Overview
- Provides the first extensive examination of 'gibbetting', or ‘hanging in chains’ since the nineteenth century
- Explores the processes, technologies and macro-geographies involved in gibbeting
- Assesses what the practice tells us about attitudes to bodies, the dead, and to criminals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife (PHSCCA)
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Table of contents (4 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book is the first academic study of the post-mortem practice of gibbeting (‘hanging in chains’), since the nineteenth century. Gibbeting involved placing the executed body of a malefactor in an iron cage and suspending it from a tall post. A body might remain in the gibbet for many decades, while it gradually fell to pieces. Hanging in chains was a very different sort of post-mortem punishment from anatomical dissection, although the two were equal alternatives in the eyes of the law. Where dissection obliterated and de-individualised the body, hanging in chains made it monumental and rooted it in the landscape, adding to personal notoriety. Focusing particularly on the period 1752-1832, this book provides a summary of the historical evidence, the factual history of gibbetting which explores the locations of gibbets, the material technologies involved in hanging in chains, and the actual process from erection to eventual collapse. It also considers the meanings, effects and legacy of this gruesome practice.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Sarah Tarlow is Professor of Historical Archaeology at the University of Leicester, UK. Before coming to Leicester in 2000 she taught at the University of Wales Lampeter, UK, and has published extensively on the archaeology of death and burial, archaeological theory and on post-medieval archaeology.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Golden and Ghoulish Age of the Gibbet in Britain
Authors: Sarah Tarlow
Series Title: Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60089-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-60088-2Published: 29 December 2015
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-95879-5Published: 11 December 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-60089-9Published: 29 December 2015
Series ISSN: 2947-6348
Series E-ISSN: 2947-6356
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 155
Number of Illustrations: 24 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, Imperialism and Colonialism, Cultural History, History of Science, Crime and Society