“A Little Spark Perhaps May Lie Conceal’d”: Humane Societies and the Principles of Resuscitation to Save the Drowned

Using representative texts from the humane societies’ print oeuvre, this essay shows how the public and private enactment of resuscitation engages collective participation in a narrative of individual and civic restoration. The essay argues that changes in representations of the apparently dead body, from a “pallid body” in the societies’ case reports to its depiction as a sympathetic object of charity in their hymns and odes, and then to its public display in the societies’ anniversary celebrations as the apex of benevolent sensibility, masks social and cultural uncertainty about matters of life and death.