The Thieves’ Accomplice: The Hand of Glory

Tags

crime, folk magic, folklore, Hand of Glory, thieves, Yorkshire

_{Hand of Glory. By Albertus Parvus Lucius – The Grimoire of Pope Honorius Grimorium Verum Petit Albert, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93012064}

“Why, my goot Master Oldenbuck, you will only laugh at me. But de hand of glory is vary well known in de countriess where your worthy progenitors did live, – and it is hand cut off from a dead man, as has been hanged for murther, and dried very nice in de shmoke of juniper wood; and if you put a little of what you call yew wid your juniper it will not be any better, – that is, it will not be no worse; then you do take something of de fatsh of de bear, and of de badger, and of de great eber, as you call de grand boar, and of de little suckling child as has not been christened (for dat is very essentials), and you do make a candle, and put it into de hand of glory at de proper hour and minute, with de proper ceremonish, and he who seeksh for treasuresh shall never find none at all”[1]

So, what is the truth behind the mummified hand held in Whitby, why does the Hand of Glory occupy such a precarious position between fact and fiction and why did the myth around the dried and pickled hands of hanged criminals take such a strong hold on the imagination of so many people?

Hand of Glory Recipe

Step 1: Preparation of the Hand

There are quite a few pamphlets that describe how to make Hands of Glory. Certain minor details vary from account to account but overall, the instructions are strikingly similar in detail. The following instructions are taken from the Petit Albert (an eighteenth-century grimoire of natural and cabalistic magic)[2] which cites Émile-Jules Grillot de Givry[3], a French occultist as its source and from the Compendium Maleficarum[4], a witch-hunter’s manual written by Francesco Maria Guazzo in 1608.

1. Sever the hand from the body of a still hanging criminal.  Choose the left hand, except in the case when the man is a murderer, then cut off the hand that committed the murder. If this is not known, remove his right hand as this is the hand most likely to have been used.
2. Remove the hand in the dead of the night or during an eclipse.
3. Wrap it in part of a funeral pall and so wrapped squeeze it well.
4. Then put it into an earthenware vessel along with zimat (an unknown substance, possibly verdigris), nitre (the mineral form of potassium nitrate also known as saltpeter), salt and long peppers. The contents should be well powdered.
5. Leave it in this vessel for a fortnight, then take it out and expose it to full sunlight during the dog-days (the hottest days of July and August) until it becomes quite dry (if the sun is not strong enough put it in an oven with fern and vervain)

A different method of making a Hand of Glory can be found in the text which accompanied the Whitby Museum’s Hand and which was published in a book in 1823.

“It must be cut from the body of a criminal on the gibbet; pickled in salt, and the urine of man, woman, dog, horse and mare; smoked with herbs and hay for a month; hung on an oak tree for three nights running, then laid at a crossroads, then hung on a church door for one night while the maker keeps watch in the porch”[5]

 Step 2: Create the Candle

There are two ways to make a Hand Glory.

The first is to bleed the hand, dry it and then dip it in wax, turning each finger into a candle.

The second is to use the Hand of Glory as a candlestick to hold a candle. The candle must be made from human fat taken from the corpse of the same hanged man and then combined with virgin wax, sesame and ponie. De Givry proposed that ponie was another name for horse dung, which due to its combustible nature when dry would make it a logical choice. An alternative suggestion also put forward is that ponie is a contraction of  ‘sisame de Laponie’, in English, Lapland Sesame[6].

In some descriptions, the hair of the deceased man is used for the wick.

_{Witches brewing potions. Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=359592}

The Perfect Thieves’ Tool

Hands of Glory were most commonly associated with thieves who would harness its power to steal from households. 

It was believed that all the fingers and the thumb should be lit. If one finger refused to ignite it was due to there either being less than five people in the house or to one person still being awake. Dousing the hand in milk was the only way to extinguish the flames and render the power of the hand dormant, releasing anyone under its control.

The hand could:

1. Induce a coma-like state for anyone already asleep in the household.
2. Open any door, however securely it had been locked and bolted.
3. Cause the holder to become invisible to others.
4. Make any person to whom the candle was presented, motionless.
5. Burn forever.

How to Protect Your Home and Property

A household could protect itself from the Hand by rubbing a rather unpleasant and pungent concoction on their thresholds or other parts of the house. The mixture should be composed of the gall of a black cat, the fat of a white hen and the blood of a screech-owl. As with the creation of the hand, the potion has to be made during the hottest days of July and August[7].

Historical Evidence for the Hand of Glory

Body parts have always had the reputation of being imbued with special qualities, you have only to look at the reverence that remains of Christian saints are held in. Even today in Africa, body parts are used in witchcraft practices, for instance, male genitalia is the most sought-after human body parts used in traditional witchcraft ceremonies[8]. So, it is easy to understand that in the past, remains were thought by many to have magical qualities and how in their minds, crime, especially terrible crimes would increase the dark power of those remains.

So, what actual historical evidence do we have? The answer is very little. Most of it is either hearsay, second-hand accounts or very obviously fanciful. Hand of Glory stories are most common in Northern England. Robert Southey in his memoirs at one-point talks of assisting in the “definitive judgement” of certain criminals. Before he begins to demonstrate his knowledge, he makes it very clear to his audience that he himself had never attempted to create such an abominable object. He then states that men who had undergone torture confessed to him their use of a Hand of Glory. He says that its purpose was to render people motionless “insomuch that they could not stir, anymore than if they were dead“[9]. He then goes on to describe how to create a Hand of Glory. Unfortunately, the lack of actual details such as where the trials took place and who the men were does call its veracity into question and besides under torture people will admit to anything! 

