On Jun 9, 2005, at 10:35 PM, Jeremy Pye wrote:

> James,
>
>    Thanks for the email about the glass. ......It is believed that
> this land was used as a
> poor farm, and that many of these individuals were
> indigents.
I would doubt extremely that the high-end glass windowed coffins would
have been used for indigents. Looking through some of the prices for VA
coffins, the high end wooden ones were on a par with the Fisk coffins
at about $100 whereas an indigent coffin was at the $5.00 range if
memory serves.

>   Is it possible that the glass could have
> originated as intended for a window, and simply was
> included as a part of the coffin?
Metallic coffins were more of an industrialized product than a craft
cabinetry item. Fisk had foundries in four cities in the USA that
produced his coffins and after his death Crane & Breed continued
marketing them, having bought his interest from his widow. The
thickness of the glass would have to have been toward the "thick" end
of the range due to the expectation that the coffin would remain
airtight to prevent ingress by bacteria that would produce gasses and
in effect burst the thinner window type of glass. The glass had to be
of sufficient thickness to withstand the admittedly slight expansion of
gasses produced by the limited decomposition of the body between the
time the coffin was sealed and when the bacteria expired due to lack of
oxygen. Drenches of up to 2 lbs/50lbs body weight of arsenic were
employed to counteract this prior to the advent of embalming.

How this dynamic changed after the introduction and widespread use of
embalming later in the second half of the 19th century might be
indicated by a less thick viewing plate.

Lyle Browning