Unintentional
At least one (almost certainly apocryphal) report of accidental burial dates back to the thirteenth century. The philosopher John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) was reportedly, upon the reopening of his tomb, found outside his coffin with his hands torn and bloody after attempting to escape.
Revivals of supposed "corpses" have been triggered by dropped coffins, grave robbers, embalming, and attempted dissections. Fearing premature burial, George Washington, on his deathbed, made his servants promise not to bury him until two days after his death. Folklorist Paul Barber has argued that the incidence of unintentional live burial has been overestimated, and that the normal effects of decomposition are sometimes misinterpreted as signs that the person whose remains are being exhumed revived in his or her coffin, but patients have nevertheless been documented as accidentally being bagged, trapped in a steel box, or sent to the morgue after erroneously being declared dead as late as the 1890s.
Newspapers have reported cases of exhumed corpses who appear to have been accidentally buried alive. On February 21, 1885, The New York Times gave a disturbing account of such a case. The victim was a man from Buncombe County whose name was given as "Jenkins." His body was found turned over onto its front inside the coffin, with much of his hair pulled out. Scratch marks were also visible on all sides of the coffin's interior. His family were reportedly "distressed beyond measure at the criminal carelessness" associated with the case. Another similar story was reported in The Times on January 18, 1886, the victim of this case being described simply as a "girl" named "Collins" from Woodstock, Ontario, Canada. Her body was described as being found with the knees tucked up under the body, and her burial shroud "torn into shreds."
"Safety coffins" have been devised to prevent premature burial, although there is no evidence that any has ever been successfully used to save an accidentally buried person. On 5 December 1882, J. G. Krichbaum received US Patent 268693 for his "Device For Life In Buried Persons". It consisted of a movable periscope-like pipe which provided air and, when rotated or pushed by the person interred, indicated to passersby that someone was buried alive. The patent text refers to "that class of devices for indicating life in buried persons", suggesting that such inventions were common at the time.
Count Karnice-Karnicki of Belgium, after witnessing the revival of a friend's daughter as her coffin was lowered into the ground, patented a rescue device in 1897, which mechanically detected chest movement to trigger a flag, lamp, bell, and fresh air. Along similar lines, in the United Kingdom, various systems were developed to save those buried alive, including breakable glass panels in the coffin lid and pulley systems which would raise flags or ring bells on the surface. Without air supply, as in the Italian model, this naturally would be useless without vigilant guards above ground. As such, undertakers were hired to stay in the graveyard at night to watch out for such signals. In 1890, a family designed and built a burial vault at the Wildwood Cemetery in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, with an internal hatch to allow the victim of accidental premature burial to escape. The vault had an air supply and was lined in felt to protect a panic-stricken victim from self-inflicted injury before escape. Bodies were to be removed from the casket before interment.
Read more about this topic: Premature Burial