_{Jack Shepherd robbery from Ainsworth’s “Jack Sheppard,
A Romance” 1839 by George Cruikshank}

There are also many stories that have been passed down, recounting incidents of the Hand being used. A famous account concerns the Inn of Spital on Stanmore (possibly Stainmore) in Yorkshire[10]. It was said that on a cold October night in 1797, an old female beggar come to the door asking for lodgings. The owner of the inn, George Alderson agreed but stated that the beggar would have to be content with sleeping by the fire in the kitchen. The family then went to bed. Only the maid, Bella remained awake. Something about the beggar’s appearance unsettled her. Pretending to be asleep, she watched the beggar and was shocked to discover that the raggedy old woman was actually a man in disguise. She saw him remove a withered hand from his pocket, as well as a candle. Taking her chance, she rushed to her master’s bedroom but was unable to wake him or his son. On her return to the kitchen, she saw the man open the door and go outside leaving the Hand on the table. Realising that the household was under a spell, she grabbed a cup of milk and poured it on the Hand’s flames. Immediately the household woke and grabbing their guns, they shot at the thief and his accomplice. Knowing their luck had run out, the thief asked for the Hand of Glory to be returned. In answer, the son shot at them again. The Hand remained in the family’s possession for sixteen years. This account was supposedly given to the author by someone who had themselves heard it from the daughter of Bella. Two other Hand of Glory stories from Yorkshire are known; one is from Oak Tree Inn, Leeming (the incident reported to have taken place in 1824)[11] and another earlier tale retold by Sabine Baring-Gould[12]. The heroes of these stories are again female servants who save the families (and their valuables) through their bravery and intelligence.

Whitby’s Hand of Glory

The only surviving Hand of Glory can be found in Whitby Museum. Given to the museum in 1935, it was discovered in a cottage in Castleton by stonemason and local historian, Joseph Ford. Hidden in the wall, Ford identified it based on depictions found in numerous stories[13].

Often the Whitby example is cited as being proof of the existence of the Hand of Glory but is it really what it is purported to be? As shown above, stories about its existence were widespread and widely believed but could it have just been one of many items such as witches’ bottles and shoes that were hidden in walls to protect against witchcraft, demons and the fey or could it have been the property of cunning folk or ‘witches’? Unfortunately, we will never know.

_{The Hand of Glory at Whitby Museum By http://www.badobadop.co.uk –
Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36864122}

Witches, Fairies and a Dead Hand

It was not only thieves that were associated with dead hands or Hands of Glory but also witches and fairies. These stories show the power of such objects as well as the fear that they could stir in people’s hearts and minds.

In Ireland ill luck, diseases and ‘curses’ were more commonly attributed to fairies rather than witches. It was generally believed that butter witches used the hand of a corpse to help them produce large quantities of butter and milk. In one tale an old woman asks a fairy how to get more butter and the fairy in response digs up a corpse’s hand and gives it to her to use for collecting it[14]. In another, locals of the parish of Eyrecourt suspect a neighbour of having a dead hand in her possession due to the large amount of milk and butter she managed to produce from only a few cows[15]. Despite the possible benefits of owning a dead hand such as taking a neighbour’s “crops and stock, and maybe breaking them out of house and home”[16], it was strongly believed that in the end, the hand would become a curse for whoever was in possession of it[17].

In England, a number of local stories appeared which linked the Hand of Glory to witches. One more light-hearted tale is set in the village of Crasswall in Herefordshire where it was said that a witch made a Hand of Glory from a hanged corpse in order to put a spell on the people who ducked her in a horsepond. The story was told by a woman from the village who remembered it as being one of her great-uncle’s “silly old tales”[18]. 

The most famous case concerns the Scottish schoolmaster and convicted ‘sorcerer’, Dr John Fian (alias Cunninghame). Tortured to breaking point and in extreme agony, he admitted to having trained several witches in North Berwick Kirk (many of whom found themselves centre stage in the now infamous North Berwick Witch Trials), bewitching townsfolk and raising a storm to sink the ship carrying King James VI of Scotland and his newlywed wife, Anne of Denmark as they returned from Copenhagen[19] and using a Hand of Glory to help him break into a church and perform a service to the Devil[20].

Further afield in Germany, during their witch hunts in 1588, two women, Nichel and Bessers were accused of witchcraft and the exhumation of corpses. The women admitted to “poisoning helpless people after lighting hands of glory to immobilise them”[21].

_{By print maker: Pieter van der HeydenPieter Brueghel (I)
Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81331702}

The Hand’s Medicinal Properties

One other curious aspect of the belief in the power of dead hands was that people, despite the objects’ gruesome nature, also associated it with healing. Even in Ireland, dead hands were believed to cure toothache. The hand had to be rubbed against the tooth. For the treatment to be effective for men, they had to avoid shaving on a Sunday[22].

Hands of Glory were also thought to have healing properties. In particular, they could be used to heal goitre, an abnormal growth on the thyroid gland caused by poor diet and nutrition, by passing the Hand over the swelling[23]. Severed and preserved hands have been found in physicians’ medical bags and collections.

European Traditions

It is fascinating that stories about hands used for similar purposes can also be found in other countries in Northern Europe.

