Newes from the Dead

I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Prof. Jane Taylor at the Thackray Medical Museum last Thursday, on the creative processes which led to the creation of her play, After Cardenio, which drew its initial inspiration from the title of s lost Shakespeare play. Taylor's play dramatizes the events surrounding the supposed resurrection of Jane Greene, who was hanged at Oxford in 1650, but, when taken to be prepared for dissection by anatomists, it was discovered she was breathing and she was revived. She was thereafter pardoned for her crime - infanticide - and lived for another 15 years, bearing several children. The events surrounding her attempted execution led to much debate about the nature of resurrection from numerous scholars and surgeons at the time,

 After Cardenio uses puppetry as a means to explore the sense of disconnection between the physical and the metaphysical - how we apply definite boundaries to the notion of 'brain death' as a legal means to draw a line where none can physically be drawn. Prof. Taylor has also written a novel about the first heart transplant in the 1960s, which took place in her home land of South Africa, which necessitated the legal definition of brain death to be established so that heart donors could be found. The puppet in the play represents Jane Greene, as does the visible puppeteer and the female actress who voices her. 

We were shown video excerpts from the play, as well as experiencing a short theatrical interval by the Puppet Parliament, a local group using the puppet from the play. 

The lecture being held at the Thackray struck a chord with me: I have long felt the continued display of Mary Bateman's remains at the museum was a continuation of an outmoded form of posthumous punishment and the idea of a resurrection on the dissection table was highly symbolic to her story, being as her 'life' as anatomical model began at that point. I wondered if Prof. Taylor was aware of this synchronicity and planned to ask her at the event, which I did, but prior to the lecture I checked in the gallery where Mary was displayed and she had disappeared. 

Some discussion with Prof. Taylor and the Thackray curators provided us with some information. Mary had been removed from display at the end of July, and Leeds University will be conducting research on her before they decide whether to display her again. That evening I read this post by Marisol Solchaga, whose work placement at the Thackray whilst undertaking an MA in museum studies led to the discrepancies in the manner of Mary's remains being displayed being investigated and ultimately her remains being removed from display. I had flagged up the fact that her display was at odds with the current guidelines for museum displays of human remains to the Thackray for several years now, so it is a great relief to see something finally being done to remedy the issue.

 It is interesting to note that a male relative of Mary came forward to voice their unease at her treatment, I would very much like to get in touch with that person to discuss the best possible outcome for her remains. Leeds university, I am told, has a good track record with the proper treatment of sensitive materials, I hope to discuss the matter with them shortly. The physical afterlife of Mary has perhaps gone on too long. 

It was  a poignant moment for me from Prof. Taylor's discussion of the play that she described a newborn infant as a thing 'of cloth and bone', who she supposes is a blank canvas for us to gaze upon and imprint with our own ideals. The empty vessel of her description is a contradiction of my own experiences with a newborn, whose wants and desires are complex and insistent from the moment of birth, and even before. Birth is as much a liminal area as death, the moment we consider life to start and end is continually being reconsidered and re imagined - we now read about the chimeric cells of lost fetuses and siblings being mingled with those of future babies, and becoming part of the mother's genetic material too. The pathetic figure of the dead infant from the play is absent but for small gestures from the actress and puppet, wrapping two brass tankards in a blanket and cradling it, which the puppet, a more worldly creature, cannot pretend is it's child and throws the bundle across the room. The cloth and bone of Prof. Taylor's description reminded me of the creature from Eraserhead, dehumanizing the tiny infant as a means to cope with it's precarious mortality. 

The innocence of Jane in her child's death is ambiguous, the precarious position that women held in 17th century England demanded they declare a pregnancy or be accused of concealing it and therefore endangering the baby. Stillbirth therefore could be considered murder, as it was in Jane's case until her 'resurrection by god' absolved her of guilt. 

After Cardenio is sadly not currently being performed, however there is a lecture by Prof. Taylor available online, and her talk at the Thackray was both fascinating and inspiring so I highly recommend watching this in the meantime, while hoping the play may be performed again in the near future. 

