Search results
Apr 8, 2019 · The hangman’s rope also became part of British folk medicine. One story about the luck acquired from a hangman’s rope involved the murderer, Benjamin Ellison. He was executed by the hangman George Mitchell in August 1845.
- Abstract
- Miraculous and Medical
- Untimely Dead and Executed Criminals
- Location, Spectacle and Process
- End of Spectacle and The End of A Tradition
- Funders
- Acknowledgements
The recent digitisation of millions of pages of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British newspapers and periodicals opens up new avenues for tracing popular medical practices that were formerly, and largely, only understood by historians through the lens of printed antiquarian and folklore collections.1 Systematic and painstaking research through...
Across early-modern Europe the corpse was a significant element in the pharmacopeia of the medical profession and the populace. Blood, bones, fat and sweat could be ingested, prepared and smeared in order to cure a variety of ailments from epilepsy to ulcers and rheumatic pains. Often based on classical medical theory, human organic substances were...
So far in this discussion no distinction has been made between the curative power of the natural dead and the untimely dead. All corpses were thought to have the potential to have potency it would seem, as illustrated by the examples mentioned above and the judicial corpse of the murdered. In the latter tradition, which ended as a quasi-official, d...
Transference, life force and, to a lesser extent perhaps, the spiritual arguments, all explain why the freshly executed were sought out and not gibbeted criminals. The gibbet corpse was already in an obvious state of decay, thus rendering transference less potent. Its life force was well and truly extinguished by the time it was creaking in its cag...
In 1828 a newspaper article praised reforms that had taken place at Newgate which had the effect of ‘banishing a most disgusting indecency’—the hanged man's stroke. It related that the former governor Joseph Brown, who appears to have taken up the post in 1817, forbade any but officials to approach the suspended corpse and also ended the practice o...
This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust as part of the ‘Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse’ project (grant number 09590412fi11Z).
Our thanks to fellow project members, Sarah Tarlow, Pete King, Elizabeth Hurren, Richard Ward, Zoe Dyndor, Floris Tomasini, and Shane McCorristine for their thoughts and insights on an early draft. Our thanks in particular to Richard Ward and to Jennifer Evans and also to the anonymous reviewers for their comments on the final draft.
- Owen Davies, Francesca Matteoni
- 2015
The rope was a prominent part of British folk medical and magical tradition, as it was the main hanging country in Western Europe during the nineteenth century. Just as people came to hangings to feel the touch of the hanged man’s hand for swellings, so they also came to obtain a bit of the rope for the cure of ague, epilepsy and other ailments.
- Owen Davies, Francesca Matteoni
- 2017
- 10.1007/978-3-319-59519-1_4
Nov 28, 2018 · The rope was cut a foot above the noose and the body lowered into a coffin. In case the drop didn’t break the neck, two large, strong men were stationed underneath the gallows to grab the man’s legs and jerk downward to ensure a broken neck.
In 1586, Ana de Yuso confessed how she and an acquaintance named Geronima ‘had gone one night to a hanging and the said Geronima had asked a man who went with them to cut her a piece of the rope or a finger from the body and, when he had unsheathed his sword to do so, another man arrived and prevented him.’
- Owen Davies, Francesca Matteoni
- 2017
- 10.1007/978-3-319-59519-1_3
Jan 16, 2007 · The rope, which is of manila hemp of at least 3/4″ and not more than 1 1/4″ in diameter and approximately 30 feet in length, is soaked and then stretched while drying to eliminate any spring,...
People also ask
How did the hangman's rope become a part of folk medicine?
Where should a hangman's rope be used?
Why did a hangman cut a rope?
What did a responsible Hangman do?
Aug 2, 2016 · What is the meaning of the Hangman’s riddle: “‘He who serves me best,’ said he, ‘shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree’”? In 1933, Martin Niemöller, a leader of the Confessing Church, voted for the Nazi Party. By 1938, he was in a concentration camp.
