Jealousy, bigamy, gin and a ghost: The murder of Elizabeth Beesmore

Tags

alchohol, confessions, Dickens, domestic violence, Elizabeth Beesmore, Ghosts, gin, guilt, hanging, Hauntings, newgate, nineteenth century crime, spectres, Thomas Bedworth

At 8 o’clock on Monday 18 September 1815, 51 year old Thomas Bedworth was hanged at Newgate for the murder of his on/off lover Elizabeth Beesmore. The details of the murder although vicious were no different to most other crimes of passion, except in one way, Thomas Bedworth claimed that he had been driven to confess in order to put an end to the relentless harrying of Elizabeth’s ghost.

Bedworth’s background

Bedworth was born in 1764 in Bloxidge in Staffordshire. According to him although his parents were good, honest people and tried to keep him on the right path, he was often in trouble. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a brindle bit and stirrup maker in Walsall but left after he had completed the apprenticeship in 1782. He eventually found himself in London and went to work at a factory owned by Mr Rowley in Drury Lane. He left in 1795 when he signed up to join the army.

A bigamous marriage

During his time in London he married Mary Bainer, the daughter of a tradesman from Soho with whom he had three children. He left the army in 1803 and went with family to Birmingham. In 1804 he joined the navy where he gained a reputation as a good sailor. He was discharged in 1813. On returning to his wife he found she had bigamously married again and had three children from this union.

The murder of Elizabeth Beesmore

Shortly afterwards he met up with Elizabeth Beesmore who had been deserted by her husband and left destitute with a child. They took up together and Bedworth promised to provide for her as long as she had no contact with her estranged husband. This she agreed to and they pledged themselves to each other to be as husband and wife. To make matters even more complicated she also happened to be the sister of Mary Bainer and so Thomas Bedworth’s sister-in-law.

Detail from William Hogarth’s ‘Four Times of Day’ series. 1738. Public Domain.

They were together for two years when out of the blue John Beesmore returned to London looking for his wife. Thomas was outraged, Elizabeth had broken her word and worse still was giving Beesmore money. Bedworth moved out and took up other lodgings. Attempts on both parties to reconcile failed and during the last altercation Elizabeth announced that she was returning to her husband. Hearing this news a jealous Bedworth vowed to kill Elizabeth.

On the 20 June 1815 Bedworth, his mood heightened by gin, made his way to Elizabeth’s rooms armed with a shoemaker’s knife. On the way he met a woman (Sarah Collis) who lived in the same lodgings as Elizabeth who told him that she was not at home. He and Sarah decided to go for a drink to wait for Elizabeth’s return.

Later he arrived at Elizabeth’s obviously drunk and she allowed him to sleep it off. On awaking he left (without his shoes and coat) and went back to the dram shop, had more gin and returned. He drank tea laced with gin provided by Elizabeth and announced he was going. Before he left, he called Elizabeth to the kitchen where she embraced him and he conflicted “between jealous passion and strong affection” drew his knife and slashed her throat, nearly severing it from her body. He then made his escape.

Willliam Hogarth. 1751. The Four Stages of Cruelty, Cruelty in perfection (Plate III). Public Domain.

Ghostly recriminations

Bedworth recounts that he first went to Spa-fields where under the cover of darkness he got rid of his blood-splattered apron and then wandered to Regent’s Park where he threw the knife into the canal. He spent the day hiding in Hampstead. It was during that night that he first heard the agonising moans which filled him with ‘disquietude and alarm’.

The next night, which he spent in St Albans, he heard the terrible sounds again and a voice which he recognised as belonging to Elizabeth, crying ‘Oh Bedworth! Bedworth! What have you done?…You have deprived me of all the happiness of this life’. Bedworth terror-stricken prayed for the apparition to leave him in peace.

The nightly visitations continued and grew worse. Tormented by guilt he wandered the streets of London until he came to Highgate Hill. There he saw Elizabeth’s grisly ghost in front of him, she walked by his side and taking his hand placed it on her severed throat. Bedworth fled in terror and lying down in a field felt her lay down alongside him.

Thomas Bedworth. Detail from his Confessions. 1815. The Lewis Walpole Library_Yale University

Driven out of his mind and despite being by this time wanted by the police Bedworth managed to obtain a ‘walking pass’ from the Magistrates Public Office and left London. He eventually found himself in Coventry. Although still on the run he had at last come to terms with his guilt. The haunting had also ended. After arriving in Horsley, the torment returned and unable to cope any longer he went back to Coventry where on the 6 July he turned himself in. He was arrested and brought back to London where he signed his confession in front of a magistrate.

The confession of Thomas Bedworth

1815 Edition of the Confessions of Thomas Bedworth. The Lewis Walpole Library_Yale University

The above account of the murder of Elizabeth Beesmore is taken directly from a statement made by Bedworth the night before his execution[1]. He told his story to witnesses, one of whom wrote it down and produced an 18-page pamphlet costing 6 pence a copy. As always with first-hand accounts it is difficult to know how trustworthy the narrator is and some of the details vary significantly from the two witnesses, Sarah Collis and another friend, Ann Webber who were present at the time of the murder[2]. At the trial Bedworth argued with them causing the judge to admonish the defendant who he believed was trying to recant. Bedworth denied the accusation explaining that he just wanted everything to be accurate such as the murder weapon being a shoemaker’s knife and not a razor.

The major difference surrounds the supposed reappearance of John Beesmore. Bedworth claimed his return was the motive behind Elizabeth’s murder but Sarah Collis stated at the trial that Bedworth moved out due to a dispute with Elizabeth’s son, also called John (even Bedworth admits to arguing with John the day of the murder)[3]. Neither Collis or Webber mentioned Elizabeth estranged husband. It is difficult to know who to believe; maybe Bedworth thought that a crime of passion would gain more sympathy with the general public than a senseless murder committed by a drunk. It is also strange that if involved, John Beesmore never appeared to give evidence at the trial especially if Bedworth was telling the truth and Elizabeth had decided to go back to him.

It took less than an hour for the jury to bring in a guilty verdict of wilful murder. The judge sentenced Bedworth to hang on the following Monday and his body to be given to the surgeons to dissect and anatomise. He also hoped that Bedworth would spend the time he had left repenting and berated Bedworth for taking away Elizabeth’s chance to confess her own sins and die at peace.

A ghastly visitation

So on to Elizabeth’s ghost. The unique aspect of this case was Thomas Bedworth’s assertion that he had been plagued by the restless spirit of Elizabeth who pushed him to the brink of insanity and forced him to confess. Despite many attempts to convince people that ghosts and spirits did not exist through both religious arguments and scientific investigations, the belief persisted. Why a ghost would appear varied but general consensus was that it was more likely if the person had met a violent end and stories of ghosts seeking revenge for their untimely demise were told and retold in all parts of the country. So to many Bedworth’s account would have been entirely credible.

Setting aside the argument that Elizabeth’s ghost was real; the only other logical conclusion is that the ghost had been a figment of Bedworth’s imagination. How and why did Bedworth’s mind conjure up this hallucination can be attributed to two possible causes; alcohol and guilt.

 “Gin, cursed Fiend, with Fury fraught, Makes human Race a Prey.  It enters by a deadly Draught And steals our Life away.”[4]

William Hogarth’s Beer Street and Gin Lane. Public Domain.

The above is the first verse of a poem which accompanied Hogarth’s print of ‘Gin Lane’ and it really says it all. Although since the 1751 Gin Act, gin was no longer viewed as the devil as it had been in the first half of the 1700s[5], its popularity did return during in the early 19^th century. Gin could be easily bought in ‘dram shops’ which flourished in areas of extreme poverty and unemployment. Dram shops were small shops where you could either drink the gin there and then or take it away with you[6]. Later these small shops were overtaken by the popular Gin Palaces which sprung up in London in the Late Victorian period.

Then as now people drank to drown their sorrows and forget the misery of their lives, if you were drunk then you couldn’t feel the pangs of hunger. Gin was cheap and strong and easily available[7]. It is noticeable that Bedworth was in the days leading up to the murder pretty much constantly drunk. A witness’ testimony that Bedworth’s was a ‘very quiet man when sober, but when drunk he used to swear a little’[8] seems odd considering Bedworth’s drunken, murderous exclamation at the Two Spies Public House that ‘it would be blood for blood’[9]. All involved on the day of the murder including Elizabeth herself were drinking gin even if it was diluted in water.

Even in the 1800s drinking in excess was understood to be one of the triggers behind ghost sightings. Gin in excess was believed to cause ‘terrible hangovers, depression, anger or even insanity’[10]. If it was the effects of the drink which led Bedworth to murder Elizabeth then it must have been the withdrawal from alcohol, the DTs which caused Bedworth to hallucinate the spirit of Elizabeth raised from the grave. Side effects of DTs include ‘nightmares, agitation, global confusion, disorientation, visual and auditory hallucinations, tactile hallucinations, fever, high blood pressure, heavy sweating’[11]. Maybe if Bedworth had been sober he would never have killed Elizabeth.

The Gin Shop. Cruikshank. 1829.

The product of a distorted mind

The most famous work in English literature depicting a descent into madness through guilt is Macbeth. Macbeth during the banquet scene sees the gory apparition of his murdered friend, Banquo and murmurs ‘when the brains were out, the man would die; and there an end, but now they risen again’[12] This line encapsulates perfectly the struggle between logic and irrationality and the slow crumbling of a mind at war with itself.

Even in the Victorian period it was accepted that ghosts could be a product of illnesses such as melancholy which could lead to madness. The warning signs of melancholy included dejection, sadness, gloominess and haunting dreams. In many ways it is the modern equivalent of depression with the exception of hallucinations and visions. Melancholy was said to be the result of ghost stories told in childhood as well as anxiety brought on by religious enthusiasm, fear of bewitchment, grieving and guilt[13]. Murderers were known to see their victims and there are countless more recent reports of killers being haunted by the spirits of those whose lives they took.

One famous example is Al Capone who masterminded the murder in 1929 of seven members of a rival gang including James Clark. Shortly after Capone was arrested, his guards ‘would later report that he [Capone] would let out bloodcurdling screams, shouting for Jimmy to leave him alone’[14]. For the rest of his life Capone would see Clark’s ghost, he even hired a medium to banish the spirit but to no avail. [15]

So it is very likely that Bedworth’s guilty conscience did contribute to the appearance of Elizabeth’s ghost.

The haunting immortalized

Dickens never claimed to have used the story of Bedworth’s haunting and deranged ramblings as inspiration for his depiction of Sikes wild behaviour, frenzied wandering and hallucinations after the murder of Nancy but the parallels are clear.

He could hear its garments rustling in the leaves, and every breath of wind came laden with that last low cry. If he stopped it did the same. If he ran, it followed–not running too: that would have been a relief: but like a corpse endowed with the mere machinery of life, and borne on one slow melancholy wind that never rose or fell…

At times, he turned, with desperate determination, resolved to beat this phantom off, though it should look him dead; but the hair rose on his head, and his blood stood still, for it had turned with him and was behind him then. He had kept it before him that morning, but it was behind now–always. [16]

It would be odd if Dickens hadn’t known about the murder since his friend, the artist George Cruikshank and illustrator of Oliver Twist had produced the frontispiece for another friend William Hone, whose pamphlet concerned ‘The Horrid Murder of Elizabeth Beesmore’. After Dickens death, Cruikshank claimed that the idea for Oliver Twist was his[17].

Oliver Reed as Sykes in Oliver! 1968. Dir. Carol Reed.

Elizabeth’s revenge

In my opinion the most likely theory for the appearance of Elizabeth’s ghost is guilt mixed with the effects of alcohol withdrawal but I do think that Bedworth did genuinely believe himself to be haunted by Elizabeth’s ghost. The loss of his grasp on reality can be detected in a newspaper article on the trial which reported that Bedworth appeared ‘insensible of the awful situation in which he stood, and was smiling and talking to all the persons about him’[18].

Whatever the reason behind Elizabeth’s murder, whether jealousy, anger or drink one thing is certain ghost or not, Elizabeth did finally get her revenge.

Here’s to Mrs Beesmore’s spectral revenge.

Bibliography

William Hogarth – Gin Lane.jpg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Hogarth_-_Gin_Lane.jpg

Delirium tremens, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens

The Haunted: Social history of ghosts, Owen Davies, 2007

The European Magazine, and London Review, Volume 68, Philological Society, July-December 1815

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

Macbeth, William Shakespeare

British Executions, http://www.britishexecutions.co.uk/execution-content.php?key=3705&termRef=Thomas%20Bedworth

1800 – 1827 Public executions, http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/1800.html 

Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England, Peter Marshall, 2004

Domestic Murder in Nineteenth-Century England: Literary and Cultural Representations, Bridget Walsh, 2014

10 Murderers Haunted By Their Victim’s Ghost, http://listverse.com/2017/08/04/10-murderers-haunted-by-their-victims-ghost/ 

The power of conscience exemplified in the genuine and extraordinary confession of Thomas Bedworth: delivered to one of the principal officers of Newgate, the night before his execution, onSeptember 18, 1815, for the murder of Elizabeth Beesmore, in Drury Lane, Thomas Bedworth, https://archive.org/details/powerofconscienc00bedwiala

Dickens and Victorian Print Cultures, (ed.) Robert L. Patten, 2016

Courier newspaper, Saturday September 16, https://newspaperarchive.com/courier-sep-16-1815-p-2/

Gender and Crime, 1815-1834, Julie C. Tatlock, Marquette University, 2009

Thomas Bedworth, Killing: murder, 13^th September 1815, https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18150913-1-defend50&div=t18150913-1#highlight

Gin Craze, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Craze

Gin Palace, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_palace

How Gin Came to Be Known as the Big Bad Wolf of the Spirits World: Why do some people fear gin?, Chaim Dauermann, 1 June 2015, https://www.eater.com/drinks/2015/6/1/8700045/why-gin-a-look-at-the-roots-of-why-some-fear-this-familiar-j

Notes

[1] The power of conscience exemplified in the genuine and     extraordinary confession of Thomas Bedworth
[2] Thomas Bedworth, Killing: murder, 13th September 1815
[3] Ibid
[4] William Hogarth - Gin Lane.jpg
[5] Gin Craze
[6] Gin Palace
[7] The Haunted: Social history of ghosts
[8] Courier newspaper, Saturday September 16
[9] Thomas Bedworth, Killing: murder, 13th September 1815
[10] How Gin Came to Be Known as the Big Bad Wolf of the SpiritWorld
[11] Delirium tremens
[12] Macbeth Act III, Scene IV, Shakespeare
[13] The Haunted: Social history of ghosts
[14] 10 Murderers Haunted By Their Victim’s Ghost
[15] Ibid
[16] Oliver Twist
[17] Dickens and Victorian Print Cultures
[18] Courier newspaper, Saturday September 16

Fire and Brimstone: The Animal Kingdom on Trial

Tags

Animal Trials, Animals on trial, crimes, criminals, do animals have souls, excommunication, france, leeches, mice, Murder, Perrinot Muet, punishment, sow on trial, St Bernard of Clairveaux

‘The Law is an Ass’[1]

Image by Lenora.

One of the strangest practices that developed in the early medieval period was that of animal trials.

Animals were only brought before the law and punished if they affected people or society; animals killing other animals for food was seen as a part of the natural order of things – pretty sensible or there would have been no animals left.

For some reason the majority of cases seem to have taken place in France, maybe animals and insects held an unusually strong grudge against the French. Whatever the reason the industry surrounding animal courts and lawyers specialising in bestial crimes flourished there. Eventually it was decided that it was unfair that animals were being sentenced without the chance to prove their innocence. Obviously the animals and insects were unable to arrange their own defence and so under Francis I (1494-1547) it became illegal for an animal to be tried without a defence lawyer present to act as an intermediary between the animals and the injured human parties[2]. This practice was to some extent adopted in other mainland European countries.

There seems to have been two main types of charges; that of a single animal or small group of animals attacking an individual person and that of large numbers of a species causing harm to a community or society.