GT/BQ 2013 - Jane Taylor - After After Cardenio - 09 May 2013 from GIPCA@UCT on Vimeo.

Mary Bateman's Skin

I located an article yesterday in an old issue of Country Life magazine relating to the remains of Mary Bateman, who, frequent readers may recall, was flayed after her body was displayed at the Leeds Medical School. I thought I would transcribe the article as, although it mostly repeats the well-known aspects of her life, it has some interesting facts I was previously unaware of including some details relating to the use of her skin to make various macabre trinkets.

MURDERERS' LEATHER By EDWARD ELMHIRST September 9th 1954

The last witch in Yorkshire, Mary Harker, who later became Mary Bateman, was born near Thirsk in 1768. According to the later accounts of her life, printed, wisely, after the events that had made her notorious, she soon gave evidence of a low cunning. She had what was then considered a good education for the daughter of an agricultural labourer, and went to school until she was 13; here she learnt to read and write, accomplishments she was later to use remorselessly against her more ignorant acquaintances. After a few years as a servant in Thirsk, she got employment making dresses in a shop in York, but she had to leave this post after her mistress had been robbed. She then moved to the new industrial Leeds and there set up as a rather inferior mantua-maker among the swarming factory workers.

When her business began to fail, she was happy to discover that she could supplement her income by telling fortunes. In 1792 she found another source of livelihood by marrying a wheelwright called John Bateman, a man both unlucky and unobservant. Next year a lodger lost two guineas, which were later found in the possession of Mary Bateman. No prosecution followed; "there can be little doubt," it was uncharitably recorded, "that the young man who she robbed made her infamy the price of his clemency." Her simple husband got a message calling him to his father's deathbed; but when he got there he was surprised and delighted to discover that the old man had never been healthier. When he got back to Leeds he was surprised again; Mary had stripped their house and sold everything that was movable.

In spite of this rather unsatisfactory married life, the Batemans again look up residence in the empty house, which Mary apologetically arranged to have refurnished as inexpensively as possible. This she did by the simple expedient of swindling local tradesmen. A new lodger was found - a bad choice on the part of Mary, who found him so insensitive and implacable that he actually made her refund money that he found her stealing. For this and other reasons the name of Bateman became locally so unpopular that her husband joined the Militia to get away from it all. Mary, not yet so confident enough in her abilities as a solo performer, trailed around the countryside in his wake.

After his demobilisation Mary entered into the second phase of her career. Her dilettante period of crime was over by 1798. For the next few years she found employment as a professional agent for a "screwer-down" a difficult art, needing explanation. Her victims were persuaded that some-body or other intended to do them evil, and that this potential evil-doer could only be prevented by "screwing down," which would stop them in their tracks. Mary did not claim to be able to exert this miraculous power of immobilisation herself, but she conceived of two phantom familiars, not like the two improbable little animals called Pye-wacket and Grizzel Greediguts, which had featured two centuries before in the witch-craft trials of Matthew Hopkins, but weighty and responsible ladies with respectable names. First was a Mrs. Moore, whose mere mouth-piece Mary claimed to be. Mrs. Moore was conjured up about 1799, and a man was enabled to have his creditors screwed-down by giving Mary money for the mythical Mrs. Moore . Mrs. Moore was also much employed as a screwer-down of husbands whose affections seemed liable to wander, and it was while acting for Mrs. Moore that Mary also started business as a part-time abortionist.

To be appreciated as an unofficial witch, Mary needed some widely recognised miracle. In Black Dog Yard in Leeds she announced that one of her hens had laid a phenomenal egg on which were clearly to be read the words CRIST IS COMING. The prophetic hen and its egg were then exhibited to anyone who cared to pay for the privilege. The mis-spelt and misbegotten egg achieved considerable local fame and Mary, by this time a skillful if unorthodox obstetrician, was able to stock the hen with other no less miraculous eggs for laying in the presence of witnesses. When the hen grew tired or resentful, it was sold to a neighbour who, finding no other mysterious messages vouchsafed, ate it in an unimaginative way.

