbing them through the heart, or even decapitation were all specified at different times as a way of making sure these people didn't wake up six feet under.
Since England is so old and small they started running out of places to bury people. So they started digging up some coffins and would take their bones to a house and re-use the grave.
Burying the dead in previously-used graves happened with some frequency throughout Europe, both before, during, and after the 1600s. It didn't have to do with any particular country being too small to hold all the dead bodies, though — it had to do with the shortage of space in established cemeteries. The family of the deceased would habitually look to inter the loved one in the graveyard attached to their parish and, like any other piece of land, graveyards were finite — they could only be used to house so many before they filled up and older tenants had to be moved out.
Sometimes remains were dug up, and sometimes what was left was pushed aside, with the newcomer loaded in on top of whoever was already there. Most folks accepted this practice, provided the old bones remained near the church. When bones were disinterred, they were taken to a charnel house, in a process termed second burial.
English common law states a grave is held only temporarily (not owned) and its use terminated "with the dissolution of the body." Grave inhabitants are granted "the right of appropriation of the soil to the body interred therein until its remains shall have so mingled with the earth as to have destroyed its identity." In other words, once you're bones, you've lost your rights.
Modern cemeteries in many countries routinely rent graves for two to thirty years. At the end of that period, the bones are disinterred and reburied in accordance with that country's cemetery laws. Vancouver, BC, successfully uses a 30-year-renewable lease for its graves. In London, England, the wealthy have for many years obtained 99-year leases on their graves in prestigious cemeteries. (Graves for purchase, though, are scarce.)
They started opening these coffins and found some had scratch marks on the inside. One out of 25 coffins were that way . . .
Scratch marks have been found on the inside of some coffins and tombs. Our Buried Alive page details some cases of this. Such marks, however, were a relatively rare find, certainly nothing on a level even remotely approaching the "one out of 25" figure given in the e-mail.
. . . and they realized they had still been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell.
Premature burial signalling devices only came into fashion in the 19th century; they weren't around in the 15th. Some of these 19th century coffins blew whistles and raised flags if their inhabitants awoke from their dirt naps. (Once again, our Buried Alive page provides information about a number of these devices, including ones available in modern times.)
That is how the saying "graveyard shift" was made.
The earliest documented use of the phrase graveyard shift comes from a 1907 Collier's Magazine. However, graveyard watch was noted in 1895, with that term referring to a shipboard watch beginning at midnight and lasting usually four hours.
If the bell would ring they would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer".
Saved by the bell is a 1930s term from the world of boxing, where a beleaguered fighter being counted out would have his fate delayed by the ringing of the bell to signify the end of the round. Need we mention that although fisticuffs were around in the 1500s, the practice of ringing a bell to end a round wasn't?
Likewise, dead ringer has nothing to do with the prematurely buried signalling their predicament to those still above ground — the term means an exact double, not someone buried alive. Dead ringer was first used in the late 19th century, with ringer referring to someone's physical double and dead meaning "absolute" (as in dead heat and dead right).
A ringer was a better horse swapped into a race in place of a nag. These horses would have to resemble each other well enough to fool the naked eye, hence how the term came to mean an exact double.
-frolix
Setting records straight whenever possible.