Incredible story of Irish labourer buried alive in coffin for 61 days told in new documentary | Ireland
They were known as undertakers – people who had buried themselves alive in gruesome displays of endurance – and Mick Meaney was determined to be the best ever.
The year was 1968 and the Irish worker had barely a pound to his name, but he believed that if he stayed underground in a coffin longer than anyone else, the world would remember his name.
On February 21 of that year, well-wishers and TV crews followed his 6ft 3in tall, 2ft 6in wide and foam-lined coffin through the streets of Kilburn, the heart of Ireland’s immigrant community in London, and watched as Meaney was lowered into a pit in a construction yard.
The soil had buried the coffin except for the air tube through which food and liquid could be lowered. Meaney’s goal to break the world record and achieve fame and fortune was 61 days.
This remarkable demonstration and what happened afterwards are described in a documentary to be broadcast on Irish-language television channel. TG4 On November 26. The film, titled Beo Faoin bhFód (Buried Alive), has already been screened at festivals. Governing Apartment CollinsIt combines interviews with Meaney’s family and friends with archival footage of an event that made headlines around the world.
““My father was a proud Tipperary man,” his daughter Mary Meaney says in the documentary. “He was another Irishman, they are now called the forgotten Irish, they worked there with picks and shovels and sent the money back to their families. Conditions were bad then.”
Strong and powerfully built, Meaney wanted to become a champion boxer, but injury ended that dream and he ended up digging tunnels in London. When an accident briefly trapped him under rubble, he remained calm and was overcome by another ambition: to capture the record for longest time buried alive.
The craze began in California in the 1920s – the US also spawned other unusual endurance competitions such as the longest time spent on a pole, hula hooping or dancing – and in the 1960s the unofficial record was attributed to a Texan named Bill White. Calling himself a “living corpse,” White made a career out of being buried to promote car dealerships and other businesses and remained underground for 55 days.
To set a new record, 33-year-old Meaney Michael ‘Butty’ Sugruea circus performer turned publican and impresario in London’s Irish community. Sugrue held a funeral at a bar called the Admiral Nelson, where Meaney was placed in a coffin. A lorry transported the coffin to the courtyard owned by contractor Mick Keane, who allocated part of the site to the show. A lid opening into a space slightly larger than a normal coffin under the coffin served as a toilet.
““I had a great night’s sleep last night,” Meaney told a TV news anchor on his second day, speaking from a phone placed inside his coffin. He established a routine: waking up at 7 a.m., doing quarantine-compatible exercises, applying ointment to his body, eating, reading books and newspapers and talking to people on the phone.
The line was connected to a telephone at Admiral Nelson, where Sugrue charged customers for each call. Celebrities such as boxer Henry Cooper chatted with the buried man, but interest waned as the weeks went by; The war in Vietnam and the assassination of Martin Luther King dominated the interest. Nevertheless, Sugrue gathered dancers, musicians, and journalists for what was called Meaney’s “resurrection” 61 days later, on April 22.
The coffin was dug up, loaded onto a truck, and driven through the cheering crowd back to the bar. When the hatch opened, Meaney grinned with sunglasses and beard shielding his eyes. “I would like to go another hundred days,” he told the press. “I’m happy to be world champion”
The chance never came; Sugrue allegedly defrauded his star. A discussed world tour and sponsorship deal with Gillette never materialized. “There are people in all walks of life who use you like a vampire,” said Mary Meaney, who was three when her father returned to Ireland. “He came back with not enough money in his pocket for the price of a bottle of milk.”
Fame was temporary. No Guinness Book of World Records representatives recorded Meaney’s feat, and a rival mortician named Tim Hayes, who spent less time underground in a regular-sized coffin, disputed his credentials as champion. Then in 1968, a former nun named Emma Smith buried herself under a fairground in Skegness for 101 days.
Meaney took a job with Cork county council and died in 2003. “He could have lived an ordinary life, a working class, ordinary life, but he desired this extraordinary life,” Mary Meaney said. “Breaking the world record gave him the feeling of ‘I’m important.'”
