Threat to museums -

[Gareth Hughes]

Political correctness gone mad / over-sensitive "relative" who could never have known the individual concerned or what?

http://www.eadt.co.uk/content/eadt/news/story.aspx?brand=EADOnline&category=News&tBrand=EADOnline&tCategory=news&itemid=IPED11%20Feb%202007%2022%3A17%3A09%3A820

GRISLY remains including the skin and ear of one of Suffolk's most notorious murderers could be destroyed if a relative's quest to retrieve the items is successful.

In what may prove a landmark decision, a special committee could be set up by St Edmundsbury Borough Council to decide whether the remains of William Corder should be handed over to one of his descendants.

Corder, of Polstead, near Sudbury, was hanged in Bury St Edmunds in 1828 after being found guilty of murdering his lover Maria Martin in what became known as the Murder in the Red Barn.

She had been shot and repeatedly stabbed before being buried in a shallow grave in a barn.

Following his execution, a death mask of Corder was made and his skin was tanned and used to bind an account of the murder, which captured the public's imagination at the time and quickly passed into Suffolk folklore.

For years now, author Linda Nessworthy, whose grandmother was related to William Corder, has sought to retrieve her ancestor's remains from their current home in Moyses Hall Museum in Bury.

If she is successful, Ms Nessworthy plans to destroy the historic artefacts.

 

[Nemesis]

I know of course the grisly tale, made more famous by being performed as a melodrama... but as for the skin being used to bind a book... hmmm.

Sort of related but not quite as grisly - I found out this week where the pharase 'Sweet FA' comes from.

Or indeed Sweet Fanny Adams, who was an 1867 (Alton Hampshire) murder victim whose body was chopped up in tiny pieces. Her killer, one Frederick Baker, was hanged in Winchester Gaol on Christmas Eve.

However, the early attempts at an international meat trade, before the voyage of the SS Strathleven in 1880 landed its frozen cargo in London to be sold at Smithfield, was tinned meat. The public did not like it. Which is another piece of research altogether. It wasn't good stuff by all accounts. However, the Navy decided canning was the way ahead to feed our salty tars and set up a factory at the Victualling Yards in Deptford.

Those who had to eat it called it 'Sweet Fanny Adams'.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

More gruesome (some of it very gruesome) lunchtime reading here:

for Fanny Adams-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Adams

http://www.hants.gov.uk/museum/curtis/fannyadams/index.html

for the Red Barn Murder-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barn_murderer

http://www.stedmundsbury.gov.uk/sebc/visit/redbarn-intro.cfm

Are we more, or less, ghoulish about this sort of thing today?

 

[Nemesis]

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=11421226


Aaahhhh.

 

[Nemesis]

Also ...

http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/search/details.aspx?pid=2&id=277037


Maria Marten's Cottage?

 

[Matey Plumber]

That web site doesn't even acknowledge the large cemetery where my Dad is buried although it does find two smaller ones elsewhere in England .....

 

[Nemesis]

Well - it's up to you to submit it then...


http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=whois

 

[plumbers mate]

Life's too short.