In Switzerland, it was said that the bodies of deceased and unbaptised children should be buried at night so that the location of their graves remained unknown. This was done to prevent the bodies from being mutilated as it was thought that the hands of such infants could open any lock. As in England, it was believed that the number of fingers that were not burning indicated how many in a house were still awake[24].

Germanic folklore also contained stories of how thieves would make lights for themselves which would cast a spell over people keeping them asleep for however long the candles burned. Known as ‘Thieves’ lights’, these gruesome objects were made from the fingers of unborn children. These infants would have to have been cut from a womb of a thief or murderer who had either been hanged, beheaded or had committed suicide. Specific and strict instructions had to be followed in order to invoke the hand’s power:

• Special incantations and spells had to be recited.
• The journey must be made along the devil’s roads at midnight.
• The journey must be taken in absolute silence.
• The same axe or knife that had been used by the executioner must be used to “open up the poor sinner’s belly, take out the child, cut off its fingers, and take them with you”.

The candles fashioned from these tiny hands would ignite whenever their owner wished it and would be quenched in the same manner. The power held by these macabre objects echoes exactly the power displayed by Hands of Glory. To add to the gruesome origin of these lights, it was reported that pregnant women were often sold to or stolen by brigands of thieves[25].

In West Flanders in the Netherlands, a story persists of how a foot of a hanged man was found in the possession of a thief which he used for the purpose of putting people to sleep. There is also a story from Huy, which bears a remarkable similarity to the Yorkshire tales. In this version, two men request permission to sleep by their host’s fire. The maid not liking the look of the visitors, spies on them. When they believe themselves to be unobserved, one of them, to the maid’s horror, draws a thief’s hand from his pocket. Despite his best efforts, all the fingers burn except for one. Realising that someone in the house was not asleep but seemingly unperturbed they hang it by the chimney and go to the door to call their associates. Failing to wake her master, the maid runs to the kitchen and blows out the candles. In an instant, the men of the household wake up and drive off the robbers[26].

The Hand of Glory: An Interesting Tale or a Grim Tool

Although it is highly improbable that Hands of Glory were powerful magical instruments, it is more than likely that people did try to make them. There are just too many stories, from too many countries, to dismiss them as complete nonsense. It is a shame that only one has survived as more physical evidence could give us a better understanding of this traditional occult practice. What happened to the others? One possible explanation is that they were buried in secret locations where they could not cause harm and another is that they were simply destroyed. Going back to the introduction and the section taken from the novel Waverley, it is apparent that the author did have knowledge of the Hands although the description given here of their creation is very different from the written accounts that have come down to us. Also, its use to protect secret treasure seems contradictory, it is more likely the Hands would be used to find it instead!

I will leave the last word to Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor (pen name of Richard Harris Barham) who wrote The Hand of Glory, the second of the Ingoldsby Legends.

Now open, lock!
To the Dead Man’s knock!
Fly, bolt, and bar, and band!
Nor move, nor swerve.
Joint, muscle, or nerve
At the spell of the Dead Man’s hand!
Sleep, all who sleep! – Wake, all who wake!
But be as the dead for the Dead Man’s sake

The Hand of Glory, still popular today.
Image from Snazle on Amazon.

---

Bibliography

Baring-Gould, Sabine: Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Rivingtons: London, Oxford & Cambridge, 1868

Guazzo, Francesco Maria: The Compendium Maleficarum, Dover Publications; Montague Summers edition, 1988

Guiley, Rosemary: The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca, Checkmark Books, 2008

Harris Dalton Barham, Richard: The Ingoldsby Legends (Classic Reprint), Forgotten Books, 2012

Leather, Ella Mary: The Folk-lore of Herefordshire, University of Michigan Library, 1912

Southey, Robert: The Poetical Works of Robert Southey: With a Memoir of the Author, Volume 4, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860

---

Notes:

[1] Sir Walter Scott, Waverley, Oxford University Press, 2015

[2] Edmund Kelly (ed.), The Petit Albert, English Edition, 2013, https://books.google.co.il/books?id=P-udDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&vq=hand+of+glory&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=hand%20of%20glory&f=false)

[3] Émile-Jules Grillot de Givry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile-Jules_Grillot_de_Givry

[4] Francesco Maria Guazzo, The Compendium Maleficarum, Dover Publications; Montague Summers edition, 1988

[5] Hand of Glory: The Dark Secret Of The Severed Hand At Whitby Museum, Hand of Glory In Whitby Museum, The History Behind The Hand Of Glory, Hand of Glory In Whitby Museum, The History Behind The Hand Of Glory, https://www.thewhitbyguide.co.uk/hand-of-glory/

[6] The Hand of Glory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_of_Glory

[7] Ibid

[8] Male genitalia tops witchcraft list, https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/kwazulu-natal/male-genitalia-tops-witchcraft-list-1065078#:~:text=Male%20genitalia%20are%20the%20most%20sought-after%20human%20body,with%20Childline%20South%20Africa%20in%20Durban%20on%20Thursday

[9] Robert Southey, The Poetical Works of Robert Southey: With a Memoir of the Author

[10] Edwin Sidney Hartland, English fairy and other folk tales, https://archive.org/details/englishfairyothe00hartiala/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater

[11] Hand of Glory, https://whitbymuseum.org.uk/whats-here/collections/special-collections/hand-of-glory/

[12] Sabine Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages

[13] Hand of Glory

[14] dúchas.ie, https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922363/4874420

[15] Ibid

[16] dúchas.ie, homehttps://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922034/4920836 

[17] Ibid

[18] Ella Mary Leather, The Folk-lore of Herefordshire

[19] John Fian, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fian

[20] Rosemary Guiley, The Encyclopaedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca

[21] Ibid

[22] dúchas.ie, https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4602721/4598281/4631369.

