Yes, Barnabas was always formally attired when he would retreat to his coffin at dawn: in 1797, 1840, 1897, 1967 to 1970 and even in 1995.
One aspect of Barnabas’ 170-year confinement in that coffin in the secret room of the Collins Family Mausoleum is that I wonder for all those many nights Barnabas was chained up in that coffin, did mice, squirrels, bats or other small critters somehow find a way into the secret room? And, if they did, can you imagine how annoying, if not downright grating, it must have been for Barnabas to be stuck in that coffin wide-awake for twelve hours each night, with those little stinkers running continually back-and-forth and up-and-down on his coffin? The poor guy must have felt like he was going round-the-bend from having to hear that incessant scratching of their little claws on his coffin!
Although, there might have been one positive aspect of having those squirrels scampering all over Mr. B.’s coffin; I have noticed over the years that squirrels will sometime climb onto my cyclone fence and literally gnaw at the metal bands, which keep the fence material attached to the metal poles driven into the ground. These squirrels must have some incredibly strong teeth to chew right through those metal bands.
So, if those persistent squirrels had kept chewing on those iron coffin chains over those 170 years, maybe Barnabas could have gotten out of that chained coffin many years before Willie Loomis ever decided to break into the Collins Family Mausoleum in an attempt to steal the famed Collins family jewels?