20 Jan Genealogy search- Skin in the Game
Good morning fellow skin-wearers,
Have you ever heard of “Anthropodermic Bibliopegy”? I hadn’t either, but I can assure you it is not a binding option for our beautiful Dancestors Genealogy books!
Skin-bound books may sound like weird artifacts that belong in Evil Dead movies or Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. But from the 1600s to 1800s, these suede-like tomes were less necromancy, more commemorative plate. And converting yourself into human moleskin upon kicking the bucket made for a heartfelt present.
The pre-anesthesia surgery blog “The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice” has a charming overview of the history of “anthropodermic bibliopegy,” or the process of binding books with human skin.
Although this process sounds gruesome to modern readers, this procedure possessed a litany of meanings to prior generations. For example, the Scottish mass murderer William Burke was transformed into his own binding as a ghoulish recycling measure — you can see his tome below — whereas other corpses were transformed into books to observe their passing, not unlike Victorian hair art:
Some people willingly donated their skins for the purpose of binding narratives about their lives after death. James Allen, alias George Walton, was one such person. Allen, a ‘Jamaican mulatto’, was a 19th-century highwayman. One day, he assaulted John A. Fenno on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Fenno bravely resisted the robbery, even sustaining a gunshot wound in the process. He later became instrumental in the apprehension of his attacker. On his deathbed, Allen requested that his skin be used to bind a book about his crimes, and for this to be presented to Fenno as a ‘token of his esteem’.
John Fenno is the ancestor of a Dancestors Genealogy client. See the cool stuff we find when we research your past!
Of course, not all books bound in human flesh were done so for the purpose of honoring the donor’s life. Some were done for pragmatic reasons, as in the case of medical texts which were bound using skin from dissected cadavers. There were also those which were covered in the skins of executed criminals, as we have seen with the pocketbook fastened from a piece of William Burke’s flesh.
If you’re interested here’s another article on a human bound book:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/exm3bk/binding-books-with-human-skin-135
The article below was one I noticed adjoining another article in a newspaper archive.
How about selling your skin? Yes, San Francisco was weird in 1896!
In November we provided you some information on Obituaries, what about your burial decisions, here’s a new one to consider:
A greener way to go. Kansas considers an eco-friendly alternative to burial, cremation
A process that freezes bodies and reduces them to particles is not cremation, the Kansas Attorney General said in a legal opinion.
Read in The Kansas City Star: https://apple.news/AHiAgmBUHTjmp9uyqbzCkig
Now that you’re past the holidays, send me a note and we’ll get going on your families’ 2020 Christmas gift. The most personal of gifts, their story!
Dan Nelson
