The Exhumation
Residents of the town believed that the Browns were cursed and went so far as to suggest that undead activity (they did not use the word vampire although I have and will continue to do) was to blame because so many members of the same family suffered from TB. They suggested that one of the deceased Brown women was, in fact, a vampire and responsible for sucking the life out of Edwin. The key to his recovery was to find out which woman was the culprit before destroying the body.
The exhumations took place on March 17, 1892. Obviously, the first two Browns to die were essentially piles of bones having died a decade earlier. Mercy’s corpse was still fresh, so she was the culprit according to the townsfolk. They didn’t take into account the fact that Mercy had been kept in freezing temperatures, which slowed decomposition. A doctor removed her heart and liver and found decayed blood on the heart. He also found dormant TB germs in her lungs, but the people of the town were convinced that Mercy was, in fact, a vampire.
As was the ritual of the age, her liver and heart were removed and burned on a rock. Edwin ate the ashes in the hope that his condition would improve. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work, and he died two months later. The unfortunate Mercy’s remains were buried in the local Baptist Church Cemetery. In the modern era, the strange case of Mercy Brown has created a cult following. Indeed, she is apparently the inspiration for ‘Lucy’ in Dracula.
Where Did People Get The Crazy Idea Of Vampires?
The so-called ‘Yankees’ of the 19th century were known to be reasonably practical, so how did they fall for such a myth in the first place? The word ‘vampire’ originated in Slavic Europe in around the 10th century and Germanic and Slavic immigrants probably brought their superstitions with them to America when they settled in the 18th century.
In June 1784, a councilman by the name of Moses Holmes penned a letter in the Connecticut Courant and Weekly Intelligencer. He warned people about a foreign ‘quack’ physician who told families to dig up their dead relatives and burn them to stop the spread of TB. In his book ‘Vampires, Burials and Death‘, Paul Barber explained that observations of decay in the human body brought about the idea of vampires. For example, a staked corpse will ‘scream’ as the natural gasses escape, and a bloated body looked as if it has been eaten recently.
It is also important to note that only 10% of rural folks in New England in the 19th century belonged to a church. Superstition took the place of organized religion; a notable example includes burying shoes by the fireplace to catch the Devil if he comes down the chimney. Disease spread fast in these communities, so an exhumation of a family member was a sign that you are doing everything you could to solve the problem. Residents knew that if the disease wiped out the Browns, it could get the next family too.
George Brown never believed in the vampire myth and was not present for the ritual. He only agreed to it to satisfy his neighbors. Having buried four of his family because of TB, George never contracted it and didn’t die until 1922.