[23] Hand of Glory: The Dark Secret Of The Severed Hand At Whitby Museum, Hand of Glory In Whitby Museum, The History Behind The Hand Of Glory

[24] The Hand of Glory and other legends about human hands, http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/hand.html#rothenbach

[25] Ibid

[26] Ibid

[27] Richard Harris Dalton Barham, The Ingoldsby Legends

Anthropodermic Bibliopegy: the macabre art of making books out of human skin

Tags

anthropodermic bibliopegy, dissection, doctors, execution, human skin, mass peptide fingerprinting, Murder, nineteenth century, PMF, post mortem, poverty, skin books

Introduction 

_{A 17th-century book on female virginity in the Wellcome Library,
rebound in human skin by Dr. Ludovic Bouland around 1865.
Wikimedia Commons.}

On 3^rd December 1817, Charles Smith was hanged on the Town Moor at Newcastle upon Tyne for “the barbarous and cruel murder of Charles Stewart at Ouseburn Pottery”. ¹

The condemned man left instructions that his body be released to his wife for burial. This request was denied, and his body sent to be anatomised at Surgeon’s Hall, Newcastle. So far, so unremarkable. The bodies of many hanged criminals ended up under the anatomist’s knife in Britain at this time. But that was not the end of Charles Smith’s story. The actual fate of at least part of Charles Smith’s body was both peculiar and macabre.  

Road to the gallows 

The story began the previous year, 1816, when the pottery was declared bankrupt, and a sheriff’s officer was authorised to sell goods to pay off debts. On the night of the 4th of December, Charles Stewart, the elderly Keeper appointed by the Sheriff, was sleeping on the premises, his task, to guard the money from the sale. In the early hours of the morning, he was woken from his slumber by the sound of loud banging on the door. Opening it, he was faced with two ruffians, intent on robbery. He was attacked and beaten severely. Although he eventually managed to summon help, his injuries were too severe and after lingering for several weeks he died on Christmas Day, 1816. 

_{Newcastle Gaol, early 20th Century. Designed by architect John Dobson c1822,
to replace the ruinous Newgate Gaol. Newcastle Central Library Collection.}

Before he died, Stewart was interviewed and pointed the finger of blame at Irishman Charles Smith, a former employee at the pottery, in a dramatic deathbed confrontation. When accused, Smith denied everything, even though a bloody stick and blood-spattered clothing had been found at his lodgings. Some doubt was cast on Stewart’s ability to identify Smith, and Smith did obtain a brief stay of execution. Ultimately however, Stewart’s testimony, along with some damning circumstantial evidence, and a dash of contemporary prejudice against the Irish, sealed Smith’s fate. He was found guilty of wilful murder and publicly executed the following December. The second assailant was never identified. ² 

And so ended the tragic life of Charles Smith.  

Afterlife  

On 3^rd of October 1818 the Durham County Advertiser reported the following curiosity: 

“Literary relic – An eminent collector and Antiquarian of Newcastle is possessed of a piece of the skin of the late Charles Smith, executed near the town last year for the murder of Charles Stewart, which he had washed, tanned and dressed for the purposes of binding a large paper copy of the murderer’s dying speech!!!” ³ 

I find the multiple exclamation marks interesting, while the eminent collector might find it acceptable to put human skin to this purpose, the author of the article clearly has his doubts. 

The eminent collector and antiquarian in question, was likely to have been John Bell, an avid collector of books and coins, who ran a bookshop on Newcastle’s Quayside.^4,5 

_{Newcastle Quayside, Arthur Edmund Grimshaw, 1865, Public
domain, via Wikimedia Commons}

The practice of binding books in human skin was hinted at in the ancient and Medieval periods. Some examples dating to the 16^th and 17th century have survived, but the trend really grew in popularity, amongst certain sections of society, in the 19^th century. But what was the motivation behind the practice? 

Punishment 

There are several reasons why a book might be bound in human skin. In the early nineteenth century it was occasionally used as a post-mortem punishment for an executed criminal, often adjacent to dissection.  Dissection had been an added post-mortem indignity for the executed person since the introduction of the Murder Act in 1752, which allowed the bodies of executed criminals to be publicly dissected (a boon to anatomy schools struggling to obtain cadavers). Both Charles Smith, and more famously, William Burke, half of the murderous duo Burke and Hare, were hanged, dissected, then had parts of their skin removed for book binding.  

_{A book bound in the skin of the murderer William Burke,
on display in Surgeons’ Hall Museum in Edinburgh
By Kim Traynor – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons}

Binding a book in the skin of the condemned man was a post-mortem mortification with metaphysical consequences. At a time when many Christian’s believed you needed your body to remain whole in order to rise on the day of judgement, having part of your skin made into a pocket notebook or used to bind a copy of your Gallows Speech and clippings about your crime, might well prevent you from entering the Kingdom of Heaven.  As an Irish Catholic, this may have been on Charles Smith’s mind when he entreated authorities to release his corpse to his wife, for Christian burial.  

The practice of public dissection, in this context, is a cruel and unusual punishment, a staggering display of callousness in disregarding the religious beliefs and dignity of the poor and criminal classes who were most likely to suffer this fate.   

