So the fascinating subject of turning people into books without any abracadabra, started in Part 2…Skin for Skin, was somewhat drowned out by urine, weird pseudo-sex, tattoos and…other things. It remains to conclude the story of the Skin Book, if I may call it that. Actually, books bound with human skin, as it pertains to criminals, is somewhat boring. You can, of course, get in legal trouble without committing murder, being executed, and then cut to pieces. I will note that an actual skin book is shown. Enter…
…Anthony Askew, a Doctor of Medicine, and all around decent sort of chap. But what he is most famous for is having the largest book collection held outside of a library. He was a fanatical bibliophile. Story has it that Askew had his favorite book on anatomy bound in human skin…that of the infamous murderess Mary Raiman. But the binder didn’t know, at the time the book was bound, that the material was human skin. When he learned of it, he had Askew prosecuted.
It’s a strange thing, to be sure, that it was not only books related to criminals whose skin was used bind books about them. Other books name the skin donor as well. As you’re well aware, there is the case of the most famous book held in the Harvard Law Library…
…Practical Questions about the Laws of Royal Spain, written by Juan Gutierrez, and is currently held in the Harvard Law Library (actual book shown). There is an inscription on the last page…
The binding of this book is all that remains of my dear friend Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King Mbesa gave me the book, it being one of the poor Jonas’s most valuable possessions, together with ample amount of his skin to bind it. Rest in peace.
Back to flaying people alive. There is an African tribal group called the Wavuma, located in current day Zimbabwe. But I’ve not located any information about Mbesa or Jonas Wright. Alas. Certainly, though, August 4, 1632, was a bad day for Jonas Wright…if he was real, that this. It would be strange for a European to be living in that part of Africa in 1632 lugging around an arcane book about Spanish law. Yet this isn’t the only law book that has received a human-skin binding…
…Bibliotheca Politica; or…A Discourse by Way of Dialogue, whether Monarchy be jure divino: Collected out of the Most Approved Authors, both Ancient and Modern (actual book shown). Yes, that is a clunky name. The book is a collection of separate writings on the subject of the nature of kingship…is it established by law, or established by God? The book is held in the Juniata College’s Beeghly Library, a donation from the noted book collector…Abraham Harley Cassel…visible in the image of the note on the right…
This book bound in human skin consists of several tracts bearing dates from 1650-1690. Exhibited by Abraham M Cassel.
Cassel managed to collect over 50,000 books, pamphlets, and documents. If it was written on, he wanted it.
However, this tribal reference leads to a strange book of Spanish erotic poetry…
…El Largo Viaje, by Tere Medina-Navascues (actual book shown). Do you like weird books about weird things? How about a little Bibliographic Hocus Pocus? The Slippery Rock University’s Baily Library bought a collection of books from the 1970s, and this book was in the box. It was put on a shelf, and seemed to have remained on the shelf. Years later, library staff began moving books around. Someone picked up this book, and noticed that the following was written on the first page…
“The cover of this book is made from the leather of the human skin,” it reads. “The Aguadilla tribe of the Mayaguez Plateau region preserves the torso epidermal layer of deceased tribal members. While most of the leather is put to utilitarian use by the Aguadillas, some finds its way to commercial trade markets where there is a small but steady demand. This cover is representative of that demand.”
Very cool. I have, however, been unable to verify the historical background provided in the note. Time to meet…
Dr. John Stockton Hough. In some ways, he reminds me of Dr. Anthony Askew, discussed above. Except…on rocket fuel. Hughes was a physician, and an avid bibliophile. He died in 1900, at the age of 56, having been thrown from his carriage by a frightened horse. After he died, his massive collection of medical books went to the University of Pennsylvania and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. And like Askew, he too had a somewhat macabre sense of binding books. He worked at the Philadelphia General Hospital as a resident physician, though his passion was trichinosis. A patient named Mary Lynch died of tuberculosis, but during the autopsy carried out by Hough, her body was found to be riddled with pork roundworms, some of which had formed cysts. Given the fact that she was dead, our dear Dr. Hough decided that her body shouldn’t go to waste…
Hough thought that Mary’s skin would make excellent binding for some of his most prized books. The book shown is Speculations on the Mode and Appearances of Impregnation of the Human Female, by Robert Couper (actual book). Hough had his copy bound in Mary’s skin, and was not shy about it. He included the following note…
…the leather with which this book is bound was tanned from the skin of the thigh of Mary L, affected with trichinosis, who died of Consumption in the Philadelphia Hospital in 1869 (see the American Journal of Sciences, 1869, page 566). The skin was tanned in a chamber pot by J. S-H at the Philadelphia hospital in 1869. The book was bound in Weston in March 1884. Mary L was a widow, and was 28 years old. She died on January 16, 1869.
