Bloody Bindings: Putting the “Man” in “Manuscript” — Part Three
Anthropodermic Bibliopegy using men’s skin: John Horwood
Go to the full list of articles in this series.
Cases of women’s skin being used to make anthropodermic books are covered in a future post.
Unless otherwise stated, the quotations embedded throughout this article are taken directly from the Horwood Papers.
Skeletons, Closets and Conspiracies
Like most people, I’ve often wondered what kind of people my ancestors might have been. My mam and my aunt have both looked into it and discovered a fairly innocuous lineage¹ of glove makers, miners and farmers. There’s an infinitesimal possibility that I’m distantly related to a counterfeiter who had beef with Sir Isac Newton, but otherwise the family closet is free from skeletons. The same cannot be said of Mary Halliwell’s ancestral armoire, as she discovered back in 2010 that a literal skeleton was gathering dust in the University of Bristol.
¹I was really hoping for a bog witch or some kind of Welsh warrior maiden. Perhaps I’ll be the first…
The skeleton was that of John Horwood, brother to Halliwell’s great-great-great grandfather and the first person to be publicly hanged in New Gaol, Bristol in 1821. Horwood had been convicted of murder and so — thanks to The Murder Act of the 1750s — was not to be “suffered to be buried”. Instead, his cadaver was dissected and anatomised, and his skeleton (complete with a noose to forever illustrate his ignominious end) given to what became the Bristol Royal Infirmary for research.
The bones were not all that remained of young John Horwood. As this is the third part in the “Manuscripts” arc of my anthropodermic bibliopegy series, it will come as no surprise that there also remains a book bound in the boy’s skin. The book, known as the Horwood Papers, is comprised of notes, letters, accounts, clippings and all manner of documented evidence pertaining to Horwood’s trial, gathered together by the doctor who anatomised his body.
So far, a fairly typical example of anthropodermic bibliopegy. However, as I read through the Horwood Papers and then researched the topic more extensively, a darker picture began to paint itself. Darker than even a book bound in the skin of a killer should be.²
²If you just pictured a glittery book bound in the skin of Edward Cullen, same.
I’m not generally one for conspiracy theories. Don’t get me wrong, as a lover of stories, I enjoy a fun yarn about lizard people who are at risk of tripping off the edge of a flat Earth, but that’s as far as it goes. They entertain me, not I them. So imagine my chagrin when I began to imagine that John Horwood might have been conspired against. I can’t say with any certainty that this inkling is correct, but I can let it entertain you.
A Curated History
Usually, this is where I would summarise the case which lead to the murderer’s death and subsequent binding. However, this time I think it’s important to mention the sources I’m synthesizing. I avoid bibliographies because they are tedious, but this time I want to at least draw your scrutiny to the Horwood Papers. How we read them will determine how we view John Horwood.
Reading through the many handwritten notes and pages of the Horwood Papers was, frankly, painful. Not just because of the story hidden within, but also for the simple fact that — despite years honing the skill as an English teacher — I found it incredibly difficult to decipher many of the handwritten documents. Despite being penned at a time when poor-penmanship was punishable in school, the handwriting of these documents is, on frequent occasion, nightmarish. In fact, there are only a couple of examples in the whole packet which didn’t make my eyes try to swallow themselves, and I highly recommend any masochists among you go and slog through the texts yourselves. Perhaps, like me, you’ll find yourself developing a bit of a fangirl crush on Johannes Guttenberg.
What does manage to shine through in these collected papers is a less than subtle bias against John Horwood. As it is from these papers that history has gleaned its summation of his character, a lot of modern retellings of his trial paint him as an unpleasant man who couldn’t stay out of trouble. I’m not so sure. I think the boy (who I can’t help but think of as such, considering he was executed just a couple of days after he turned 18) might have been quite vulnerable in many ways.
It is important to note that this gathered “evidence” was compiled and bound by Dr. Richard Smith — the doctor who dissected and anatomised Horwood’s body. The doctor who pressed for Horwood’s arrest. The doctor who was very likely responsible for the death of Eliza Balsam³ — the person John Horwood was hanged for murdering. While the texts are, therefore, primary sources, they were curated by a less than impartial hand.
³Balsam, Balsom and Balsum are all spellings used in the Horwood Papers.
