Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. The Criminal Corpse in History

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Introduction

      • Sarah Tarlow, Emma Battell Lowman

      Pages 3-27Open Access

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   3. The Power of the Criminal Corpse in the Medieval World

      • Sarah Tarlow, Emma Battell Lowman

      Pages 29-56Open Access

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   4. How Was the Power of the Criminal Corpse Harnessed in Early Modern England?

      • Sarah Tarlow, Emma Battell Lowman

      Pages 57-83Open Access

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3. The World of the Murder Act

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 85-85

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   2. Murder and the Law, 1752–1832

      • Sarah Tarlow, Emma Battell Lowman

      Pages 87-114Open Access

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   3. Anatomisation and Dissection

      • Sarah Tarlow, Emma Battell Lowman

      Pages 115-150Open Access

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   4. Hanging in Chains

      • Sarah Tarlow, Emma Battell Lowman

      Pages 151-190Open Access

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4. The Legacy of the Criminal Corpse

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 191-191

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   2. Seeking the Physical Remains of the Criminal Corpse

      • Sarah Tarlow, Emma Battell Lowman

      Pages 193-212Open Access

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   3. Folk Beliefs and Popular Tales

      • Sarah Tarlow, Emma Battell Lowman

      Pages 213-237Open Access

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   4. Conclusions: Ethics, Bullet Points and Other Ways of Telling

      • Sarah Tarlow, Emma Battell Lowman

      Pages 239-268Open Access

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5. Back Matter

   Pages 269-273

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This open access book is the culmination of many years of research on what happened to the bodies of executed criminals in the past. Focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it looks at the consequences of the 1752 Murder Act. These criminal bodies had a crucial role in the history of medicine, and the history of crime, and great symbolic resonance in literature and popular culture. Starting with a consideration of the criminal corpse in the medieval and early modern periods, chapters go on to review the histories of criminal justice, of medical history and of gibbeting under the Murder Act, and ends with some discussion of the afterlives of the corpse, in literature, folklore and in contemporary medical ethics. Using sophisticated insights from cultural history, archaeology, literature, philosophy and ethics as well as medical and crime history, this book is a uniquely interdisciplinary take on a fascinating historical phenomenon.

• Open Access
• medical humanities
• capital punishment
• criminal execution
• history of crime
• histrorical sociology

• School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

  Sarah Tarlow

• School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire, Hertford, United Kingdom

  Emma Battell Lowman

Sarah Tarlow is Professor of Historical Archaeology at the University of Leicester, UK. She has published extensively on the archaeology of death and burial, archaeological ethics, and the post-medieval archaeology of the British isles. She was PI on ‘Harnesssing the Power of the Criminal Corpse’, the research project on which this book is based.

Emma Battell Lowman is Lecturer in the History of the Americas at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, with research interests in historical narrative, connections between bodies and memory, and the use of power to shape social identity. She holds postgraduate degrees from the University of Victoria, Canada, and the University of Warwick.

Policies and ethics