Propaganda 

Some books purported to be made of human skin were used for political propaganda, such as the unproven rumours that French Revolutionaries set up a macabre tannery at Meudon. The tannery was supposed to have specialised in producing a range of fashionable leather breeches, boots, and book bindings, all using human skin. A copy of the Constitution and Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, dating from 1793, and supposedly made of human skin, helped feed into the legend of blood thirsty Revolutionaries tanning the hides of their enemies. This legend was still being taken at face value well into the twentieth century, until academics began to look to the original source of the rumour, the rabidly pro-monarchist Abbot of Montgaillard (or possibly his equally monarchist son). ^6,7 

Racial stereotypes 

The infamous Swaatland parchment claims to be an eighteenth-century artefact, linked to the experiences of the real historic figure Luke Swatland. Swatland was captured by Native Americans, and later escaped and wrote of his experiences.  The inscription on the piece of leather states that it was made from the skin of a ‘White Man taken by an Ingen, Scalped and skinned Alive[..]’ it went on to make the false claim that Native American’s were using the skin of Europeans as currency. Following testing by Megan Rosenbloom, the parchment proved to be made from cow hide, and was likely made at a much later date as a piece of racist propaganda to justify the treatment of Native Americans by settlers.⁸ 

_{A notebook allegedly covered in human skin.
The label reads ‘The cover of this book is made of
Tanned Skin from the Negro whose Execution caused
the War of Independence’. c. 1770 – 1850}. _{Wellcome Collection.}

Rarity 

Going back to the Charles Smith book for a moment, it is not known whether John Bell created the book for his own private amusement or as a commodity to sell. However, the fact that John Bell was a book collector is important, because, in the 19th century, in many cases books bound in human skin were made for collectors – enthusiastic bibliophiles with niche tastes in unusual and rare book bindings.  

Collectors of such rare commodities invariably considered themselves to be gentlemen and often they were also medical men, as evidenced by the extensive research of Megan Rosenbloom. Many of the authenticated human skin books originated in the libraries of doctors and surgeons.    

Medical men had two things in their favour – access to the raw materials, and clinical detachment.   

Anthropodermic book binding can be seen as an example of clinical detachment taken to its extreme, with doctors forgetting the essential humanity of their patients, patient consent not being considered, and the unspoken trust between doctor and patient being breached almost irrevocably.  

This idea of the gentleman collector is at odds with the popular image of human skin books. Most people’s first thoughts would probably run to HP Lovecraft’s ‘mad Arab’ Abdul al Hazred and his Necronomicon, and obsessive and insane occultists pouring over Grimoires of arcane knowledge.  That or serial killers and Nazis. In short, people you would want to avoid at all costs, not your trusted GP or hospital doctor! 

_{The Amateur Bibliophile. Liebig card, late 19th century/early
20th century. Look and Learn / Rosenberg Collection}

A matter of identity 

While the matter of who made books of human skin, and why they did so, is fascinating. The question also remains as to whose skin was used? 

Evidence would suggest that it was primarily the skin of the poorer classes, executed criminals and those who died in situations that left their bodies open to exploitation by medical men and collectors. 

Very occasionally someone might volunteer, like unlucky highwayman James Allen, who asked that his memoirs be bound in his own skin.⁹  But that was a rare occurrence – in most cases the skin was obtained without consent or in direct opposition to the wishes of the deceased. 

In cases where a book was bound in the skin of a criminal, such as William Burke or Charles Smith, we can be fairly sure of their identity. However, in many cases, particularly where the skin was obtained covertly in a medical setting, this is not possible, the identity of the unwilling donor left, quite literally, on the shelf.   

One notable exception to this anonymity was uncovered by Beth Lander, the librarian at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, in the United States. She uncovered a tale of medical malpractice from over 150 years ago.  In 1868, a young, up and coming doctor named John Stockton Hough, performed an autopsy on a twenty-eight-year-old woman who died of Tuberculosis at Philadelphia General Hospital.  During her autopsy, Dr Hough decided to take a macabre souvenir of the event, in the form of skin from the woman’s thighs. He held on to his gruesome treasure for many years, but eventually he found a use for it. Hough had an impressive library, and what better than to use this rarest of materials to bind three of his favourite books – on women’s health (which seems a particularly ghoulish choice).  Beth Lander was able to follow the clues left by Hough and identified the woman as being Mary Lynch, a twenty-eight-year-old, impoverished Irish widow. ¹⁰ 

_{Blockley Alms House, later Philadelphia General Hospital.
Penn archives digital image collection.}

Not everything you read is true 

One glaring fact about many ‘human skin’ books is that they do not all stand up to scrutiny, this seems to be particularly common where the subject matter is overtly macabre or has a definite political or racial agenda to promote.  This can be seen in the case of the Swaatland parchment, which, upon testing, proved to be cow hide, and this may also be true of the Constitution and Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, linked to the Meudon Tannery, which has yet to be tested. 

But why have so many books claiming to be bound in human skin been taken at face value?  One reason is clearly that these artefacts exert a morbid fascination. The other reason is that until recently, there was no fool proof, non-destructive way to authenticate them.   

Books bound in human skin don’t scream at you, they look like any other book on the shelf. Previous testing consisted of looking at the binding under a microscope to examine the pores of the hide and compare them to human, pig, cow, etc.   This method was not always accurate.

More modern techniques such as DNA testing are a no go because the tanning process destroys DNA, while repeated handling of the books over many years risks contaminating the sample and skewing the results.  

