Archive for the ‘Ancient Europe’ Category
By: The Scribe on October, 2007
It’s one thing to want a unique book cover for your favorite journal or volume of literature… but it’s quite another to use human skin to bind your book together. Yet, during the 18th century, this wasn’t altogether an uncommon practice…
In 2006, a 300-year-old ledger was found in the area of Leeds in England, dropped by a burglar as he fled – which is quite fortunate, as skin-bound books are rather rare to come by these days. During the French Revolution however, it was not out of the ordinary to have a skin book or two in one’s collection, which may explain why this particular book was written in French.
The practice of binding a book in human skin is called “anthropodermic bibliopegy”, and some scholars would assert that this was commonly done with things like trial proceedings, where the account of the trial would be bound in a killer’s skin, or in cases where individuals would request that their memoirs be bound in their own skin after they passed away.
The truth is, binding a book in human skin isn’t all that different from creating a leather binding – which was why, historically, it could be easily done. The Bancroft Library in California has a book that was bound in human skin during the Revolution in the 1790s, which is actually a tome of prayers that had been published a century earlier – someone wanted a new cover on their prayer book and apparently decided that human skin would suit it best.
Brown University Library in Rhode Island has three of these ancient skin volumes – one is an anatomy text, presumably bound in the skin of a dissected cadaver, while the other two are editions of a Medieval morality tale from the 1800s called “The Dance of Death”. One of the copies from 1816 – rebound in skin in 1893 – has a clear separation where it is visible that the binder didn’t have enough skin to go all the way around the volume and had to split it in two. The front cover was bound with an outer layer of human skin, which feels like soft sandpaper to touch. The back cover and the spine were made from the inner layer of skin, resulting in a fine, suede-like texture.
Whereas the first volume was then left plain to show off the binding material, the second volume of the Medieval tale had elaborate leather inlays and a goldwork skull on the cover – however, when examined up close, the pores of the former skin’s owner are still clearly visible.
The Athenaeum Library in Boston has a copy of a highway robber’s memoirs that was wrapped in his own skin, dating to 1837; the College of Physicians in Philadelphia has four volumes bound by the doctor John Stockton Hough, who became famous for diagnosing the first case of trichinosis in the city – after which, he used the patient’s skin to bind three of his four books.
One of Harvard University’s libraries also contains a treaty on Spanish law from 1605 with an inscription on the inside, which reads:
“The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the 4th day of August, 1632. King Btesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas’ chief possessions, together with ample of his skin to bind it.”
As disturbing as it may be to modern sensibilities, it turns out that some of the world’s best libraries have copies of books that were bound in human skin!
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Tomorrow: Ghosts in Ancient Rome and Greece!
By: The Scribe on October, 2007
The details of Mary Read’s life are disputed from the very beginning: some say she was born in Devonshire, others claim it was London; some reports explain that she was the daughter of a sea captain’s widow, while still others accuse her of being an illegitimate child, since the rightful father had been at sea too long for Mary to have been his own. Either way, one thing is clear: Mary spent nearly all of her childhood as a boy.
According to history, Mary’s brother died when he was quite young, and in order for Mary’s mother to continue receiving financial help from her mother-in-law, she needed to disguise Mary as the young boy – that way, Mary and her mother could receive the deceased son’s inheritance. Mary’s grandmother was apparently fooled, which allowed Mary’s mother to support herself and her child well into Mary’s teen years. However, the money eventually ran out, forcing Mary to find work to help support the two of them.
Disguised as a boy, Mary was hired as a footboy to a French family. She worked there for awhile, until her longing for adventure brought her to a British Man-o-War, where she was employed for some time. Eventually, she fell in love with a fellow sailor, and – although details are scant – allegedly revealed herself as a woman to him, which naturally resulted in a marriage. The newlyweds then left the military, opening their own inn called The Three Horseshoes (or The Three Trade Horses, depending on who’s telling the story).
For the first time, Mary lived her life as a woman… but this was to be short-lived, as her husband died of fever within a few years. She tried to join the military again, dressed once more as a man, but found that something was lacking. Thus, Mary Read quit the military, boarded a ship headed for the West Indies, and subsequently found herself on board a vessel being attacked by pirates. Indeed, it was Calico Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny.
Faced with the choice of either joining Rackham’s crew or being run through with a sword, Mary chose self-preservation – although she kept her true gender a secret. Before long, Anne Bonny had taken a liking to the new young man and often followed him around the ship, trying to engage him in conversation. As the story goes, Bonny walked in on the young man one day as he was undressing, fully intending to engage him in something other than conversation… and was shocked to find herself faced with another woman.