Meanwhile Mrs. Moore, whose screwing-down had not been uniformly successful, gave place in 1803, without a protest, or perhaps with a simple metamorphosis, to the equally imaginary Miss Blythe, who could also rule destinies if suitably furnished with money. Two comparatively wealthy sisters were advised by Mary that their own futures and that of their business, a drapery, could be ensured by acting on the instructions of Miss Blythe. Miss Blythe sent a potion by the hands of Mary, which quickly eliminated one of the women. Another dose was needed for a curious mamma, and finally the other sister was poisoned a few days later.

Mary, though suspected, said that the plague had killed them all. Miss Blythe did not feature at the inquest, and, by the time Mary had been through the account-books, the dissolved drapery business could not pay its creditors more than eightpence to the pound.

This failure of the phantom Miss Blythe in no way made Mary Bateman desert her. After several minor jobs, Mary and Miss Blythe got together for the last time.

Rebecca Perrigo, living in Leeds, was much troubled with intestinal discomfort. Mary diagnosed this, not as indigestion, but as the effect of a curse which only Miss Blythe could counter. Mrs. Perrigo and her husband were convinced: thereafter this fatuous couple blindly obeyed letters of instruction handed to them by Mary, and alleged to be written in the hand of Miss Blythe herself.

In the following months a vast amount of goods and not a little money were extorted from the Perrigos. When they began to get restive, Miss Blythe advised them to eat some honey to which Mary would have added a mystic powder. This powder proved to be nothing more esoteric than corrosive sublimate, which killed Mrs. Perrigo very promptly and made her husband extremely ill. Their medical advisor a surgeon called Thomas Chorley, suspected poison, and very soon Mary Bateman was on trial for her life. Since she had a collection of arsenic pills in her house and was even carrying with her, at the time of her arrest, a bottle containing an unwholesome mixture of rum, oatmeal and arsenic, she made but a poor defence from the dock.

She was hanged at York, in company with another poisoner, on march 20, 1809. Her body was taken to the General Infirmary at Leeds where it was put on view at the charge of threepence a visitor, and no fewer than 2,000 people came to gape. It was afterwards dissected - this had been part of the sentence - and the greater part of her skin seems to have been tanned. Her skeleton, without the mandible but with an additional pair of ribs, remains in the Anatomy Department at Leeds Medical School.

Mr. Chorley, who had looked after the Perrigos and had analysed the brew that Mary carried with her, was also one of the dissectors at the Infirmary, and doubtless reserved various titbits for his friends. Among these was William Elmhirst, an eminently dull and upright Deputy Lieutenant for the West Riding. It seems improbable that so worthy a man would relish a portion of a murderess, but a folding cup made of Mary's skin certainly belonged to his son Robert, who possessed a certain appropriately sardonic humour. Other portions of Mary's skin were in existence, at least until the beginning of this century. Volumes bound in her leather were then in the library at Marlborough House; others were once in Methley Hall in Yorkshire; but recent search at both places has not discovered them.

Though Mary Bateman (executed 1809) seems to have been one of the earliest murderers to have her skin preserved, she was certainly not the last. Body-snatcher Burke (executed Edinburgh 1829) provided leather for a pocket-book, and Steptoe (Reading, c. 1810) furnished the raw material for a pair of gloves. Charles Smith (Newcastle, 1817) and William Corder (Bury st. 1817), the latter of whom achieved inexplicable notoriety for the very hum-drum murder at the Red Barn, both provided leather that was unfeelingly used to bind accounts of their respective trials. Johnson (Norwich, c. 1816) went to bind his namesake's great dictionary, and Kazia Westcomb (exeter, c. 1815) was used to cover Milton's Paradise Lost. Another edition of Milton was bound in Devon in the skin of George Cudmore (Exeter, 1830). Cudmore seems to have been one of the last to be tanned. In 1831 the practice was described as one that "cannot be too much reprobated: it engenders brutality, and has a tendency to make the most serious things objects of heartless sport or utter indifference."

