About Me

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?!

Instagram Shots

    See more

    More liked posts

    Executing the Death Penalty

    In the spring of 1999, a French journalist was in Chicago to write about the latest death row exoneration and, as our lunch concluded, made a stunningly bold prediction. “Your country will abolish capital punishment in the next 25 years,” she declared.

    Laughing, I reminded her that public support for the death penalty was at an all-time high, capital punishment was the law in 38 states and most of them were routinely performing executions.

    She waved her hand dismissively, pointing out that her country had been beheading prisoners since the French Revolution until, for economic and moral reasons, the death penalty gradually fell into disuse in the 1970s and was finally abolished. Same thing had happened throughout Europe. “Your country may have a cowboy mentality,” she concluded, ” but even cowboys don’t like being on the wrong side of history.”

    Read more here.

    Gloucester prison closure: Criminals buried underneath

    A historian has said there could be up to 122 executed criminals buried in unmarked graves under Gloucester prison.

    The jail will close at the end of March and proposals for its future already include a hotel, flats and a museum.

    But English Heritage said the site required archaeological investigation before any development takes place.

    The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said it was aware of 17 burials there between 1874 and 1939.

    A MoJ spokesman said it was considering the future of these along with the future use of the site.

    The prison, a Grade II*-listed building, was built over the levelled remains of Gloucester Castle.

    Local historian Phil Moss said public executions took place at the gate lodge up until the middle of the 19th Century.

    “Tradition was prisoners were always buried within the prison,” he said.

    Mr Moss added that there could also be Roman remains beneath the jail.

    He said limestone set into the walls of the prison was believed to have come from “a Roman quay or something like that”.

    But he added not all the bodies will have been buried there.

    “According to the records when they were cut down from the gallows sometimes… the body was taken to Gloucester Infirmary and used for anatomical dissection,” he added.

    Read more here.

    ‘Bodies Revealed’ revealed Blockbuster exhibit sets attendance records for Da Vinci while raising ethical questions about origins of humans on display. Cheryl Stevenson leaned in close, eyes straining to get a better look at the preserved human cadaver before her. The man’s skin had been peeled off, exposing his underlying muscles, tendons and bones, and his body was posed in a sprinter’s crouch, testes dangling below his hips. “Oh my goodness,” the Nanticoke resident said, reacting to the Bodies Revealed exhibit that has shattered admissions records at the Da Vinci Science Center in Allentown. “For people to donate their bodies,” she continued. “I just can’t think of the words.” Donated — that’s what the Da Vinci center maintains and the exhibit vendor assures, producing affidavits as evidence. “Our suppliers have confirmed to us that all of the bodies and organ specimens … came from individuals who chose to donate their bodies to medical science for the purpose of study and education,” Da Vinci states on its website. And yet, whether the Chinese men whose bodies are on display at Da Vinci ever imagined, let alone authorized such a spectacle is unclear. Neither Da Vinci nor the exhibit vendor, Atlanta-basedPremier Exhibitions Inc., was able to provide The Morning Call with conclusive documentation of consent. The company’s medical expert and lawyer said they have never seen a consent form and have relied on the word of Chinese and Taiwanese partners who are but middlemen in a global body supply chain. The words “donate,” “donated” or “donation” do not appear in the annual report of Premier, a public company whose shares trade on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Rather, the report – referring to Premier’s multiple Bodies exhibits worldwide and not specifically to the one at the Da Vinci center – says, “Most of the bodies were unclaimed at death, and were ultimately delivered to medical schools for education and research.” Premier’s critics include medical professionals and experts onChina who cite the country’s notorious human rights record. Their questions have trailed the Bodies exhibits for a decade: Why are most of the bodies of Chinese men? Were these people Chinese prisoners? Were they executed? Read more here…

    ‘Bodies Revealed’ revealed

    Blockbuster exhibit sets attendance records for Da Vinci while raising ethical questions about origins of humans on display.

    Cheryl Stevenson leaned in close, eyes straining to get a better look at the preserved human cadaver before her. The man’s skin had been peeled off, exposing his underlying muscles, tendons and bones, and his body was posed in a sprinter’s crouch, testes dangling below his hips.