It is difficult to ascertain the veracity of the evidence, but if it is trustworthy, then Horwood was no innocent, no matter how much his chubby cherubic cheeks make me think of a hapless Neville Longbottom. I detest the “boys will be boys” argument which so often seeks to excuse bad behaviour, but I think there is a better case for Horwood being a silly boy than there was for him being a murderer in want of hanging.
Cast Not the First Stone
John Horwood was born in 1803 in Hanham (near Bristol) and was one of ten children. He worked in the mines as a child, but quit following a series of accidents and deaths (including that of one of his brothers). He went to work with his father, but when he was sixteen he was let go due to his poor behaviour. This behaviour was also in evidence outside of his professional life. He was — according to the collected evidence — a destructive boy who was often in trouble with his neighbours.
The accounts (which frequently conflict about all aspects of this convoluted case) vary about exactly how John Horwood and Eliza Balsam were involved, but several sources suggest that they had, in the past, been at least tentatively romantically involved. Given that they were both still teenagers, it was likely little more than youthful courting. However, whatever relationship they had, Balsam ended it and Horwood took it poorly. According to details in the Horwood Papers, Horwood’s behaviour became atrocious. He had apparently overtly threatened Balsam, and at one point he threw “oil of vitriol” on her (which I thought was figurative until one source pointed out that it is what sulphuric acid was once called).
In January 1821, John Horwood was out with some of his mischief-making mates when he saw Eliza Balsam in the company of two other local lads. Horwood, in a petty fit of pique, made the life-altering decision to throw a stone at her. The witnesses contradict one another as to where and how this incident occurred, with one person setting it down a hill, another mentioning Balsam falling into water, and Balsam herself apparently disclosing that they met in a lane where Horwood picked up a stone and struck her.
Eliza apparently screamed upon being hit and fell to the ground, and Horwood’s friends claimed to have chastised him for his act. However, nobody accused John Horwood of attempted murder. Not then, at least. If Eliza Balsam was knocked down, she was back on her feet promptly, and over the next few days, she even managed to repeatedly walk the ten miles to the Bristol Infirmary to get her head dressed.
It was while she was in the waiting room of this infirmary that she was spotted by the senior surgeon — Dr. Richard Smith Jr.
The Good Doctor
Dr Richard Smith decided Eliza Balsam should be admitted into his care immediately, though it is unclear why he took such a keen and immediate interest. Whatever the case, he insisted (and Eliza consented only reluctantly) and promptly diagnosed her with a skull fracture.
Things gets blurry again here. Eliza Balsam was admitted on January 31st, 1821, and for a few days she was fine. Then, she wasn’t. On February 10th, the wound was inflamed and she had a fever and headache. After consulting with five “brethren” doctors, it was decided that a trepanning procedure be performed on the woman.
Trepanation involves boring a hole through the skull, and exposing the brain. Dr. Smith’s notes (hard-to-read handwritten testimonies which can be read in the digitised version of the Horwood Papers) say that he “cut out a circular piece about the size of a shilling” from her skull , so that the “dura mata, or thin membrane of the brain” was exposed. He claimed to have found swelling in the “part [where] the stone had fallen” and that Balsam was “much relieved” afterwards. Such relief was short-lived. Shortly after the trepanning, she became confused and was at least partially paralysed.
It was at this juncture — when he began to suspect that Eliza wasn’t going to pull through — that Smith decided to get in touch with the local authorities. He gave them John Horwood’s name and twice demanded that the boy be arrested. How strange that he chose this moment and not a couple of weeks earlier, when Balsam was first admitted. It’s almost like he was trying to make sure all accusatory eyes would fall on someone other than him.
After Horwood’s “capture was affected”, constables escorted him to Balsam’s room in the Bristol Infirmary. She turned from him, refusing to look at “the villain who had murdered” her.
Smith recorded that upon this declaration from Balsam, Horwood turned to him and said, “I? I know who did it but it was not I.”
To this, Richard Smith whispered to Horwood, “You had better not confess that you know anything about it.”
Perhaps it’s the story-lover in me, or maybe the writer, but when I read this I found myself wondering if this exchange could allude to more than just a boy shifting blame and a doctor reminding him of his right to remain silent.
Consider:
- Eliza Balsam had been alone with the doctor for a couple of weeks, long enough for the doctor to get inside her head, literally and figuratively.