Early in December 1945, a ripple of horror went round the civilised world at the revelations from the court-room at Nuremberg. There were there exhibited pieces of skin from a lampshade made of human parchment, and the judges heard authenticated tales of more household ornaments found in use in Buchenwald concentration camp, and of others made for the amiable wife of SS Standartenführer Koch.

To us in these islands, securely blanketed in our century of respectability, such happenings were horrible and incomprehensible. Yet in many libraries and elsewhere in our houses there remain similar relics, sometimes unrecognised, sometimes unrecognisable, to remind us that our great grandfathers were in no position to cast the first stone. They chose, it is true, the skins of the prosecuted guilty rather than those of the persecuted innocent, but there would seem to be little variation in the aesthetic standards involved.

~

It appears from this article that Edward Elmhirst had access to the skin cup when he wrote the article as it has a photo accompanying it which I haven't seen elsewhere and his name reveals that he was related to the family who originally owned it. I intend to discover if the family still owns the cup, if anyone has any information relating to the next of kin of Dr Edward Mars Elmhirst (who unfortunately died a few years after this article was printed) I would love to talk to them. It appears that Elmhirsts still own farm land  near their ancestral seat, Houndhill.  

203 Years

Today, on the 203rd anniversary of Mary Bateman's execution, Briony Yorke and I visited the Thackray Museum to play a song to Mary. The Yorkshire Witch, who is macabre entertainment for the visitors to the museum, received a short recital, on cello and voice of a Yorkshire dialect song.

Two days after Mothering Sunday, on the spring equinox, we play a dirge to the sad remains of a women who left behind four children to die on the gallows. Nothing is sacred - every emotion, every memory has a price. No forgiveness or peace for those who, through their misery, can bring financial gain.

Songs for the Dead

I'm very pleased to be working on a project (which is currently mostly a secret) with an old friend who is also billed as Aghartha for the Bang the Bore event mentioned in an earlier post. More on this soon!

 Tonight I went and sat by Meanwood Beck and listened for the low voices you sometimes hear in the rushing water, the moon was bright orange, low in the sky and dissolving from the top.

The melting snow had given the water a more oppressive sound though, Meanwood beck was in too much of a hurry to talk today. 

~

I'll be performing my first Morris dance out at the Field of Wakes on the last weekend of February for the Rhubarb Festival, one of the dances will be a NW Morris version (with stomping and whooping!) of Mona's Delight, a lovely dance collected from the Isle of Man:

I'll be the one messing up the last figure. 

Bateman Skin Book

from The Bookworm, an illustrated treasury of old time literature - 1891

Mary Bateman Artwork

I've been neglecting Mary of late, something I plan to make amends for. In the meantime I happened upon a portrait of the Yorkshire Witch herself by James Woodford, one of series of paintings relating to immortalised remains.

You can check out more of Woody's beautiful artwork here at his website. 

Mary Bateman - Kirk White Poem

In addition, a poem written by Kirk White quoted at the time of Mary's death:

Sleep baby mine, enkerchieft on my bosom,

Thy cries pierce again my bleeding breast;

Sleep, baby, mine, not long thou'lt have a mother,

To lull thee fondly in her arms to rest.

Baby, why dost thy keep this sad complaining?

Long from mine eyes have kindly slumbers fled;

Hush, hush, my babe! The night is quickly waning,

And I would fain compose my aching head.

Poor wayward wretch; and who will heed thy weeping,

When soon an outcast in the world thou'lt be?

Who then will soothe thee when thy mother's sleeping

In her low grave of shame and infamy?

Sleep, baby, mine; tomorrow I must leave thee

And I would snatch and interval of rest;

Sleep these last moments, 'ere the laws bereave thee,

For never more thou'lt press a mother's breast

Mary Bateman in Northern Earth

Its been a tad quiet on the Mary Bateman front of late but I did write a small letter for Nothern Earth about my stance on the issue. This is published in NE 126, which looks to be an interesting issue!

Maria Marten most beautiful and fair. I promised I would marry her upon a certain day; Instead of that I was resolved to take her life away.