    “Oh my goodness,” the Nanticoke resident said, reacting to the Bodies Revealed exhibit that has shattered admissions records at the Da Vinci Science Center in Allentown. “For people to donate their bodies,” she continued. “I just can’t think of the words.”

    Donated — that’s what the Da Vinci center maintains and the exhibit vendor assures, producing affidavits as evidence.

    “Our suppliers have confirmed to us that all of the bodies and organ specimens … came from individuals who chose to donate their bodies to medical science for the purpose of study and education,” Da Vinci states on its website.

    And yet, whether the Chinese men whose bodies are on display at Da Vinci ever imagined, let alone authorized such a spectacle is unclear. Neither Da Vinci nor the exhibit vendor, Atlanta-basedPremier Exhibitions Inc., was able to provide The Morning Call with conclusive documentation of consent. The company’s medical expert and lawyer said they have never seen a consent form and have relied on the word of Chinese and Taiwanese partners who are but middlemen in a global body supply chain.

    The words “donate,” “donated” or “donation” do not appear in the annual report of Premier, a public company whose shares trade on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Rather, the report – referring to Premier’s multiple Bodies exhibits worldwide and not specifically to the one at the Da Vinci center – says, “Most of the bodies were unclaimed at death, and were ultimately delivered to medical schools for education and research.”

    Premier’s critics include medical professionals and experts onChina who cite the country’s notorious human rights record. Their questions have trailed the Bodies exhibits for a decade:

    Why are most of the bodies of Chinese men? Were these people Chinese prisoners? Were they executed?

    Read more here…

    Dipped in the blood of beheaded French king: Scientists use DNA to confirm gourd was a VERY gruesome memento from the execution of Louis XVI Two centuries after handkerchiefs were dipped in the blood of the beheaded French king Louis XVI, scientists believe they have proved one such rag kept as a revolutionary souvenir contains his bloodstains. For years researchers have been trying to verify the claim that an ornately decorated calabash contained a blood sample of the king, who was guillotined in Paris on January 21, 1793. On that day Parisian Maximilien Bourdaloue joined the crowds as dipped a handkerchief into the blood left at the scene of the decapitation. He is then believed to have placed the fabric in the gourd, which has been in the hands of an Italian family for more than a century, and had it embellished. Two years ago, analysis of DNA taken from traces of blood found inside the gourd revealed a likely match for someone of Louis’ description, including his blue eyes. But it was never able to be proved beyond doubt as at the time the team did not have DNA of any royal relation. You can read more here!

    Dipped in the blood of beheaded French king: Scientists use DNA to confirm gourd was a VERY gruesome memento from the execution of Louis XVI

    Two centuries after handkerchiefs were dipped in the blood of the beheaded French king Louis XVI, scientists believe they have proved one such rag kept as a revolutionary souvenir contains his bloodstains.

    For years researchers have been trying to verify the claim that an ornately decorated calabash contained a blood sample of the king, who was guillotined in Paris on January 21, 1793.

    On that day Parisian Maximilien Bourdaloue joined the crowds as dipped a handkerchief into the blood left at the scene of the decapitation.

    He is then believed to have placed the fabric in the gourd, which has been in the hands of an Italian family for more than a century, and had it embellished.

    Two years ago, analysis of DNA taken from traces of blood found inside the gourd revealed a likely match for someone of Louis’ description, including his blue eyes.

    But it was never able to be proved beyond doubt as at the time the team did not have DNA of any royal relation.

    You can read more here!

    NEW STUDY INVESTIGATES FATE OF THE CRIMINAL CORPSE A NEW MAJOR RESEARCH PROGRAMME BRINGING UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER ACADEMICS IN THE SCHOOL OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY, AND THE SCHOOL OF HISTORICAL STUDIES TOGETHER WITH EXPERTISE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE, WILL EXAMINE THE FATE OF THE CORPSES OF EXECUTED CRIMINALS. Between 1752 and 1832 the bodies of executed murderers were legally denied burial in consecrated ground. Instead they were donated for anatomical dissection or ‘hung in chains’ (displayed in a gibbet). This new research programme brings together scholars from archaeology, medical and criminal history, folklore, literature and philosophy to explore the ways that the dead body of the criminal could still be powerful. The 5-year project, supported by the Wellcome Trust with a grant for nearly a million pounds, uses the criminal corpse as a focal point from which the team can spin out to explore the many ways that human bodies were understood in the period between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, and how attitudes that took shape at that time continue to affect our ambivalent feelings about how the dead should be treated. This sounds fab! You can read more about the project here!

