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I'm a PhD student researching the role of the archaeological dead in contemporary British society. Think of this as a scrapbook of all the interesting links, snippets of information and random bits and bobs I come across pertaining to death, dying and the dead. Enjoy?!

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    The Grisly Deeds of Alexander Bean The Legend The tale of Sawney Bean, arguably Scotland’s most shocking and gruesome legend, was said to have taken place on the usually idyllic coast of the south-west. The most commonly told account of Sawney Bean begins in East Lothian where Alexander “Sawney” Bean, the son of a ditch-digger and hedger, came to realise that labouring in the family business, and indeed labour in general, was not to his taste leading to his departure for the south-west coast of Scotland. After leaving his home and travelling to South Ayrshire, Bean found companionship with a woman, sometimes named Black Agnes Douglas, who shared his disinterest in an honest living. A remote coastal cave, located between Girvan and Ballantrae, is said to be where the couple took up residence. The Beans survived undiscovered for 25 years in this setting and populated the cave with a 45-strong incestuous brood. They carved a monstrous living ambushing travellers on the road, whether individuals or small groups, robbing them of their possessions, and murdering them before dragging their bodies back to the cave where they would be dismembered and eaten. As body parts began washing up on nearby beaches and the larger disappearances were noticed by nearby villagers, the secretive Beans managed to evade detection during the investigations and scapegoats were falsely accused and lynched to appease the mob. Read more. Via Skeletons in the Closet.

    The Grisly Deeds of Alexander Bean

    The Legend

    The tale of Sawney Bean, arguably Scotland’s most shocking and gruesome legend, was said to have taken place on the usually idyllic coast of the south-west.

    The most commonly told account of Sawney Bean begins in East Lothian where Alexander “Sawney” Bean, the son of a ditch-digger and hedger, came to realise that labouring in the family business, and indeed labour in general, was not to his taste leading to his departure for the south-west coast of Scotland. After leaving his home and travelling to South Ayrshire, Bean found companionship with a woman, sometimes named Black Agnes Douglas, who shared his disinterest in an honest living. A remote coastal cave, located between Girvan and Ballantrae, is said to be where the couple took up residence. The Beans survived undiscovered for 25 years in this setting and populated the cave with a 45-strong incestuous brood.

    They carved a monstrous living ambushing travellers on the road, whether individuals or small groups, robbing them of their possessions, and murdering them before dragging their bodies back to the cave where they would be dismembered and eaten. As body parts began washing up on nearby beaches and the larger disappearances were noticed by nearby villagers, the secretive Beans managed to evade detection during the investigations and scapegoats were falsely accused and lynched to appease the mob.

    Read more.

    Via Skeletons in the Closet.

    "Frankenstein" Bog Mummies Discovered in Scotland

    archaeologicalnews:

    In a “eureka” moment worthy of Dr. Frankenstein, scientists have discovered that two 3,000-year-old Scottish “bog bodies” are actually made from the remains of six people.

    According to new isotopic dating and DNA experiments, the mummies—a male and a female—were assembled from various body…

    theossuary: This is a watchtower in Dalkeith Cemetery, near Edinburgh, Scotland. It was built in 1827, when folks—particularly in Scottish communities near the medical schools in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen—felt a real need to have their dead protected, and those with enough money were able to do something about it. The well publicized crimes of the Williams Burke and Hare in 1827 and 1828—men who escalated body-snatching from mere grave-robbing to actual murder—didn’t help, either. Some communities built structures called morthouses to temporarily house the dead as they made their journey from freshness to putrefaction. This one is in Udny, in Aberdeenshire: This particular morthouse is unique because of its clever design. Inside was a sort of lazy Susan for the dead. From Geograph:  This circular stone building houses a revolving wheel upon which a coffin would be placed and kept securely under lock and key. When another body was deposited, the wheel would be turned slightly to accommodate the new coffin. Eventually, when a coffin had been rotated one full revolution, it could safely be buried because the corpse would be sufficiently decomposed as to be of no use to the body-snatchers. Only a few of these structures still exist. Here’s a recent article about plans to restore a deteriorating morthouse in east Perthshire, Scotland. Top image: Photograph by Kim Traynor, via Wikipedia. Bottom image: Lynette and Malcolm Johnson, via Geograph.

    theossuary:

    This is a watchtower in Dalkeith Cemetery, near Edinburgh, Scotland. It was built in 1827, when folks—particularly in Scottish communities near the medical schools in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen—felt a real need to have their dead protected, and those with enough money were able to do something about it.