The punishment meted out depended on the crime. If an animal or insect could be identified as the culprit they could face a death sentence i.e. death by hanging, burning at the stake or decapitation.

The Death Sentence

Although dressing animals up in human clothes, appointing them a lawyer and conducting a trial is no longer employed, putting down animals which have injured or killed humans is still in use. Whereas today it seems to be dogs that are often in the news for attacking people, in the past it was pigs who dominated the animal trials.

A famous case occurred in Falaise in France where a sow was accused of killing a child and then devouring it. The sow was tried and found guilty of murder and condemned to be killed by the sword. Since the child’s head had been eaten as well as an arm, the sow’s foot was cut off and its face mutilated before it was dressed in men’s clothing and led away to face the executioner[3].

Trial of a sow from The book of days: a miscellany of popular antiquities, Public Domain.

Another occasion also in France, three sows were accused of killing the swineherd, Perrinot Muet. The sows were duly convicted but as if the case wasn’t strange enough two entire herds of swine were accused of being accessories to murder since they had heard Perrinot’s screams, ‘rushed’ to the scene of the crime and ‘witnessed’ his death. After appealing to the Duke of Burgundy, Prior Humbert de Poutier managed to get the death sentence dismissed against the herds[4]. This weird judgement was based on medieval law codes that stated that any living creature in the vicinity of certain serious crimes e.g. murder, rape and sexual assault could be seen as an accomplice and decapitated[5]. What did people expect the animals to do; fight the perpetrators, go for help or raise an alarm? It seems in these situations only Skippy, Flipper and Lassie would have survived.

Banishment

Sentences of banishment or exile were also used where the crime was not considered as severe or where the prosecutors felt sympathy for the perpetrators.

In Russia a he-goat was exiled to Siberia after butting an important official whilst he was tying his shoe[6] and in 1519 a community in Western Tyrol brought to trial some mice which were causing grave damage to the harvest. The defence lawyer argued that the mice served the community by eating insects and enriching the soil. Despite losing the mice were treated with leniency and kindness. Although they were ordered to leave immediately a fourteen day reprieve was granted to any pregnant mice that were unable to travel or any young that could not make the journey unaided[7].

Sometimes the situation was beyond the power of the law courts to deal with and the church was called in to intervene on behalf of the complainants. The church wielded two unique weapons; these were the power of excommunication and anathema.

Excommunication and Anathema

An excommunication in full swing. Public domain.

Excommunication involves ejection from the church and exclusion from its services and communion[8]. Anathema was a more severe form of excommunication and was often used to cast out the devil or his agents. Anathema involved using curses and denouncements to ban a person or thing from the light of the church and was implemented in religious solemnity by ecclesiastical authority[9].

The problem with excommunication was that how can you eject something from an institution that it is not a part of in the first place? The other difficulty is that it suggested that animals and insects have souls, something the Catholic Church at that time denied. That is why anathema was often seen as a more powerful and appropriate punishment.

How the excommunication or anathema was implemented could vary. Sometimes it was on the spur of the moment and at other times a representative was appointed to argue on behalf of the accused.

The Power of a Saint

In general the success rate of these judgements against insects, mammals and birds is unknown but in one case the records definitely confirm a win.

St Bernhard of Clairveaux Jorg Breu the elder. 1500. Public domain.

In 1121 St Bernard Clairvaux, initiator of the Cistercian Order and fervent proponent of the 2^nd Crusade was preaching at the monastery of Foigny which he had founded when a swarm of irreligious flies entered without permission. These flies showed no respect for the solemnity of the occasion and proceeded to irritate St Bernard and distract his parishioners. The infuriated saint reaching the end of his tether suddenly addressed the flies and announced in a prophetic voice “I excommunicate you”. The next morning all the flies were found dead on the floor and had to be swept out[10].

It does seem that even though excommunication could be performed by any clergyman, effectiveness was more likely when performed by someone high up on the religious ladder.

The curse of the caterpillars

Caterpillars for some reason in particular seemed to have raised the ire of our medieval ancestors.

Image by Bob King — kingICK2c2.

One of the earliest recorded excommunications took place in 1120 and was carried out by the Bishop of Laon when he issued a letter biding the annoying caterpillars to vacate the area. The caterpillars were apparently working in cohorts with some field mice as they were also named. It is really interesting that the formulae used by the bishop to deliver the proclamation was the same as that employed the previous year by the Council of Rheims which cursed priests who continued to marry ‘in spite of the canons’[11]. So in France it seems that rebellious priests and mutinous caterpillars warranted the same treatment!

Further decrees of excommunication against caterpillars were issued in 1480 by the spiritual court of Autun responding to complaints from the inhabitants of Mussy and Pernan, in 1543 in Grenoble, in 1585 by the Grand Vicar of Valencia who ordered the caterpillars to vacate his diocese and on the 9 July 1516 when Jean Milon, an officer of Troye passed this damning sentence,

after having heard the parties and granting the request of the inhabitants of Villenove, we admonish the caterpillars to retire within six days; and in case they do not comply, we pronounce them accursed and excommunicated [12]

In general it is not known how the caterpillars felt about these denouncements but in the case of the caterpillars of Valence in 1587 they stuck their suckers in and refused to budge[13]. It seems that the loss of the comfort of the church was less important than the pleasure of some tasty greens.

The Leeches of Geneva

In 1451 a pile of leeches were brought to court on the order of William of Saluces, the Bishop of Lausanne, to listen to the accusations against them. How this worked I have no idea as they don’t have ears but anyway it was against the rules to issue any legal edict without representatives from those accused being present. The leeches had been threatening the destruction of fish, in particular salmon stocks in Lake Geneva. The edict confined them to one specified part of the lake. It seems that the leeches on this occasion were not excommunicated as they obeyed and caused no further trouble[14].

Noah’s Ark Stowaways

Sometimes the ingenuity of the arguments given by the lawyers prosecuting and defending insects and animals smacked of brilliance and their arguments had a weird logic to them.

An Inger…? Image by Chickenstein.

In 1478 the community of Berne in Switzerland asked for judicial help against a plague of insects called ingers which were destroying their crops. A proclamation made from the pulpit gave the ingers six days to leave and if they failed to do so they had to appear at one o’clock at Wifflisburg to face trial before His Grace the Bishop of Lausanne or his deputy. When the ingers did not appear they were appointed Thruing Fricker as their defence lawyer. The clever prosecutor dismissed Fricker’s statement that as one of god’s creatures they were allowed the right to live. He instead argued the opposite pointing out that ingers had survived the flood as stowaways aboard the Ark as they were not listed amongst the creatures invited by Noah. The prosecutor won and it was decreed that the ingers should be banned, exorcised and accursed and that wherever they go their numbers should decrease[15]. Maybe it worked, as I have never heard of ingers! If anyone has please let me know.

The Weevils’ Revenge

Probably the most drawn out animal court case concerns the weevils of Saint-Julien. In 1545 a lawsuit was taken out against weevils who were destroying a local vineyard. A preliminary judicial judgement was successful and the weevils left. Unfortunately forty-two years later they returned. This was seen as the weevils breaking the agreement. I think that this is very unfair considering weevils have a life span of at the most two months, which means at least 252 generations had passed between the original and 1587 miscreants. Even if weevils have an oral tradition it would have been unlikely this 252^nd generation of weevils would have been aware of the original judgement. Nevertheless the new trial went ahead. It was finally decided that the accused should be given another piece of land where they could live in happiness and comfort although the opposing lawyers could not agree where that should be since the prosecutors’ choice was deemed as unsuitable. It is unclear what the final decision was as possibly in revenge of theirs and their ancestors’ blackened reputation either the weevils or some of their friends ate the pages outlining the trial summary and the court proceedings[16].

The Rat Attorney

Image by Lenora.

One of the most successful animal lawyers was Barthélemy de Chasseneuz, a French jurist and theologian who studied law in France and Italy. He worked in the service of the duchy of Milan and Pope Julius II but moved back to France after a plague outbreak where he became famous for defending a group of rats who were destroying a barley crop in the vicinity of Autun. The citizens of Autun finally applied to the Episcopal Court to get the rats excommunicated as all other means of removal had failed. The court appointed Chasseneuz to represent the rats. Chasseneuz studied the evidence and put forward an interesting argument for adjoining the trial i.e. that the rats had not been properly summoned to the hearing as not all the priests in the infected areas had issued formal citations. This approach did not result in a dismissal of the case so he then tried to delay the trial by arguing that not enough time had been allowed for the rats to present at court considering the physical peril they faced in having to negotiate the church cats[17]. I could not find a record of the sentence but this group of rats probably lost and were excommunicated.

The Deviancy of Birds

Birds did not escape the wrath of the church. Most often they were excommunicated for damaging harvest crops or livestock as in Canada at the end of the 17^th century when a number of birds of prey were excommunicated, but occasionally there were other concerns.

In 1559 the Saxon vicar, Daniel Greyber, excommunicated a flock of birds which were residing in his church. Greyber was angry at them disrupting his services and even more concerned at their sexual shenanigans or “scandalous acts of unchastity”[18]. Possibly the vicar was worried about the birds setting a bad example!

Cockchafers and their Deceased Defender

Sometimes the law was ignored and insects not given their proper legal aid. For instance in 1479 in the Lausanne area some cockchafers (whatever they are) were invited to appear at the bishops’ court to face charges. Perrodet was appointed to represent them but neither Perrodet or the cockchafers showed up. Both had good excuses, the cockchafers were insects – enough said and Perrodet had been dead for six months. In their absence a judgement was given in the name of the Holy Trinity and Blessed Virgin and the insects ordered to quit the area forever[19].

Parson Hawker

One of the last known animal excommunications took place in England by the 19^th century vicar, Robert Stephen Hawker of Morwenstow who excommunicated his cat for mousing on Sundays.

Image by Lenora.

The difference between this and most of the earlier examples is that Hawker was a minister of the Church of England and not a Catholic priest. Putting that aside his parishioners saw the excommunication as an extension of Hawker’s eccentric behaviour rather than religious adherence, for instance he was known to dress on occasion as a mermaid[20].

“Four legs good, two legs bad”[21]

The list of animals that faced a legal trial is a long one and includes aside from those already mentioned snails, slugs, locusts, moles, eels, grasshoppers and dolphins. Nearly 144 excommunications and executions of animals and insects took place between 824 and 1845[22] but in reality by the 1700s animal trials had begun to fall out of favour.

Although we can laugh at it now at the time animal trials were taken completely seriously as in the medieval mind the devil was working through these creatures and so they needed to be dealt with severely.

As to the views of the members of the animal kingdom that were executed, exiled and condemned, we are in the dark but if Christianity is wrong and Hinduism right about reincarnation then we know who has had the last laugh!

Miss Piggy on trial. Image by Michell O’Connell from Spiked 9 Sept 2015

Bibliography

Popular Science, Dec 1882, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JSsDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA248&lpg=PA248&d#v=onepage&q&f=false

Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 38, Number 5867, 15 January 1870, https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SDU18700115.2.10&e=——-en–20–1–txt-txIN——–1

Medieval Religion and its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages, Thomas A Fudge, 2016

Scapegoat: A History of Blaming Other People, Charlie Campbell, 2011

Encyclopædia metropolitana; or, Universal dictionary of knowledge, Volume 18, (ed) Edward Smedley, 1845, https://books.google.co.uk/books

Barthélemy de Chasseneuz, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barth%C3%A9lemy_de_Chasseneuz

Popular Science Feb 1876, Feb 1876, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CSIDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA504&lpg=PA504&dq=the+bishop+of+laon+excommunicate+caterpillars&source=bl&ots=r8dx_n0saM&sig=Wq3xCjO7hpFd9NWYNoGsPww6zvw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6lfGjyPfdAhXLKMAKHaD-ChgQ6AEwA3oECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=bishop%20of%20laon%20excommunicate%20caterpillars&f=false

The criminal prosecution and capital punishment of animals, Edward Payson Evans, 1906

Bugs and Beasts Before the Law, Nicholas Humphrey, Chapter 18 in The Mind made Flesh, OUP 2002, http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/2002BugsAndBeasts.pdf

Fantastically Wrong: Europe’s Insane History of Putting Animals on Trial and Executing Them, Matt Simon, https://www.wired.com/2014/09/fantastically-wrong-europes-insane-history-putting-animals-trial-executing/

Bernard of Clairvaux, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_of_Clairvaux

Beasts before the Bar, Frank A Beach, http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-past/041873/beasts-before-the-bar?page=2

Robert Stephen Hawker, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stephen_Hawker

Legal Prosecutions of Animals, William Jones, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_17/September_1880/Legal_Prosecutions_of_Animals

Anathema, https://orthodoxwiki.org/Anathema

Excommunication, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication

Animal Farm, George Orwell

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

Notes

[1] Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

[2] Popular Science, Dec 1882

[3] ibid

[4] Medieval Religion and its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages

[5] ibid

[6] Beasts before the Bar

[7] ibid

[8] Excommunication

[9] Anathema

[10] Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 38

[11] ibid

[12] The Popular Science, December 1882

[13] Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 38

[14] ibid

[15] Bugs and Beasts

[16] Medieval Religion and its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages

[17] Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 38

[18] Medieval Religion and its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages

[19] Legal Prosecutions of Animals

[20] Robert Stephen Hawker

[21] Animal Farm, George Orwell

[22] Scapegoat: A History of Blaming Other People

WGW: Whitby Goth Weekend Oct 2019

Tags

Abbey Wharf, Alternative, Bizarre Bazaar, corsets, Doctor and the Medics, Dracula, Goths, Halloween, October 24-27, St Marys Church, Steampunks, Vampires, Victoriana, Victorians, WGW, WGW 2019, WGW part II, Whale bones, Whitby, Whitby Goth Weekend

Whitby Goth Weekend 24-27 October 2019

Twice a year Whitby, a quaint seaside town in North Yorkshire, becomes the mecca for the darkside. Goths, Steampunks, Victorian enthusiasts all gather for the Whitby Goth Weekend.  The event, which grew out of a goth music festival developed by Jo Hampshire back in 1994,  is now so huge that accommodation is often booked out for two years in advance and it’s estimated that it these two weekends bring in over a £1.1 Millions pounds to the local economy.

WGW brings in the crowds!

I’ve been going to the Goth weekend for many years with Bonnie and Occasionally Miss Jessel has managed to join us, but life and general mischance have meant I’ve not been since the 2015 October event.  My recollections of the at last visit was that there was a change in the air, the Goths who came for the music festival seemed to be in retreat in the face of Victorian enthusiasts and the Steampunk advance.  The locals also seemed to be growing tired of photographers and visitors disrespecting and damaging the historic graveyard of St Mary’s.  What had always seemed to be a very inclusive and welcoming atmosphere had developed fissures and the tensions were bubbling up to the surface. While I still enjoyed the evant, I was left wondering what would happen, if, indeed, it would survive.

WGW at Abbey Wharf

Doctor and the Medics at Abbey Wharf

I’m happy to say that WGW is going strong.  In the face of a huge explosion in popularity over the last few years and the diversity of alternative sub-genres in evidence, it is clear that the event has successfully evolved and regenerated into a wonderful and inclusive event.

These days the music events have diffused and WGW have many official events across the weekend.  The events are all free, but you can get fast-track and VIP tickets (which are worth it, as even after 11pm the Queues were long).  Jo and the other organisers seem to have successfully brought music back to the forefront of the event Abbey Wharf played host to a Stars and Moons Productions Barnum and Bailey/Greatest Showman themed night, headlined by the legendary Doctor and the Medics.  It was packed out and there were queues all night to get in.

The Bizarre Bazaar has also lost none of its allure since moving from Whitby Pavilion to Whitby Leisure Centre (just a short way along from the Pavilion).

Tourists flock through St Mary’s graveyard.

This year sadly  Miss Jessel was unable to join me, but Bonnie and I went down with some younger friends who had never attended the event before.  I don’t think that they were quite ready for how difficult it was to get anywhere without being swarmed by photographers! One of them even made it into the national papers (look for ‘woman in black corset and dramatic face makeup enjoying a stroll’ in the link below) not bad for her first visit!!