Although the two women tried to hide Read’s identity from the rest of the ship, Rackham soon became jealous that his lover was spending so much time with the ‘new guy’, and demanded to know what was going on. It was simple enough to explain: Mary bore her breasts to him, and the matter was settled. Before long, the rest of the crew discovered that there were two women aboard – but since they’d been pulling their weight and always fought just as hard as any man on the ship, they were allowed to stay. There are even rumors that Mary fell in love with one of the pirates on Rackham’s ship, and intended to marry him.
One version of the story explains that although Mary was in love, another rather large and burly pirate aboard the ship – who wasn’t yet aware that Mary was a woman – challenged Mary’s lover to a duel, for some reason or another. Fearing for her lover’s life, Mary challenged the burly pirate to a duel of her own, and demanded that it be settled immediately. According to the Pirate Code, the combatants had to be rowed ashore to settle their score. Each of them was given a pistol and a cutlass, and both fired their pistols immediately and missed. As they began the swordfight, Mary’s ability to move quickly worked to her advantage against the stronger man.
As they fought, Mary was able to study the larger pirate’s attacks, avoiding his lunges and simply waiting for him to make a mistake. During one of his lunges, the pirate stumbled a bit, and Mary took her chance. In that moment, she ripped open her shirt – exposing her breasts to the unbelieving gaze of the pirate – and was able to swing her cutlass around and nearly decapitate him as he gaped at her chest, realizing he’d been dueling with a woman. Whether this account is true or not is another matter entirely, however it certainly reveals that Mary’s femininity was no hindrance to her participation in pirate life.
While Calico Jack and his crew had plenty of success for a period of about three months, they began to spend more and more time “celebrating” their victories – namely, drinking and lounging about the ship. When the ship was eventually captured in October 1720, the only crew members who resisted against the British Navy were Mary and Anne – the rest of the crew cowered below deck in a drunken stupor.
Although Mary was sentenced to hang for her crimes, as was her fellow female pirate Anne Bonny, both the women received stays of execution due to being pregnant. Unfortunately for Mary, her time in prison was far worse than expected. She contracted a foreign illness and died of fever in early 1721, before she was able to give birth. According to some accounts, Mary was able to give a final statement to the court before being placed in prison when they asked her why a woman would ever turn to piracy. Instead of giving a statement that could have possibly earned her pardon, she explained:
“As to hanging, it is no great hardship. For were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so unfit the seas, that men of courage must starve.”
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Tomorrow: The first Aztec tomb
By: The Scribe on October, 2007
The official dates of Anne Bonny’s birth and death are disputed, and most of what is known about her life comes from a book written in 1724 called A General History of the Pyrates. Anne was born an illegitimate daughter to lawyer William Cormac and his serving woman, Mary Brennen – and when Cormac’s wife made his affair public, he was thoroughly shamed and his career in law destroyed. He left Ireland with Brennen and his new daughter, moving to Charleston, South Carolina.
The small family lived and worked on a plantation until Anne’s mother died when Anne was in her early teens. She became responsible for most of the household duties, and it is during this time that the rumors of Anne’s vicious temper seem to begin – one story claims that when she was 13, she became very angry with a servant girl and stabbed her in the stomach with a kitchen knife. Another tale suggests that she sent a young man to hospital, after he attempted – and failed – to sexually assault her.
Clearly, Anne was strong-willed, physically capable, and highly intelligent. At 16, she fell in love with a young pirate named James Bonny – who really only wanted her estate – and married him against her father’s wishes. Disappointed and considering himself a failure at making a young lady out of his daughter, Cormac disowned his only child. Rumor has it she was so furious that she started a fire on the plantation before leaving for Nassau in the Bahamas.
While in the Bahamas, Anne began working at the local tavern, mingling with the pirates who stopped for a drink. It was here that she met the pirate John Rackham, otherwise known as “Calico Jack”, and they began having an affair. Rackham soon offered to purchase Anne from her husband through a “divorce-by-purchase” deal, but James Bonny vehemently refused, seeking legal action against both Rackham and his own wife. Naturally, Anne would not be confined by anyone, and proceeded to elope with Calico Jack before the charges could be brought against them.
In order to prevent harassment from the rest of the crew – and since women were considered bad luck on a ship – Anne was dressed as a man while aboard Rackham’s ship Revenge. While she managed to stay in disguise for some time, fighting alongside the rest of the men with no less competence, she soon became pregnant… something that a woman simply cannot hide from anyone! And the one man who challenged her before the pregnancy ended up with a cutlass through the heart, so if anyone had suspected she wasn’t a man before that, it was rather unlikely that they would have spoken up.
