On this day in Oxfordshire...

On 5 JANUARY 1760, the Oxford Mail announced the death of a plasterer’s labourer a week after a fall of between thirty and forty feet from St John’s College on Christmas Eve. The unnamed man landed bolt-upright on his feet, hitting the ground with such force that he actually bounced back up to “a considerable height”. He then fell backwards, speechless.

Upon examination it was discovered that neither his ankles, knees, nor hips were broken, and at first it was hoped that he would recover. Every care was taken to nurse the poor man but, after lingering for a week, he died on New Year’s Day.

After his death his body was opened the right kidney was found to be full of extravasated blood (i.e. as a result of internal bleeding), the bladder “mortified” (probably meaning ruptured), and the pubic bone fractured on the left side.

William Hogarth portrayed a similar scene in The Man of Taste with a workman teetering perilously on a platform, literally “kicking the bucket” of mortar which pours like a stream of vomit over one of the nobs below. The figure of death lurks in the foreground on the right, ready to claim another soul courtesy of a chaotic building site.

1  Oxford Journal, 05 January 1760