Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife

12 Pages·2017·0.25 MB·English

Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal
Corpse and its Afterlife
Series Editors
Owen Davies
School of Humanities
University of Hertfordshire
Hatfield, UK
Elizabeth T. Hurren
School of Historical Studies
University of Leicester
Leicester, UK
Sarah Tarlow
History and Archaeology
University of Leicester
Leicester, UK
Aim of the Series:
This limited, finite series is based on the substantive outputs from a
major, multi-disciplinary research project funded by the Wellcome Trust,
investigating the meanings, treatment, and uses of the criminal corpse
in Britain. It is a vehicle for methodological and substantive advances in
approaches to the wider history of the body. Focussing on the period
between the late seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries as a cru-
cial period in the formation and transformation of beliefs about the body,
the series explores how the criminal body had a prominent presence in
popular culture as well as science, civic life and medico-legal activity. It is
historically significant as the site of overlapping and sometimes contradic-
tory understandings between scientific anatomy, criminal justice, popular
medicine, and social geography.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14694
Shane McCorristine
Editor
Interdisciplinary
Perspectives on
Mortality and its
Timings
When is Death?
Editor
Shane McCorristine
Independent Researcher
Cambridge, UK
Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife
ISBN 978-1-137-58327-7 ISBN 978-1-137-58328-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58328-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944547
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017. This book is an open access publication.
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A
cknowledgements
This book emerged from the “Harnessing the Power of the Criminal
Corpse” project at the University of Leicester. Generously funded
and made open access by the Wellcome Trust (Grant number:
095904/Z/11/Z), this project brought together a team of interdisci-
plinary scholars to explore themes relating to crime, punishment, exe-
cution, magic, and the notorious dead. I would like to thank: all the
members of the team for their collegiality and curiosity over several
years working together; our Principal Investigator, Sarah Tarlow, who
co-organised the 2015 conference at Leicester, “When is Death?”‚ that
led to this book; the contributors who shared their wonderful research
with us in this book; and Emily, Carmel‚ and everyone at Palgrave
Macmillan, who were patient and helpful throughout the process.
v
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
Shane McCorristine
When is Death? 1
The Traditional Irish Wake 4
Chapters in This Book 11
Notes 14
2 Being Dead in Shakespearean Tragedy 17
Mary Ann Lund
The Borderlands of Death: Renaissance Tragedy 19
Becoming Dead in Shakespeare 21
Textual Deaths in Hamlet 24
Produce the Bodies: King Lear 27
Notes 30
3 “A Candidate for Immortality”: Martyrdom,
Memory, and the Marquis of Montrose 33
Rachel Bennett
Montrose: Covenanter and Cavalier 35
The Execution of Montrose 36
“An Honourable Reparation” 39
vii
viii CONTENTS
“A Most Convincing Form of Testimony” 40
Conclusion 43
Notes 45
4 Overcoming Death: Conserving the Body in
Nineteenth-Century Belgium 49
Veronique Deblon and Kaat Wils
Conserving the Dead Body: The Preparations of
Frederik Ruysch 51
Death in Nineteenth-Century Belgium 53
Between Life and Death: The Preparations of Adolphe
Burggraeve 55
Embalmment Mania: Jean-Nicholas Gannal’s
Conservation Method 58
The Application of Conserving Procedures 60
Overcoming Death: The Post-Mortem Subject 61
Conclusion 63
Notes 63
5 Premature Burial and the Undertakers 69
Brian Parsons
The Changing Context of Disposal 71
Premature Burial and the Undertakers 75
Notes 82
6 The Death of Nazism? Investigating Hitler’s Remains
and Survival Rumours in Post-War Germany 87
Caroline Sharples
Notes 99
7 Death’s Impossible Date 103
Douglas J. Davies
Introduction 103
Chronological Precision: Cultural Measures of Death 103
Life-Course Narratives 108
Existential Anticipation 113
Conclusion 114
Notes 115
CONTENTS ix
8 The Legal Definition of Death and the Right to Life 119
Elizabeth Wicks
Introduction 119
The Legal Definition of Death 120
Higher-Brain Death: Its Proponents and Problems 122
Death and the Right to Life 124
Life, Death, and Embodied Selves 126
Conclusion 129
Notes 130
9 The Last Moment 133
Jonathan Rée
Notes 142
10 Afterword 145
Thomas W. Laqueur
Notes 152
Further Reading 155
Index 163
e c
ditor And ontributors
About the Editor
Shane McCorristine is an interdisciplinary historian with research
interests in the history of Arctic exploration, the cultural geography
of extinction, and the place of the supernatural in the modern world.
Between 2013 and 2015 he was a Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow on the
“Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse” project at the University
of Leicester. His most recent book is William Corder and the Red Barn
Murder: Journeys of the Criminal Body (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
Contributors
Rachel Bennett University of Warwick, UK
Douglas J. Davies Durham University, UK
Veronique Deblon University of Leuven, Belgium
Thomas W. Laqueur University of California, Berkeley, USA
Mary Ann Lund University of Leicester, UK
Brian Parsons London, UK
xi
xii EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
Jonathan Rée London, UK
Caroline Sharples University of Roehampton, UK
Kaat Wils University of Leuven, Belgium
Elizabeth Wicks University of Leicester, UK