Modern Vampire hunters!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7618815/Goths-steampunks-seaside-town-Whitby-twice-yearly-Goth-Weekend.html

Here are some of the images from Whitby Goth Weekend 2019.

The Goths and the Victorians

Victorian Vampires at St Mary’s Church.

Death stalks the St Mary’s graveyard.

Miss Jessel has a rival in this gothic governess.

Death and the maiden

Detail

The Vampire chained

 

Goth guy

 

Vampyra in the YHA (outfit designed and created by Iga Pecak)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Close up by the whale bones

Vampire Alley

 

RNLI guess the weight of the pumpkin!

Grey lady and gent

Purple lady

The Mad Hatter

Bride of the bat

Detail

Victorian Steampunk couple

The undisputed queen of the vampires

Steampunks and the rest

 

Steampunk Pirate hat by Iga Pecak

Detail

Steampunk explorers at the whale bones

Steampunk gentlemen

Gentleman playing the saw at the bandstand

STeampunk pixie girl

Gorgeous Georgians

 

You shall not pass!

Anime girl

Bring out your dead!

Where else but Whitby would you see a lady out strolling with her dragon?

And the final word goes to the fabulous Goth Cat and friend!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

FROM THE HAUNTED PALACE!!

Phantom fashion: why do ghosts wear clothes?

Tags

apparitions, catharine crowe, clothing, cruikshank, Daniel Dafoe, Frank Podmore, ghost clothes, Ghosts, Gillray, GMN Tyrell, Myers and Gurney, Newton Crossland, Nightside of nature, Nora Sidgwick, Society for psychical research, spectres, Spiritual photographic theory, Spiritualism, SPR, telephathy

“Ghosts commonly appear in the same dress they usually wore whilst living; though they are sometimes clothed all in white; but that is chiefly the churchyard ghosts.” (Francis Grose, 1787)

“How do you account for the ghost’s clothes – are they ghosts too?” (Saturday Review, 19 July 1856)

Just how do you account for ghosts clothing? A disarmingly simple – yet vexed – question that has been debated for centuries by both sceptics and believers.
If ghosts are supposed to represent the spirit or eternal essence of a human being, why, then, do they need to appear in something so prosaic as clothing or the ubiquitous white sheet? I mean, have you ever heard of anyone saying they saw the ghost of their dearly departed grandma – naked?

Naked ghosts

Naked ghosts are rare in the UK – it must be the weather. However, there are some examples, often with Medieval or early modern origin.

In Rochester a Medieval tale tells of the ghost of a priest who appeared to witnesses shivering and naked. His state of undress was important because his spectre had a message for the living – it wished to symbolise how his estate had been stripped bare by his corrupt executors. [1]

Image from an exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery. Photo by Lenora.

A tale that circulated in London between the 15-18th Centuries, concerned the fate of five condemned men. In 1447 the men were said to have been sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered – a particularly grisly fate. Once hanged, the five were cut down from the hanging tree and stripped in preparation for the gruesome denuemont of their punishment. Their clothing was distributed to the gaping crowds. An added twist in the tale lends poignancy to their fate by claiming that a pardon arrived just too late to save them from their deaths.

Railing at the injustice and humiliation of their execution, the unhappy spirits were said to have risen up from their corporeal bodies in a misty vapour. The ghosts accosted the crowd demanding their clothes be returned and then fled. The tale persisted for around three hundred years, with occasional reports of five ghostly naked men importuning startled strangers apparently still seeking the return of their clothing – and presumably their dignity.[2]

Scotland, too, has reports of naked ghosts. In 1592, Agnes Sampson was accused of witchcraft, tortured and burned at the stake (in England witches were usually hanged). Her tormented spirit is said to walk naked in the grounds of Holyrood – although she sometimes covers up and wears a white shroud (again, it must be the weather).
These three examples fit into a Medieval ghost-type, the ghost who has suffered a wrong in life, and in the first two cases at least, is trying to right that wrong post mortem, so their nakedness is necessary to their stories.[3]

So, while sightings of naked ghosts clearly do occur, their nakedness is for a particular reason. In short, these cases appear to be the exceptions that prove the rule – that most ghosts prefer to wear clothes when being seen.

Of course, sometimes naked ghosts turn out to be something else entirely – in 1834 a primitive Methodist got very primitive indeed and scared the bejazus out of his neighbours by jumping out at them ‘dressed’ – or should that be ‘undressed’ – as a naked boggart. His eccentric prank was not appreciated by the judiciary, and he got three months hard labour for his efforts.[4]

What do ghosts wear?

Accepting that most ghosts wear clothing of some sort, what, then, do they wear?

White sheets – obviously

The popular image of a ghost is of a floaty, often transparent, figure in a white sheet – although most modern ghost sightings don’t seem to support this image. In fact, this version of ghostly attire has particular origins, which will be examined later.

The three living and the three dead. British Museum Collection.

The animated dead found in European Medieval art may often wear white but they look anything but ethereal – rather they look very solid and corpsey. There is no mistaking them as former denizens of the grave, with their mouldering bones poking out of tattered flesh and their wormy eye-sockets all a-stare.

The spectral fashion for white is linked to burial practices. Until about the 17th century, most people in Britain and Europe would have been buried not in a coffin, but in a simple undyed linen or wool winding sheet. It’s not surprising, then, that early ghost sightings tended to describe ghosts dressed in their winding sheets or shrouds.

Detail of grave clothes from Astrology (1806) by Ebenezer Sibly. Wikimedia.

By the eighteenth-century ghosts had a more extensive wardrobe to choose from. However, white clad ghosts were still sighted, Daniel Defoe, writing in his 1727 work ‘An Essay on the History of Apparitions’ describes the traditional ghost as:
“[..] dress’d up …in a shroud, as if it just came out of the coffin and the church-yard”
And Francis Grose, writing in 1787, reported some ghost as ‘clothed all in white’ but that those were mainly confined to churchyard sightings.[5]

But by the eighteenth century there had been a revolution in grave clothes. Funereal fashion had moved away from the long winding sheets and shrouds of old and developed a new line in more everyday death-wear: tailored shirts for men, and shifts for women. Examples of this fashion can be found in satirical prints by the likes of James Gillray (1756?-1815) and  George Moutard Woodward (1765-1809).  Many Christians believed in actual bodily resurrection for the Last Judgement, so a shirt or shift probably seemed like more practical and respectable attire in which to meet one’s maker!

Of course, while this change was great for the manufacturers of funeral clothes, not everyone appreciated the change. The 18th century saw the rise of Gothic literature and following publication of Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) came a growing appreciation of the beauty of horror. So, what is an artist or a theatre director to do, to recapture the ‘magnificent horror’ of the vengeful spectre? [6]

Artist unknown. University of Austin Texas.

The answer, it seems, was to be found in that other 18th century passion – classical antiquity. The ghosts of art and theatre now took on the white draperies of the ancient Romans or Greeks. Henry Fuseli, George Romney and Johns Flaxman all helped cement this image in the popular imagination and added a cloudy transparency to top it all off.

The white clad ghost captured the public imagination so much so, that this element was incorporated into the Hammersmith Ghost hoax of 1803/04 (in which the belief that ghosts wore white resulted in a tragedy when a white clad bricklayer, Thomas Millwood, was mistaken for the alleged spectre and shot dead).

The Hammersmith Ghost. Wikimedia

Even in the 20th century the power of the white draped phantom is used to particularly chilling effect by MR James in “Oh Whistle Lad, and I’ll come to you”. Here the classical drapery is replaced with more mundane, but no less terrifying, bedsheets that take on a ghostly form and possess an “intensely horrible face of crumpled linen.” Anyone who has ever slept alone in a room with a spare bed must surely feel horror at this description.

Their ordinary clothes

By far the most common attire reported, particularly in modern sightings, is a generic costume appropriate to the era of the apparition. A knight might appear in armour, a religious in the habit of their order, a lady might appear in the fashions of her day, granny might appear in her Sunday best.

Many reports of ghosts have them mistaken for the living, dressed in their ordinary clothes. For example, Daniel Defoe famously reported on the case of the ghost of Mrs Veal. Mrs Veal visited her good friend Mrs Bargrave and the two ladies had a conversation before Mrs Veal finally went on her merry way. Only later, did Mrs B find out her friend had passed away. In order to validate her experience Mrs B was able to describe her late friend’s silk gown in great detail: “you have seen indeed, for none knew, but Mrs Veal and myself, that the gown was scower’d” (to make the fabric softer) [7] so who could it have been but Mrs Veal? [8]

The Penny Story Teller – The Fated Hour 1832. Wikimedia.

Many modern sightings, particularly of deceased friends and relatives also follow this model, with the ghost appearing in their familiar garb (and as with Mrs Veal, sometimes this can make them appear less like ghosts and more ‘real’ to the witness).

Sightings of ghosts in particular period dress, such as Roman Legionaries in York or Anne Boleyn in the Tower of London, are also frequently reported. However, as Owen Davies has noted, some periods are favoured over others – he provides a possible explanation in in that popular culture and cinema make it easy for most people to identify a Tudor ghost or the ghosts of Roman soldiers than, say, a bronze age ghost.[9]

The Woman in Black

The Woman in Black. 2012. Dir. James Watkins.

Susan Hill’s 1983 novel ‘The Woman in Black’ fixed the black clad ghost firmly in the public psyche.  Jennet’s black clothing symbolise her mourning for her lost child and her malevolent nature as the bringer of death to the innocent.  However, black clad ghosts are rare in Britain compared to in Europe.  Owen Davies suggests this could be down to religious differences.  In Europe, and some medieval English ghost reports, black clad spirits often represent the souls passage through purgatory.  One example, provided by Joe Nickell, was of a corrupt money lender whose doleful ghost appeared to his wife, dressed in black for seven years.  To assist his soul’s journey through purgatory, she prayed at his grave for seven years, until his ghost re-appeared dressed white.  After the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation, purgatory fell out of favour in Britain, and black clad ghosts became rarer. [10]

Things changed in the nineteenth century when the Victorian’s elaborate mourning rituals, including black mourning clothes, saw a spike in reports to the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) of ghosts in black clothes.

Skeptics and believers

“[H]ow is a spirit, in itself immaterial and invisible, to become the object of human sight? How is it to acquire the appearance of dress?” (Anti Canidia, 1762)

“…as a matter of course, that as ghosts cannot, must not, do not, for decency’s sake, appear WITHOUT CLOTHES; and that there can be no such thing as GHOSTS or SPIRITS of CLOTHES, why, then, it appears that GHOSTS NEVER DID APPEAR AND NEVER CAN APPEAR” (George Cruikshank, 1863)

Both writers express the rationalist position in relation to the existence of ghosts. In doing so, they raise the vexed question of ghost’s clothing – a seemingly trivial question but one that actually strikes at the heart of the nature of ghosts and ghost sightings.

Clothing at its most basic level keeps us warm, but it also expresses social status, tribal identity, and sexual allure. If ghosts are supposed to represent the eternal spirit part of human existence, surely clothing is redundant?

This question, often highlighted by sceptics to support the non-existence of ghosts, forced psychic investigators and believers to examine more critically why this apparently illogical phenomenon is frequently reported by seemingly credible witnesses. Are there ghost clothes, or could ghostly clothing represent something else entirely – how the living receive and perceive such phenomena?

A very brief guide to how ghostly clothing has been explained

The nature of apparitions, how they appear, to whom and why some people see them while others do not, it is a vast topic. This is a brief overview of some of the views presented by early writers and psychical investigators.

The growth of spiritualism, mesmerism and clairvoyance promoted the idea that the sentient souls of the dead could convey thoughts and images to the living via the medium of clairvoyance.

Catherine Crowe (1803-1876), writing in 1848, seemed to support this view when she:
“If a spirit could concieve of its former body it can equally concieve of its former habiliments, and so represent them, by the power of will to the eye, or present them to the constructive imagination of the seer” and the reason for this “to appear naked [..] to say the last of it, would be much more frightful and shocking.” [11]
Basically, Crowe suggested that ghosts were trying not to offend the Victorian sensibilities of their audience.

Giles Scroggins Ghost. 1893. Wikimedia.

In the later nineteenth and early twentieth century, many psychical investigators, often working under the aegis of the SPR, wanted to encourage a more scientific approach.  Moving the focus away from the power of the apparition to shape it’s appearance, to the power of the viewer to do so.

Here are a few of the theories that came out of these investigations:

Spiritualist Newton Crossland (1812-1895) proposed a ‘spiritual photographic theory‘ suggesting that every moment of a life is psychically recorded and can be reproduced by apparitions – therefore a suitable outfit and props were always on hand.  This view was dismissed by many psychical researchers at the time.

Edmund Gurney of the SPR. Wikimedia.

Frank Podmore (1856-1910) pointed out that many cultures provide grave goods for the dead to utilise in the afterlife, so perhaps ghost clothing was not unreasonable.

Edmund Gurney (1847-1888), co-founder of the SPI, and Frederic Meyers, looked for a more scientific theory and both suggested some form of telepathy. That in the case of crisis apparitions, such as when a person is dying, a blaze of energy from the subject could telepathically project their apparition to a sensitive ‘receiver’ who then clothed the apparition via the medium of their own emotions and memory. Nora Sidgwick (1845-1936), working with Gurney, noted that many witnesses were vague on the detail when pressed to describe the clothing worn by apparitions, which might support this view.

However, this theory would seem to be focused on apparitions of the recently deceased and not to fit so well with historic ghosts where any final blaze of energy would surely be dissipated over the passage of time.

GMN Tyrell (1879 –1952), another member of SPR, considered ghosts as a hallucination of the conscious mind and supported the telepathic theory as the mechanism. He supported the concept of the ‘apparitional drama’ and proposed that clothing and props were part of the apparition as a whole and that the details depended on the viewers personality.[12]

The work of the SPR laid the foundations for a psychology-based approach to understanding why people see apparitions – and why they usually see them clothed.

Conclusion

In setting out to look into why ghosts wear clothes, I was surprised to find that how and what they wore was subject to so much debate. That the apparently frivolous question of where ghosts obtain their clothing, actually leads on to more serious questions such as: whether ghosts exist, why eternal immaterial spirits would need clothing in the first place, whether apparitions have ‘agency’ to create illusions of dress in the mind of the viewer, or whether the psychology of the person witnessing the apparition has bearing on the appearance.

While the jury is likely to remain out for the forseable future, on whether ghosts really do exist , for me the question of why ghosts wear clothes is answered best by Joe Nickell, in his 2012 book, The Science of Ghosts.  Nickell opts for the principle of Occam’s Razor, preferring that the simplest, most tenable explanation is most likely to be true. In this case, that apparitions (and their clothing) are the mental images of the living, appearing as they do in memories, dreams and the imagination.[13]  I like the elegant simplicity of this theory.

What do you think?

‘Oh Whistle Lad and I’ll come to you’. 1904 illustration by James McBryde. Via Wikimedia.

Sources and notes

Anonymous, 1762, Anti-Canidia: Or, Superstition Detected and Exposed. in a Confutation of the Vulgar Opinion Concerning Witches, Spirits, Demons, Magick
Crowe, Catherine, 1848, The Night-Side of Nature, or, Ghosts and Ghost-seers (Wordsworth reprint 2000) [11]
Cruikshank, George, 1863, A discovery concerning ghosts: with a rap at the “spirit-rappers”
Dafoe, Daniel, 1727, The History and Reality of Apparitions <https://archive.org/details/TheHistoryAndRealityOfApparitions> [7]
Davies, Owen, 2007, The Haunted: A social History of Ghosts, Palgrave MacMillan [1][3][4][9]
Grose, Francis, 1787, A Provincial Glossary [5]
Nickell, Joe, 2012, The Science of Ghosts: Searching for the Spirits of the Dead, Prometheus books [2][8]-[10][13]
Owens, Susan, 2017, The Ghost A cultural History, Tate [6]
Tyrell GNM, 1953, Apparitions, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd [12]

Death masks and phrenology: the Victorian guide to spotting a psychopath

Tags

criminal research, Death masks, executions, hangings, imago, norwich castle, phrenology, public executions

 

Death mask of Tutankhamun. Image by Roland Unger via Wikimedia.