- Eliza Balsam gave her statement to the officers after she’d been subjected to trepanning.
- Horwood turned to face the doctor, not Balsam or the officers, when he said he knew who killed Balsam.
- The Doctor, upon hearing this, told the boy to keep his mouth shut.
The exchange just seemed slightly off as I read it. But, however the evidence is read, Eliza Balsam was dead by February 17th.
The Trial
The trial took place on April 11th, 1821, and the accounts of the proceedings are lopsided to say the least. A newspaper report kept among the Horwood Papers (which misreports Horwood’s age as 23 and basks in tabloid-worthy expression) described Horwood with such colourful language as, “outrageous”, “unfeeling”, “guilty”, “a most ferocious, desperate fellow” and “the villain”. It said “the officers, at one time, thought that they should have been obliged to fire upon him in their own defence.” They reported that those same officers only managed to cuff Horwood after a “desperate conflict.”⁴
⁴The story caught the attention of many newspapers at the time, yet this is the one Richard Smith chose to include in his collection.
It’s hard to pin Horwood’s character when the documents veer wildly between tar-and-feathering him and then describing him as a gormless fool. He is denoted as a young man who penned a poem about his own sin, yet also as a “sly” and “indifferent” troublemaker who showed no feeling throughout the trial.
It really seems like Horwood’s fate was predetermined and despite all his “indifference” and “stupidity”, a lot of the words used to describe him make it seem like perhaps he wasn’t quite able to comprehend what was going on. He seemed to genuinely believe that he deserved little more than a slap on the wrist, likely because in throwing the pebble at Eliza Balsam, he wanted to hurt and humiliate her, but never expected to kill her. Indeed, given the amount of time between the action and Eliza Balsam’s death, I’m not sure Horwood really connected her death to his throwing of the stone.
The thing is, Horwood was not unjustified in believing he would be found not-guilty. As mentioned before, the different accounts of the actual incident didn’t match up, and this should have been a veritable gold mine for those employed for Horwood’s defence. They didn’t mention it. Nor did they offer for his defence any of the following:
- Eliza Balsam did not want to be hospitalised and only agreed under duress.
- She gave her evidence after an invasive cranial surgery.
- The trepanning procedure performed by Dr. Smith was a drastic decision based on what might have been scant evidence for its necessity. It seems, at the time, he was praised for being able to make such courageous diagnoses.
- The cause of death could as easily be attributed to the actions of the doctor as the boy and it might have been only prejudice in favour of the wealthy former and the working-class latter that swayed opinions as to the boy’s guilt.
- It could not be proven that Horwood intended to kill Eliza Balsam when he threw the rock.
Horwood’s defence should have had enough to ensure the boy’s survival. Perhaps they could not have spared him imprisonment or some other punishment, but the death penalty could have been strongly refuted. However, as far as I can decipher from the Horwood Papers, very little (if anything) was made of any of the above.
The prosecution, on the other hand, were willing to grasp at any and every straw to assure John Horwood’s execution, including evidence provided by writer and phrenologist Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck.
Schimmelpenninck compiled a report for the prosecution which analysed the shape of Horwood’s skull. The report is another of the more eye-friendly epistles of the collection, and is both amusing and shocking to a modern audience. Schimmelpenninck says her findings are “as accurate as [she] could make” them, and then also admits that “two persons craneologizing a head [could] give a chart differently”. To think that such evidence was permitted in court just makes Horwood’s fate more pitiable.
She even admits that she left a lot of gaps in the chart as she didn’t feel a “woman not being acquainted” with the subject could possibly fill out details of the skull as well as a “medical man” could.
Her report is also self-contradictory. She says the skull is lacking in “destructiveness” but “abounding in combativeness”. She says the “bump of murder” (a skull formation which was supposedly exhibited by all murderers) was absent. Indeed, she attests that he might be a “brutal, coarse, bullying ruffian, rather than either an ill-natured fellow or a malicious villain”. Really, considering she stood on the side of the prosecution, her report sometimes makes him seem like she didn’t think Horwood was guilty. But then she says he had “no development of intellectual faculties”, nothing to indicate love for friends or family, no “development of conscience” and that he “must be wholly without sympathy.”
