List of Unusual Deaths - 19th Century

19th Century

• 1814: London Beer Flood, seven people were killed (some drowned, some died from injuries, and one succumbed to alcohol poisoning) when 323,000 imperial gallons (388,000 US gal; 1,468,000 L) of beer in the Meux and Company Brewery burst out of its vats and gushed into the streets.
• 1816: Gouverneur Morris, an American statesman, died after sticking a piece of whale bone through his urinary tract to relieve a blockage.
• 1830: William Huskisson, statesman and financier, was crushed to death by a locomotive (Stephenson's Rocket), at the public opening of the world's first mechanically powered passenger railway.
• 1834: David Douglas, Scottish botanist, fell into a pit trap accompanied by a bull. He was gored and possibly crushed.
• 1862: Jim Creighton, a very early baseball player, died when he swung a bat too hard and injured himself, possibly by rupturing his bladder.
• 1863: Emma Livry, a famous prima ballerina, died from burns she received when her costume caught fire from the footlights at a rehearsal. She lingered in agony for eight months.
• 1863: Stonewall Jackson, a Confederate general during the American Civil War, went on a scouting mission but upon returning was shot by his own men who thought he and his companions were with the union army. He died eight days later.
• 1869 Mary Ward, a passenger in a steam car built by her young cousins, including the future steam turbine inventor, Charles Algernon Parsons, fell from the car and was crushed under its wheels, making her the first person to die in a road accident involving a powered vehicle.
• 1870: Alain de Monéys, French aristocrat, was cooked and eaten alive by the villagers of Hautefaye, Dordogne, during a reported case of mass hysteria.
• 1871: Clement Vallandigham, a lawyer and Ohio politician, was demonstrating how a victim may possibly have shot himself while drawing a weapon from a kneeling position when he shot himself in the process. Though the defendant, Thomas McGehan, was ultimately cleared, Vallandigham died from his wound.
• 1877: David Lunt, an early resident of Deadwood, South Dakota, was accidentally shot in the forehead during a Saloon fight between a man named Tom Smith and Town Marshal Con Stapleton, who was trying to disarm him. Even though the bullet passed through Lunt's brain and left entry and exit wounds in his head, he remained conscious the whole time and suffered no pain. Lunt then resumed his life as usual until he suddenly felt a terrible headache and died 67 days after the incident. An autopsy found that Lunt had died due to the shot, but could not determine a reason for why he survived for such a long time.
• 1884: Allan Pinkerton, detective, spy, and founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, died allegedly when he contracted gangrene after slipping and biting his tongue; however, conflicting reports indicate that he died of a stroke instead.