There is something deeply fascinating about looking into the faces of the long-dead. Whether you find yourself gazing at the desiccated remains of ancient Egyptian Mummies, pondering the fate of the often brutally murdered bog-bodies, or staring into face of a long dead ancestor given immortality of sorts via the medium of portraiture or post-mortem photography.

There is clearly a very visceral difference between staring into the actual face of the dead as opposed to their likeness.  However,  sometimes it is possible to come across a likeness so uncanny that it bridges this gap;  where a three dimensional portrait creates a truly intimate and accurate record of how a person looked at the point of death.

A very brief history of the death mask

Death masks of one description or another have been popular in many cultures for thousands of years.  The gold mask of Tutankhamun is possibly the most famous example, although other cultures have just as many, his mask was part of the mummification process and was intended to guard and strengthen the soul on its journey to the afterlife [1].  In the Roman period, noble families had their galleries of imago – wax casts of their venerable ancestors, brought out for processions.  After the murder of Julius Caesar, his entire body was cast and taken in procession.  By the Middle Ages, European Royalty were using wax or wooden effigies of the deceased in their funeral rituals – that of Henry VII is still in existence at Westminster Abbey. Fast forward to the eighteenth and nineteenth century and the great and the good, such as Walter Scott, Coleridge and Mendelssohn, were taking life and death masks to preserve their features for posterity.

Death mask of King Henry VII, Westminster Abbey.

Before the advent of photography, a life or death mask was the most accurate, and not necessarily flattering, likeness that it was possible to get of an individual.

L’inconnue de la Seine – death mask of a Parisienne suicide.

But there is a darker side to death masks (no irony intended).  They were not only used by the great and the good for the edification of posterity, the use of death masks in particular had a more macabre purpose.

In the nineteenth century the police often utilised death masks to help with the identification of unknown corpses.  In the time before effective refrigeration, a corpse would not stay fresh for long.  Places such as the Paris Morgue often resorted to death masks when bodies had deteriorated and could no longer be put on display (masks were later superseded by post-mortem photography).

During the nineteenth century, the death mask took on a new and insidious purpose.  It was used to illustrate the dubious tenants of a very popular new science, designed to categorise the human character and intelligence based on physical traits.

The rise of Phrenology 

Franz Josef Gall. Public domain via Wikimedia.

In 1796, Franz Joseph Gall would set in motion a ‘scientific’ school of thought whose more negative connotations still reverberate to this day.

At the end of the eighteenth century, opinion was divided as to how the brain worked.  Some thought the brain was a homogenous whole, while others thought that specific areas of the brain controlled specific functions.   Gall was of the belief that the development of the brain, with its over or under-developed areas, would influence the shape of the skull.[2]

Gall felt this view was strengthened when he examined the skulls of a group of pick-pockets and identified that each had a pronounced bulge over their ear, which he took to be the area of the brain associated with lying, theft and deception.  He followed this up with extensive (but unscientific) research in prisons and asylums. While his conjectures went far beyond the empirical evidence, his work was the first tentative steps towards understanding and identifying criminal behaviour.

Phrenology Head. Source unknown.

His ideas were enthusiastically taken up and developed in the first half of nineteenth century, his method promised to identify those with criminal potential before they had the opportunity to commit a crime.  Phrenological Societies boomed – London boasted 28 in the 1820’s and the Phrenological Society of Edinburgh was founded by one of Phrenology’s great luminaries – George Combe and his brother Andrew.  The Edinburgh society is credited with laying the ground for Evolutionary theory. [3].

Not only did this research focus on the living, it focused on the dead as well, particularly those of the criminal classes.  Hence the number of death masks of notorious criminals from that age (although not only death masks were taken: while William Burke’s mask was taken after his execution, the slippery Hare, who turned Kings evidence, had his mask taken in life).  Masks were an ideal way to capture and study criminal physiognomy.

Death mask of Burke and life mask of Hare. Edinburgh University. Image by Kim Traynor.

Social Darwinism: born bad and ‘degenerate’ races

While fashionable people flocked to phrenology saloons in the nineteenth century (seeing it as a form of ‘scientific’ fortune-telling due to its supposed ability to predict behaviours) on another more insidious level it was being used to cement ideas of racism and eugenics.

It is hard to believe now, but there had been an ongoing debate amongst the thinkers of the Enlightenment as to whether people of different races were actually different species.  Even great thinkers such as Voltaire and Linneus supported this idea of polygenism.  This created a drive to categorise and measure different races using racial anthropological physiognomy.  Masks, both life and death, played a part in this as did Phrenology, which identified characteristics based on racial stereotypes and well as social stereotypes.

Excerpt from ‘Crania Americana’ by Samuel Morton. 1839. Used to promote racist ideas of the supposed differences between the skulls of different races. Image from Vassar Collection.

By the nineteenth century, the view was that while all races were the same species, the non-white races had somehow ‘degenerated’ from the original ‘whiteness’ of Adam and Eve, due to various factors such as climate or food(?!) Clearly this was all based on racist conjecture and stereotyping and had very little to do with actual science.  As the Step Back in History Vlog, Scientific Racism, points out,  there was a purpose behind this, it was to was to create a moral justification for white Christian nations to enslave other people based on race, and to colonise their lands. [4]

John Beddoe whose book provided a pseudo-scientific basis for racism. Public domain.

This is just as insidious as it sounds, and was taken up enthusiastically by American Slave owners and British Colonialists alike to justify the oppression of other people based on race, and to promote the idea of paternalistic colonialism.   An example of this kind of racism can be found in John Beddoe’s The Races of Man, published in 1862, which managed to ‘prove’ the Irish were non-white, therefore ‘degenerate’, using racial anthropological physiognomy to justify British Imperialism against the Irish,  contributing to a century and a half of violence and oppression.

You don’t have to be an expert on twentieth century history to see just how evil this line of thinking gets.

Franz Muller death mask. Metropolitain Police Crime Museum.

Racial stereotypes were not the only stereotypes that phrenology helped to promote. Social Darwinism, the idea that theories of natural selection could be applied to sociology and politics, promoted the idea that some people were simply born bad, and that using ‘scientific’ techniques, criminal types could be identified before any criminal act had been committed.  It was here that phrenology and death masks combined in the study of criminal physiognomy.  Many examples of criminal death masks can be found today, notable examples are in Norwich Castle Museum, Edinburgh University and The Metropolitan Police Crime Museum in London.

Norwich Castle Museum

Norwich Castle Museum boasts a collection of death masks belonging to some of the most notorious murderers of the mid-nineteenth century.   They were created by  Giovanni Bianchi, a Tuscan who moved to London in 1836, and later moved to Norwich.  Between 1837 to 1854, he worked at Norwich Castle producing the death masks of executed criminals.

Norwich Castle. Image by Lenora.

When a condemned criminal was hanged, the bust maker had to move quickly.  To get the best casting, he had to take the mould within a few hours of death, or else bloating would distort the features.

Greenacre’s death mask. Norwich Castle Museum. Image by Lenora.

Robert Wilkins in his Fireside Book of Death outlines the process for taking a mask: first, liberally apply oil to the face to avoid any adhesions, then (if the subject is living) insert tubes into the nostrils, lay thread across the face then build up layers of plaster.  This is allowed to harden,  then the mask is removed usually in three pieces, using the threads laid on the face.  Before the advent of quick drying materials, it could take some time for the plaster to dry, and could be quite a claustrophobic experience.  Obviously, if the subject was dead, this was much less inconvenience to them. 

Once removed this produced a very accurate cast with facial pores, eyelashes and whiskers often visible.  This mould would be filled with wax or other materials to make the final bust.  While living subjects might expect to wear a cap to protect their hair during the casting of the back of their heads, criminals had their head shaved before the cast was taken, so that the phrenologists could have a clear canvas to work on.

Corder’s death mask. Norwich Castle Museum. Image by Lenora.

Bianchi immortalised such notorious individuals as Daniel Good, a murderer hanged at Newgate, whose successful evasion of the law led to the creating of the Detective Branch in London; Samuel Yarham, who murdered Harriet Chandler in Norwich in 1846; and James Bloomfield Rush, who, in 1849, somewhat sensationally went on a bloody rampage one winters night at the home of Isaac Jermy, the Recorder of Norwich.  His shooting spree left Isaac and his son dead, injured his daughter-in-law and seriously wounded a maid. [5]

It is hardly surprising to discover that phrenologists studying criminal physiognomy were not the only ones interested in obtaining images of the criminal dead.  An indication of the popularity of public executions and sensational crimes, as well as the speed at which death masks were produced, is given in The Norwich Mercury. Following the hanging of  James Bloomfield Rush in 1849, the Mercury described the grisly process for the benefit of those unable to attend:

“After hanging the due time, the body was cut down, and in the course of the afternoon the head was shaven and a cast taken of the features and the skull by Bianchi of St George’s Middle Street in this city.  The remains were then buried, according to the sentence, in the precincts of the prison.” [6]

A further indication of the public fascination with sensational crime (and grisly souvenirs) is provided by Sir Robert Bignold of Norwich Union fame, who wrote:

“The clerks of the Norwich Union took the morning off, which was quite in accordance with the precedent on execution days, and no doubt Bianchi the modeller did a good trade. It is even probable that some of the Norwich Union clerks were among his customers, for we have it on good authority of the chief clerk that it was not unusual for the staff to buy the casts of murderers on those days and hide them in their office desks.” [7]

Death masks, it would seem, also fulfilled a less scientific and more profitable niche in Victorian popular culture.

The end of the line

While phrenology continued to be of interest to some even into the twentieth century, it had always had its critics.  By the middle of the nineteenth century its star had waned and it was seen more as a novelty than a real way to identifying criminal types.  By the end of the nineteenth century, death masks of criminals had also become largely obsolete as the spread of cheaper methods of photography ushered in the age of the criminal mug shot.

Behind bars, even after death. Death masks at Norwich Castle Museum. Image by Lenora.

Today, Phrenology is relegated to a pseudo-science for its wild conjectures going  way beyond the empirical evidence, and its use in promoting the invidious so called ‘scientific’ racism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries -the repercussions of which can still be felt today.

Nevertheless the concept that specific parts of the brain relate to character, thoughts and emotions, did influence early psychiatry and psychology and eventually sow the seeds of neuro-psychology.

One fortunate by-product of the nineteenth century’s obsession with criminal physiology is we now have a series of lifelike and accurate portraits of the lower and criminal classes. Prior to photography images of these, mainly poor, working class people would not exist, or would be known only through distorted illustrations in the popular press of the day.

And if we think were are beyond judging a book by its cover, we should think again. The myth is still peddled that beautiful people have beautiful lives in this Instagram-ready age.  In addition to this, developments in AI technology may mean that both governments and corporations in the near future will be judging us all on our appearances and targeting us accordingly, so, be warned!

Sources & Notes

Corden, Joanna, 2013, ‘Death Masks‘ on the Royal Society Repository website. [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Phrenological_Society [3]

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/weird-norfolk-norwich-castle-museum-dungeon-death-masks-1-6029246   [5]-[7]

Fitzharris, Lindsey, Dr, Under the Knife: The Phrenology Head, YouTube [2]

http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/overview.htm

Wilkins, Robert, 1990, ‘The Fireside Book of Death‘, Hale

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-phrenology-2795251

http://theconversation.com/natural-born-killers-brain-shape-behaviour-and-the-history-of-phrenology-27518

http://www.victorianweb.org/science/phrenology/intro.html

https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/the-born-criminal-lombroso-and-the-origins-of-modern-criminology/

Step back in history,  What is scientific racism? YouTube [4]

 

Stratford’s death mask. Norwich Castle Museum image by Lenora.

The Cadaver Synod: The Trial of the Pope’s Corpse

Tags

cadaver synod, Corpse pope, crown, dead pope, disinterred, exhumed, Formosus, Holy Roman Emperor, Italy, ninth century, papal throne, revenge Rome, scandal, Spoleto, stephen VI, synodus horrenda, trial, vatican

Damnatio Memoriae

The Trial of Pope Formosus by Jean Paul Laurens. Musee des arts Nantes.

Pope Formosus, clad in the sacerdotal robes of the pontiff, sat upon the papal throne in dignified silence while his accuser, the new pope, Stephen VI, spat out charges against him. Formosus was accused of ‘usurping the Universal See in such a spirit of ambition’ [1], of breaking canon law by accepting the Bishopric of Rome while still Bishop of Porto, of perjury, and of attempting to exercise the office of bishop as a layman….Formosus’ past had come back to haunt him.

Race to the top

City plan of Rome, showing the Lateran Palace of the pope. Wikimedia via Met Museum Edward Pearce Casey Fund, 1983.

Rome, and by extension, the papacy, was in a period of instability and turmoil during the ninth and tenth centuries. The reason for this was that the throne of St Peter offered not just spiritual power, but temporal power. Part of this power came from the pope’s role in electing the Holy Roman Emperor. Ever since the death of Charlemagne, Rome and its riches were in the sights of the many fiefdoms and factions that had sprung from the collapse of Charlemagne’s empire. This link meant that influential and powerful families all wanted to have their man on the papal throne, and by extension, if you wanted to be pope, it helped to have powerful backers.

Popes, even those backed by powerful families, came and went with surprising rapidity. The road to high office and ultimately the papal throne was strewn with hazards for the ambitious cleric: political violence, treachery and assassinations were not uncommon. A man had to be ruthless to get to the top and success did not guarantee longevity.

Enter Formosus, born in around 816 CE in Rome. Formosus soon became a high-flyer in the church. Made bishop of Porto-Santa Rufina in 864 by Pope Nicholas I, his talents were such that in 866 he was made papal legate and  sent to convert the Bulgarians. In fact, he was so successful in this task that Prince Bogoris of Bulgaria requested Formosus, and only Formosus, be made their Arch-bishop. If this had been Formosus plan, it was thwarted – the request was refused as it contravened canon law, which stated a bishop could not leave his own see to administer another (an accusation that would come back to haunt Formosus). Even at this early stage, Formosus may have already had his eye on the papal throne. And such high ambition creates enemies.

Pope Formosus via Wikimedia.

Despite this personal set-back, Formosus was still flying high in papal regard when in 869 and 872 Pope Adrian II entrusted him with missions to France, as did Pope John VIII in 875.

However, Pope John VIII seems to have begun to regard Formosus as a stalking horse, and soon relations between the up-and-coming bishop and the pope began to sour.

The growing distrust between John VIII and Formosus appears have bubbled to the surface over the controversial election of the new Holy Roman Emperor, the descriptively named Charles the Bald, King of the Franks. Not all Romans wanted Charles the Bald, there were many who supported the widowed Empress Engelburga and her brother-in-law, Louis the German. Formosus may have been one of them [2].

John VIII ordered Formosus to invite Charles to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome. Charles took the throne at Pavia and the Imperial Insignia in Rome on 29 December 875. Perhaps Formosus didn’t carry out his orders with enough enthusiasm, because soon after the Coronation of Charles the Bald, Formosus fled Rome for Tours to escape reprisals. But Tours was not far enough away to escape John’s displeasure.

A Synod was called on 19 April 875, in which Pope John VIII demanded Formosus, and other fugitives, return to Rome. Perhaps sensing a trap, Formosus refused. He was excommunicated and removed from the ranks of clergy. Other accusations were that he had deserted his diocese without papal permission, aspired to be arch-bishop of Bulgaria against canon law, and that he had conspired to destroy the papal see and had despoiled the cloisters of Rome.  Many of these allegations would be dug up again during his later trial.

In July, Formosus excommunication was announced. His glittering career had come to an abrupt halt, even his obvious successes, such as his mission to Bulgaria, had been used as ammunition against him. Pope John VIII, it would seem, had successfully put down his rival.

