RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Luzzu on Wednesday 13 April 11 17:01 BST (UK)
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Hi,
Thought this story would be of interest.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1376395/Funeral-murderer-hanged-1821-skeleton-Bristol-University-cupboard.html
What a find!
Luzzu
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Wow, that's a great article, nice that he is finally buried! :)
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Interesting story.
I'm curious how many of us would go to this much effort to put an ancestor's burial right. Thoughts?
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The really creepy part is that the cobwebby skeleton was kept with a rope round his neck! :o And ugh, the thought of binding a book with the murderer's skin :o
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Agree that it was pretty grotesque and didn't seem very "civilized".
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Very tragic. Obviously the surgeon did n't think he had anything to do with it.
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Do you know if the family got the book and was it buried with him? I rather think Dr Smith had a lot to answer for there.
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Was the doctor familiar with the Marquis de Sade? Was n't he supposed have done something similar.
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Interesting story.
I'm curious how many of us would go to this much effort to put an ancestor's burial right. Thoughts?
I am in the middle of something similar...similar but different if you catch me.
Many of you who have read my other posts will see that I am searching for James Murphy who died in Wandsworth Prison, England.
He died by 'hanging by the neck until dead' for a robbery and murder which went a bit wrong... it was supposed to be a robbery but the fight that ensued went wrong and the poor man died....
James Murphy was my great grandfather and his story has intrigued me and so i have researched his case through prison archives and various docs....
i was saddened to discover that since his hanging and burial there has been a road built over him!!
I know he went to prison for something terrible however im not sure about the whole 'being built over'
the road was built over him in the 80's and a number of other people were exhumed when this was done.... Lord Haw Haw i believe was one of those pulled up from the plot area....
however my great grandad is still under there being driven over every day....
IMHO i have respect for the dead regardless of why they are dead and i would never consider building on them! in todays day and age a little more compassion from authorities would be expected and a exhumation and reburial of all prisoners in the area shold have been conducted, but apparently we are still in the cold emotional age of the Victorians here and none of the families were ever contacted lol ;D So i have contacted various persons with review of my ggrandad being exhumed and released to our family so i can put him under some trees or if he has to remain within prison walls as part of his punishment, then for him to be reburied in another area of the prison....
fingers crossed its granted and i can move him on
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I know the pub that was the Star where the trial took place.The upper floors were once used as a courtroom for the Bedminster district.Allegedly a former landlord once kept a tiger in a cage out the back for the amusement of the customers.Once they tired of it he upped the ante by getting in the cage where it killed and ate some of him.
The gate house of the gaol from where this chap was hung still exists,the rest was detroyed in the Bristol Riots in the 1800's.
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Interesting yet macabre story. I've got to admit I just don't get the full on funeral with black coffin, mourners and all the 'trimmings' after 190 years - a burial certainly, but not such a 'showy' event. :-\ Just my opinion.
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Tis indeed Ruskie,and after all he did kill someone.
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I agree Ruskie.
I also feel the need to say that the sentence was all wrong. Clearly "the victim" died after the intervention of the surgeon and not as a direct result of the blow from the stone. I would also question the charge of murder which suggests premeditation, manslaughter would surely have been more appropriate.
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They were hanging people for less serious crimes then fifer.I went to look round the old gaol in Bodmin a few weeks ago and they had a list of people and why they were hung.One 20 year old girl copped it for setting fire to a haystack.
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Thanks - I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way.
Shades of the Victorian love of funerals and ceremony methinks. ;)
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I know what you mean but ........... a small injury and surviving several days, then the surgeon bores a hole in her skull from which she develops an abscess which kills her. Seems to me the surgeon/doctor were in cahoots and maybe short of a body or two to practise on! :P
Poor young lad suffered a horrendous death so a couple of quacks with sadistic tendencies could practise medicine, there were lots of ways of "body snatching" and doctors were in the thick of illegality of it.
I made a solemn promise to my gran that when she died I would collect her ashes (cremated 1976) and her late husband's (cremated 1930) and scatter them where their first cottage had stood. I did, but not till my mum was very very ill and I had authority to do so in 2001. So it was something I had to do because of a familial promise made.