    NEW STUDY INVESTIGATES FATE OF THE CRIMINAL CORPSE

    A NEW MAJOR RESEARCH PROGRAMME BRINGING UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER ACADEMICS IN THE SCHOOL OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY, AND THE SCHOOL OF HISTORICAL STUDIES TOGETHER WITH EXPERTISE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE, WILL EXAMINE THE FATE OF THE CORPSES OF EXECUTED CRIMINALS.

    Between 1752 and 1832 the bodies of executed murderers were legally denied burial in consecrated ground. Instead they were donated for anatomical dissection or ‘hung in chains’ (displayed in a gibbet). This new research programme brings together scholars from archaeology, medical and criminal history, folklore, literature and philosophy to explore the ways that the dead body of the criminal could still be powerful.

    The 5-year project, supported by the Wellcome Trust with a grant for nearly a million pounds, uses the criminal corpse as a focal point from which the team can spin out to explore the many ways that human bodies were understood in the period between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, and how attitudes that took shape at that time continue to affect our ambivalent feelings about how the dead should be treated.

    This sounds fab! You can read more about the project here!

    'You can't take your eyes off that door': Death row inmate facing THIRD walk into the execution chamber describes waiting for the lethal injection

    What Cleve Foster remembers most about his recent brushes with death is the steel door, the last one condemned Texas inmates typically walk through before their execution.

    ‘You can’t take your eyes off that door,’ he says.

    But twice over the past year and a half, Foster has come within moments of being escorted through the door, only to be told the U.S. Supreme Court had halted his scheduled punishment.

    On Tuesday, Foster, 48, is scheduled for yet another trip to the death house for participating in the abduction and murder of a 30-year-old Sudanese woman, Nyaneur Pal, a decade ago near Fort Worth.

    It takes just under an hour to drive west from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Polunsky Unit, where the state’s male death-row inmates are housed, to the Huntsville Unit, where condemned Texas prisoners have been put to death for nearly a century. The last 485 have been by lethal injection; the first 361, from 1924 through 1964, from the electric chair.

    On execution day, the condemned inmate waits, usually for about four hours, in a tiny cell a few steps from the steel door to the death chamber.

    Foster, a former Army recruiter known to his death row colleagues as ‘Sarge,’ denies his role in the murder. Prosecutors say DNA ties him to the killing and that he gave contradictory stories when questioned about Pal’s death.

    ‘I did not do it,’ he insisted recently from a tiny visiting cage outside death row.

    Full story here.

    The search for a humane way to kill

    The triple-drug cocktail used by many states to kill death-row inmates may not always provide a painless death. Will moving to a new method quiet criticism?

    On 1 August this year, Ronald Smith was supposed to die.

    He was sentenced to death by the state of Montana for two murders he committed more than 30 years ago. But, after three decades on death row and several planned and postponed execution dates, a new legal challenge has caused yet another delay.

    This challenge is not linked to the crimes for which Smith was convicted; it is about the method the state plans to use to end his life.

    The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which brought the case, claims the three-drug protocol that Montana uses in executions could cause unnecessary suffering.

    Designed by anaesthesiologist Stanley Deutsch as an “extremely humane” way to end life, it is supposed to work quickly and painlessly.

    Full story here.

