This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout the 19th century, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.
| Name of person | Image | Date of death | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas Millwood | The 32-year-old plasterer was shot and killed by excise officer Francis Smith, who mistook him for the Hammersmith ghost due to his white uniform. Smith was later sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to one year's imprisonment with hard labor, and he received a full pardon later in the year.[1] [2] | ||
| Victims of the London Beer Flood | At Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery, a 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) wooden vat of fermenting porter burst, causing chain reactions and destroying several large beer barrels. The beer subsequently flooded the nearby slum and killed eight people. Several people also subsequently died from alcohol poisoning as a result of vaporized liquor.[3] [4] [5] | ||
| William Henry Harrison | The 9th President of the United States died a month after his inauguration from an illness (possibly pneumonia or enteric fever) that developed after he stood in the rain to deliver his 2-hour-long inaugural address, the longest by any U.S. President. Medical treatments Harrison received in the last week of his life included opium, castor oil and leeches. Harrison remains the U.S. President to have served the shortest term in office and was the first President to die in office.[6] [7] | ||
| Zachary Taylor | The 12th President of the United States died of diarrhea and dysentry 5 days after consuming raw cherries and iced milk at a 4th of July event at the site of the Washington Monument.[8] [9] Persistent speculation that Taylor was poisoned would lead to the exhumation of some of his remains in 1991, but scientific testing found no evidence of poison. | ||
| William Snyder | The 13-year-old died in San Francisco, California, reportedly after a circus clown named Manuel Rays swung him around by his heels.[10] [11] | ||
| Victims of the 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning | In Bradford, England, a batch of sweets accidentally poisoned with arsenic trioxide were sold by William Hardaker, colloquially referred to as "Humbug Billy". Around five boxes of sweets were delivered and sold. Around 20 people died and 200 people suffered from the effects of the poison.[12] [13] | ||
| Jim Creighton | The 21-year-old American baseball player from Manhattan died from abdominal pain, possibly caused by pitching or swinging at the ball, which likely gave him a ruptured bladder or a ruptured hernia.[14] [15] | ||
| Julius Peter Garesché | The Cuban-born professional soldier was killed on the first day of the Battle of Stones River when a cannon ball decapitated him.[16] [17] | ||
| Archduchess Mathilda of Austria | The daughter of Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen set her dress on fire while trying to hide a cigarette from her father, who had forbidden her to smoke.[18] [19] | ||
| Unknown woman | A woman in Gayton le Marsh, Lincolnshire, England, became severely ill and later died after consuming her own hair for 12 years.[20] [21] | ||
| Clement Vallandigham | The American politician and lawyer, who was defending a man accused of murder, accidentally shot himself while demonstrating how the victim might have done so. His client was acquitted.[22] [23] [24] | ||
| James "Jim" Cullen | The 25-year-old Irish man became the only man ever lynched in Mapleton, Maine,[25] after he committed a robbery and beat two deputy sheriffs to death with an axe.[26] | ||
| Unknown man | A factory worker in Manchester found a mouse on her table and screamed. A man rushed over to her and tried to shoo it away, but it tried to hide in his clothes, and when he gasped in surprise the mouse dove into his mouth and he swallowed it. The mouse tore and bit the man's throat and chest, and he later died "in horrible agony".[27] | ||
| Victims of the Dublin whiskey fire | At The Liberties, Dublin, Ireland (then part of the United Kingdom), a fire broke out at Laurence Malone's bonded storehouse on the corner of Ardee Street, where 5,000 hogsheads (262500impgal) of whiskey were being stored. The heat caused the barrels in the storehouse to explode, sending a stream of whiskey flowing through the doors and windows of the burning building. The burning whiskey then flowed along the streets where it quickly demolished a row of small houses. Despite the damage from the fire, all of the resulting 13 fatalities were caused by alcohol poisoning after drinking the undiluted flooded whiskey.[28] [29] | ||
| James A. Moon | The 37-year-old blacksmith, self-proclaimed inventor, and American Civil War veteran killed himself with a makeshift guillotine.[30] [31] [32] | ||
| Hague and another female servant | A British servant of one Mr. Birchall was instructed by his master to retrieve a four-chambered pistol.[33] Hague did so, but while examining the gun he shot himself in the jaw, which caused instant death. He was discovered by another servant, who also shot herself demonstrating how Hague died.[34] | ||
| Sir William Payne-Gallwey, 2nd Baronet | The former British MP died after sustaining severe internal injuries when he fell on a turnip while hunting.[35] [36] | ||
| Samuel Wardell | The lamplighter in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, had attached a 10lb rock to his alarm clock, which would crash to the floor and awaken him. On Christmas Eve, he rearranged his furniture for a party, but forgot to change his room back afterwards. When the alarm mechanism went off the next morning, the rock fell on his head and killed him.[37] [38] | ||
| George Murichson | The 8-year-old boy from Aroostook County, Maine, died from a hemorrhage after having a live snake pulled out of his mouth. The snake was speculated to have gone down his throat after he had "gone to sleep in some field".[39] [40] [41] | ||
| Caroline Yates | According to an autopsy during her inquest, the 25-year-old woman, living in Redfern, New South Wales at the time, died from peritonitis due to an internal injury inflicted by Dr. Sabowiski with the intent of "procuring abortion".[42] [43] | ||
| Unknown Iraqi male | At around 8:30pm, a shower of meteorites fell "like rain" on a village in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq (then part of the Ottoman Empire). One man was paralyzed and another died. His death is considered the only credible case of death-by-meteorite.[44] [45] [46] | ||
| Isaack Rabbanovitch | A bear walked into the barkeep's inn in Vilna, Russia (now part of Lithuania) and picked up a keg of vodka. When he tried to take it back, he was hugged to death by the intoxicated bear along with his two sons and daughter. Villagers shot and killed the bear.[47] | ||
| Unknown sailor | A sailor in Bermuda was arguing with other sailors, but the argument turned into a fight and the sailor was pushed into the water. A marine began undressing for a rescue attempt, but an officer ordered him to stop because there was a boat nearby that had ladies on it. As the sailor continued struggling in the water, five men volunteered to save him, but he had already drowned.[48] | ||
| Mary Agnes Lapish | The Australian woman stumbled into a barbed-wire fence, possibly while intoxicated, and was strangled by her fur collar.[49] [50] | ||
| Jeremiah Haralson | The former United States Congressman from Alabama disappears from the historical record after his 1895 imprisonment for pension fraud in Albany, New York. He was reportedly killed by an unknown animal while coal mining near Denver, Colorado,, but there is little or no historical evidence for this.[51] [52] | ||
| Bridget Driscoll | The 44-year-old, the first recorded case of a pedestrian killed in a collision with a motor car in Great Britain,[53] was struck on the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London, by a car belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company while giving demonstration rides.[54] | ||
| Salomon August Andrée, Knut Frænkel, and Nils Strindberg | The group of men died of exhaustion on the island Kvitøya after trying to reach the North Pole by hot air balloon.[55] [56] [57] | ||
| Empress Elisabeth of Austria | Stabbed with a thin file by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni while strolling through Geneva with her lady-in-waiting Irma Sztáray. The wound pierced her pericardium and a lung. Her extremely tight corset held the wound closed, so she did not realize what had happened (believing a passerby had struck her), and walked on for some time before collapsing.[58] [59] | ||