All fired up over verdicts of combustion

MEDICAL MATTERS: GIVEN LAST week’s opinion at inquest by State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy that spontaneous human combustion…

MEDICAL MATTERS:GIVEN LAST week's opinion at inquest by State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy that spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is a "myth" enjoyed by fiction writers, we have now had a hat-trick of similar cases in the Republic's coroners' courts. But with the score currently at 2-1 in favour of the "No to SHC" team, fears of an unlikely epidemic can probably be played down.

The saga started in Galway in September in an inquest into the death of west Galway resident Michael Faherty. Coroner Dr Ciarán McLoughlin said of the fire which killed Faherty: “This fire was thoroughly investigated and I’m left with the conclusion that this fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, for which there is no adequate explanation.” He added it was the first time in 25 years as a coroner that he had returned such a verdict.

Donegal was the location for the next episode in the triad, during an inquest into the death of Elizabeth McLaughlin of Carndonagh. Coroner Dr John Madden said that when he saw the deceased’s remains, spontaneous human combustion had come to mind. But citing expert opinion, the coroner said SHC was probably “an urban myth”; despite the belief of McLaughlin’s partner, Harry Masterson, that she had perished as a result of the phenomenon, Madden was not inclined to deliver such a verdict.

Last week, the action moved to the Dublin Coroner’s Court, and the unusual circumstances surrounding the death of Declan Dowling. Like the other two cases, he had died from extensive burns from a fire confined to the area around his body, with minimal damage to his house. Dr Brian Farrell returned a verdict of death by misadventure, but it was the comments from Cassidy that caught the public’s attention. She described spontaneous combustion as a myth and a theory that has not been valid for 500 years.

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Apparently, we can blame Charles Dickens for the myth: he used SHC as the cause of death of a heavy drinker in his 1852 novel Bleak House, fuelling a popular belief that excessive drinking could trigger this kind of event. Responding to criticism that he was encouraging nonsense, in the second edition of Bleak House, Dickens claims he knew of some 30 cases of SHC.

De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis, published in 1763, contains stories of alleged self-ignition, again usually involving drink. And whatever about the 21st century, perhaps we should not judge those living in less scientific times too harshly. Confronting partially burned corpses lying near unburned rugs and furniture must have been both puzzling and unnerving.

Science can help explain the phenomenon, at least in part. To cremate a human body requires temperatures of about 1600 degrees Fahrenheit for about two hours – these kinds of temperatures are unlikely to be reached in a typical house fire. A reasonable theory of how human bodies burn without having the entire room engulfed in flames is that of the wick effect. Once human fat is ignited by an external source, it burns quite slowly at low temperatures, much as the wick of a candle does when surrounded by wax.

At last week’s inquest, Cassidy noted the victim’s skin was breached and liquid fat had emerged, catching fire but burning very slowly at a low temperature and causing only a localised fire. She labelled the phenomenon “atypical or sustained human combustion”.

Outside the court, she said that spontaneous human combustion was a “misnomer”. “It captures everybody’s imagination, this idea that somebody suddenly erupts into flame.”

Should we be worried the State’s coroners’ verdicts differ over SHC? On the contrary, it is a healthy sign of their independence. It is clear McLoughlin reluctantly returned the verdict in September but presumably he did so having considered, in detail, other possible explanations for the evidence laid before him. At the end of the day, the verdict is his professional opinion, to which he is fully entitled.

So any lingering concerns over coroners’ differences can surely be laid to rest.