Emma Battell Lowman

Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse

This open access book is the culmination of many years of research on what happened to the bodies of executed criminals in the past. Focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it looks at the consequences of the 1752 Murder Act. These criminal bodies had a crucial role in the history of medicine, and the history of crime, and great symbolic resonance in literature and popular culture. Starting with a consideration of the criminal corpse in the medieval and early modern periods, chapters go on to review the histories of criminal justice, of medical history and of gibbeting under the Murder Act, and ends with some discussion of the afterlives of the corpse, in literature, folklore and in contemporary medical ethics. Using sophisticated insights from cultural history, archaeology, literature, philosophy and ethics as well as medical and crime history, this book is a uniquely interdisciplinary take on a fascinating historical phenomenon.

Murder and the Law, 1752–1832

The legislative framework for the key period of our research is set by the period during which the Murder Act was in force. Its passage and provisions are considered here, as are the alternative ways of strengthening the death penalty which were not in the end written into law. The numbers affected by the Murder Act were nowhere very high, but there was considerable geographical and chronological variation in the frequency with which the provisions of the Act were enacted in full: broadly being more aggressively implemented in the London area and the east of the country than in the west and north. In the nineteenth century the popularity of hanging in chains in particular declined to almost nothing. The effects of the Murder Act are hard to assess. By the early 1830s the savagery of its provisions, and its failure to provide anything like the number of cadavers necessary for scientific work had made it sufficiently unpopular that it was repealed and replaced with legislations that arguably substituted poverty for criminality to meet the demands of anatomists.

Conclusions: Ethics, Bullet Points and Other Ways of Telling

The bodies of the dead are often contentious sites for contemporary ethical decision making. A number of those ethical anxieties either have their roots in the deep past, or can usefully be examined in light of the history of how dead bodies have changed in meaning and value. The case of the soldiers ‘shot at dawn’ during the First World War for cowardice or desertion illuminates the way that both criminality and the meaning of a dead body can change after death. Finally this chapter draws out some of the main conclusions of the project, and reviews some of the possible interpretive frameworks within which the history of the criminal corpse during the period of the Murder Act might be understood.

Anatomisation and Dissection

The bodies of most of those executed under the Murder Act were sent for anatomical dissection by men of science. This blurred the line between scientific needs and judicial arrangements, and many medical men were unhappy about their co-option to the work of the executioner. This was especially so since short-drop hanging, the most commonly practised type of execution, often failed to kill criminals, so that their deaths often occurred on the dissection table rather than the scaffold. Procedures for the anatomisation and dissection of dead bodies varied geographically and took account of the multiple constituencies who wanted or needed access to them.

The Power of the Criminal Corpse in the Medieval World

Taking a long-term view of the history of crime and punishment problematises any straightforwardly progressive narrative of the history of punishment as one of increasingly humane attitudes. Punishment in the Middle Ages was about retribution, but also about compensation and the restoration of social order. The strong parallels between sin and crime and between punishment and penance affected much of the practice and discourse about punishment throughout both early and later medieval periods, and indeed extended into modernity. The dying and dead body was an important locus in both religious and secular discourses of power.

Seeking the Physical Remains of the Criminal Corpse

In the first of two chapters considering the legacy of the criminal corpse we examine what happened to the physical remains of criminal bodies—partial and fragmented as they were by the end of their post-mortem punishments. Very few remains received any sort of burial, but a number were put to use as mounted skeletons or anatomical preparations for educational purposes. Other remains were curated as macabre souvenirs. Other uses included modelling for artists, experimental subjects for galvanism or phrenology; and the medicinal use of body parts in both orthodox and folk medicine.

Hanging in Chains

For a minority of convicted murderers the decision was taken to gibbet their body rather than send it for dissection. This chapter reviews what was involved practically in gibbeting a body (or ‘hanging in chains’ as it was known), including the locations chosen, and the technology of the gibbet. Three cases of hanging in chains are discussed: two in England and one in Canada. The Canadian one is especially interesting as it is a rare incidence of a woman being gibbeted (no women are known to have been gibbeted in Britain during this period). Finally, some enduring myths of the gibbet are described.

How Was the Power of the Criminal Corpse Harnessed in Early Modern England

During the age of spectacular punishment, the bodies of those who threatened the State or social order were subject to highly visible symbolic justice. The executions and dead bodies of traitors in particular were put at the centre of acts of theatre. At the same time, new discourses around the dead body were taking shape at this time: especially discourses about anatomy and medicine; and a new theology that came to dominate British religion after the Reformation and altered profoundly the relationship between the living and the dead.

Folk Beliefs and Popular Tales

Despite their relatively small number, the bodies of executed criminals exercised an impressive hold over the imaginations of writers, artists and storytellers. This chapter considers the range of artistic and creative afterlives of criminal bodies. Some criminals and their ends were remembered in anonymous folk ballads or ghoulish stories; others featured in works of published literature or art. The theatre of execution that was so significant in the late medieval and early modern periods remains a popular subject of artistic reinterpretation, as a brief discussion of the film Braveheart confirms.

The Spaces of Dangerous Freedom: Disrupting Settler Colonialism

This chapter expands on two related concepts developed by Mohawk scholar Alfred (2005): that of ‘the clearing’ and the ‘space of dangerous freedom.’ We examine how the embodied encounters in the clearing can model a powerful practice for transforming relationships in place through ritualised relational protocols. The clearing is rooted in Haudenosaunee practices and customs but can be applied to a wide variety of meetings between Indigenous peoples and Settler communities, supporting struggles for Indigenous resurgence. We follow on work by Hunt and Holmes (2015) on the complexities of pursuing decolonisation through (inter-)relational encounters in ‘everyday’ domestic spaces, and Haiven and Khasnabish (2014) on effective spaces generated in support of social justice movements.