Rest in Pieces: The story of a hanged woman and her journey to becoming a museum object. By Ali Wells
When referring to “skeletons in the cupboard” we rarely expect these to be literally true, but in the case of Mary Ann Higgins and the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry, it is. In the early 1970s the Herbert acquired an unusual and unique object – the head of the penultimate woman […]
Summertime, and the Gibbeting ain’t Easy… By Emma Battell Lowman
Today is officially the first day of summer, and I welcome the season this year particularly grateful for something that this time last year hadn’t even crossed my mind. Thank goodness Britain no longer practices gibbeting! Between the bouts of monsoon-style rain, the sun is bursting through here in Leicester making for uneven […]
The Bloody Business of the Bloody Code: Dissecting the Criminal Corpse. By Elizabeth Hurren
Imagine hearing local gossip that a notorious murderer was about to be executed, and that everyone in the vicinity of a homicide was planning to turn out to see the violent culprit punished in Georgian England. Getting to the gallows to secure a good spot would mean having to take an unpaid half-day off […]
Disgusting Dinner Conversation. By Emma Battell Lowman
In the two months since joining the Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse project at the University of Leicester, I like to think I’ve become a highly desirable dinner guest. Before what I’m calling my CrimCorpse period, I could be relied on to chat socially about the weather, dogs, the latest series of RuPaul’s […]
Post-Mortem Punishment: A Fate Worse than Death? By Rachel Bennett
A key question I have repeatedly asked myself in the researching and writing up of my PhD thesis, and one that permeates the Criminal Corpse project, asks why punish the dead? The 1752 Murder Act placed the post-mortem punishment of the corpse at the centre of the criminal justice system in Britain as it stipulated […]
Recent Comments