The Macabre of History Never Heard Before 19th Century: Books Binding in Human Skin
For the generation Z, it may seem very awful but it was the usual practice in the 16th century
Do you have any book bound in human skin and are familiar with this kind of macabre act that clutches to the soul?
Well then, is it a lie or trick? What actually have had happened that driven people to such an act of brutality?
Then why does there came the need for an unusual binding with human skin when there was the use of leather.
The questions identified many secrets.
We read enough books throughout our lives or maybe not. Also, there are billions of books in the world library. people were not familiar with such unusual binding until it was revealed in the 19th century. Let’s talk about human skin books binding called Bibliopegy.
Where It Was Found First?
The evidence was recently found at Harward University. The grim tale of humanity’s apocalypse is very unusual. The scientists recently found that the book Des Destinees de l’Ame (Destinies of the Soul) is bound in the human skin of an unclaimed female mental patient who died of a natural cause.
It is said that writer Arsene Houssaye had given the book to his friend Dr, Ludovis Bouland in the mid-1880s who judged the unusual binding. The subject Bibliopegy was of interest in the 19th century, but the practice was very before in the 16th century.
First Book Bound with Human Skin:
Bristol Record Office carried the first existing book among a few of the surviving that is made of the first man 18 years old John Horward hanged at Bristol Gaol in charge of murdering a girl, Eliza Balsum.
The book contains the documents of his crime in 1821. Horwood became infatuated with Balsum and threatened to kill her, threw stone at her while she was going to fetch water from the well.
According to the documents in the book, he took up a large stone and hurled her unto which broke her skull into pieces.
Following his trial and execution, Horwood’ corpse was dichotomized by surgeon Richard Smith in a public lecture at the Briston Royal Infirmary. Smith then decides to have part of his skin and bind the book with his actual account. The book was embossed with a skull and crossbones in words” words “Cutis Vera Johannis Horwood”, “the actual skin of John Horwood”, added in golden letters.
T he book now is present in Bristol’s M Shed Museum, one of the most prevalent in the records. It’s preserved the same as any other leather-bound book, in suitable atmospheric conditions. It feels very macabre to bind a book in human skin and it is quite hard to comprehend why it happened. It seems quite vengeful.
The Second Book with Human Skin:
Another book recorded with human skin binding with a sinister is made from the skin of notorious murderer William Burke. He sold the dead bodies to a private Edinburgh anatomy school run by Robert Knox. Instead, he dug out the graves for dead bodies, along with his partners William Hare murdered people. They collaboratively sold some 15 bodies before they were discovered and caught.
A brown pocket with no pages that could have been used for personal documents and notes is stamped with the execution date of Burke in 1829. However, how the skin was ended up in a pocketbook is still a mystery and kept in the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh’s Museum.
There was a public dispute and then it was reported part of the skin was missing after which it was found to be sold in Edinburgh, after which it has become the tradition in which executed criminals’ s skin was considered to be the type of talisman.
Besides Burke other criminals who gave their skins are part of books include murderer Devon George Cudmore, hanged in charge of poisoning his wife, and William Corder, convicted for murdering Maria Marten in a crime known as the Red Barn Murder in Suffolk 1827.
It Was Somewhat Normal to Bind Books in Human Skin:
Oh! it has an official name as Anthropodermic bibliopegy.
If you think about the most horrible thing, look at the early pictures and practice of what is known among historians as bibliopegy, binding books in human skin.
Now, If I find it, the idea appears ridiculous, but for the people of the 17th and 19th centuries would not have been.
There is a deep question. Many museums have collections of body parts, and some of them have been reverted to their belonging countries — like the mummified Maori heads, to New Zealand, the bones and other body parts to Australia and America. Then why are these books bound in human skin are a curious case of study?
Maybe because this is something different. And when men dead, it’s tough to have their skin. Bones and other body parts remain after death, but skin vanishes or dries up. And also, it seems something most brutal in its real term.