All of that has changed recently, with the advent of peptide mass finger printing (PMF).  This technique requires only a tiny sample of leather and can conclusively determine if a book is bound in human skin.  The Anthropodermic Book Project, co-founded by Megan Rosenbloom, is currently testing as many alleged human skin books as possible using this technique. And while many books are not what they claimed to be, many others prove to be the genuine article.¹¹

_{Necronomicon By Shubi(Shubi) – Self-made just for fun.,
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.}

Final thoughts 

While unusual cases, like that of James Allen, show that occasionally people did choose this method of post-mortem memorialisation, most did not. Whether the skin of a condemned criminal or impoverished hospital patient, one thing is clear, the men who created these artefacts, did so with little regard to the wishes of the deceased.  

This poses the question, should these books remain in museum and library collections? The curating and display of human remains is a challenging subject at the best of times, fraught with ethical, philosophical, and cultural dilemmas. 

My view, is that they are a valuable resource that can help us explore broader subjects, such as how attitudes to race and class have changed over time, issues surrounding informed patient consent, and how the medical gaze, taken to its extreme, can depersonalise the patient. 

Ultimately, these most macabre of artefacts can provide a window into a different time, a time when respectable gentlemen could blithely damn the criminal and the poor in the afterlife, and hide behind the clinical gaze, in search of that rarest most precious material to bind their books, human skin. 

But what do you think? 

Postscript 

As it happens, Bell never did bind his book in Smith’s skin, but instead fixed the sample of tanned flesh inside a rather ordinary half-bound volume (a leather spine, with darkly marbled covers), a particularly rare curio amongst newspaper clippings of the trial, commentary, and other ephemera.  He even ended the book with a pen and ink sketch of a devil merrily playing the fiddle, above a dangling noose – gallows humour indeed.

_{‘The Particulars of the trial and Execution of Charles Smith by John W Bell’,
on public display in Newcastle Central Library until 31 July 2022 as part of the
‘Life and Death of Newcastle Gaol 1822-1922’}

The Charles Smith Book is held at Newcastle Central Library, it is available to view by appointment, but is currently featured as part of an exhibition that runs until the end of July 2022. 

Edinburgh Surgeon’s Hall displays the pocketbook made from the skin of William Burke.  

Sources and credits 

I would like to thank Sarah at Newcastle Central Library, for facilitating my viewing of the fascinating human skin book relating to Charles Smith and answering my many questions. 

In researching this post, I found the most knowledgeable and accessible writer and speaker on the subject of anthropodermic bibliopegy to be Megan Rosenbloom. I have in particular relied on her excellent book ‘Dark Archives’ as well as several online interviews and articles. 

Ancient Origins website Books Bound in Human Skin – The Practice Isn’t As Rare As You Might Think! | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net) 

Bell, John, 1817(?) ‘The Particulars of the trial and Execution of Charles Smith by John W Bell’, Newcastle Central Library Special Collection. 

Ocker, JW, 2020, Cursed Objects, Philadelphia

Rosenbloom, Megan, 2020, Dark Archives, New York  

Rosenbloom, Megan, 2016, A Book by Its Cover | Lapham’s Quarterly (laphamsquarterly.org)  

Xavier, Paddy, 24/11/2016, Murder in the Ouseburn and Books of Human Skin – lastdyingwords 

Notes 

1. John Bell, ‘The Particulars of the trial and Execution of Charles Smith by John W Bell’
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Paddy Xavier, Murder in the Ouseburn and Books of Human Skin – lastdyingwords 
6. Megan Rosenbloom, A Book by Its Cover | Lapham’s Quarterly (laphamsquarterly.org)  
7. Megan Rosenbloom, Dark Archives
8. Ibid
9. JW Ocker, Cursed Objects
10. Megan Rosenbloom, Dark Archives
11. Ibid

Available now on Amazon! The Haunted Mirror: History, Folklore and the Supernatural, from the Haunted Palace Blog

Tags

dark history, folklore, Ghosts, Haunted Palace book, haunted palace collection, Macabre, new book, supernatural

Published 16 May 2021, 230 pages

Paperback £8.99

Kindle £3.99

Buy now on Amazon, click here: The Haunted Mirror: History, Folklore and the Supernatural from the Haunted Palace Blog (The Haunted Palace Blog Collection): Amazon.co.uk: ., Lenora, Jessel, Miss: 9798505220504: Books

_@chknstyn

A compendium of dark history, strange folklore and mysterious hauntings culled from the Haunted Palace Blog. Lenora and Miss Jessel have selected and re-worked some of their favourite posts for your enjoyment.

Did you know that a prodigious palace once stood in the London Borough of Wanstead and Woodford but a dissolute Earl threw it all away, leaving his heart-broken wife to haunt its ruins forever? Or that Victorian tourists flocked to the grim spectacle provided by the Paris Morgue – the best free theatre in town? Or that a murderous jester is reputed to have lured people to their deaths at a castle in Cumbria? Join us as we explore a past populated by highwaymen, murderers, eccentrics, and lost souls.

Lavishly illustrated with specially commissioned art, engravings and photographs from the Haunted Palace Collection, and national collections.