That’s quite an admission. Although he withheld the name of the binder and the last name of Mary, research has shown that the woman in question is Mary Lynch. I was thrilled and over the sun to find the copy of the book with Dr. Hough’s autograph at the top of the cover page. It’s also strange that the skin was removed from Mary’s body in 1869, but not was used as a binding for the book until 1884.
Hough owned another book on the subject of reproduction…
…Charles Drelincourt’s classic…De Conceptionae Adversaira…Problems with Conception. This book ended up in the College of Physicians. On the flyleaf, Hough states that the book was bound in Trenton, New Jersey, in March 1887. Poor Mary Lynch again? Not this time. Hough says that he used…
“skin from around the wrist of a man who died in the [Philadelphia] Hospital 1869—Tanned by J.S.H. 1869. This bit of leather was never boiled or curried.”
But what of Ludovicus Barles and his book titled The New Discoveries? Dr. Hough had another beloved edition, this time…
…supposedly bound in human skin. And now for everyone’s favorite book, written by the Queen Midwife who delivered countless babies, including all the children of King Henry IV of France…
Bound in Weston by Mr. Jack, June 11, 1884. The leather tanned came from the skin of Mary L. Tanned in Philadelphia in 1869. See further in Couper, Impregnation.
We know that Mary L is Mary Lynch. Her skin was used to bind these three books. He refers to Couper’s book…Impregnation…in the note. Hough is also credited with binding his copy of…
…Catalogue des Sciences Medicales, with skin he took from a man’s back.
But Mary Lynch is not the only woman to fall victim to such a fate who is known by name. Nor was she the only woman to become a medical book. No, indeed. I refer to none other than…
…the princess de Lamballe, Madame du Barry, the lesbian lover of Marie Antoinette. She is known to have faced her execution in a less than noble way than other victims did, with lots of begging, pleading, and the like. Marie was still in prison when Lamballe was executed on September 3, 1792. Deciding to inflict more emotional pain on the queen before her death, the body of Lamballe was decapitated, her head stuck on a pike, and it was then paraded around in full view of Marie. Her body was cut up, and skin was removed from her inner thighs and vaginal region and used to bind books. The titles are not known, but Richard Le Gallienne claimed that he saw one auctioned in Paris. However, there was a rumor that a copy of…
…Dr. Augustin Cabane’s book…La Princesse de Lamballe…the Princess of Lamballe, had been bound in human skin. It isn’t specified that it was Du Barry’s skin that was used, but that seems likely given the references to binding books with her skin. So one is inclined to see this as just another morbid tale. But something interesting was said about the Medical Library at the University of Dublin…
A coincidence? Perhaps. But, if so, it is a remarkable one.
I would include another doctor, who, although he didn’t name the skin donor, he nonetheless used someone’s skin for binding. Like Hough and Askew, he too was a physician and bibliophile…Dr. Ludovic Bouland. And he had a book that he particularly liked…
… On the Destinies of the Soul, by Arsene Houssaye (actual book shown). The image shows a copy of the note Bouland placed in the book…
"This book is bound in human skin parchment on which no ornament has been stamped to preserve its elegance. By looking carefully you easily distinguish the pores of the skin. A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering: I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman. It is interesting to see the different aspects that change this skin has according to the method of preparation to which it is subjected. Compare for example the small volume I have in my library, Sever. Pinaeus de Virginitatis Notis, which is also bound in human skin but tanned with sumac."
Some sources say that the skin used came from the body of an unclaimed deceased female patient, but this is not stated in Bouland’s note. But Bouland also mentions another small book he has in his collection, this one by Severin Pineau…On the Integrity and Corruption of Known Virgins. And Bouland also placed a note in his copy of the book…
This curious little book on virginity, which seemed to me to deserve a binding in keeping with its subject matter, is bound with a piece of woman’s skin that I tanned myself with some sumac.
