Spontaneous Human Combustion Revisited -
A Classic Case and Short Review
Dr John D Twibell,
Twibell Associates, Farthingwood, Broadway, Sidmouth, Devon, UK.
Fire and Arson Investigator (IAAI Journal) Jan 2012, 53-57 (republished in IAAI (UK) Chapter newsletter spring 2012)
Preface
A few years ago I wrote the following article but then decided that it was not worth publishing. I felt that the topic was so well aired that no-one in or around the fire investigation fraternity could be in any doubt that Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) was a myth. Recent events in Ireland have shown my view to be wrong as a coroner has issued a verdict (September 2011) that a fire victim died from spontaneous combustion. I know nothing of the Irish case other than the reported embarrassment that the verdict has produced amongst fire investigators in Ireland and general consternation amongst colleagues around the world. I now feel that the time is right to offer this article, which includes a description of a typical SHC type case that I once investigated. It also contains a discussion of the reasons for the unusual features often seen in such scenes and a short review of similar cases.
Introduction
Claims for the phenomenom of SHC extend back for several centuries with documented reports of inexplicable incidents from at least 1725 (1,3). These early cases clearly appeared to be strange to investigators at the time but most cases would appear less so on reading the details today, given that there were far more sources of ready ignition around in those days. Thus many of these cases involved bodies burning in or close to hearths, or persons using candles or oil lamps or smoking tobacco pipes. The mysteriousness of many of these cases may be due simply to the events not having been directly witnessed, and the fire having self extinguished prior to its discovery. In other cases the burning itself appears to have been unnatural, in that contrary to normal experience the corpse appears to burn from the torso outwards, leaving the extremities largely unburnt. Another strange characteristic is that in most cases items close to the body show little or no fire damage.
The debate over the phenomenom has long been controversial. In 1851 the chemist Justus von Liebig (1) listed a series of cases and used scientific reasoning to try to dismiss such false notions. Charles Dickens appears to have brought matters to a head when he used SHC as a cause of death for the alcoholic character Krook in Bleak House (1853) (2). The novel caused a public literary controversy, principally with his erstwhile friend George Henry Lewes who viewed it as vulgar superstition. Dickens felt it necessary to defend his position by citing cases in the Preface. In 1861 Lewes himself compiled lists of examples and gave scientific arguments against SHC as a genuine phenomenon (3).
The frequency of such cases is very low and relatively few investigators are likely to see one during their career. In that sense I was particularly fortunate to be the on-call fire investigator called to such a scene at the start of 1991. I was called in by an English county police force to investigate the mysterious fire death of an old man in a flat over the New Year period. The fire scene was highly unusual and appeared to be a classic case of spontaneous human combustion. The old man lived alone on the upper floor of a relatively modern two storey, purpose built block of flats. The upper floor was of concrete construction which prevented the fire descending to the lower apartment. The fire had been discovered on the arrival of a key-holding home help, on her first attendance after the holiday period. Finding the premises in darkness she fed the electricity meter coin box before realising that there had been a fire in the premises. On opening the door to the sitting room she noticed an acrid burning type smell and found the room to be partly smoke logged and heavily smoke stained. She called out the emergency services. On attendance they found that in the sitting room there had been a relatively small fire which had centred on the area where the occupant usually sat in an armchair in a corner to one side of the open fireplace. The fire had self extinguished. Partly burnt body extremities were present in the burnt area which had completely consumed the torso and most of the armchair.
The door to the flat had remained locked and the closed windows had remained unbroken such that the fire could have been ventilation controlled. As others have noted with spontaneous human combustion cases there was a heavy brown condensate which had run down the insides of the windows and had gathered in pools on the windowsills. There were lesser amounts of staining to the walls away from the fire location.
The only burning had occurred in the location where the old man normally sat in his armchair (Figures 1-3). Most of the armchair had been consumed except for some basal woodwork and the metallic remains of two sprung cushion pads. His torso and the major parts of his limbs had been entirely consumed in the fire, leaving remnants of extremely fragile calcined bone. His feet and lower legs had survived unburnt at the front of the burnt area, still in their slippers and the majority of a pair of trousers, and his head had rolled off into the corner of the room, where it survived with minimal burning. The collected body remnants are shown in Figure 4. Adjacent to the burnt area there was very little heat damage, and several partly consumed drinks bottles were standing upright on the floor adjacent to where the armchair had been. These included an almost full glass bottle of sherry, a third full glass bottle of whisky and an almost full 2 litre plastic (PET) bottle of Coca Cola. Further away the open fireplace contained unburnt coal and discarded cardboard packaging and thus had not been lit at the time of the fire. Items adjacent to the armchair showed little if any heat damage.
There were two pendant electric lights in the room, the shade of the one nearest the burnt body location had partly melted and dropped to the floor but when tested the circuit and bulb remained operational. Both bulbs in the room were heavily smoked. There were two electric heaters in the room, neither of which showed any fire damage. The nearest to the fire location was an oil filled convector heater over which unburnt clothing was draped upon which the deceased’s walking stick was resting. The other was a radiant heater some distance away. The wall adjacent to the fire location was heavily smoke blackened and the plaster at low level was starting to spall. A double electric socket on the wall had been totally burnt. Two items had been plugged into the socket, one being the burnt lead to the oil-filled radiator the other burnt lead led to a heat damaged portable mains radio at the edge of the fire location.