The whole letter/report is worth a read — and you can do so here — just for its staunch assurance in a practice so utterly discarded by modern science. Despite its evidentiary flaccidity, Schimmelpenninck’s findings were included by the prosecution. They were willing to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find Horwood guilty. The defence seem to have been actively throwing the barrels away in some Donkey Kong-esque bid to fail.
Speaking of Skulls…
Another of the moments which makes me question the character of Dr. Richard Smith is his inclusion in his notes of the admission that while he was in the witness-box, he had Eliza Balsam’s skull cap in his pocket. Now, where I come from, a skull cap is a nickname for what’s more commonly known as a beanie hat. In my mind, I assumed she had been wearing some kind of tight-fitting compression hat as a post-surgical measure.
Nope. It was the literal top of Eliza Balsam’s skull that the good doctor had in his pocket. The calvaria — the topmost part of the skull.
He says in his notes that he decided against producing it while giving his court testimony, as “its production might produce a sensation injurious to the prisoner.”
This seems so counterintuitive that I find it hard to believe. Dr. Smith had done everything possible (at least since the trepanning) to ensure Horwood was held accountable. It seems unlikely that he’d be concerned about exciting prejudice against the boy now. Perhaps he realised that the tide was already against Horwood. Perhaps the trepanning mark was more obvious than that left by the pebble. He was a self-confessed collector, so perhaps this was just another collectible.
For whatever reason, Dr. Smith gave his evidence against John Horwood with the top of Eliza Balsam’s skull in his pocket, and that’s pretty creepy.
It would still have been in his pocket when the judge pronounced Horwood guilty and sentenced him to be hanged, dissected and anatomised.
After Sentencing, Before Death
Horwood’s Papers contain a pamphlet with the following title: “A Short Narration of Circumstances Connected with the Life and Death of John Horwood, who was Executed at Bristol, Friday, April 13, 1821, Aged Eighteen Years and Two Days, to which, are added, the Hymns Composed and Selected for the Public Services at Jeffery’s Hill.”
The whole of the pamphlet reminded me of the last pages of The Highwayman’s anthropodermic book, where the Warden took up the tale. I was dubious of James Allen’s apparent death-bed conversion to Christian beliefs in that book. In Horwood’s book, I’m dubious of quite a few things, but I actually believe that Horwood might have latched on to idea of a zero-hour conversion, because I suspect that the boy only considered himself a murderer when he was told by the judge that he was. Also, at several points he just seems rather credulous. On the day of his sentencing, the writer of the pamphlet says Horwood might have appeared indifferent, but the writer believed this stoicism “arose entirely from his inability to comprehend” what was going on. He continues to say the boy “burst into tears” upon being sentenced.
If the pamphlet is to be believed, John Horwood’s character made an abrupt about-face the day before he was executed. Throughout his trial, he had been repeatedly visited by a priest and a Mr. Roberts, who had been trying to impress upon the young man the importance of piety. The religious visitors were trying to get Horwood to prepare to shuffle off his mortal coil. Their teachings left little impression until Horwood was sentenced, and then he was all in favour of prayer. Apparently.
“O Lord God; have mercy upon me, a miserable and guilty sinner! Lord, thou knowest that in a few hours I shall be in eternity, O Lord! save my poor dear soul; Lord teach me to pray; and help me to pray for Christ’s sake. Lord, thou didst send thy Son into the world to die for poor wicked sinners. Lord, have mercy upon me, and cleanse my dear soul, for this day I hope to be in thy kingdom…”⁵
⁵ Horwood, as quoted in the pamphlet. It goes on for another nine lines, but you get the gist.
Do I believe John Horwood turned to God at the end of his short life? Perhaps. Do I believe he said the above? No. Nothing to this point hints at the typically monosyllabic John Horwood being prone to (or capable of) this much expression at a time. I’m sure it would make for a gripping melodramatic sermon, though.
The pamphlet suggests much of John Horwood’s last hours were spent in desperate prayer as he tried to make a last-minute bid for the pearly gates. The pamphlet writer clearly wants us to think Horwood’s death day redemption was a blessing from God.
“I besought him to look to Jesus. He said, “Oh sir, I am a guilty sinner. I replied, “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” He said, “But do you think he came to save me.” I answered, “Yes; you are the very character.”⁶
⁶Please know that the iffy punctuation and paragraphing here is taken directly from the original. It’s no wonder I question its legitimacy.