So Dr. Creepy-Creeps does keep pieces of human skin lying around, and seems rather fond of Sumac. In this case, he tanned the skin himself. Unfortunately, racism rears its ugly head, as it always seems to do. A Mr. Alfred DeSauty, a bibliophile and expert in bookbinding, said something interesting about…
…Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic book…Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book whose importance cannot be overstated…where else could you find Eva and Topsy? Oh, yes…racism and Mr. DeSauty. Actually, the story was told by H.W. Tribolet of R.R. Donnelley and Sons. In 1932, DeSauty gave a speech to anyone who was interested in the subject of bookbinding. Then he brought up…anthropodermic bindings, i.e. binding books with human skin…
…he stated in jest that he would be quite happy to be able to bind a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin in a Negro's skin. His statement was hardly serious, and he soon forgot it. But shortly thereafter a clumsy looking package came to his office with his name on the address label. Inside was a portion of a Negro skin that had been taken from the body of a person who must have died only a few hours previously, for the skin was quite moist and flexible. The unwelcome gift was promptly dispatched to the boiler room. Many months afterwards it was revealed that a mortician' s apprentice was in the audience at the time the original statement was made by DeSauty and, appreciating a good opportunity for his crude joke, sent the portion of the skin in question.
How do we know that he wasn’t serious? Why say it to begin with? And the Mortician’s Apprentice seems to have taken it seriously. It seems to me that this story has been spun in such a way as to get around an outrageously racist comment. And I wonder if the people running around lynching people would have seen a joke here. There is, however, no real proof that a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was bound in human skin. Perhaps the Mortician’s Apprentice was finally busy doing his job.
Now for a truly bizarre, and racist, claim made about the use of human skin. The French poet Stephane Mallare produced a French translation of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem…Le Corbeau…The Crow.
The book is, of course, rare. But one copy of it is particularly rare. It is believed that a collector named J.R. de Brousse made changes to his copy. In particular, he…
…appears to have been a wrestling fan. Meet Max Bambula, also known as Salvador Bambula, or just…Bambula. The story runs that following Bambula’s death in 1930, de Brousse removed the backcover of his copy of Le Corbeau, and had it covered with Bambula’s skin. What makes this particularly interesting is that a man named R. Messimy had bookbinder Rene Kieffer bind a copy of…
… Fete Foraines de Paris, written by Gabriel Mourey, with illustrations by E. Chahine. Rumour has it that the book came with an inlaid piece of human skin tattooed with the image of a wrestler. Yet another book should be noted. JH Rosny’s…
Berenice of Judea. The plot is based on Berenice, daughter of Herod Agrippa, and…
…the Emperor Titus. Skin with a tattoo was used with the following description…a branch of laurels and a flower on its stem form medallions on the second dish.
Two books were identified as having tattooed skin depicting the heads of musketeers tattooed on them…
…La Vie de Caserne, by George Courtline, and…
…Le Neveu de Rameau, by Denis Diderot. Some of Diderot’s writings appears in another skin-book titled…
Philosophical and literary pamphlets, most posthumous or unpublished. This book is a collection of 8 essays written by different authors, and bound together by Jean Baptiste Antoine Suard and Simon-Jerome Bourlet de Vauxcelles in 1796. The catalogue of the library of M.L. Veydt, issued in Brusells in 1879 indicates that the book is bound in human skin. As concerns…
…Sahara et Sahel, Messimy decided to have his copy bound by De Sambleaux-Weckessen, with an inlaid piece of skin depicting a knight in armor. Another source described it differently…
An astonishing hussar of the last Empire sits in profile on a gray horse, he is the real Constantin Guys, who parades on the cover of Sahara and Sahel. The book was bound by Sambland and Welkesser. On the back, one finds florets, stars, flowers, and a bunch of grapes. Vaccine marks suggest that this fragment of skin comes from the upper part of an arm.
Wow! The human skin used is from the upper part of an arm because it shows indications of vaccination. Creepy is an understatement.
Poor Poe. Or is it…Poe Poor? Just as a crow is black, so a bug is gold. Poe’s book…The Golden Scarab, leads to somewhat surer ground…
Bound in human skin, G. Rykers. It has been suggest that G. Rykers is Gustave Rykers, a Belgian bookbinder. But there is also a handwritten note in the book…
… Dear John…What a tribute to the morbid, death-loving Poe, to bind the Gold Bug in human skin. Or is it an attempt at a pun? Poe…human of human skin.
It should be said that Bambula wasn’t the only Big Man to have his skin end up as binding for a book.
…Exercitatio Anatomica de Glandula Pituitaria, a medical text dealing with the pituitary gland, by Johann Conrad Brunner. By this point, it comes as no surprise that this book has been said to have been bound in human skin. Ok, but is it possible to be more specific as far as the donor is concerned? Thanks for asking! It sure is! There is supposedly a copy of this book held in the Clendening History of Medicine Library in Kansas City that fits the bill. The previous owner, Dr. Charles Humberd, placed the following inscription on the front page…
Deluxe binding of human skin from the circus giant named Perky.