    Chilling, Unique, Unpublished: The Newgate Prison Execution Journal This is the  handwritten Newgate Prison execution journal of the “Ordinary”, or Chaplain, of Newgate, the Rev. Horace Salusbury Cotton. Cotton kept his macabre log throughout his tenure at Newgate, even though he was strictly forbidden from doing so. Between 1814 and 1839 he noted not only the names and crimes of those being executed along with the date of their execution but also his personal observations on any execution that he found particularly interesting. His journal also contains three very unusual prints including one unique new view of him at work within the prison. Cotton died in 1846 and his library was sold off by Sotheby’s in 1848. For the next century and a half this remarkable journal has barely seen the light of day and has unbelievably, never been thoroughly recorded, photographed or transcribed. Until now only four small images of it existed in the public realm and they were to be found in the Rare Books catalogue of Peter Harrington, in Fulham Road. Peter Harrington are currently selling the book, the asking price is £5,000. But before the book is sold, possibly back into obscurity, they have very kindly allowed me to publish here the largest ever selection of  high quality images from this very evocative and historically significant little volume. Wow. Click here for the full story.

    Chilling, Unique, Unpublished: The Newgate Prison Execution Journal

    This is the  handwritten Newgate Prison execution journal of the “Ordinary”, or Chaplain, of Newgate, the Rev. Horace Salusbury Cotton.

    Cotton kept his macabre log throughout his tenure at Newgate, even though he was strictly forbidden from doing so.

    Between 1814 and 1839 he noted not only the names and crimes of those being executed along with the date of their execution but also his personal observations on any execution that he found particularly interesting.

    His journal also contains three very unusual prints including one unique new view of him at work within the prison.

    Cotton died in 1846 and his library was sold off by Sotheby’s in 1848. For the next century and a half this remarkable journal has barely seen the light of day and has unbelievably, never been thoroughly recorded, photographed or transcribed.

    Until now only four small images of it existed in the public realm and they were to be found in the Rare Books catalogue of Peter Harrington, in Fulham Road.

    Peter Harrington are currently selling the book, the asking price is £5,000. But before the book is sold, possibly back into obscurity, they have very kindly allowed me to publish here the largest ever selection of  high quality images from this very evocative and historically significant little volume.

    Wow. Click here for the full story.

    The working model of a guillotine made from bone by prisoner awaiting execution A working model of a guillotine made by a  Napoleonic prisoner, awaiting his death, is expected to fetch up to £8,000 at auction when it goes on sale early next month. The 200-year-old replica was crafted by an inmate using scrap animal bone, salvaged from waste bins. The 20 inch-tall model was unearthed by an expert doing a routine valuation in a house near Dorchester, Dorset. Amy Brenan, from Duke’s auction house in Dorchester, said the family who owned the model guillotine had no idea what it was. She said: ‘With little contact outside the prisoner of war camps, prisoners were forced to improvise. ‘Cheap materials like straw and scrap wood were easy to find and prisoners were able to use skills learnt in their trades outside the camp to produce high quality objects such as woven straw-work boxes. The prototype shows a platform lined with soldiers and a set of steps up the the guillotine itself. Other soldiers surround the blade and a decapitated body lies beneath it. The macabre model is intricately carved and the blade goes up and down and even the soldiers who are holding swords have moving arms. Click through for the rest of the article!

    The working model of a guillotine made from bone by prisoner awaiting execution

    A working model of a guillotine made by a  Napoleonic prisoner, awaiting his death, is expected to fetch up to £8,000 at auction when it goes on sale early next month.

    The 200-year-old replica was crafted by an inmate using scrap animal bone, salvaged from waste bins.

    The 20 inch-tall model was unearthed by an expert doing a routine valuation in a house near Dorchester, Dorset.

    Amy Brenan, from Duke’s auction house in Dorchester, said the family who owned the model guillotine had no idea what it was.

    She said: ‘With little contact outside the prisoner of war camps, prisoners were forced to improvise.

    ‘Cheap materials like straw and scrap wood were easy to find and prisoners were able to use skills learnt in their trades outside the camp to produce high quality objects such as woven straw-work boxes.

    The prototype shows a platform lined with soldiers and a set of steps up the the guillotine itself.

    Other soldiers surround the blade and a decapitated body lies beneath it.

    The macabre model is intricately carved and the blade goes up and down and even the soldiers who are holding swords have moving arms.

    Click through for the rest of the article!