From the eighteenth century through to the abolition of public executions in England in 1868, the touch of a freshly hanged man's hand was sought after to cure a variety of swellings, wens in particular. While the healing properties of corpse hands in general were acknowledged and experimented with in early modern medicine, the gallows cure achieved prominence during the second half of the eighteenth century. What was it about the hanged man's hand (and it always was a male appendage) that gave it such potency? While frequently denounced as a disgusting ‘superstition’ in the press, this popular medical practice was inadvertently legitimised and institutionalised by the authorities through changes in execution procedure.
This chapter examines historic views on the potency, power and agency of the living criminal body in the early modern and modern periods as a way of understanding the potency of the criminal corpse. The main section of the chapter focuses on the witch as the most powerful of living criminal bodies. There is discussion on phrenological interpretations of criminality and the work of Cesare Lombroso on the 'born criminal'. The meaning of cruentation, or the ordeal by bleeding corpse, is also explored.
Keywords Witch · Phrenology · Humours · Bleeding corpse LombrosoIn the medieval and early modern period, it was widely thought that God left his imprints on all living things, and it was an aspect of natural magic for humans to try and interpret their meaning to understand better the world He had created. With regard to human bodies, this meant that the lines on the hand, the wrinkles on the forehead, the shape of the nose, the colour of hair, the number of moles and other visible bodily features, signified how God moulded each person and imbued him or her with an individual character, identity and destiny. This art or science of physiognomy drew on concepts from the ancient world that expounded all-encompassing theories regarding the interconnectedness Criminal Bodies
This limited, finite series is based on the substantive outputs from a major, multidisciplinary research project funded by the Wellcome Trust, investigating the meanings, treatment, and uses of the criminal corpse in Britain. It is a vehicle for methodological and substantive advances in approaches to the wider history of the body. Focussing on the period between the late seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries as a crucial period in the formation and transformation of beliefs about the body, the series explores how the criminal body had a prominent presence in popular culture as well as science, civic life and medico-legal activity. It is historically significant as the site of overlapping and sometimes contradictory understandings between scientific anatomy, criminal justice, popular medicine, and social geography. More information about this series at
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