No rest for the dead ...
QUESTION Why do they keep moving U.S. president James K. Polk’s body?
James Polk was born in North Carolina in 1795, but he’s associated with Tennessee, having moved there to study law in 1818. He represented the state as a Congressman from 1825 to 1839, and was state governor from 1839 to 1841.
In 1844, he was elected the 11th U.s. president, serving from 1845 to 1849. He died, ostensibly of cholera, on June 15, 1849, just three months after leaving the White House.
In keeping with the local practice for cholera victims, Polk was first buried in a cemetery outside Nashville, but a year later, respecting an ill-defined wish in his will to be buried ‘at home’, his body was moved into Nashville.
He rested there until 1893. It was then decided to move his remains to the grounds of the Capitol in Nashville, where they lie to this day with those of his wife.
Polk’s main memorial is in the James k. Polk Home and museum in Columbia, Tennessee, about 50 miles from Nashville. Those who wish to move his remains again say resting them there would come closer to his wish to be buried ‘at home’.
But there’s a commercial side to it all: shrines to U.s. presidents represent very big business. The re-interment of Polk’s body in Columbia would be a big financial boost. The Polk family and opinion in Tennessee are split on moving the body again. The Tennessee senate has approved the idea, but there are many more hurdles to overcome before the Columbia gravediggers can take up their shovels.
Gavin Choyce, London W2.
QUESTION The BBC’s Taboo series, set in the Regency period, featured torture of prisoners by the authorities as a way of obtaining information. Had torture not been banned under Common and Statute Law long before then?
TorTUre has never had official sanction in British courts. It was, however, an instrument of state, applied by bodies other than the common law courts such as the Court of star Chamber.
Torture was performed under a warrant of the monarch. The Tudor kings and queens were keen on it: Victorian historian Henry Hallam noted ‘the rack seldom stood idle in the Tower, for all the latter part of elizabeth’s reign’.
england was one of the first countries to ban the practice in 1628 — a ban brought about by a murderer named John Felton. He’d been convicted of killing George Villiers, a favourite of Charles I, and was brought before the Privy Council in an effort to obtain the names of his accomplices and fellow conspirators.
The Bishop of london suggested he be tortured, to which Felton is said to have replied: ‘I know not whom I may accuse in extremity of pain — Bishop laud, or perhaps any lord on the Board.’ He was asked no more questions.
a few days later, on November 14, 1628, a meeting of judges decided ‘that he ought not to be tortured on the rack, for no such punishment is known or allowed by our law’.
During the long Parliament in 1640 the practice was formally abolished, about 150 years before the regency period depicted in the Taboo TV series.
James Miller, Oxford.
QUESTION I have a Road Safety award from the Fifties awarded by the Bertram Mills Circus and presented by Coco The Clown. Why did Coco became a road safety campaigner?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, I met this most charming and charismatic gentleman in the late sixties when I was a police sergeant. I spent a day with him, and we went around schools in the area.
The children loved him. He dressed in his usual costume, and they were enthralled. at lunchtime he and I returned to my police house where we had lunch. He was a most likeable man.
We remember vividly his delight that we had a downstairs toilet he could use because his size 59 boots were too big for him to climb the stairs to the main bathroom. a great guy.
Colin Bennett, Calpe, Spain.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow, G2 6DB. You can also fax them to 0141 331 4739 or you can email them to charles. legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.