And you thought the skin of a professional wrestler is weird. But who is Perky the Circus Giant? Commentators have determined that there was no known circus giant named…Perky. However, the original owner of the book, Dr. Charles Humbred, was the Nodaway County of Missouri, coroner, giving him access to body parts. He was also a bit careless…
At least it wasn’t morphine. And he was interested in the pitutitary gland and its contribution to the rare disorder…giantism. He wrote an unflattering article about…
…Robert Wadlow, a man whose height reached 8 feet and 11.1 inches when he died on July 15, 1940, at just 22 years of age. Robert worked for a time in the circus of Ringling Brothers. So he had been a circus giant, though he was never known by the name of Perky. Wadlow sued Humberd for the article he wrote about him, claiming libel. The lawsuit begin in 1939, and ended on March 11, of the same year. To his chagrin, another giant who worked in the circus…
…Jack Earle, who reached a height of 7 feet and 6 inches, and didn’t die until 1952, testified against Wadlow. Another giant, Glenn Hyder, who ran a cigar store, and was over 7 feet in height, also testified on behalf of Humberd. Wadlow died a little over a year after his unsuccessful lawsuit. Humberd spent much time illicitly obtaining body parts of men classified as giants. Dr Charles Humberd had the skeletons of Johan Assen and several other giants hanging from the ceiling of his living room until his death in 1960. When Ed Gein does it, he’s a sick psycho, whereas when Humberd does it, it just practicing medicine…of a sort. There is no doubt that Humbred was in a position to obtain the skin of a giant. So was one of these skeletons in the living room of Humberd…Perky the Circus Giant? Possible, but unlikely. If Perky had been a circus giant, there would be information about him. I found a Perky the Clown, and a performing mouse named Perky, but no giant. On 11/18/1939, Warner Brothers released…
…an 8-minute short called…Porky the Giant Killer, in which Porky participates in a futile attack on a giant’s castle, only to find himself having to deal with Giant Baby. Darla watched it and she liked it for two reasons…
…Porky gets the finger, and has a habit of running around wearing a shirt but no…
…pants. What could the Porcine Streaker have to do with a book bound with the skin of the non-existent circus clown known as Perky? Well, in a rather weird look at the matter, Humberd’s victory over Wadlow could have caused himself to be a…giant killer. If he had been reading the December 5, 1941 edition of the Record Searchlight, he would have seen this…
For some reason, a good bit of racism is involved in these tales. Yes, it’s a misspelling, but at least we have a Perky associated with a giant under attack. The reporter appears to have been a little more accurate with Sniffles and the Book Worm.
It is unfortunate, to say the least, that racism made its way into this subject. I’m not sure what to make of Bambula. But I know what to make of…
…Phillis Wheatley, a woman who had been captured in West Africa, sold into slavery, and eventually purchased by John Wheatley of Boston, and was the first African American to publish a book of poetry. This, unfortunately, left Phillis Wheatley and her poems on various subjects, vulnerable to attack. Hundreds of years later, a strange story began to circulate about a copy of this book held in the Cleveland Public Library…the book was bound in human skin…though not Mrs. Wheatley’s. A letter written on July 15, 1958, by Bert Smith, General Manager of Acres of Books, was included with the controversial copy of the book...
I know, it’s hard to read, but it’s the best copy I could find, and bears the signature of Bert Smith. But, there can be no doubt what book is intended by. The last paragraph refers to the work…Bookman’s Bedlam, published in 1955 by Walter Blumenthal, which catalogs a number of what he called…literary curiosities. Smith refers specifically to paragraph 3, page 78, which says…
Some years ago a well-known rare-book dealer stated that he had sent a Negro skin, salted, to Zaehnsdort to bind Phyllis Weatley’s Poems, and other books by Negroes, indicating that he had difficulty getting this book out of this country. Banned as human skin, and being regarded as an anatomical specimen, the roll was finally sent as animal skin. At a New York book sale in 1935, the catalogue noted that a first edition of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects (London, 1773), the earliest published work by a Negro dwelling in North America, was “said to be bound in human skin.”
There is another instance of this, or at least it seems probable, in a book made up of six medical pamphlets created for the private library of Dr. Hans Friedenthal, a renowned physiologist and anthropologist. These pamphlets all date to the 18th century, and were basically…literally curiosities. But Friedenthal was a collector. And in keeping with the whole Zeus-Danae storyline, a very strange pamphlet, written in 1741 by B.S. Albinus, was one of the six pamphlets…Effigies Penis Humani…Images of the Human Penis.