@igamagination

The Art of the Pickpocket and Cutpurse: Schools of Fobology – Part 1

Tags

child crime, crime, cut purses, Fagan, pickpockets, poverty, slums, theft

Training with Fagin

When the breakfast was cleared away, the merry old gentleman and the two boys played at a very curious and uncommon game…The merry old gentleman, placing a snuff-box in one pocket of his trousers, a note-case in the other, and a watch in his waistcoat pocket, with a guard chain round his neck, and sticking a mock diamond pin his shirt, buttoned his coat right round him, and putting his spectacle-case and handkerchief in his pockets, trotted up and down the room with a stick…All this time the two boys followed him closely about; getting out of his sight so nimbly, every time he turned round…If the old gentleman felt a hand in any one of his pockets he cried out where it was; and then the game began all over again. [1]

“The merry old gentleman’s pretty little game” by Frederic W. Pailthorpe — seventh illustration for “Oliver Twist” (1886) (victorianweb.org)

This passage from Oliver Twist is the most famous description of the training of young thieves in literature. Although it is a fictional account, as with all Dickens’ books it was taken from real life stories and events he had witnessed, read about or heard of from the people involved. The details of how pickpockets learnt their trade are corroborated by numerous factual accounts and Saffron Hill where Dickens placed The Three Cripples, Bill Sikes favourite alehouse was actually a lodging house in the Victorian period. Next to the lodging house was a pub called The One Tun which Dickens patronised. This public house was established in 1759, and is one of only two pubs of this name still in existence and trading in London today[2].

The One Tun of Old Pye Street

Incredibly there was another One Tun public house during the same period which also boasted a connection to Dickens. Although both pubs were located in slums, the pub in Old Pye Street managed to reach new lows even in a city noted for areas of abject poverty. The name of this infamous area of London paints a vivid picture – The Devil’s Acre. The Devil’s Acre was only a few yards from Westminster Abbey and the prestigious houses which surrounded it. The irony of its location was not missed by Dickens who wrote “The most lordly streets are frequently but a mask for the squalid districts which lie behind them, whilst spots consecrated to the most hallowed of purposes are begirt by scenes of indescribably infamy and pollution; the blackest tide of moral turpitude that flows in the capital rolls its filthy wavelets up to the very walls of Westminster Abbey”[3]. This notorious rookery (a popular slang word for slum in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) with its narrow streets, gloomy alleyways, overcrowded and dilapidated buildings was home to thousands of destitute and poor inhabitants, many of whom eked out a meagre living through criminal activities and prostitution.

Dorset Street 1902. Jack London, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The pub in Old Pye Street was known to be a hideout for a thief-trainer and his boys, orphans who had been taken off the streets. On a visit, Andrew Walker, a member of The City of London Mission, was horrified to find the children living in such a place. He nicknamed it ‘The School of Fobology’[4] and witnessed first-hand, children being taught the art of pickpocketing. His report so shocked the Mission that the wealthy philanthropist, Adeline Cooper in 1853, bought the pub and along with the famous social reformer, the Earl of Shaftesbury, founded the first Ragged School which gave free basic education for poor children. Interestingly the landlord left without paying his rent and stripped the pub of all its furnishings and fittings. By 1871, the school had around 133 pupils[5].

The Billigsgate Cutpurses

One of the earliest known schools of theft was found at an alehouse at Smarts Key near Billingsgate in 1585. It was run by Wotton, a gentleman who had fallen on hard times. The Recorder, Fleetwood, wrote that somehow Wotton convinced all the cutpurses in the area to come to his house. He set up a school to train thieves and devised some ingenious methods to help them learn their trade. Two objects were hung from the roof, one a pocket and the other a purse. The pocket contained counters and was hung up with hawk’s bells and a little scaring bell. The purse held silver. The boys would try to remove a counter and the silver without disturbing the bells. Those that managed to get the counter became a “public foyster”(pick-pocket) and those that took out the silver was “adjudged a judicial nypper” (cutpurse or pick-purse)[6].

Life on the Streets

Amongst the filth and poverty and largely ignored were the street children. Neglected and abandoned both by their parents who were often in prison, absent or dead and society to whom they were either invisible or treated like vermin, they stole to survive. The large number of children in prison or in Houses of Correction is heart-breaking. In 1849, in England and Wales 10,460 children under 17 had been arrested and convicted[7]. Living on the streets, preferable to the brutal workhouse, was dangerous and so many preferred to band together into child gangs as there was safety in numbers.

See page for author, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It is therefore no wonder that the professional thief-trainers had their pick of candidates. For street children suffering malnutrition and living in filth this represented a step up as they would gain a roof over their head and food in their belly. Thief-trainers would look out for boys and girls who were quick, sharp and steady. Sometimes they would notice a child stealing and approach them. If the child was good-looking this would be another point in their favour.

As well as teaching them the tools of their trade they would also instruct them on how to behave and dress in fashionable places such as railway stations and race-courses so they could blend in with the crowd. As for the thief-trainers they gained a source of income and knew that if the child got caught it was nearly impossible to trace the crime back to them and so they could “concoct crimes with a readiness and a recklessness arising only from impunity”.[8]

“Oliver amazed at the Dodger’s mode of going to work,” fifth illustration of “Oliver Twist” by George Cruikshank (victorianweb.org)

How to be a Thief

Nearly two hundred years later the Annual Register of the 5 March 1756, records another school which had managed to achieve notoriety[9]. The school was sited in a public house near Fleet Market where a club of boys were instructed on pickpocketing. Taken from the evidence given by the four boys who were arrested, an idea emerges of the techniques and skills which the boys were taught at this school.

Stage One: The ability to remove a handkerchief out of the thief trainer’s pocket and then a watch. They were taught to go for small light objects such as scarf pins which were easy to remove and hide; how to bump into and distract their prey; and where they could find the best pickings such as at crowded fairs and firework displays. Practice made perfect and eventually the trainee thief could remove the items without the owner being aware that their property had gone.

