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Atypical Deaths of these Historical Figures

Khalid Elhassan July 14, 2020 34 min

Gouverneur Morris - Founding Father of the United States

27. WHOOOSH!

Martha Mansfield and John Barrymore in ‘Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde’. Silence is Platinum

At the end of filming on Thanksgiving, Martha Mansfield was hanging out with fellow actors. She was still in costume and clad in a frilly period dress of a Southern belle, when somebody lit a cigarette and tossed the match. It landed on Mansfield’s dress, which immediately caught fire and went up in a WHOOOSH!

Her co-star saved her face and neck by throwing his overcoat over her, while her chauffer sustained severe hand burns ripping the flaming dress off of Mansfield. However, by then she had sustained severe burns over much of her body. Mansfield was rushed to a hospital in San Antonio, but despite the treatment doctors’ best efforts, the burns were too extensive, and death claimed her the following day.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.