This fire has all the classic features of spontaneous human combustion (SHC) or preternatural combustion as it is sometimes called. The fire has centred on and completely consumed the torso of the body to leave unburnt extremities, in this case just the head and feet. It appears to have been a relatively cool fire which has not provided enough heat to damage items relatively close by. It has produced copious amounts of a brown pyrolysate which has run down the windows and pooled on the windowsills. Furthermore the victim was clearly partial to a drop of alcohol which also seems to be a feature of many spontaneous human combustion cases.
The details of this case were not revealed to the press, sections of which would doubtless have latched onto it as a classic case of SHC. Of the numerous fires that I have attended or investigated over a career span of over 35 years this is the only case that I recall which resulted in the almost complete combustion of a human corpse in such a small fire.
Let us now take a look at some of the other circumstances. The old man had difficulty in moving around and spent much of his time in his armchair. He was a pipe smoker, and could easily have set fire to his clothing whilst lighting his pipe, particularly if slightly inebriated. He also had a prepayment electricity meter, which required the insertion of coins to restore and purchase further supply. Consequently he frequently ran out of electricity and used candles for emergency lighting. The remains of several melted candles including the cardboard packaging from two packs of six candles, and a number of partly burnt matches were found at locations in the edges of the burn location. A further empty candle box was present amongst the unburnt packaging in the fire grate. He clearly could have set fire to his clothing or his chair whilst lighting or using a flaming candle.
Further examination of the electrics revealed that trip covering the ring main circuits had operated but the lighting circuit was still on. The oil filled radiator also appeared to have been on but whether or not the socket switch was on could not be determined after the fire. Assuming that the electricity meter had run out of credit prior to the fire then the trip would be likely to have operated due to the fire damage to the heater and radio leads when the home help restored electricity supply.
Discussion of features typical of SHC
Are any of the other features of this case specific to preternatural human combustion? What about the consumption of the body from the torso outwards? What about the fact that such fires appear to be relatively cold and create little damage to items close by? What about the typical brown pyrolysate condensing on the windows? What about the predisposition to this phenomenon in elderly persons who consume alcohol?
The most significant difference from a “normal” fatal fire is the pattern of damage to the body. We all appreciate that corpses are difficult to burn and that in most fires the exposed extremities burn away leaving the thicker parts of the torso relatively intact. In supposed SHC cases and the case cited herein it is the torso that burns and the fire extinguishes before reaching the extremities. Typical conditions involve the relatively slow rendering down and dehydration of the corpse with the fatty material wicking off and burning from the dried organic material or off clothing or furniture such as a combustible armchair.
Numerous experiments have been conducted using pork fat or human fat to show that these can burn from materials acting as a wick (4-7). DeHaan (6) has conducted a number of larger scale tests with pig carcases wrapped with fabric materials to simulate clothing and has shown that the wicking effect can produce a sustained fire. He has also shown that the presence of wet tissues moderated the heat output rate of the fire such that it was unlikely to spread to nearby materials. The actual heat output rate of these fires was moderated by wet tissue involved. Such experiments suggest that a corpse of similar size to a human torso could be burned to near completion if the conditions are correct. (Some of these experiments were reproduced by DeHaan on British television in a BBC QED programme on SHC in 1998.) Christensen (7) has performed similar small fire experiments using amputated human tissues and has shown that low output sustained fires can result. She also explored the possibility that decreased bone density in elderly victims may be a factor in the apparent ready fragmentation of the major bones in such cases.
We readily accept that ventilation control limits the rate of spread or heat output rate of many indoor fires involving dry flammable materials. Most SHC cases occur indoors and (as in the example cited above) ventilation control would limit the heating effect on nearby items. In the case of a fire consuming a corpse however the main moderating factor clearly must be the large proportion of the heat output necessary to dehydrate the tissues. It is this dehydration moderation that controls the overall output of the fire, rather than ventilation control and indeed SHC type events could occur outside in the open where the oxygen supply is unlimited. This is certainly the case with an example cited by DeHaan from Medford Oregon in 1991 where a female murder victim was found on fire in a wood and the local sheriff’s deputy actually photographed the flames emanating from the torso (5). The reduced heat output rate in such fires is likely to produce a much sharper or more defined edge to the fire damage region, leaving items close to the body relatively unburnt.
The brown pyrolysate typically reported in indoor SHC type cases is by no means unusual, as in many slow, ventilation controlled fires copious amounts of pyrolysate condense and run down cold windows and walls. Such pyrolysate runs would almost certainly be features of the early stages of most indoor fires, but they will have dried out and been further cooked or even burnt away in the later stages of major building fires.
In most SHC type cases reported the fire is out and the scene cold on discovery, which seems to add mystery to the situation in some quarters. Why this should suggest some non-scientific supernatural or even alien cause, I cannot imagine. Normally the fact is that there has been a low level, relatively slow fire that did not spread to other materials and eventually self extinguished. Many small scale fires that occur during unoccupied periods in buildings burn themselves out and are discovered only after they have cooled off. Unless the building has fire alarms it is unlikely that an out of hours fire will be discovered live unless it develops into a major building fire. The fact that a body is found in a small extinct fire situation should not in itself be remarkable.
Short SHC review