But that wasn’t the end of Formosus rise to power, it was just a hiatus. In 878 Formosus swore an oath the stay out of Rome and desist from performing priestly office in order to have his excommunication revoked.

The ever-spinning wheel of fortune, turned again, and, in 883, a new pope, Marinus I restored Formosus to his Bishopric of Porto. His fortunes continued to prosper under subsequent popes St Adrian III and Stephen V. Formosus was well and truly back in the race for the throne of St Peter.

Pope at last

In October 891, 27 years after becoming Bishop of Porto, Formosus was unanimously elected as pope. His career would suggest that he was a capable, talented and perhaps charismatic man. His personal success in Bulgaria, the trust placed in him by the several popes he served, and not least the mistrust that led John VIII view him as a rival, would indicate that his ambition was well matched with his ability.

Pope Formosus. Public domain via Wikimedia.

As pope, Formosus did not rest on his laurels, after all, the ninth century was rife with internal power-struggles within Rome and Italy, as well as strained international relations. Formosus was asked to intervene in a dispute in Constantinople, where his opposite number, the Patriarch had been relieved of office by a rival. Formosus also engaged in disputes relating to the French Crown, between the Count of Paris, and another Charles with another less than flattering soubriquet – Charles the Simple.

Closer to home Formosus had problems with the current Holy Roman Emperor Guy III Spoleto, things came to a head in April 892. when Guy is thought to have forced Formosus to crown his son Lambert as co-emperor [3].

Perhaps resenting the Spoleto’s strong-arm tactics, Formosus, not a pope to take things lying down, retaliated by inviting Arnulf of Carinthia to invade Italy and eject the Spoletos. Although Arnulf did invade Italy in 894 the plan fell apart. When Guy III Spoleto died in December, Formosus invited Arnulf to try again, possibly in response to the actions of another Guy, Guy IV Spoleto, who had recently invaded Benvenuto and expelled the Byzantines.

In 896 Arnulf entered Rome and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Formosus, who may have breathed a sigh of relief to finally be rid of the Spoleto stranglehold on his papacy. Fate had other ideas, however, and Arnulf became ill and returned to his kingdom where he died shortly afterwards. Formosus also exited this world on 4 April 896, probably from a stroke, and was succeeded with the exceedingly short-lived papacy of Boniface the VI who lasted an impressively brief 15 days.

In a world where popes might only last days or weeks, Formosus name and deeds might have been expected to quickly fade from memory and merit only a line or two in the history books. However, it is what happened after his death, that ensured his bizarre place in history.

Synodus Horrenda

The Trial of Pope Formosus by Jean Paul Laurens. Musee des arts Nantes.

The trial of a bad pope might not seem unusual, except that in this case, when Formosus sat silently listening to his accuser screaming out allegations against him, he had been dead for nine months.

The corpse of pope Formosus on trial. Detail.

Yes, Stephen VI, took the bizarre and macabre steps of having his penultimate predecessor’s rotting corpse exhumed, dressed in papal finery and sat upon a throne in the Basilica of St John Lateran, while he, the new pope, acted as a very rabid counsel for the prosecution. To be fair, Stephen did ensure that the dead pope could answer the charges himself, well, sort of. A deacon was employed to speak as Formosus and offer half-hearted responses when required – I can’t imagine that this was a job he boasted about afterwards.

Pope Stephen VI, on the other hand, appears to have thrown himself in to the role of cross-examining the defendant with rather too much vitriol and zeal for most people’s taste, screaming insults and accusations at his rival’s decayed corpse. Even the most cynical Romans felt a little queasy with Stephen’s blasphemous antics.

Pope Stephen VI accusing Formosus. Detail.

The outcome of this bizarre trial was never in doubt, Pope Formosus was found guilty and Litupriand of Cremona, a tenth century commentator, reports that Stephen VI had the corpse of Formosus stripped of its robes of office. Stephen then cut off the three fingers on Formosus right hand, a symbolic gesture, as the right had was used for offering blessings. Then, all of Formosus acts and ordinations were invalidated (ironically, with implications for Stephen as Formosus had ordained him as a bishop, and creating a headache for the church for years to come).

The corpse was then dragged out of the palace, tossed to the mob, who hauled it through the streets. Initially Formosus body was buried in the strangers cemetery, a burial ground for foreigners, however, this was not degrading enough for Stephen VI, and he had the corpse dug up, yet again, and in a final act of desecration it was weighted down and thrown into the Tiber like so much refuse.

River Tiber looking towards Vatican City. Image by Jean-Pol GRANDMONT – Own work, CC BY 3.0. Via Wikimedia.

Aftermath

Pope Stephen VI. Public domain via Wikimedia.

The posthumous trial of Pope Formosus is gruesome and bizarre, but what was behind it? It certainly didn’t help Pope Stephen VI cement his power – far from it. His macabre performance did not go down well in Rome, especially when, during the cadaver synod, an earthquake damaged the Lateran palace. Many saw this as an omen. Later, rumours also began circulating that Formosus corpse had washed up from the Tiber and was performing miracles. Soon Rome was in turmoil, there were riots on the streets and Stephen VI was imprisoned and ultimately strangled to death, all this only a few months after he wreaked his terrible revenge on Formosus. Later popes revoked the decrees of the Cadaver Synod and restored Formosus honour and re-validated his ordinations, it would seem Formosus had the last laugh after all.

Sympathetic Magic and Carolingian fallout

So why go to such lengths to destroy the reputation of a dead rival? One interesting interpretation of this papal Grand Guignol, proposed by ER Chamberlain, is that the act of degrading Formosus corpse was a case of sympathetic magic. In stripping and defiling the corpse of the former pope, Stephen VI (and whoever was pulling his strings) intended to symbolically degrade and strip Formosus supporters of their power as well. The whole affair points to a revival of the ancient Roman practice of Damnatio Memoriae repurposed for a Christian audience [4].

There are several theories as to why Stephen VI took part in this gory spectacle. Firstly, he could simply have been insane, after all, it takes a certain kind of person to be able to harangue and despoil a corpse in such an elaborate and public spectacle. It hardly seems to fit with the dignity of office of the pope. Alternatively, he could have been attempting to curry favour with Formosus enemies in order to strengthen his own hold on the papacy.

The Frankish king Charlemagne and Pope Adrian I.  Charlemagne had close ties with the papacy.  Antoine Verard. Source , Public Domain

For a long-time the most prominent theory was based on factionalism surrounding who should be Holy Roman Emperor. Following the death of Charlemagne, a slew of illegitimate offspring had vied for the role. Formosus had been viewed as pro-Carolingian, however John the VIII had crowned Guy III Spoleto as Holy Roman Emperor, precipitating Formosus flight to Tours. Later, Guy III Spoleto was thought to have forced Formosus, when pope, to crown his son Lambert in 892. Formosus called upon Arnulf of the Franks, a Carolingian, to help him be rid of the Spoleto’s, but this failed when Arnulf died, leaving Carolingian power in Rome in tatters, and allowing for the return of Lambert and his mother, Angiltrude, bent on posthumous revenge [5].

Later interpretations by Joseph Duhr in 1932, and supported by Girolamo Arnaldi, suggest that relations between Lambert and Formosus were far better than the above theory would allow. Citing positively friendly relations between Formosus and Lambert as late as 895, Arnaldi proposes relations only soured when Guy IV, Lambert’s cousin, invaded Benvenuto and kicked out the Byzantines. To counter this aggression, Formosus called again upon Arnulf to invade Rome.

Lambert of Spoleto. Public domain via Wikimedia.

The alternative theory is that when Formosus and Arnulf died, Lambert and his mother returned to Rome, accompanied by Guy IV Spoleto, and it was he, not Lambert that was the prime mover behind the Cadaver Synod [6].

Arnaldi cites further evidence to support this theory, stating that when the latter pope John IX decided to revoke the decrees of the Cadaver Synod, Lambert appeared to actively support the rehabilitation of Formosus memory [7]. Surely it would be a brave or foolish pope that confronted the instigator of the synod and attempted to reverse its decisions?

I can’t help think that there must have been a lot of personal animus involved to exhume a corpse, but that the act of revenge, being so theatrical and symbolic, undoubtedly had a wider public purpose. This purpose appears to have backfired, and rather than cementing the new pope and the Holy Roman Emperor’s power, actually destabilised it (in the following 12 months there were 4 more popes, some of whom only reigned for days or weeks). It may be that Lambert was more implicated in the cadaver synod than he wished to be, even if he was not its instigator. Perhaps, seeing the horror it evoked, and the political turmoil it caused, he was happy enough to put the past behind him and rehabilitate Formosus when John IX offered him the chance.

Sources and notes

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/morbid-monday-cadaver-synod

Chamberlain E.R., The Bad Popes, 1969, Barnes and Noble [4]

Litupriand of Cremona (quoted from ER Chamberlain) [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod [5]-[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Formosus [2] [3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Stephen_VI

 

The Bitter Taste of Poison: Death by Chocolate

Tags

Aztecs, chocolate, chocolate of Chiapas, Christiana Edmumds, death by chocolate, female poisoners, history of chocolate, Lady Denham, Maynards poisoner, Murder, Napoleon, Poison, Pope Clement XIV, Victorian poisoners

Chocolate is one of lives greatest pleasures or as Michael Levine put it ‘Chemically speaking, chocolate really is the world’s perfect food’. It seems that the majority of Britain agrees as in 2017 the UK topped the Europe chocolate eating league, comprising a third of the European market. On average Britain consumes 11.2kg or 266 Mars bars per year[1]. Our love affair with chocolate began hundreds of years ago and it seems to be a relationship which will last for many years to come.

Mmmmm chocolate. Image from Thorntons website.

A very brief history of chocolate

Aztec woman making chocolate.  Image from the Codex Tuleda via  Wikimedia.

Cacao has been used by South American indigenous cultures for centuries and until very recently it was believed that it was the Olmec people (originating from Mexico) who were the first to have consumed chocolate which they called Theobramo Cacao or ‘food of the gods’. A recent discovery now pushes back the timeline by about 1500 years and reveals that in fact the Mayo Chinchipe culture of Ecuador were processing cacao more than 5000 years ago.

Cacao was a tricky plant to grow and because of its low yield was considered extremely valuable. The Mayans preferred their cacao, hot and frothy seasoned with chilli and vanilla whilst the Aztecs liked it foamy and cold[2]. The Aztecs used the beans as currency, 10 beans could buy a rabbit and a 100 a human slave[3]. They saw it as a man’s drink and warriors drunk it before battle to stimulate aggression and sexual performance. The Spanish conquistadors were fascinated with chocolate and were able to add sugar to the mixture to dilute the bitter taste although at first not all Europeans knew what to make of these strange ‘black almonds’. A pirate ship after finding the precious cargo threw it overboard thinking they were rabbit droppings[4].

The Spanish brought back to Europe the know how to make chocolate which rapidly became popular throughout the continent. Most Europeans added coffee, wine and water to their chocolate drink whilst the English and Dutch added milk. In the 1700s Britain saw the rise of the chocolate houses. Chocolate was even recommended as medicinal for children and consumptive patients. It was popular amongst the aristocracy and a unique set of rooms especially for the preparation of chocolate has recently been found at Hampton Court dating to the reign of William III and Mary II[5].

An 17th Century European Chocolate Shop. Image via California Herb Museum.

Despite its popularity, this bitter tasting drink gained a possibly unfounded reputation as the perfect tool for poisoners.

“Beware the chocolate of Chiapas”[6]

Lady pouring chocolate. Image by Jean Etienne Liotard, 1744.. Public Domain via Wikimedia.

This popular Mexican saying refers to one of the earliest suspected cases of poisoned chocolate being used. In the mid-1600s a Bishop of Chiapas incurred the wrath of his female parishioners when he banned the drinking of chocolate in his church which he said broke religious fast laws. The women protested saying that the chocolate was a medicinal necessity for their weak stomachs and prevented them from fainting during the long mass services. The ladies tried to circumvent the ban by attending mass in other outlying parishes and convents[7]. In order to bring his disobeying congregants to heel, the bishop extended the ban to cover all parishes and forced the women to attend mass at their own parish i.e. his. The ladies still defiant stayed at home and refused for a month to attend church[8].

According to the Dominican English monk who was travelling in the Americas at the time, Thomas Gage, one of the ladies, the wealthy Doña Magdalena de Morales was so incensed that she sent the bishop a poisoned cup of chocolate[9]. Shortly afterwards the bishop became sick and died convinced that he had been poisoned. In order to prevent dissent Pope Alexander VII made a law that all drinks including chocolate did not break the fast.

Whatever the truth behind the legend, what is clear is that in the war between chocolate versus Church; chocolate wins!

“What frosts to fruits, what arsnick to the rat; What to fair Denham mortal chocolate”[10]

Lady Denham. Royal Collection.

One of the famous stories of drinking poisoned chocolate is that of the death of Lady Margaret Denham. Lady Denham was the second wife of John Denham, 30 years her senior. Her beauty attracted the attention of many men including the king’s brother, James, Duke of York. Denham a respected poet and government official was at this time suffering premature aging which had left him limp and reliant on crutches. He had also just recovered from a serious mental breakdown during which he had believed he was the Holy Ghost. A rather cruel description of the couple notes “His wife was young and beautiful; himself was old and unappetizing”[11].

The evidence isn’t clear on whether Denham knew that his wife was the duke’s mistress although it was hardly a secret. Some sources imply that Denham was cuckolded and so passionately devoted to his wife that he was blind to her faults. If these are to be believed Denham only learned of Lady Denham’s indiscretion during a trip to visit his quarries in Portland, a destination he never reached as he returned, planning to make her pay.

Detail of the Poisoning of Queen Bona. Public domain via Wikimedia.

In early November 1667 Pepys wrote that Lady Denham was sick and a rumour started to circulate that she had drunk poisoned chocolate. She never totally recovered. There was minor improvement in the middle of month but in December she was still unwell. In January, the following year she died.

Aside from Denham the other poisoner in the running was the Duke of York’s wife Ann Hyde who had a double reason to hate Margaret who was not only having a very public affair with her husband but also was an advocate of a political rival faction which campaigned against her father, the Earl of Clarendon. A popular rumour was that the Duchess was so terrified by an apparition of the deceased lady that she bit off part of her tongue[12].

Pepys never gave weight to the rumour although he did express his intense dislike of Lady Denham and her influence over the Duke of York calling her a whore and ‘this bitch of Denham’[13]. Despite an autopsy which suggested a ruptured appendix later generations were convinced the story of poisoned chocolate was true and it reached almost mythical proportions.

A Poisoned Pope: Clement XIV

Pope Clement XIV was born Giovanni Ganganelli near Rimini in 1705. Educated by the Jesuits after school he became a Franciscan Friar and was promoted to cardinal in 1759. A close friend of Pope Benedict XIV he was named his successor and ascended to the papal throne in May 1769[14].

Pope Clement XIV. Public domain via wikimedia.

Clement XIV inherited a Catholic Church in crisis with the Holy See being opposed, the role of the pope decreasing in importance and France wanting back French provinces such as Avignon held by the papacy. Added to this Portugal (and other Catholic countries) was threatening a schism if the interfering Society of Jesuits were not disbanded. Initially Clement prevaricated partly because of his genuine admiration of the Jesuits and partly because he was afraid of their (possibly unwarranted) reputation as assassins. Eventually under increased pressure and to avoid a total schism, Clement banned the Society and the Jesuits were expelled from all Catholic countries.

The stress which Clement had been under began to take on a toll on his mental health. He spent the last year of his life suffering from remorse, depression and a paranoid fear of assassination[15]. On the 10 September 1774 Clement was violently sick and confined to bed. He insisted it was due to poison which had been delivered to him in a chocolate drink. On the 22 September 1774 he died.

Despite being described as an ‘upright and moral man’[16] his papacy was fraught with difficulties and has been seen by posterity negatively. Was he poisoned, Clement thought he was but the autopsy said otherwise!

