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Dissecting the Criminal Corpse

Staging Post-Execution Punishment in Early Modern England

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  • Open Access
  • © 2016

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Overview

Authors:
  1. Elizabeth T. Hurren

    1. School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxx
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  2. Introduction

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. The Condemned Body Leaving the Courtroom

      • Elizabeth T. Hurren
      Pages 3-32Open Access
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    3. Becoming Really Dead: Dying by Degrees

      • Elizabeth T. Hurren
      Pages 33-68Open Access
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    4. In Bad Shape: Sensing the Criminal Corpse

      • Elizabeth T. Hurren
      Pages 69-118Open Access
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  4. Back Matter

    Pages 293-326
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Keywords

About this book

Those convicted of homicide were hanged on the public gallows before being dissected under the Murder Act in Georgian England. Yet, from 1752, whether criminals actually died on the hanging tree or in the dissection room remained a medical mystery in early modern society. Dissecting the Criminal Corpse takes issue with the historical cliché of corpses dangling from the hangman’s rope in crime studies. Some convicted murderers did survive execution in early modern England. Establishing medical death in the heart-lungs-brain was a physical enigma. Criminals had large bull-necks, strong willpowers, and hearty survival instincts. Extreme hypothermia often disguised coma in a prisoner hanged in the winter cold. The youngest and fittest were capable of reviving on the dissection table. Many died under the lancet. Capital legislation disguised a complex medical choreography that surgeons staged. They broke the Hippocratic Oath by executing the Dangerous Dead across England from 1752 until 1832. 

This book is open access under a CC-BY license. 

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

    Elizabeth T. Hurren

About the author

Elizabeth T. Hurren is Reader in the Medical Humanities at the University of Leicester, UK, and an expert on the history of the body, medicine, poverty and welfare in Europe from early modern to modern times. She has published two major books since 2007, Protesting about Pauperism: Poverty, Politics and Poor Relief in Late-Victorian England and Dying for Victorian Medicine: English Anatomy and Its Trade in the Dead Poor, c. 1832 to 1929.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Dissecting the Criminal Corpse

  • Book Subtitle: Staging Post-Execution Punishment in Early Modern England

  • Authors: Elizabeth T. Hurren

  • Series Title: Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58249-2

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and the Author(s) 2016

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-58248-5Published: 19 August 2016

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-58249-2Published: 17 August 2016

  • Series ISSN: 2947-6348

  • Series E-ISSN: 2947-6356

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXX, 326

  • Number of Illustrations: 13 b/w illustrations, 22 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, History of Science, Cultural History

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