Spontaneous Human Combustion: Witnessed by Others

The Jeannie Saffin case

Jeannie Saffin of London, England was 61 years of age but had the mental capabilities of a six year old and lived with her 82-year-old father, Jack Saffin. On September 15, 1982, Jeannie Saffin was in the kitchen, when Jack noticed a bright flash out of the corner of his eye. Turning to Jeannie to ask if she had seen it as well as, Jack Saffin noticed his daughter was on fire, sitting perfectly still with her hands in her lap.

In an effort to save Jeannie’s life, her father disfigured his own hands while pulling her to the kitchen sink. Putting out the flames surrounding Jeannie, her father began calling for his son-in-law Donald to help, screaming “Jeannie’s burning!” Donald stated that he ran into the kitchen seeing Jeannie with roaring flames around her face and abdomen while contacting EMS.

In the reports from the incident, Jeannie’s injuries were listed as facial burns as well as burns to the chest, neck, shoulders, left arm, abdomen, thighs and left buttock along with both sides of both hands. Some of these were full thickness burns in which the skin is destroyed down to fat tissue. Jeannie’s face afterward was described as horribly disfigured. Don Carrol claims he saw flames coming from Jeannie’s mouth and said she was “roaring like a dragon” although no burns were found in Jeannie’s mouth.

It was too late. Jeannie went into a coma and died eight days later.

P.C. Marsden from the Edmonton Police Station, in a report to the coroner’s office, stated that no cause for the flames had been found. This report also states that the chair and walls of the kitchen were undamaged by fire and smoke, that the closest source of ignition (a gas stove) was at least 5 feet away and that Jeannie was still burning when he got to the residence. He helped put out the flames with a towel.

Jeannie Saffin’s official cause of death was recorded by coroner, Dr. John Burton, as “broncho-pneumonia due to burns”, reportedly due only to the fact that when Jeannie’s family attempted to explain the spontaneous combustion they had witnessed, he replied “No such thing.”.

Robert Francis Bailey, a homeless man, was inside an abandoned home at 49 Auckland Street in Lambeth, South London. At 5:21am on 13 September 1967, an unnamed member of a group of female office workers phoned the London Fire Brigade. While waiting for their bus to work, they had noticed flickering blue flames visible through an upper window of 49 Auckland Street, Lambeth, London. They presumed it was burning gas. When the fire department arrived at 5:24am they discovered the burning body of Robert Francis Bailey, a local homeless alcoholic.

One of the responding firefighters reported, “When I got in through the window I found the body of a tramp named Bailey laying at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the second floor. He was lying partly on his left side. There was a four-inch (102 mm) slit in his abdomen from which was issuing, at force, a blue flame. The flame was beginning to burn the wooden stairs. We extinguished the flames by playing a hose into the abdominal cavity. Bailey was alive when he started burning. He must have been in terrible pain. His teeth were sunk into the mahogany newel post of the staircase. I had to prise his jaws apart to release the body. The fire was coming from within the abdomen of his body. […] There’s no doubt whatsoever, that fire began inside the body. That’s the only place it could have begun, inside that body.”

Baily had been conscious as he burned to death and there was evidence to suggest he had been convulsing in agony as the fire consumed him. He had bitten into the post on the stairs which was made of solid mahogany and his teeth were embedded so deeply into the wood that his mouth had to be pried open by the fire department in order to remove his body.

The firefighter described what he had witnessed, “There was about a four inch slit in his stomach and the flame was emanating from that four inch slit like a blow torch. It was a blue flame. The flame was actually coming from the body itself. From inside the body. He was burning literally from the inside out. And it was definitely under pressure. And it was impinging on the timber flooring below the body, so much so that the heat from the flame was charred into the woodwork.”.

The only fire damage in the house was on the floor, directly below where the body had been burning. Aside from the abdomen where the fire had originated, Robert Francis Bailey’s clothes were intact and unaffected by the fire. The fire department put out the flames almost immediately, originally believing Bailey may still have been alive. The job required the use of several fire extinguishers and was incredibly difficult. Robert Francis Bailey’s original cause of death was determined to be “asphyxia due to inhalation of fire fumes” but after reviewing the case further his death was deemed to have been due to “unknown causes”.