Napoleon’s near miss

Napoleon by David. Image via Google Art Project.

A rumour abounded in both English and American newspapers possibly the result of British propaganda[17] at its most inventive that Napoleon had narrowly avoided death when he was served a poisoned chocolate beverage by an abandoned lover. The story goes that Pauline Riotti, a former mistress of Bonaparte was left destitute by Napoleon who had promised to support her and their child. With no means of income a sympathetic priest helped her find a job as a monastery kitchen inspector.

In 1807 Pauline after learning that Napoleon planned to visit the monastery was determined to get her revenge. During the preparation of Bonaparte’s late morning chocolate Pauline emptied something into the mug. Unfortunately a cook had been watching and relayed a warning message to Napoleon. Pauline was sent for and forced to drink the chocolate. She began to convulse and an hour later she died, apparently mad[18].

This is a classic story of a failed attempt at murder by a spurned lover. Did it happen, not sure but I would love it to be true.

The Chocolate Cream Poisoner

One story of chocolate poisoning which is undoubtably true concerns a woman called Christiana Edmunds. In 1869 Christiana was living with her elderly mother in Brighton and engaged in a secret love affair with a local married doctor, Dr Charles Beard. She was infatuated and when he ended things she continued to harass him. When Dr Beard refused to see her, Christiana instead of venting her anger at her ex-lover decided her only option was to get rid of the wife.

Christiana Edmunds. Image from the Brighton Journal.

Obtaining strychnine from a dentist, Isaac Garrett under a false name and on the pretence of poisoning feral cats[19] and forging prescriptions for arsenic which were delivered by an errand boy to different chemists, Christiana injected the poison into chocolates. The chocolates having been procured from Maynard’s a local chocolate shop. Christiana’s first attempt on Mrs Beard was when she personally delivered the chocolates to her house, after which the unfortunate lady became violently sick. When confronted by the doctor, she denied any culpability and even claimed to have been ill herself. Mollified the doctor left.

Poison bottle.

Christiana began sending boxes of chocolates anonymously to not only Mrs Beard but also to other well-to-do families in Brighton, to her own friends, herself and sometimes back to Maynard’s for resale. Her targets were indiscriminate she did not care who ate the poisoned chocolates. More and more people began to fall sick.

In 1871 Christiana’s campaign claimed its first victim. Sidney Barker aged 4 died after eating chocolates bought from him at Maynard’s whilst he was visiting Brighton with his family. At the inquest a verdict of ‘accidental death’ was recorded. John Maynard was exonerated and destroyed all his stock. Christiana had the nerve to give evidence at the inquest complaining that she had also been poisoned. Her vindictive campaign against John Maynard continued as she sent three letters to Sidney’s father[20] encouraging him to sue Maynard.

The poisoning continued and it was not until six victims including Mrs Beard’s servants fell sick that the Chief Constable placed an advert in the local paper asking for anyone with evidence to step forward. Finally Dr Beard handed in Christiana’s incriminating love letters. Suddenly everything fell into place as now there was a motive for what had looked like random attacks. Christiana was identified as the anonymous author of both the letters sent to the police attacking Maynard and to Sidney’s father. She was arrested on the charge of murder and placed in custody.

Contemporary news report. Image from the Old Police Cells Museum.

After an initial hearing in Brighton it was decided that no Brighton judge could give a fair judgement and the trial was moved to the Old Bailey in London[21]. On 8 January 1872 Christiana was convicted of the murder of Sidney Barker and sentenced to death. The sensational nature of the trial was relished by the tabloids. The descriptions given in the papers varied from tall and handsome to thinking too much of herself. One damning article called her a ‘scheming, image-obsessed murdering minx’[22]. Her sentence was commuted and she was placed in Broadmoor mental asylum for the criminally insane where she stayed until her death in 1907. She never denied, gave an explanation or showed any remorse for what she had done[23].

“Of all murders poisoning is ye worst and most  horrible

because it is secret

because it is not to be prevented

because it is most against nature and therefore most hainous

it is also a cowardly thing”

       Sir John Coke  [24]

The above reasons illustrate a deep-rooted fear in England in the 17^th century of being poisoned even though actual cases were rare with most casualties being accidental or suicides. Literature was full of lurid tales of poisoning which only increased the paranoia. Initially poisoning was linked to witchcraft due to the mixing of ingredients and seen as the murder weapon of choice for women. For some reason maybe a guilty conscience men developed a huge fear of being poisoned by their wives[25].

Reynolds’s Miscellany [PP.6004.b Vol.21 No 525 p.1] Images Online

The difficulty of proving that someone had been poisoned is illustrated by the case of Mary Bell who was accused of killing her husband in 1663, five years after the supposed crime took place[26]. Chocolate was a popular drink, it could disguise bitter tastes and so there was no better choice. Countless other unsubstantiated rumours of chocolate poisoning attempts floated around including Frederick the Great of Prussia and King Charles II[27].

Even today chocolate poisoning cases occur. In France in 2006 Ghislain Beaumont aged 45 murdered both his parents with a poisoned chocolate mousse. He claimed that his mother kept him as a virtual prisoner and was trying to prevent him moving in with his girlfriend[28].

Interesting chocolate fact! 

Luckily chocolate itself is not lethal for humans but if you are determined to use it to commit a murder then somehow you must persuade them to consume 22lb of cacao, the equivalent of 40 bars of Dairy Milk in one go![29]

…one last wafer thin mint…? Image Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. Dir. Terry Jones.1983.

Bibliography

Harmony from Discords: A Life of Sir John Denham, Brendan O Hehir, 1968

Sir John Denham (1614/15–1669) Reassessed: The State’s Poet, Philip Major, 2016

John Denham (poet), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Denham_(poet)

COLUMNIST: Painting a picture of Lady Denham – the scandal and her demise, Stephanie Bateman, https://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/nostalgia/columnist-painting-a-picture-of-lady-denham-the-scandal-and-her-demise-1-8684708

Sir John Denham, https://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclopedia/1676/

By Permission Of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London, Adrian Tinniswood, 2004

Death By Chocolate: Did You Know It Can Kill?, http://www.health-benefits-of-dark-chocolate.com/death-by-chocolate.html

Death by poisoning of His Holiness Pope Clement XIV, https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/death-by-poisoning-of-his-holiness-pope-clement-xiv-1-2402306

Papal Profile: Pope Clement XIV, http://madmonarchist.blogspot.com/2012/10/papal-profile-pope-clement-xiv.html

Clement XIV, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Clement-XIV

QI: quite interesting facts about chocolate, The Telegraph, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/qi/5878406/QI-quite-interesting-facts-about-chocolate.html

Humoring Resistance: Laughter and the Excessive Body in Latin American Women’s Fiction, Dianna C. Niebylski, 2004

Death by chocolate, https://mexfiles.net/2010/04/26/death-by-chocolate/

When the Church said “No” to chocolate, http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/1469-when-the-church-said-no-to-chocolate

Britain is now top of the chocoholics league, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-147227/Britain-chocoholics-league.html

Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage, Louis E. Grivetti, Howard-Yana Shapiro, 2009

Poison – hidden weapon of the Tudor wife, https://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/2015/12/poison-hidden-weapon-of-tudor-wife.html

A historical murder: The Chocolate Box Poisoner, https://robin-stevens.co.uk/a-historical-murder-the-chocolate-box-poisoner/

Christiana Edmunds, http://www.oldpolicecellsmuseum.org.uk/content/history/sussex_murders/christiana_edmunds

Broadmoor Revealed: Some patient stories: Christiana Edmunds (1829-1907), http://murderpedia.org/female.E/images/edmunds_christiana/christiana-edmunds.pdf

The Case of the Chocolate Cream Killer: The Poisonous Passion of Christiana Edmunds, Kaye Jones, 2016

Archaeologists Find Earliest Chocolate Ingredients in Ecuador, Kristina Killgrove, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2018/10/31/archaeologists-find-earliest-chocolate-ingredient/#482331ea242a

Chocolate mousse murderer: Middle-aged man kills parents by lacing pudding with poison because they wouldn’t let him leave home, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-520312/Chocolate-mousse-murderer-Middle-aged-man-kills-parents-lacing-pudding-poison-wouldnt-let-leave-home.html February 2008

The Chocolate Kitchens, https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/explore/chocolate-kitchens/

Christiana Edmunds, https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=def1-185-18720108&div=t18720108-185#highlight 

Notes

[1] Britain is now top of the chocoholics league

[2] QI: quite interesting facts about chocolate

[3] When the Church said “No” to chocolate,

[4] Ibid

[5] The Chocolate Kitchens

[6] Death by chocolate

[7] Ibid

[8] Death by chocolate

[9] Humoring Resistance

[10] Harmony from Discords: A Life of Sir John Denham

[11] Ibid

[12] Harmony from Discords: A Life of Sir John Denham

[13] Ibid

[14] Clement XIV

[15] Ibid

[16] Papal Profile: Pope Clement XIV

[17] Chocolate: History, Culture and Heritage

[18] Ibid

[19] A historical murder: The chocolate box poisoner

[20] Broadmoor Revealed: Some patient stories: Christiana Edmunds

[21] Christiana Edmunds (Old Bailey Records Online)

[22] Christiana Edmunds

[23] Ibid

[24] Poison – Hidden weapon of the Tudor wife

[25] Ibid

[26] Ibid

[27] Chocolate: History, culture and Heritage

[28] Daily Mail: Chocolate Mousse Murderer

[29] QI: Quite Interesting facts about chocolate

The Paris Morgue – Dark Tourism in the 19th Century

Tags

bodies on display, chatelet prison, dark tourism, dead, dead house, death, house of the dead, L'affaire Billoir, Morgue, Mortuary, Murder, Paris, spectacle, suicide, temple of suicide, theatre of death, thomas cook, tourist, unidentified, Victorians

Dark tourism

The Paris Morgue on the Quai du Marche. Public domain via Wikimedia.

Anyone familiar with David Farrier’s recent Netflix Series Dark Tourist, will know that for a certain element of society, tourism isn’t about sun, sea and sand but about exploring the macabre, dangerous or disturbing. Far from being a new trend, this phenomena has long history. In the nineteenth century the Paris Morgue was an unlikely, but popular, attraction. Many an English traveller would turn their steps away from the famous sights of that most romantic of cities and follow the crowds towards the best free show in town.

In Thérèse Raquin Zola perfectly captures the popular appeal of the morgue, with all of its grisly drama and spectacle:

“The Morgue is a spectacle within the reach of all pockets, free for all, the poor and the rich. The door is open, anyone who wishes enters. There are fans who make detours so as not to miss a single representation of death. When the slabs are empty, people leave disappointed, robbed, mumbling under their breath. When the slabs are well furnished, when there is a good display of human flesh, the visitors crowd each other, they provide cheap emotions, they scare one another, they chat, applaud or sniffle, as at the theatre, and then they leave satisfied, declaring that the Morgue was a success, that day”

The Paris Morgue was regularly featured in journals and travel books of the era. While there was often there was an undercurrent of moral disapproval at the voyeurism inherent in the morgue’s attraction, it’s popularity as a free public spectacle knew no bounds.

The Diamond Guide for the stranger in Paris, 1867, with a chapter about ‘The Morgue (Dead House)’. Via MessyNessy.

But how did a civic institution become a public spectacle and was there a more serious purpose behind this most macabre institution?

A Stinking Pestilent Place

The Militia after the storming of the Bastille. 1789 Public domain via Wikimedia.

Every city has a problem with what to do with the unidentified and unclaimed dead. In Paris the Medieval period, the Order of St Catherine fulfilled this function. Later, in the reign of Louis XIV, the practice of displaying the dead to identify them was established. The very word morgue comes from an archaic verb morguer which, as Vanessa R Schwartz explains, means to stare or have a fixed and questioning gaze, which would seem very appropriate under the circumstances.

In 1718 the Dictionaire de l’Academie defined the Paris Morgue as ‘a place at the Chatelet [prison] where dead bodies that have been found are open to the public to view in order that they be recognised’ and which was composed of ‘dead bodies found in the street and also found drowned’ [p49].  Indeed, drowning victims would be the staple of the morgue for most of its existence.

Despite the public function of such morgues, those historically attached to prisons were by no means a clinical setting for viewing the dead. Corpses were often tossed on the ground in piles, left to putrefy while unfortunate visitors had to to breath in the noxious vapours as they tried to identify them. Adophe Guillot described the Basse Geole as ‘[..] a stinking pestilent place with little of the respect death deserves ‘[1].

The Chalelet Prison in Paris fell-foul of its royal connections during the French Revolution and was closed in 1792. But not before hosting the grisly remains of the 7 prison guards killed during the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789.

The Temple to the Dead

The Paris Morgue, 1850’s.  Brown University Library.

The growing urbanisation of Paris in the nineteenth century, which saw more people living cut off from their traditional communities, increased the chance of people dying anonymously amongst strangers.  This in turn created an administrative problem of how to identify the masses of unidentified corpses that kept turning up on the streets and in the Seine.

In 1804, a new morgue was built by order of the Napoleonic Prefect, in order to address this problem. The purpose-built morgue was sited on the Ile de la Cite, at the Quai du Marche, on the corner of Pont St Michel, it was close to the river – the supplier of so many corpses destined for display in the morgue. This new classical building was purpose-built in the centre of the administrative district –it was very visible, sited on a busy road and close by the Police HQ and courts. All elements crucial to its civic function – the river to bring the bodies, the public to identify the bodies, the police to solve crime, the courts to punish the guilty.

A corpse being delivered to the Morgue, Public domain via Atlas Obscura.

Although this new specialised building was far better than what went before, and drew in thousands of spectators, it still had its problems; there was no private entrance for delivery of corpses, the morgue had a terrible chemical smell, and there was a huge population of large grey rats that frequented the area.

the Morgue and the Media

In the 1850’s Napoleon’s prefect of the Seine, Baron George Haussmann had grand plans for Paris.  Haussmann redeveloped (some say ‘disemboweled’) the crowded Medieval Isle de la cite, to build the new more spacious Boulevard Sebastopol. The old morgue, in the heart of Medieval Paris, fell foul of ‘Haussmannization’ and was demolished.  In 1864 a new and improved morgue was built behind Notre Dame Cathedral on the quai de l’Arche Veche.

The Paris Morgue c1900. Source unknown.

The new morgue was much larger than the old, with a large Salle du Public (exhibition room) and it was endowed with more advanced facilities including rooms for autopsies, registrar and staff, a laundry (for the clothing of the deceased) and a more discreet rear entrance for corpses.  By the 1870’s photography was being utilised when corpses were no longer suitable for display, and by the 1880’s refrigeration was introduced.  However, despite these sound scientific improvements and the emphasis on the civic duty of displaying the corpses to the public in order to aid identification, there remained a huge element of sensation and entertainment in a visit to the morgue. In the public imagination, which was fuelled by the popular press of the day, the morgue was intrinsically linked to suicide, murder and human tragedy.

L’inconnue de la Seine, alleged to be a suicide victim brought to the Morgue.

A visitor to the new morgue in the 1860s would have been in for a grand spectacle of everyday drama.  If the body on display was a cause celebre a visitor might have to queue for hours to gain entrance. In a single day tens-of-thousands of men, women, children, of all classes, might come to view the latest media sensation, such happened in the cases of L’affaire Billoir in 1876 & the Mystere de la rue Vert Bois in 1886. In the first case a man dismembered his lover, her body was fished out of the Seine in two packages, while the second related to an 18 month old girl found dead at the foot of a staircase.  Both cases caused an ongoing media sensation. Keeping the cases in the news kept the crowds coming to the morgue in their thousands, to view the corpses and speculate on the circumstances of their demise.  Ironically, in the Billoir case, while tens of thousands of visitors thronged the morgue to view his victim’s remains, less than 600 people attended his public execution. [2]

A visit to the morgue

La Femme Coupee en Morceaux/L’affaire Billoir. Paris Musee Collection.