    The well publicized crimes of the Williams Burke and Hare in 1827 and 1828—men who escalated body-snatching from mere grave-robbing to actual murder—didn’t help, either. Some communities built structures called morthouses to temporarily house the dead as they made their journey from freshness to putrefaction. This one is in Udny, in Aberdeenshire:

    This particular morthouse is unique because of its clever design. Inside was a sort of lazy Susan for the dead. From Geograph: 

    This circular stone building houses a revolving wheel upon which a coffin would be placed and kept securely under lock and key. When another body was deposited, the wheel would be turned slightly to accommodate the new coffin. Eventually, when a coffin had been rotated one full revolution, it could safely be buried because the corpse would be sufficiently decomposed as to be of no use to the body-snatchers.

    Only a few of these structures still exist. Here’s a recent article about plans to restore a deteriorating morthouse in east Perthshire, Scotland.

    Top image: Photograph by Kim Traynor, via Wikipedia.
    Bottom image: Lynette and Malcolm Johnson, via Geograph.

    (via theossuary)

    Teeny Tiny Murder Victims In 1836, two boys discovered a dozen tiny carved figures hidden in a niche in Edinburgh’s massive park. Could they be effigies of victims planted by the city’s most notorious murderer? In 1827, two enterprising young men discovered a solution to the time consuming labors involved in finding and digging up dead bodies to sell to the city’s anatomists: they decided to source the bodies themselves. For two years Williams Burke and Hare, with the help of their lady friends, bumped off 17 victims and provided them as dissection models for Edinburgh’s surgeons. Fresh bodies were a hot commodity in the era before the legalization of non-criminal post-mortem anatomy subjects. But there were only so many dead criminals. Doctors needed to learn, so the supply and demand led more or less naturally to these so-called “Anatomy Murders”. When the duo were caught (tripped up by a would be victim), Hare turned on Burke, who took the blame and was hanged in January 1829 - his body handed over for dissection, natch. The discovery of the dolls just a decade after the crimes led many to suggest that the 17 tiny dolls could be the creation of one of the killers, burying the dolls in place of the victims who never received proper burials. DNA tests in 2005 (tested against samples taken from Burke’s bones, kept on display at the Royal College of Surgeons) were inconclusive. It is also possible that the dolls were carved by one of the other willing accomplices, all who lived long after Burke’s hanging. Via Atlas Obscura

    Teeny Tiny Murder Victims

    In 1836, two boys discovered a dozen tiny carved figures hidden in a niche in Edinburgh’s massive park. Could they be effigies of victims planted by the city’s most notorious murderer?

    In 1827, two enterprising young men discovered a solution to the time consuming labors involved in finding and digging up dead bodies to sell to the city’s anatomists: they decided to source the bodies themselves. For two years Williams Burke and Hare, with the help of their lady friends, bumped off 17 victims and provided them as dissection models for Edinburgh’s surgeons. Fresh bodies were a hot commodity in the era before the legalization of non-criminal post-mortem anatomy subjects. But there were only so many dead criminals. Doctors needed to learn, so the supply and demand led more or less naturally to these so-called “Anatomy Murders”.

    When the duo were caught (tripped up by a would be victim), Hare turned on Burke, who took the blame and was hanged in January 1829 - his body handed over for dissection, natch.

    The discovery of the dolls just a decade after the crimes led many to suggest that the 17 tiny dolls could be the creation of one of the killers, burying the dolls in place of the victims who never received proper burials. DNA tests in 2005 (tested against samples taken from Burke’s bones, kept on display at the Royal College of Surgeons) were inconclusive. It is also possible that the dolls were carved by one of the other willing accomplices, all who lived long after Burke’s hanging.

    Via Atlas Obscura

    Viking chieftain's burial ship excavated in Scotland after 1,000 years

    A Viking ship, which for 1,000 years has held the body of a chieftain, with his shield on his chest and his sword and spear by his side, has been excavated on a remote Scottish peninsula – the first undisturbed Viking ship burial found on the British mainland.

    The timbers of the ship found on the Ardnamurchan peninsula – the mainland’s most westerly point – rotted into the soil centuries ago, like most of the bones of the man whose coffin it became.