Since a ship was no place to give birth, Calico Jack sailed to Cuba, where he left Anne with friends until after the child was born. The child died soon afterward, and Jack returned in a few months to pick her up. It was around this time that the second female on the Revenge had arrived – the notorious Mary Read – and the two women soon discovered each other’s identities, becoming close friends. Naturally, rumors swirled that Anne and Mary were more than “just friends”, and these rumors were fueled by other suggestions of Jack, Anne, and Mary’s unnaturally close relationship. However, this may simply have been the result of creative imagination, as there is no evidence of any obtuse sexual behavior ever occurring aboard the ship.
When Rackham’s ship was finally attacked by the British Navy in Jamaica, Anne and Mary fought hard to stave off the sailors, while the men hid below deck in a drunken stupor. The women yelled at the men to come up and “fight like men”, but they were far too drunk to even stand up – the celebration of recent victories simply had come at a bad time. The women were overwhelmed, and everyone on board was clapped in irons.
At the sentencing, Anne and Mary managed to escape the sentence of hanging by “pleading their bellies”, since it was illegal to kill an unborn child according to British law. Their sentences were temporarily stayed until after they gave birth… but no record of Anne’s execution has ever been found. Neither is there a record of her release, which has led to speculation over whether she was ransomed by her father, returned to her husband, or that perhaps she escaped and resumed her life of piracy under another name.
Her supposed descendents provided some information to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which is the only semi-concrete information about the rest of her life, and therefore may be the most plausible theory: “Her father managed to secure her release from gaol [jail] and bring her back to Charles Town, South Carolina, where she gave birth to Rackham’s second child. On 21 December 1721 she married a local man, Joseph Burleigh, and they had eight children. She died in South Carolina, a respectable woman, at the age of eighty-four and was buried 25 April 1782.” However, this seems like an unlikely end for a formerly ruthless female pirate…
Nevertheless, it is the only information left about the rest of Anne’s life, whether it is true or not. And yet, what ever became of Mary Read, and how did she end up choosing a life of piracy…?
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Tomorrow: Read about Mary…Read.
By: The Scribe on October, 2007
Jack Rackham – otherwise known as Calico Jack because of his preference for calico garments – was one of the more famous English pirates of the 18th century. However, he wasn’t necessarily remembered for all the things he did himself, but instead gained notoriety for who he was associated with: Calico Jack was responsible for employing two of the world’s most famous and notorious female pirates in his own crew, Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
Before he was captain of his own ship, Rackham was quartermaster on the ship of English pirate Charles Vane. Vane was infamous for his disrespect of the pirate code and for his cruelty, and so when the opportunity to dispose of him as captain presented itself – his crew took it. After failing to engage a French warship they encountered in the Caribbean, the crew mutinied in disgust at his cowardice, leaving him adrift on a small sloop in the middle of the ocean. Rackham was voted in as the new captain almost immediately, and proceeded to plunder several vessels that very day.
It was during a stop at a port’s tavern that Rackham met and began to court a young woman named Anne Bonny, who readily accepted his affections. Unfortunately for the two of them, Anne was already married, and her husband refused to let her go… and instead of sticking around to see the results of James Bonny’s court order against Rackham and Anne, the two of them eloped. However, women were still considered bad luck aboard a ship at this point – not to mention that they were in danger of abuse from the other men – and so Anne was disguised as a man in order to ensure the crew would take no notice of her.
While raiding a merchant vessel in the West Indies, Calico Jack came across a sailor on the vessel who had escaped slaughter like the rest of the crew. He gave the man an option: to either be run through with a cutlass, or join his crew. Naturally, the latter option was preferable, and the man joined the crew on Rackham’s ship.
Shortly thereafter, Rackham noticed that Anne and the new crew member were spending a good deal of time together. With his jealousy ignited, Rackham confronted the young man… who admitted that he was actually a woman in disguise. Realizing the benefit for Anne in keeping another woman around, Mary Read was allowed to remain on the ship, and it wasn’t long before Rackham revealed to his crew that there were, in fact, two women aboard… news which, oddly enough, was received rather well.
Rackham and his crew continued to attack and plunder ships with the women’s help, but in October 1720, a British governor learned of the pirate captain’s theft of an anchored ship in the Nassau harbor. Two large ships were sent after him, and they managed to catch up with Calico Jack at a moment of extremely poor timing – Rackham’s crew was in the hold, recovering from a rather severe round of drinking. They took cover below deck, but were eventually taken prisoner.
Rackham and his crew were taken to Jamaica, which was under British occupation at the time, and sentenced to death by hanging on November 16, 1720. After his hanging, his body was placed inside an iron cage and hung from a gibbet on a small island that could be seen from Jamaica’s Port Royal.
But what of Bonny and Read? After witnessing Rackham’s death, a report was given that she said she “was sorry to see him there, but if he had fought like a man, he need not have been hanged like a dog.” The fate of the women was somewhat different…
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Tomorrow: The story of Anne Bonny
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