Whilst doing some research on Mary Bateman, I came across a similar case of reburial following the display of an executed criminal's remains. William Corder, who commited the infamous Red Barn murder which was documented in an extremely popular ballad, Maria Marten (Shirley Collins rendition is a favourite of mine...)

"She conceded that Corder, who confessed to the murder the night before he was hanged, was a villain.

"But at the end of the day he was a human being and had a right to be laid to rest," she said"

Partly this case makes me think I will be unsucessful in my attempts to get her buried, and partly it gives me hope that the issue is taken seriously enough to warrant an attempt. Mary Bateman's tongue, preserved and kept in the Bolling Hall museum, was destroyed in 1959 it was confirmed to me today by their social history advisor. If her tongue is considered too morbid an item to retain, her bones must surely be too. The indignity of her body being used as a publicity device for 'ghost hunts' and halloween parties seems to degrade the enormity of a mother's execution, an act which as a society we are supposed to have progressed beyond the need for.

Letter to Thackray - Mary Bateman

I wrote an email to the Thackray detailing my issues with the display of Mary Bateman's remains. It went as follows:



"I am writing in the regards to your current display of the remains of Mary Bateman, who you advertise as 'The Yorkshire Witch'. I find the display of an executed woman's remains, especially one who you identify as a witch, ill-fitting with the ethos of a progressive and scientific educational establishment. The incomplete skeleton seems to me to have little educational value beyond morbid shock value, genuine human skeletons that have been legitimately donated are not hard to come by and would be a far greater benefit to children and adults visiting the museum. The continued ill-treatment of her remains for the past 202 years seems to far exceed the nature of her crimes, however serious. This woman paid the ultimate price for her misdeeds during her life, she died pitifully and publicly. To continue to punish her now by displaying her in a disrespectful manner while other women and men who were also executed at the time were eventually buried and laid to rest begs the question, why is Mary Bateman still displayed? To me it seems obvious that her status as a witch seems to give cause to sensationalise her death and to monopolise on the barbaric treatment of her corpse post-mortem. I'm sure her body brings in good revenue for the museum, but I think the neglect of the moral issues of displaying a corpse for little other reason than her connection to a set of folk-beliefs is somewhat archaic. This woman is a part of our cultural heritage, she is a child of the city who's genetic material is still living, walking and breathing around us. From a scientific point of view, I think a display surrounding the continuing nature of DNA would be a far greater benefit, and of a far less morbid nature.

I think a burial for Mary Bateman is 202 years late, and the costs should be met by Leeds University, or whoever has profited the most from the display of her bones. However, I am quite willing to fund raise to help towards the costs."

I have no idea how much interest this small campaign has beyond myself and a few associates who have discussed it with me, but if anyone else wishes to write to them, you can email the museum at info@thackraymuseum.org

Mary Bateman

Image by Simon Bradley

The Yorkshire Witch is on display at the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds. Her incomplete skeleton, held together by sinew and flakes of mummified flesh seems to me to serve little purpose as an educational tool for children, more a spectacle of the kind supposedly abandoned along with side show 'freaks' and public hangings. A woman, who was nursing a baby at her breast in the hours before her execution at York, who has paid a far greater price than just death; not only was her corpse pickled, displayed, flayed and sold as strips for charms but now she is dealt further indignity as a permanent exhibit, an item of morbid curiosity.

I feel haunted by viewing her remains, I see little benefit in viewing them, more so an uncomfortable understanding that her status as 'cunning woman' alone resulted in the series of post-mortem assaults. She lived on Timble Bridge, near Leed's Parish Church, under which flowed the beck I see daily. I think of her every time I see the beck, and have traversed through the underground culverts to view the now-subterranean bridge, where once she too must have daily seen the water pass by.

I wish to free the Yorkshire Witch. I hope that within the next two weeks I can implore Leeds University, who own her remains, to give Mary Bateman's bones a burial. The 202nd anniversary of her execution falls on Sunday 20th of March 2011, the vernal equinox. I will write a letter, and post up a petition in the next few days to send to both the museum and the university.