Ransom Riggs
Strange Gravestones: Death by Eraser
by Ransom Riggs - March 12, 2010 - 10:25 AM

I guess I’ve got gravestones on the brain this week (check out my Death at the Border blog from a few days ago), but I ran across this on a friend’s flickr stream and couldn’t resist posting it. Jack Mord of Thanatos.net found the gravestone and the attendant newspaper article. The moral of the story, I suppose, is that if six young women want to kiss you on your birthday, let them.

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Comments (17)

  1. What are the years there? Is that 1894 and 1909?

    posted by Jessie on 3-12-2010 at 10:35 am

  2. Yeah, I think it’s 1894 to 1909.

    posted by Sarah in CA on 3-12-2010 at 10:58 am

  3. Looks like it, Jessie.

    posted by Sara in Al on 3-12-2010 at 11:00 am

  4. Thanks for this. Still many questions: Was Miss Robbins one of the Metropolitan Six? Were they all arrested, but then cleared after the “accident” declaration? Why didn’t I have six women chasing me on my 15th birthday?

    posted by E on 3-12-2010 at 11:04 am

  5. So many questions, I mean, what if this had happened 100 years later (today)?

    - Would Miss Robbins actually be arrested prior to the “accidental death” determination?
    - Would Mr. Millet’s parents sue the girls for harrassment leading to his death? Or the company for dangerous working conditions?
    - Would anyone ever use the word “prostrated” in everyday speech?

    posted by Andrew on 3-12-2010 at 11:14 am

  6. does anyone else find it weird/spooky that there is an add for designer gravestones on this page?

    posted by Joshua on 3-12-2010 at 11:36 am

  7. Check the link on my name for more info, a short article in the NY Times which answers some of Andrew’s questions.

    posted by Mark on 3-12-2010 at 12:06 pm

  8. @Joshua—-YES!! I’m glad I’m not the only one that saw that!

    At first I thought the ad was a joke because of the “toaster” remark.

    posted by KerriD on 3-12-2010 at 1:04 pm

  9. Thanks for follow-up, Mark.

    posted by Steven on 3-12-2010 at 1:50 pm

  10. In today’s world, the Millitt family would have multimillion dollar lawsuits filed against Met Life and the manufacturer of the ink eraser (for not having a warning label).
    Of course, there’s also the wrongful death suit against the six women…

    Regarding the headline…does the coroner’s exam make clear that Miss Robbins was prostrated? Can that be determined in an autopsy?

    posted by 8rustystaples on 3-12-2010 at 1:51 pm

  11. Does anyone else find it odd that his name is abreviated on his own grave, but both his parents names are listed in full?

    posted by dirtknapp on 3-12-2010 at 2:03 pm

  12. Poor George is used as an example of death-by-ink-eraser in the Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_eraser

    posted by Kelsey on 3-12-2010 at 2:22 pm

  13. I think it’s funny that there’s an add for gravestones on this page!

    Great ad placement

    posted by Greg on 3-12-2010 at 3:06 pm

  14. Aren’t those ads semi-automatically generated. I think those cos. hsve search engines that look for keywords and get their ads placed as quickly as possible. Is that true?

    posted by jack on 3-12-2010 at 3:36 pm

  15. Jack is correct — the ads are automatically placed based on words in the blog entry. Sometimes they’re wildly inappropriate, other times just funny. :)

    posted by Chris Higgins on 3-12-2010 at 5:55 pm

  16. this might have actually been a case of suicide…I know working in insurance damn near inspired me to jam office supplies into a vital organ.

    posted by sammylee on 3-12-2010 at 7:40 pm

  17. I was wondering how an eraser could pierce the skin. I saw that it was an ink eraser which turns out to be along the lines of a knife that scrapes ink off a page. That would make more sense to me that the rubber eraser that my mind conjured.

    posted by veetie on 3-13-2010 at 9:01 am

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