The layout of the building created a kind of peep show for the crowds as they patiently jostled forwards. Billboards and posters advertised the corpses within, visitors were ushered in single file in one direction. Corpses were displayed behind vast plate-glass windows, draped with long green curtains which only succeeded in adding to the theatrical nature of the experience.

Bodies were laid out in two rows of six, naked but for a cloth covering their modestly, items belonging to them were hung up near them. In some cases, such as the Rue Vert Bois case and Mystere de  Suresnes  (two young girls retrieved from the Seine, triggering speculation that they might have been sisters), drama was added to the tragedy by posing them on chairs, in a kind of tableau, rather than on the cold hard slab. Due to initial mis-identification in the Suresnes case, these little corpses had to be put back on display, even after the bodies began to significantly decay, which must have been both a very macabre and a very sad sight.  And as such, it was just the kind of spectacle the crowd came for: combining sensation, sentimentality and speculation.

Voyeurism and Moral Hygiene

Der Anatom. Wellcome Collection.

Before refrigeration was introduced in the 1880s a constant drip of water was fed from pipes above each slab, in order to keep the bodies fresh. It is debatable how well this worked, and sometimes, such as that of the woman in the Billoir case, the body began to deteriorate and a wax model had to be substituted for the real thing.

Most of the bodies displayed were male, although women and children were also displayed (and were often the focus of intense media interest). Zola famously wrote of the morgue in his novel Therese Racine, where he touches on the erotic undertones of viewing a corpse:

“Laurent looked at her for a long time, his eyes wandering on her flesh, absorbed by a frightening desire.”

Contemporary moralists were particularly worried about threats to the risk to ‘moral hygiene’ entailed in a visit to the morgue.  In particular, they feared the uncontrolled voyeurism of female visitor, women being considered the ‘weaker’ sex morally as well as physically.  A visit to the morgue gave women access to view near naked male bodies.  Not only women, but children were also frequent visitors to the morgue, and the effects of visiting such a macabre site on children were also a cause of public concern.  None of this moral panic, however, diminished the crowds thronging the streets to gain entrance to the Morgue.

‘The last scene of the tragedy’. Harper’s Weekly 1874. Public Domain.

The unclaimed little girl of the Mystere de la Rue Vert.

While it is true that some visitors attending the morgue might imagine that perhaps they could assist in the identification of one of the unfortunates on display, this was not the prime motive for most visitors. As Schwartz has argued, they were attending for the drama of the everyday, an interest both generated and sensationalized by the media. It was free theatre. Who knows, you might be lucky enough to witness the murderer, not quite returning to the scene of the crime, but brought low by conscience after being faced with his victim. This was not so far-fetched a scenario, the police did sometimes bring the accused to the morgue to gauge their reactions in a ‘day of confrontation’ [3], Clovis Pierre writing in Le Figaro described these events as ‘[a] sensational show’. It also gave the public the opportunity to participate in the drama directly. A contemporary writer, Firmin Maillard, exclaimed ‘who needs fiction when life is so dramatic’ [4] – this was a huge element of the Morgue’s continued popularity.

It is interesting to note that the voyeurism inherent in a visit to the morgue extended beyond the corpses to its living denizens as well. Often better-off visitors came to the morgue as much to gawp at the lower classes at play, as at the deceased (whom they would have very little chance of being able to identify). One factor in common with those whose death resulted in the stigma of public display in the morgue, was that they were nearly all members of the lower classes, the poor and dispossessed of Paris were far more likely to die alone or remain unidentified. [5][6]

Innovation and Social Engineering

But of course the morgue served as far more than a public spectacle. Alan Mitchell in his article The Paris Morgue as a Social Institution in the Nineteenth Century, sees it as a positivist force, helping to revolutionise forensic medicine and policing – introducing refrigeration, pioneering forensic photography, focusing on autopsies.

It could also be seen has an attempt at social engineering: a way of turning the active and dangerously mob, who had engaged in revolutionary and subversive activity in the eighteenth century and the earlier parts of the nineteenth century, into passive and  more tractable group of spectators. [7]  Whether as deliberate policy or not, the morgue could be seen to have been a part of a wider social and political agenda in de-politicising the masses.  Setting the foundation for today’s passive consumer culture, easily distracted from the bigger issues by the latest sensation or spectacle.

The Parisian Mob in action. Source unknown.

The final curtain

The Morgue was finally closed in 1907 due to concerns with moral hygiene and a desire to professionalize the Morgue and its functions. Its replacement was the Medico-legal Institute which remains to this day.  However, the Paris Morgue of the past should not be dismissed simply as grisly voyeurism (although that certainly did play its part).

The Morgue represented a way for the authorities to institutionalise death which contributed to the improvement in scientific and forensic techniques. It also highlighted the drastic changes in rapidly industrialising societies.  While the nineteenth century is famous for its obsession with the Good Death, the morgue showcased the alternative, the Bad Death. Showing death as anonymous,  ignominious, public, and, the antithesis of the Good Death, an ephemeral popular entertainment.

This de-sacralisation of death, turning it from a private religious contemplation of the eternal into a public spectacle, heavily linked to current events was fed by the popular press, whose influence on popular culture was becoming more pervasive as the century progressed. It may also have been a way of allowing an increasingly secular, urbanised and disconnected people to experience the horror, the drama, and the hidden tragedies of everyday lives – from a safe distance. In some ways, not much has changed.

Photograph of the Paris Morgue public viewing room. Source unknown. Via Cult of Weird.

Sources and notes

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/paris-morgue-public-viewing

http://www.cultofweird.com/death/paris-morgue/

http://www.messynessychic.com/2014/05/13/that-time-when-parisians-used-to-hang-out-at-the-morgue-for-fun

Mitchell, Alan, ‘The Paris Morgue as a social institution in the nineteenth century’ Francia 4 1976 (581-96) [6]

Schwartz, Vanessa, R, 1998 ‘Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris’ University of California Press [1]-[5] and [7]

Tredennick, Bianca, http://muse.jhu.edu/article/478521 – Some Collections of Mortality: Dickens, the Paris Morgue, and the Material Corpse, The Victorian Review.

https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/paris-morgue

 

 

The Screaming Mandrake: Power, Potions and Witchcraft

Tags

folklore, magic, mandragora, mandrake, screaming mandrake, Witchcraft

Belonging to the nightshade family and found in the Mediterranean region, the mandrake has been known for centuries as one of the most powerful and potent of all plants. People originally believed that the mandrake had two forms; one male and the other female. Some botanists now think that these are two distinct species with the one known as the Autumn Mandrake native to the Levant area and the other Mandragora Officinarum found in the rest of the Mediterranean[1].

Two Mandrakes. Wellcome Collection.

The name mandragora (mandrake in Middle English and Middle Dutch) is formed from man symbolising its resemblance to a miniature person and dragora or drake taken from the archaic word for dragon alluding to its magical powers[2].

A Powerful Poison

The medical properties of the mandrake were known to the Egyptians 6000 years ago. Egyptians called it ‘the water of life’ and used it to improve health, vigour and longevity. The mandrake was attributed with divine powers and placed in a visible corner of a dwelling. Vows were made to it and candles lit[3].

Dioscorides describing the mandrake. Wellcome Collection.

Mandrake plants contain hyoscine, an alkaloid which if too much is ingested causes hallucinations, delirium and even comas. Accidental poisoning could lead to various symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhoea, dizziness and blurred vision[4]. There were some positive benefits of medicinal mandrake such as the relief of rheumatic pains and eye infections and even as far back as AD60 the Greek botanist and physician Dioscorides wrote about its use as an anaesthetic. An anaesthetic mandrake root mixture which also contained opium, hemlock and ivy was used by surgeons well into the Middle Ages.

During the Roman period a mandrake infused wine or ‘death wine’ was also known to have been offered to those being crucified[5]. I suppose being drugged into a near coma made the tortuous punishment a little easier to bear.

For many it was the presence of this alkaloid together with the mandrake’s unusual shape that conjured up images of magic and power.

‘Love apple of the ancients’[6]

Circe. 17th Century. British Museum Collection.

Mandrakes were also believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac (as long as the dosage was right otherwise the outcome would not have been so pleasant for either parties!). The Greek made a mandrake love potion by steeping the root in wine and vinegar and the plant became associated with the Greek goddesses Aphrodite and Circe (the goddess of sorcery) who used the potion to cast a spell over the Argonauts. In Arabic the mandrake is known as the Devil’s Apple and was believed to inflame a man’s love. It was also alleged that if a man carried the female-shaped mandrake in his pocket he would win the woman he desired.

‘Goe, and catche a falling starre, Get with a child a mandrake root’, John Donne[7]

The mandrake has long been linked to fertility probably because its shape reminded people of a human figure. Even in early illustrations it was drawn with a head, body and legs crossed.

One of the oldest references can be found in the Bible in Genesis, when Rachel desperate for a child asks her sister Leah for a loan of the mandrakes which her son, Rueben had harvested from the field as it was believed that eating the sweet smelling yellow fruits of the mandrake would imbue a person with sexual energy and fertility.

The mandrake could also act like an ancient test tube such as in the legend of King Hermones who wanted a male heir but was adamant in his refusal to have sex with women! The king ordered his advisors to find another solution. His astrologers, at an auspicious time took the king’s semen and placed it on a mandrake. Through alchemy a male-child was created much to the king’s delight [8].

Not only could the mandrake help to get a woman pregnant it was also used in childbirth. In order to make use of the mandrake’s power it had to be carefully looked after e.g. the root was placed on a plate and fed with milk or red wine on special days such as every Friday. The milk used to bathe the mandrake could then be fed to pregnant women. Some traditions suggest putting the mandrake under a woman’s bed in a plate full of milk mixed with breast milk. Both rituals were believed to ease childbirth and protect the mothers and babies. [9].

‘Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan’[10]

One of the most powerful legends concerns the deadly scream emitted by the mandrake when it was pulled out of the ground and how to avoid being its victim.

In Theophrastus’ treatise written in or around 230BC he explains how to pick the mandrake to avoid being bewitched. He advised drawing three circles around the plant with a sword of virgin iron and then facing west cut portions of the taproot. After cutting the second portion the picker must dance around the plant muttering incantations concerning the mysteries of love. The sword should only ever be used to cut a mandrake[11].

A later account written by the Roman Jewish historian Josephus (c.37 to 100AD) was the first to mention the use of a dog to extract the plant. He instructed the digger to dig around the root until the lower part was exposed. A starving dog should then be fastened by a rope to the mandrake root and then encouraged to pull out the plant by placing a piece of food just out of its reach. The scream of the mandrake would kill the dog instead of its master and the mandrake would then be safe to handle[12]. This practice of using a dog to remove the mandrake was still being used in the 13^th century as witnessed by the Moorish herbalist Ibn al-Baitar. He wrote that the dog in this case survived the ordeal[13]. In Germany it was believed that the dog had to be completely black with no blemishes.

Pulling a mandrake with a dog. Wikimedia.

Other variations on how to extract the mandrake have come down to us. These include stuffing your ears with wax or earth and blowing a horn whilst pulling the mandrake out. Anything to drown out the mandrake’s screams. Pliny suggests using an ivory staff to dig around the mandrake, others advise placing crosses on the plant for protection against evil forces whilst the Roman writer Apuleius stated that on certain holy days an evil spirit would emerge to do the pickers’ bidding, similar to the genie in a lamp.

Some claimed that the legend of the screaming mandrake was invented by witches to stop ordinary folk from picking their precious plant[14]. Witches were believed to enter an alliance with the spirit of the mandrake. They would promise to care for the mandrake if the mandrake’s spirit would act as a vessel for other spirits and familiars. Offerings were made to the mandrake spirit on the night of a full or dark moon and a circle of salt drawn around the plant. A black dog was tied to the plant and food used as a lure. The mandrake was then covered by a cloth and placed in a special bag.

A more practical but less colourful explanation is that it was the squelching sound made by the mandrake when its fleshy roots was pulled out of the damp earth that was mistaken for a screech.

The Little Gallow’s Man

Male Mandrake from Hortus Sanitatis. Wellcome Institute.

Myths also arose relating to where mandrakes could be found. In Welsh folklore mandrakes were found at crossroads. Crossroads were associated with supernatural and dark forces and it was here criminals were often hanged and buried along with others who could not be interred on consecrated ground.

Crossroads and gallows were known to be popular places for the gathering of herbs for a witches brew and so the link between mandrakes, gallows and witchcraft was widely accepted. The ground where a gallows was placed was seen as contaminated by the blood or semen of the hanged. Some stories stated that it had to be semen from innocent men who with the help of a witch were given a second chance at life as a mandrake whilst others claimed that they were formed from the tears and blood of the fallen innocent. In Iceland the mandrake was known as Thjofarot or Thiefs’ root and it was believed to grow where the froth from a hanged thief’s mouth fell[15].

Talismans and Charms

Female Mandrake. Wellcome Institute.

Mandrakes became popular as talismans and good luck charms. They were thought to bring wealth, popularity and the ability to control one’s own and other people’s destinies[16]. It was believed that King Solomon wore a mandrake root seal which enabled him to gain sovereignty over souls.

The powers  of the mandrake seem to be limitless such as making a person invisible, healing domestic animals, changing the weather, guiding a person to hidden treasure, transmitting diseases and allowing its owner to tell fortunes.

Mandrakes could also protect a family as well as individuals. Sprinkled with blessed water and salt mandrakes were buried near the front door to protect the households from intruders and evil spirits.

In Germany the trade in mandrake talismans flourished as they rose in popularity and were worth their weight in gold. Often roots of other plants were carved to look like mandrakes in order to meet the increased demand. People took painstaking care of their mandrakes wrapping them in white cloth, tying it with golden rope and placing them in special boxes or bags of pure silk[17]. In Germany the talismans were passed down to the youngest son.

Although mandrake charms were at first ignored by the ecclesiastical authorities the scale of their popularity eventually started to worry the Church. Wearers of the charms were accused of invoking demons and tried for witchcraft. In 1603 in Romorantin, France the wife of a Moor was hanged as a witch for keeping a familiar in the form of a mandrake and in 1630 three women in Germany were executed for possessing mandrake talismans. Although this was not the first time that the church took exception to mandrake talismans e.g. in 1431 during her public interrogation Joan of Arc was asked whether she was had a mandrake figurine to which she replied ‘I have no mandrake, and never had one,’ [18] the increasing hostility of the church did dampen public enthusiasm for the charms. Trouble was that giving away a mandrake charm was not easy as they had a habit of returning unaided to their owners.

Up Up And Away!

Witches taking flight. Goya. 1796-98. British Museum Collection.

Witches on brooms, flying high above the ground silhouetted against the moon is an image most of us grow up with but this was not always the case. In earlier traditions witches were believed to be able to fly on just about anything including kitchen utensils and furniture. It was only later that witches were linked to brooms.

The famous witches’ brew was made from deadly nightshade, henbane, devil’s snare and of course mandrake. Such a concoction was obviously lethal and so could not be ingested. It had to be placed somewhere where the user could get the maximum effect without dying. There are only two places on the body which are suitable; the armpits and the genitals. Women’s clothing at the time would have made it extremely difficult to smear the ointment on their armpits so they were left with only one alternative. In order to reach far enough inside the vagina an appropriate implement was needed and so they used a tool which was easily available – a broom handle[19].

Historical evidence can be found for the use of the broomstick. On being arrested for witchcraft and the killing of her husband in 1324, a broom with the tip coated in a strange substance was found in the cupboard of Lady Alice Kyteler[20].

The medieval chronicler of witches Jordanes de Bergamo in the 15^th century stated that he had heard witches confess to using brooms to insert a potion into their ‘hairy places’[21] which enabled them to fly. Giovanni Della Porta in the the 16^th century confirmed that he had witnessed a woman who had applied the brew to her body state that she ‘had passed over both seas and mountains’[22] and the ‘witch’ Antoine Rose testified that she had smeared a potion given to her by the devil onto a stick which she had then straddled shouting ‘Go, in the name of the devil, go!’[23]

Since the ointment contained ingredients which are known to cause intense hallucinations it is not surprising that the women believed they were flying, what is more remarkable is that more of them did not poison themselves before they were arrested and executed.