Great, we’re back to phalluses, something discussed in Part 2…Skin for Skin. So I will leave it there. But! Oh what wonderful tattoos Albinus could come up with if was given half a chance! As concerns the book made up of the pamphlet notes, it should noted that the art prints were done by John L’Admiral, whose name appears on the cover of the book made for Friedenthal, and the following is noted inside the book…
…When you feel terrified by human beings, remember your own skin.
But the book also states…Dieses Buch wurde von mir in Menschenhaut gebunden…this book was bound in human skin at my request. The binder was Paul Kersten, who printed the book on June 1910 (actual book shown). Of course, no names are used as far as the identity of the skin donor is concerned, but the cover of the work would suggest a bit of racism…
It is important to note that the bookbinder, Paul Kersten of Berlin, bound 3 books for Friedenthal, all in 1910, and all of which are embellished with fine copperplates, and printed in color by L’admiral. All three of these books were bound from the same skin. One that was still in Friedenthal’s collection was…
…Das Ratsel des Menschen…The Mystery of Mankind, by Rudolf Steiner. Steiner was a prolific writer on esoterical-religious themes. But it should be pointed out that rumors circulated about Albinus’s book…
…Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body. The story states that the skin was originally that of a white person, but it was died black due to the discussion of Ethiopians found within its pages.
Dr. Victor Cornill, the great professor of pathological anatomy in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris, and later a senator, came into possession of human skin from the time of Louis XIII that included a tattoo depicting two knights in combat. So Dr. Cornil ordered his copy of…
Les Trois Mousquetaires…The Three Muskeeters, to be bound with this tattooed skin. Now I must say that I really like the story, but there is one thing I find quite disturbing. What?
I had a hard time counting the number of muskeeters. Four? Two? One? Maybe it’s the new way of counting. But Dr. Cornil didn’t stop with the 4-2-1 Musketeers. He also had laying around another bunch of tattooed skin depicting a heart pierced by an arrow. So what would any good doctor do with extra human integument? Right…bind another book, this time…
…Bubu de Montparnasse, by Charles-Louis Philippe. The book is about a young prostitute with an abusive pimp, and a young man trying to save her from her desparate situation. However, the case of Dr. Cornil reminds us that having books bound in human skin could adversely affect your reputation. The binder for both books was Rene Kieffer, who used an alias when refering to his client.
This is the not only example of a doctor using human skin to bind, not a medical book, but rather, a novel. Dr. Legrain of Villejuif, while still in medical school, removed skin from a corpse and had it tanned. He didn’t get it back for about six months, and found it unusuable. But he had it fixed up enough to bind his copy of…
La Comedie de la Mort…The Comedy of Death. A similar thing can be said for soldiers too…
The leather with which this book is bound is human skin from a soldier who died during the great Southern Rebellion. Obviously, Dr. Joseph Leidy is referring to the Civil War, though we don’t know if the solider was a union or confederate soldier, or whether he was black or white. The strangest claim about soldier-skin-books is…
Darla and Jilly! I told you not to put things in my essays! Jilly is my sister’s kid. I agreed to let her stay for a week…that was a month ago. For some reason, I can’t seem to get in touch with Sis. Still, Joseph Leidy is their favorite writer, so I can’t really blame them. They have a chemistry set, and have made some pretty cool stuff…
…pretty awesome, huh! Well, they sold the rights…and I had a Sa-Tan-Ic of a time getting back to 1906. As grandma used to say…a little bit of Death Dust goes a long way. Thank you, Dr. Leidy! Oh wait. I got a little off track. The Civil War isn’t over! Well, technically it is, but one can still take a shot at Abraham Lincoln…
A copy of the 1932 biography of Abraham Lincoln called…Lincoln the Unknown, by Dale Carnegie, is currently held in Temple University’s Charles L Blockson Collection, with a strange inscription on the flyleaf…
Taken from the skin of a negro at a Baltimore hospital and tanned by the Jewell Belting Company.
