![The Hour of Death exhibition at the Herbert in 2009. The Hour of Death examined the lives, crimes and punishment and context of the last two women to be hanged in Coventry. Mary Ann’s skull was shown, with warnings, behind the white structure at the back of the room.](https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/crimcorpse/files/2016/07/hour-of-death-150x150.jpg)
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 […]
![The gibbet cage of Marie-Josephte Corriveau. From the Visitor's guide to Salem, Salem, Essex Institute, 1916.](https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/crimcorpse/files/2016/06/189px-Gibbet_from_Quebec_1763-150x150.jpg)
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 […]
![The skeleton has spine, pelvis and shoulders removed. The torso was given shape by the inclusion of a stake of burned wood. Image thanks to Warwick Rodwell – Barton upon Humber.](https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/crimcorpse/files/2015/10/Skin-Bag-150x150.jpg)
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](https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/crimcorpse/files/2015/09/Galvanism-on-Matthew-Clydesdale-wikimedia-commons-150x150.jpg)
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 […]
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