Sir Richard Burton, Explorer (1821-1890)

Too hot to handle

Explorer, diplomat, translator whose credits include the discovery (with John Speke) of Lake Tanganyika, Richard Burton died in Trieste. Translations attributed to Burton include the Kama Sutra, Perfumed Garden and Arabian Nights.

His body was returned to England, for interment in St Mary Magdalen's Roman Catholic Church, in Mortlake, southwest London.

Although he earned considerable sums from his translations, his estate totalled less than £200. His manuscripts were worth a fortune, but his wife Isabel (1831-1896), who was his literary executrix, promptly burned them.

When he died, she arranged for an electric charge to be administered to him to verify that no life remained.

She, too, was afraid of being buried alive, and she took steps to prevent it happening. At her death, a needle was inserted through her heart. This procedure would determine, and also presumably ensure, that she was definitely and irrevocably dead.

Denied burial in Westminster Abbey, Richard was entombed in a stone mausoleum shaped like an Arabian tent.

Isabel joined him five years later. The structure, after years of neglect and vandalism, was restored and secured in 1975.

Richard left an estate totalling less than £200. Isabel was worth nearly $12,000 when she died. She inherited part of her father's estate, her share of his £44,000 coming to approximately £10,000.