"A retired member of the Austrian Foreign Office living at Geneva has learnt some interesting details of the catastrophe ten days ago. He says that many of the accounts published contain much that is untrue. All that was said about the late Empress lying in her coffin in a white robe or a black silk dress was untrue. The Empress was never undressed at all for the post mortem examination, which was limited to the wound in her side. The bodice was opened and the underclothing cut away. Everything was sewn together again, and made to look as it had looked when the Empress was in life. The witnesses when the body was put into the coffin saw her as she left the hotel that afternoon. Not an article of dress was removed, and the usual last sad services to the dead were left undone. Nor was her hair touched. Only the gloves were taken from the hands, which were folded over a crucifix, and in which white roses were placed"
(Sheffield Evening Telegraph - Thursday 29th September 1898)
