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.

Ilkley Moor

Just to quickly share some photos I've taken of Ilkley Moor in the mist. I have a distinct fondness for Ilkley Moor, and it has a personal significance in my life as a common setting for dreams. It began to feature heavily in my dreams at the start of last year, and has been a place I have returned to at points of key change in my life in the past few years. Dream Ilkley moor and the real moor are indistinguishable, they blend together seamlessly and are each as unchartable as the other.



we happened upon this wolf sculpture howling over the edge of Windgate Nick on the way to the Doubler Stones.

Dobrudden

High over Shipley Glen, Dobdrudden hill is the highest point over Baildon moor and therefore stands in clear view of Ilkley moor. The look out over the Yorkshire landscape is beautiful, and one can see why our tribal ancestors chose these high places to bury their dead. Dobrudden is a funereal landscape, dotted with cairns and, as a later addition, medieval bell pits lurk in the long grass with deceivingly deep falls. Next to the wall of the caravan park, propped up uncomfortably against a low wall is a beautifully marked stone:

I often wonder if, like pictish stones, the cups reference a lineage or memorialise families. The way cups are grouped, linked together and circled again reminds me of family trees.

Leeds scheduled monuments project and Mardship Bow

I happened upon a page on the Leeds government website, which is quite hard to navigate to from the front page. It details the ancient scheduled monuments in the area with helpful maps on how to reach them, although some of them are out of date and the maps slightly unhelpful. I have been trying in the past six months to gradually work my way through the whole list, in a quest to deeper understand the landscape in which I have placed myself, and to try and shift my focus from the mundane distractions that are propelled to the forefront of our world view.

One of my dearest friends, Simon Bradley, shares my love of deviation from the set paths of modern living and has written a novel about the domination of the Yorkshire Omnibus Company over time in future, waterlogged Leeds. Simon and me have wandered the non-streets of Leeds and its surrounds and have had many an occasion to feel the narrowing of permitted thoroughways bearing down on us. It is my worry that life no longer revolves around the passing of folklore and mythology as a totem of belonging in whereever you are, but instead a clinical familiarity replaces it all, cold to the idiosyncracies of the land.

The ginnels and snickerways are overgrown now, deemed too dangerous although the tall grass suggests even the dark-hearted steer clear. Entire postcodes of Leeds are ghost-towns of neglect, unfashionable and undeveloped they lack the shopping malls and bus routes which renders them unpalatable to the masses.



I love leeds for its strangeness, the dark corners and impossibly confused architecture. Mary Bateman dragging her flayed skin cloak through the meanwood beck under Timble Bridge. I hope, through the story-telling of my friends and I, that these myths are living on and stay within the collective psyche of the city.

I will try and post up all of my explorations of the scheduled monuments (the grey stone and carving of cocidius are already up!) to this blog in the near future.

The Witches Stone, Meanwood.

The trees drape the stars in love,
Each leaf sighs in longing, lorn but
Together in my eyes, set apart by the heavens.
Bent weeping, the stone turns away.

Whispering water down Meanwood Beck,
Flows through the stagnant heart of the city
Where witches meandered upstream for luck,
My secrets carried by the Aire to be lost, eventually, at sea.

Adel woods carving of Cocidius

Not far from Adel crag, we were, a year or so ago, shown a carving of the celtic god Cocidius. Recently both me and my friend Phil Legard have been searching for the carving to no avail, until today when I was wandering through the woods and noticed I was in a familiar grove.

The carving lay here, the Red One sunk in mottled green rock. The tall beech trees give the clearing a cathedralesque quiet, the air is cool and the deep leaf litter slows your tread to a mindful pace. Jack-By-The-Hedge grows near and fills the air with heavy scent.


In the shrine of the war-god I am given courage to continue a difficult path. He is protector of both the hunter and the hunted, the tarot card 9, Adjustment, continually recalled at this spot.

A return visit a week later, darker still and the leaves have started to fall. My mind clear I picture a figure in the trees clad in red, who comes here before battle. What dark days lay ahead I do not know. My heart sways between being as heavy as a stone beneath a stream and being lighter than a feather.