This refers to a patch of human skin in the binding. Another source states that the black man referenced in the inscription was the victim of a lynching. But one must keep going…
…The Life and Opinions of Trestram Shandy, a copy was found bound with the skin of a young Chinese woman, whereas a copy of A Sentimental Journey was purportedly bound in the skin of a young black woman. The latter assertion was also made about the…
Les Poesies D’Anacreon, translated by Madame Dacier. The edition in question is the 1885 one, and supposedly it went up for sale in a bookshop on the Rue Lafayette sometime after the end of World War I. If the work is the one that includes the poetry of Sapho, then it just gets more interesting. Keep the name…Meudon… in mind, as it will pop up again shortly.
America has great novelists of its own. Indeed, none greater than…
…Mark Twain. In 1888, made a strange visit to the National Museum in Washington. While he was there, he was shown a book that was supposedly bound in human skin. And he made a strange comment…
Apparently, Twain hadn’t yet picked his victim yet. I can’t find anything beyond this statement, but err on the side of caution, and be sure to check your editions…
…to verify that Mr. Twain had not found a suitable skin donor. Going back as far as the 8th-12th centuries, a small collection of Middle Eastern folk tales began to develop that would eventually be known as the…
…One Thousand and One Nights, or, in English…Arabian Nights. Now for the rest of the story. A brutal, Turkish Sultan who, learning that one of his harem women had committed adultery, had her pale white skin used to bind his own version of the book. Two centuries later, the contemporary Sultan kept the book in his harem as a reminder of what befalls upon those who are unfaithful.
A cyptic entry appeared in the 1934 catalog of the library of Lawrence Maynard…
…about Jehan Rictus’s poetic work…Les Soliloques du Pauvre…The Poor Man’s Soliloquies.
“bound in three-quarter human skin, from the library of Lawrence Maynard, with his autograph, signed on account of the binding,” dated 1903, Paris.
In 1926, a special volume of the novel…
…L’Homme qui rit…The Man Who Laughs, by Victor Hugo was found. The story, published in 1869, features a character named…Gwynplaine, who had been kidnapped by a gang of rogues who mutilated his face by slashing his face from the mouth back to his ears. This resulted in a perpetual, unnerving grin. When the story was made into a movie, the decision was made to soften up how the facial deformation looks…
However, Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker hearkens back to the violent disfigurement inflicted on Gwynplaine…
The Joker never tells the truth about his disfigurement, at one point claiming that his father did it to him, and in another scene he claims he did it to himself. The wounding is known as a Glasgow Grin, or a…
…Cheshire Smile. In early to mid-1900s gangland, this was something gangesters inflicted on one another. And, just as an off-hand comment, the disfurgement turned up completely unexpectedly in Los Angeles in 1947…
One of crimebuffs’ favorite unsolved cases…that of the murder of Elizabeth Short, later dubbed the Black Dhalia, featured in the violence shown by the killer. Why he did this is rather strange. If done intentionally to disfigure someone, then the one inflicting it does not want the victim die…but rather go on living with the scars. It may seem to be a mystery what the mutiliation meant to the person who murdered Elizabeth Short. However, the Black Dahlia’s murder was part of series of sadistic, and sexual oriented, slayings. Short’s body was found on January 15. The body of 45 year-old…
…Jeanne French was found murdered on February 10th. The description of her body included the same facial gashes as those found on Short. Of all the women postulated as victims of the same person(s) who killed Short, the facial would appear to establish the connection to Jeanne French. However, there is a better explanation for the gashes, and would provide an MO for both cases, and dispense with an intentional creation of a Glasglow Smile.
However, there is another case that merits discussion. Even though the skin-donor isn’t mentionned, it was made clear who this supposedly was…
The cover of this book is made of tanned skin of the Negro whose execution caused the War of Independence.
Now that’s a tag…to be sure. Although the name of the individual in question isn’t used, it can only be one man…
…Crispus Attucks. The tension between Bostonians and the British army was greatly heightened by the killing of Christopher Seider days before the hostilities that became known as the Boston Massacre. A group of men attacked British soldiers…and even had the nerve to throw snowballs at them. When the soldiers opened fire, apparently unable to win a snowball fight, Attucks was the first man shot. He was buried with the other three men who were killed that day…
…the death of Christopher Seider is shown on the Left. Usually, black people and white people were not interred near one another. However, an exception was made for Attucks, who was regarded as a hero. It seems likely that the Snowball Throwers were attempting to provoke a reaction from the British that day, and following the killings, the Revolutionary War was inevitable. The news story on the right makes no distinction between Attucks (far right) and the other men who died that day. It seems likely that the tag on the black notebook was affixed by someone who felt that Attucks should not be viewed on a par with the other fallen. Strangely, future president John Adams regarded all four as a bunch of thugs merely looking to pick a fight. A patriot said that?