    However the outline of the classic Viking boat, with its pointed prow and stern, remained. Its form is pressed into the soil and its lines traced by hundreds of rivets, some still attached to scraps of wood.

    An expert on Viking boats, Colleen Batey from the University of Glasgow, dates it to the 10th century.

    At just 5m long and 1.5m wide, it would have been a perilously small vessel for crossing the stormy seas between Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland. But the possessions buried with him suggest the Viking was a considerable traveller.

    They include a whetstone from Norway, a bronze ringpin from Ireland, his sword with beautifully decorated hilt, a spear and a shield which survive only as metal fittings, and pottery.

    He also had a knife, an axe, and a bronze object thought to be part of a drinking horn. Dozens of iron fragments, still being analysed, were also found in the boat.

    The peninsula in the Highlands is still easier to reach by sea than along the single narrow road.

    But with its magnificent mountain, sea and sunset views, it was a special place for burials for thousands of years.

    The oldest, excavated by the same team three years ago, was a 6,000-year-old neolithic grave, and a bronze age burial mound is nearby.

    Click the link to read more about this AMAZING find!

    moriartyforpm: siemprefiestanuncasiesta: This is a grave from the Victorian age when a fear of zombies and vampires was prevalent. The cage was intended to trap the undead just in case the corpse reanimated. I have a feeling that I’ll be buried beneath one of these. Whilst there was undeniably an interest in all things ‘vampiric’ during the late Victorian period, these cages are called mortsafes and were designed, by and large, to protect against ‘Resurrection Men’ - nocturnal gangs of grave-robbers. These unscrupulous characters dug up freshly-interred corpses and sold them on to anatomists for dissection. The burgeoning science had created a market in dead bodies, with demand regularly outstripping supply. Interestingly, the theft of a body was not considered a criminal offence, unless the shroud in which the body had been wrapped had also been taken! Invented in c.1816, the cages were put in place by relatives of the deceased so as to guard against the disturbance of the body at a time when many people believed in its literal resurrection on the Day of Judgement - to be dissected was therefore to put the very soul in jeopardy. They are most common in Scotland, which was rife with body-snatching, as illustrated by the infamous case of Burke and Hare. Rich families could afford their own mortsafes, but others clubbed together to form societies that would purchase a mortsafe that would be used temporarily until a body had reached a suitably decomposed state that would render it useless to anatomists. The mortsafe could then be reused by another family.  The introduction of the Anatomy Act in the 1830s finally secured a steady, legal, supply of bodies for the purposes of anatomisation - through the corpses of executed criminals and others on the margins of society, most notably the insane, prostitutes, suicide victims and orphans. The use of mortsafes therefore waned as fear of the Resurrectionists subsided.

    moriartyforpm:

    siemprefiestanuncasiesta:

    This is a grave from the Victorian age when a fear of zombies and vampires was prevalent. The cage was intended to trap the undead just in case the corpse reanimated.

    I have a feeling that I’ll be buried beneath one of these.

    Whilst there was undeniably an interest in all things ‘vampiric’ during the late Victorian period, these cages are called mortsafes and were designed, by and large, to protect against ‘Resurrection Men’ - nocturnal gangs of grave-robbers.

    These unscrupulous characters dug up freshly-interred corpses and sold them on to anatomists for dissection. The burgeoning science had created a market in dead bodies, with demand regularly outstripping supply. Interestingly, the theft of a body was not considered a criminal offence, unless the shroud in which the body had been wrapped had also been taken!

    Invented in c.1816, the cages were put in place by relatives of the deceased so as to guard against the disturbance of the body at a time when many people believed in its literal resurrection on the Day of Judgement - to be dissected was therefore to put the very soul in jeopardy. They are most common in Scotland, which was rife with body-snatching, as illustrated by the infamous case of Burke and Hare.

    Rich families could afford their own mortsafes, but others clubbed together to form societies that would purchase a mortsafe that would be used temporarily until a body had reached a suitably decomposed state that would render it useless to anatomists. The mortsafe could then be reused by another family. 

    The introduction of the Anatomy Act in the 1830s finally secured a steady, legal, supply of bodies for the purposes of anatomisation - through the corpses of executed criminals and others on the margins of society, most notably the insane, prostitutes, suicide victims and orphans. The use of mortsafes therefore waned as fear of the Resurrectionists subsided.

    (Source: riverofpureemotion, via jujukitty)