The English Mandrake

Although the power of the mandrake was well-known in Britain they were expensive and difficult to obtain and so people began to look around for cheaper substitutes. Carvers of mandrake charms saw the large root of the white byrony (a climbing plant belonging to the gourd family) as a perfect alternative. Known as the English Mandrake these counterfeit mandrakes were carved to represent the human body with wheat and grass used to represent pubic hair. Not everyone was convinced by the power of the English Mandrake, Dr William Turner denounced the superstition stating that people ‘are thus deprived both of their wits and money’. These views did not seem to have damaged their popularity as the charms were considered valuable heirlooms and left as bequests in wills.

False Mandrake Root. Wikimedia.

In Jean-Baptiste Pitois’ book ‘The History and Practice of Magic’ he describes how to make a powerful charm from the root of the byrony plant[24].

1. Take it out of the ground on a Monday (preferably the day of the moon) a little time after the vernal equinox.
2. Cut the ends of the root.
3. Bury it at night in a country churchyard in a dead man’s grave.
4. For 30 days water the plant with cow’s milk in which three bats have drowned.
5. On the 31st day take out the root in the middle of the night and dry it in an oven heated with the branches of the verbena plant.
6. Then wrap it in a dead man’s winding sheet and carry it with you everywhere.

Even in the early years of the 20^th century the confusion between the byrony and the mandrake persisted. A story told in Warwickshire claims that in December 1908 a man employed in digging a garden half a mile from Stratford upon Avon cut out the large root of a white byrony plant. Mistaking it for a mandrake he stopped working claiming that it was bad luck to cause damage to them. A few days later he fell down some steps and broke his neck[25].

Although not quite as potent as the mandrake the white byrony it can cause nausea, vomiting, anxiety, paralysis and death[26] so it is not really surprising that it came to be viewed with the same mixture of respect and fear.

An Unbreakable Cord

The reputation of the mandrake affected one of the other members of its family, the tomato. Early herbalists associated the tomato with the mandrake and so in the 18^th century instead of being eaten people preferred to grow them as ornamental plants[27]. Potatoes were also initially viewed with suspicion, luckily for the sake of the humble chip and roast dinners people eventually overcame their fears.

The myths surrounding the link between the mandrake and witchcraft are numerous. It was believed that if a witch made love to a mandrake root they produced offspring which couldn’t feel real love and possessed no soul[28]. Many of the stories contradict each other but they do show how over the centuries the mandrake has been seen as a powerful and dangerous supernatural tool. Even though today getting hold of a mandrake is much less hazardous, being available online and even on eBay, the plant’s link to witchcraft remains unbroken as it still plays an important role in modern witchcraft.

Professor Sprout pulling a Mandrake. From Warner Bros Harry Potter films.

!!HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

 

Bibliography

Mandrake, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrake

Bryonia Dioica, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryonia_dioica

The plant that can kill and cure, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33506081

Mandrake, https://www.britannica.com/plant/mandrake-Mandragora-genus

The History and Uses of the Magical Mandrake, According to Modern Witches, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-history-and-uses-of-the-magical-mandrake-according-to-modern-witches

Mandragora autumnalis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandragora_autumnalis

How to harvest a mandrake, http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2017/12/how-to-h arvest-a-mandrake.html

Herb Analysis: Mandrake, greatest ally of witches, https://www.magicalrecipesonline.com/2015/10/herb-analysis-mandrake-ally-of-witches.html

Rare occult herbs: Mandrake, https://www.groveandgrotto.com/blogs/articles/rare-occult-herbs-mandrake

The Magic of Mandrake, http://www.thewisemag.com/mystery/the-magic-of-mandrake/

Why Do Witches Fly on Brooms?, https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/why-do-witches-fly-brooms/

The Fascinating Reason Witches are Commonly Depicted Flying on Broomsticks, http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/10/witches-fly-broomsticks-2/

Myths and mandrakes,  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539425/

Fantastically Wrong: The Murderous Plant That Grows From the Blood of Hanged Men, https://www.wired.com/2014/06/fantastically-wrong-mandrake/

Trial of Joan of Arc, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Joan_of_Arc

Alarune, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alraune

The  Solanaceae  II: The  mandrake  (Mandragora officinarum); in league with the Devil, Mr Lee, https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/sites/default/files/w_lee_2.pdf

Plants of Life, Plants of Death, Frederick J. Simoons, 1998

An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present, Doreen Valiente, 1973

Executing Magic in the Modern Era: Criminal Bodies and the Gallows in Popular Medicine, Owen Davies and Francesca Matteoni, 2017

Henry VI Part 2, William Shakespeare

Notes

[1] Mandrake

[2] The  Solanaceae  II: The  mandrake  (Mandragora officinarum); in league with the Devil

[3] The Magic of Mandrake

[4] Myths and Mandrakes

[5] The Magic of Mandrake

[6] Myths and Mandrakes

[7] Ibid

[8] Plants of Life, Plants of Death

[9] Herb Analysis: Mandrake, greatest ally of witches

[10] Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 2

[11] The  Solanaceae  II: The  mandrake  (Mandragora officinarum); in league with the Devil

[12] Mandrake, Wikipedia

[13] The plant that can kill and cure

[14] Mandrake

[15] The Magic of Mandrake

[16] Myths and Mandrakes

[17] The Magic of Mandrake

[18] The Trial of Joan of Arc

[19] Why do witches fly on brooms?

[20] ibid

[21] ibid

[22] The Fascinating Reason Witches are Commonly Depicted Flying on Broomsticks

[23] ibid

[24] Mandrake, Wikipedia

[25] Myths and Mandrakes

[26] Bryonia Dioica

[27] The plant that can kill and cure

[28] Alarune

From fact to folklore, Janet Pereson & the Witches of Wallsend

Tags

Cunning folk, cunning woman, Deleval, Ecclesiastical Courts, England, Janet Pereson, Newcastle, North East, North East Folklore, Sir Francis Blake Deleval, trials, Wallsend, Witchcraft, witches, Witches of Wallsend

The Wallsend Witches, revisited

In anticipation of Halloween I decided to revisit an old post of mine from 2013. Way back when I first started writing this blog I wrote about the fairly obscure local legend of the Wallsend Witches.  A gothic tale of horrible hags, revolting rituals and a dashing Delaval, all played out in the picturesque ruins of Old Holy Cross church, Wallsend.  The tale is found in print in several Victorian Table books and seems to have been oft retold in the eighteenth century by Sir Francis Blake Delaval (1727-1771) of Delaval Hall.

Holy Cross Church, Wallsend.

The gist of the tale is that a scion of the Delaval family was riding home late one night and noticed light emanating from Holy Cross Church.  Upon investigation he came across a band of hags performing a diabolical ritual upon a disinterred corpse.  Brave Delaval then apprehended the ring leader and brought her to trial and to the stake at nearby Seaton Sluice – but not before the accused had tried to make an aerial getaway on some enchanted plates.  For the full version of the tale, originally recounted in Richardson’s Local Table Book of 1838-46 but in this case taken from North-Country Lore and Legend, Monthly Chronicle (April 1888), click here: The Wallsend Witches: a tale for Halloween.

Having initially dismissed the tale as a combination of colourful folklore and florid Victorian Romanticism, I was surprised to come across an actual report of a Wallsend woman accused of witchcraft during the sixteenth century.

the pointing finger

Talismans & Charms used in folk magic.

I first came across this case in A History of Northumberland volume XIII which provides an extract from an earlier source: Depositions and other ecclesiastical proceedings from the courts of Durham,extending from 1311 to the reign of Elizabeth.  After a little digging I managed to get hold of a copy of the depositions, published by the Surtees Society in 1845. Here was discussed the case of one Janet Pereson of Wallsend, accused of witchcraft in about 1570.

Janet Pereson was accused by two people. One, a farmer called Robert Durham of Walshend, aged 72, who said ‘He hath heard saye that Jennet Pereson uses wytchecraft in measuringe of belts to preserve folks frome the farye’.  And the other one Catherine Fenwick, aged 20, the daughter of Constance Fenwick who accused Janet of taking payment for using magical charms to cure a little boy by the name of Benjamin Widdrington. Catherine went on to claim that ‘she knoweth not whether she is a wytche or not’. Despite the possibly malicious intent of the accusations, Janet herself was not accused of practicing malificent magic, rather, the accusations appear to indicate that she was some kind of local cunning woman or wise woman.

Cunning woman or witch?

16th Century image of a witch and her familiars. Via Wikimedia.

While cunning folk would seem to be broadly speaking, forces for good, such ‘white witches’ did not escape censure and in fact their brand of magic, whilst not obviously malevolent in intent, was viewed by many as a threat to the very souls of those who sought their aid.

Title Page of 7 Ed of Malleus Maleficarum. 1520. Via Wikipedia.

In 1487 notorious women-haters Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger wrote of such cunning folk in their infamous book The Malleus Maleficarum:

 although it is quite unlawful… bewitched persons… resort to wise women, by whom they are very frequently cured, and not by priests and exorcists. So experience shows that such cures are affected by the help of devils, which is unlawful to seek

Based on the information provided in the deposition, Janet’s case would seem fall into this category.   The accusation was recorded thus:

The said Pereson wyfe said the child was taken with the fayre, and bad hir [the child’s mother] sent 2 for Southrowninge [south-running] water, and then theis 2 shull not speke by the waye, and that the child shuld be washed in that water, and dib the shirt in the water, and so hand it up on a hedge all that night, and that on the morrow the shirt should be gone and the child shuld recover health – but the shirt was not gone as she said.

Robert Thompson, the Vicar of Benton, had the following to say about Janet:

Dicit that he herd one wedo Archer doughter called Elizabethe Gibson, saye that Jenkyn Person wyfe heled hir mother who was taken with the fayre, and gave her 6d for her payment and that the said Jenkyn Pereson wyfe took 3d of Edmund Thompson for a like matter.

Despite official unease over the practices of cunning men and women, they  were usually tolerated when they were performing helpful actions.  And,  Janet comes across as quite honest – she did not not steal the shirt left out over night (either that, or she really believed the fairies would take it). So what was going on?

Hidden motives

Digging a little deeper, Janet seems to have been accused of witchcraft after her husband, William, and son, Jenkyn, were charged with stealing a horse from Robert Thompson, the Vicar of Benton [1]. Whether any or all of the accusations were true or not, it would seem someone was out to get the entire Pereson family.

Sixteenth century court scene. Source Unknown.

As has been pointed out by many writers on historical witchcraft, witchcraft accusations could often stem from long-standing local disputes or social anxieties, focusing on those seen as a threat to social order, either by virtue of their anti-social behaviour, illness, deformity or poverty.  This element could be a factor in Janet’s case, on initial reading, if the horse theft allegation against William and Jenkyn Pereson was true, it may indicate that they were a troublesome family.  Staying under the radar of officialdom was probably the safest course for a cunning woman, but the allegations against her husband and son could have brought Janet’s practices sharply into focus as well.

Shakespeares three Scottish Witches. Source unknown.

One important factor in Janet’s case can be found in the footnote of the Depositions. The witchcraft  accusations against Janet appears in a series of Exceptions against the witnesses to a tithe Suit relative to the Living of Benton. Tithe disputes were very common in pre-modern England, especially after the Reformation, and hinged over payment of church dues [2]. All the allegations against Janet and her family seem to have arisen as part of this tithe dispute. As Jo Bath points out, Constance, the mother of Katherine Fenwick (Janet’s accuser),  was a the one engaged in this acrimonious dispute with the Pereson family [3] and the Vicar of Benton seemed to have been willing to add his accusations to the pile. Perhaps this dispute, compounded with any other real or imagined anti-social behaviour by the family, was the last straw?  Or, maybe, Constance simply was ready to use any means at her disposal to win the argument, whatever the cost.  The case certainly shows how neighbourhood disputes could easily escalate into allegations of witchcraft.

Janet’s fate

Heron Prison Pit, Black Gate Newcastle. From an original image by Barabbas 312. Wikimedia.

Unfortunately, the texts that I have seen do not provide the outcome of Janet’s case – I would be interested to hear if anyone has this information.  In the Surtees volume, a Janet/Jennet Pearson appears in relation to another case in Dunston in 1586. While differences of spelling were common at the time, it is hard, nevertheless to tell if this is the same woman or simply another with a similar name.

Broadly speaking, in England when cunning folk fell foul of the law, the were usually tried in the Ecclesiastical Courts rather than secular courts.  Allegations of providing charms, love potions, enchantments or even the of finding lost goods, could all wind a local cunning person in such a court, and this is what happened to Janet, as her case is recorded in the Depositions and other ecclesiastical proceedings from the courts of Durham.

The 1563 ‘Act agaynst Conjuracons Inchantments and Witchecraftes’ focused mainly on black magic and offered a penalty of death for anyone that ‘practise or exercise [of] any Witchecrafte Enchantment Charme or Sorcerie, whereby any pson shall happen to bee killed or destroyed’ they would be put to death.’  However, cunning folk were not overlooked and the Act goes on to say:

That yf any pson or psons shall from and after the sayd first daye of June nexte coming, take upon him or them, by Witchecrafte Enchantment Charme or Sorcerie, to tell or decleare in what Place any Treasure of Golde or Sylver shoulde or might bee founde or had in the Earthe or
other secret Places, or where Goodes or Thinges lost or stolen should be founde or becume, or shall use or practise anye Sorcerye Enchantment Charme or Witchcrafte, to this intent to provoke any pson to unlaufull love, or to hurte or destroye any pson in his or her Body, Member or Goodes; that then every suche pson or psons so offending, and being therof laufully convicted, shall for the said offence suffer Imprysonment by the space of One whole yere wthout Bayle.

Janet was tried in or around 1570, and her alleged actions would seem to meet the criteria of the recent legislation.  While the outcome of Janet’s trial was not recorded, it would be possible, that if found guilty, she could have been imprisoned (rather than burned at the stake – the purported fate of the captured Wallsend Witch).  Although it’s worth noting that imprisonment could in itself be a death sentence, due to the dreadful conditions in most prisons at that time.

From Fact to folklore

Contemporary Pamphlet about the North Berwick Witches. C1590. Via Wikimedia.

Having revisited the story of the Wallsend Witches and found in it a grain of historical truth, in that Wallsend did in fact boast at least one real-life alleged Witch, the tale of the Wallsend Witches takes on a new aura.  One in which real historical events evolve over time to become folk-lore – of course it would be hard to prove that Janet Pereson’s case is the ‘true’ origin of this tale. Nevertheless, it is appealing to think it forms the core: that as living memory of her tale faded, it began to incorporate such elements as the fate of the North Berwick Witches (burned at the stake in 1590) along with more fantastical elements of established folklore (such as that witches were thought to be able to use wooden platters to fly).

The story appears to have come down through the ages at first in folk-memory,  then, perhaps, permeating different levels of society though Sir Francis Blake Deleval’s constant retelling, eventually being embellished with the real location of Holy Cross Church, Satanic necromancy and a Delaval as hero, and ultimately being collected as a colourful piece of local lore, by Richardson in his Local Table Book of 1838-46.  

So, it would seem that however florid a tale may become with the telling and re-telling, sometimes there is a kernel of truth in it!!

Sources and notes

All images by Lenora unless otherwise stated.

Bath, Jo, Charmers, Enchanters and Witches: True tales of Magic and Maleficia from the North East [3]

Honeybell, F, Cunning Folk and Wizards In Early Modern England, University of Warwick MA Dissertation, 2010

https://archive.org/stream/TheMalleusMaleficarum/MalleusMaleficarum_djvu.txt

Raine, James, Depositions and other ecclesiastical proceedings from the courts of Durham,extending from 1311 to the reign of Elizabeth Vol 21, published by the Surtees Society, 1845 [1]

http://www.wallsendhistory.btck.co.uk/Campaign/Witches%20at%20Wallsend

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe_Dispute [2]