Image courtesy of www.janeaustenslondon.com

Stage Two: The next stage was how to pilfer from a shop. The first important step was to choose a shop with a hatch. One boy would distract the owner or manager by gaining entry whilst the other would lie on his belly close to the hatch. The hatch would be left slightly ajar when the first boy left. Once the owner had disappeared from the shop floor the second boy would crawl in on all fours and take whatever items they could, including money from the till. They would then escape the same way.

Stage Three: This stage saw the pickpocket move on to breaking and entering. Here they were instructed to work in pairs. The boys would be sent to a potentially lucrative target and pretend to be beggars. They would then lie down under the shop’s window and feign sleep whenever someone passed them. During the intervals when they were unobserved they would scrape out the mortar from around the bricks in the wall (which were usually thin and poorly constructed). Once they had a hole big enough, one of them would crawl in and steal anything they could carry and the other would hide the gap with his body, pretending to be asleep[10].

Lodging Houses and Flash Houses

Lodging houses also gained a bad reputation and as with public houses sometimes functioned as schools for thieves. These schools flourished during the Victorian era largely due to the end of apprenticeships and the march of industrialisation which worsened conditions in the slums.

Generally the training techniques did not vary that much wherever the children received their education. An unidentified lodging house trained both boys and girls (girls were often used as decoys and could be more successful as thieves since they could get closer to wealthy ladies without arousing suspicion). In this school a doll was hung up and dressed in the image of a gentleman or lady and a purse placed in its pocket. The purse contained 6 old pence and a bell. Again the children had to remove the money without ringing the bell[11].

Pubs because they sold alcohol were seen as places of vice and disrepute and so it is not surprising that they often became centres “for thieves and other evil-doers”[12]. Those pubs which had a particularly bad reputation became known as ‘flash-houses’ and were labelled “nurseries of crime”[13]. It was believed that in the first half of the 1800s, at least 200 flash-houses functioned in London. Here the police and crooks would drink side by side. Often the police ignored any dubious goings on within their walls such as the fencing of stolen goods since they provided such a rich source of information for any more serious criminal activities in the area. The infamous Mrs Jennings of the Red Lion in White Cross Street ran a very profitable flash-house where she acted as a fence, hiding goods behind cupboards and at the same time controlled a number of boys and girls who reported to her and lived with her [14].

Final Thoughts

In my mind the image of the Victorian thief and their training will always bring to mind Ron Moody from the musical Oliver dressed in a tatty green coat with handkerchiefs hanging out of his pockets dancing and singing You’ve got to pick a pocket or two to a group of cheerful urchins. Although, I know that in reality life for these children was far from jovial, I do find it fascinating that the musical does in its own way show the reality of how juvenile pickpockets and cutpurses were trained.

So who were the thief-trainers? That is another post…

Ron Moody as Fagin in Carol Reed’s 1968 musical drama film, Oliver!

Bibliography

Thomson, J. & Smith, Adolphe: Victorian London – Publications – Social Investigation/Journalism – Street Life in London, 1877, http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications/thomson-35.htm

Garwood, John: Victorian London – Publications – Social Investigation/Journalism – The Million-Peopled City, 1853, http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications4/peopled-01.htm

Rookeries, flash houses and academies of vice, https://forromancereaders.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/rookeries-flash-houses-and-academies-of-vice/

Slum Living: London’s Rookeries-, http://georgianlondon.com/post/49461306842/slum-living-londons-rookeries

Cholera and the Thames: The Devil’s Acre, https://www.choleraandthethames.co.uk/cholera-in-london/cholera-in-westminster/the-devils-arce/

White, Jerry: London in the Nineteenth Century: ‘a Human Awful Wonder of God’,  Bodley Head , 2016

Hindley, Charles (ed.): Curiosities of Street Literature: Comprising ‘Cocks,’ Or ‘Catchpennies’, Palala Press, 2012

Lower Thames Street, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol2/pp41-60

Saffron Hill, https://exploring-london.com/tag/the-three-cripples/

Day, Samuel Philips: Juvenile Crime: Its Causes, Character, and Cure, Samuel Phillips Day, (originally published 1858), 2014

Rookery (slum), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rookery_(slum)

Dickens, Charles: Oliver Twist

Plaque: One Tun pub – Saffron Hill, https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/one-tun-pub-saffron-hill

The One Tun Ragged School, Perkins Rents, c.1870, http://www.museumoflondonprints.com/image/750780/the-one-tun-ragged-school-perkins-rents-c-1870

Rookeries, flash houses and academies of vice, https://forromancereaders.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/rookeries-flash-houses-and-academies-of-vice/

One Tun, 3 Perkins Rents, St John, Westminster, https://pubshistory.com/LondonPubs/WestminsterStJohn/OneTun.shtml

Notes

[1] Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

[2] Plaque: One Tun pub – Saffron Hill

[3] The Devil’s Acre

[4] Cholera and the Thames – The Devil’s Acre

[5] The One Tun Ragged School, Perkins Rents, c.1870

[6] Thames Street

[7] Victorian London – Publications – Social Investigation/Journalism – The Million-Peopled City

[8] Juvenile Crime: Its Causes, Character, and Cure

[9] Victorian London – Publications – Social Investigation/Journalism – The Million-Peopled City

[10] Ibid

[11] Ibid

[12] One Tun, 3 Perkins Rents, St John, Westminster

[13] Juvenile Crime: Its Causes, Character, and Cure

[14] Rookeries, flash houses and academies of vice