The Golden and Ghoulish Age of the Gibbet in Britain.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (163 pages)
- Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and Its Afterlife Series .
- Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and Its Afterlife Series .
Intro -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Maps -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1 Some Further Terror and Peculiar Mark of Infamy -- Abstract -- Tom Otter -- Post-mortem Punishment -- Hanging in Chains Before the Murder Act -- The Murder Act -- Other Post-mortem Punishments: From Customary Sanction to the Full Force of the Law -- Crimes Other Than Murder: Treason -- Crimes Other Than Murder: Suicide -- Thinking About Gibbets: The Historiography of Hanging in Chains -- Who Was Hung in Chains? -- Smugglers -- Interpreting the Murder Act: Dissection or Hanging in Chains? -- The Rise and Fall of the Gibbet -- Some Common Misconceptions -- Myth 1: Gibbeting Is the Same as Execution by Hanging -- Myth 2: Gibbeting Involves Leaving People to Die in an Iron Cage -- Myth 3: There Were Traditional Gibbeting Sites -- Myth 4: Gibbets Were Occupied by a Series of Bodies -- Chapter 2 How to Hang in Chains: How, Where and When Eighteenth-Century Sheriffs Organised a Gibbeting -- Abstract -- The Process -- From the Scaffold to the Gibbet -- Locating a Gibbet: The Macro-Geography of Gibbeting -- The Micro-Geography of Gibbeting -- Hanging at the Scene of Crime -- Gibbets in the Landscape -- Out of the Ordinary -- Exception 1: London -- Exception 2: The Admiralty Courts and Maritime Crimes -- Liminality: The Symbolic Location of Gibbets -- Technology of the Gibbet -- Extant Gibbets -- The Necessary Functions of a Gibbet -- Gibbet Technology and the Absence of Tradition -- The 'Carnival' of the Gibbet -- The Curative Power of the Gibbeted Man -- Chapter 3 The Afterlife of the Gibbet -- Abstract -- How Long Did the Gibbet Remain? -- When and Why Did a Gibbet Come Down? -- Theft of Bodies from Gibbets -- Weather -- Enclosure and Convenience -- Gibbet Lore -- The Material Afterlives of the Gibbet -- Bodies and Body Parts: Eugene Aram. Phrenology at the 1838 British Association Meeting -- Chapter 4 Conclusions: Why Gibbet Anyone? -- Abstract -- The Costs of Gibbeting -- The Murder Act: An Anachronism? -- The Disappearance of the Body -- Hanging in Chains as Deterrent, Retribution or Social Revenge -- The Body in Chains -- Criminal Tales and Narrative Persons -- Conclusions: Hanging in Chains -- The Power of Hanging in Chains -- Appendix 1: All Cases of Hanging in Chains -- Appendix 2: Maps, 1752-1834 -- Concept Index -- Historical Publications Index -- Name Index -- Place Index.