Woman In A Hearse

In the dusty, mothball-scented archives of history’s strangest acts of rebellion, one woman from 19th-century Quebec City practically moonwalks across the pages — pipe in hand, coffin beneath her, and not a single f**k given. At a time when women were expected to sip tea, tend parlors, and faint politely, she instead chose to ride through town lounging in a hearse and smoking a pipe.

Yes, you read that right: she stretched out on a coffin-bed, lit up a pipe, and took a smoky, scenic tour through Quebec City as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and nobody knows why. This gloriously odd escapade wasn’t just local gossip — it was immortalized in The Illustrated Police News, Volume 11 (1871), where the journalist, clearly flabbergasted, asked the 19th-century equivalent of: “What fresh weirdness will women invent next?”

To some, she was absurd. To others, an icon. But weird or not, her coffin cruise was a bold, bizarre middle finger to societal expectations.

Sadly, very little about the woman is known, or if this actually happened (I really hope it did.) The Illustrated Police News, which ran the story, was a weekly illustrated newspaper which was one of the earliest British tabloids, and we all know about British tabloids level of news reporting.