Apparently, Horwood’s dying wishes included a new and desperate desire for his friends to learn. He asked that the writer of the pamphlet go to Jeffery’s Hill, Hanham, and deliver a religious teaching there, so that his friends might also learn from it. He said, “Go and warn them from me; tell them their sins will bring them to death; mine have brought me to death.”
Perhaps I’m just cynical, but I just don’t buy it.
The Execution
John Horwood (apparently) requested a sermon on the morning of his execution. The prisoners of New Gaol, Bristol were gathered and the Rev. Samuel Day read Romans 8:1 which reads: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
After the sermon, Horwood thanked the Governor and his wife for their kindness, and then made his way to be hanged.
He was stoic and quiet as the noose was set around his neck and his hands tied. Then he was given a handkerchief. This was to be dropped by John Horwood when he was ready, as a signal to the hangman to carry out the execution. This last moment of autonomy — however artificial — was surprising to me, and I can’t decide whether it would have been a cruelty or kindness.
Horwood stood for fifteen minutes in prayer before — in a moment which reminded me that John had only turned eighteen a couple of days earlier — asking his executioner if it was going to hurt. At this time in history, they would have been using the short-drop method of hanging (the standard drop was used from 1866 and the long drop from 1872). There was no guarantee that it wouldn’t hurt, but the executioner assured John Horwood that he’d at least be quickly put out of misery.
He let go of his hold on the handkerchief. In a bleak twist of luck, despite his hanging taking place on a Friday 13th, John Horwood died almost instantly. Nearby mothers of sick kids darted forward to touch his dangling body, as folk medicine still purported it to be something of a cure all.
The first part of Horwood’s sentence was complete, but there was yet the dissection and the anatomisation to come. If you didn’t read Murderous Medicine, then in short this means that his corpse was — by law — to be cut up in a public venue so that thousands could stroll by and witness what happened to those who committed the most gruesome sin of murder. After the cutting and gawking was done, the cadaver would then be given to a nearby medical establishment so that it might be used to advance medical understanding, usually by way of a more thorough dissection with a more select spectatorship of student doctors.
John Horwood’s body was therefore to be turned over to none other than Dr. Richard Smith. He included his receipt in the Horwood Papers.
The Horwood Papers contain Smith’s notes on acquiring the body — which involved a bit of subterfuge and even a chase, as Horwood’s friends wanted to secure the cadaver of their fallen friend, to spare him the indignity of his sentence. Smith seems almost giddy in his descriptions, taking clear enjoyment in spiriting the body away from them.
After Death
One of the most legible pieces of handwritten correspondence in the Horwood Papers is the letter sent to Richard Smith by Browne and Watson — the solicitors for John Horwood. In this letter, they “earnestly solicit [his] kind interference” so that the “agonized” and “aged” parents of the deceased might not have to suffer so much. They ask for John’s body to be returned so that his family might lay him to rest.
Smith responded by saying he had talked it over with his “Brethren” and they all decided they could not agree to this request.
Browne and Watson tried again, going so far as to “beg” on behalf of the “distressed family”, but Smith remained unmoved. Or rather, he claims to have been very moved, and he wished he could put his “feelings” before his “sense of duty”. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just up to him and he phrases his response in a way which almost implies that it was the other surgeons who were really against the request. He then goes on to point out the specific language and wording of both the “Warrant to the Sheriffs” and the “Act of Parliament” — referring to The Murder Act specifically — which meant he would regrettably be forced to anatomise the body. Smith used the cadaver to deliver “a summary course of lectures” and then the skeleton went on to be kept at first in the hospital. It was later kept in Smith’s home.
As was the case with William Corder and The Highwayman, John Horwood might have been largely forgotten by history. He was notable for being the first person hanged at New Gaol, Bristol, but the longevity of his story lies in what happened to him after death.
During the process of anatomization, the skin would generally be removed during or after one of the public lectures. After it had been used, it was customary to incinerate any such soft, spoilable, byproducts of existence as medical waste. Richard Smith, however, tanned the skin and used it to bind together all of his chosen artefacts in the Horwood Papers. Anthropodermic bibliopegy was, as I mentioned in previous articles, somewhat in vogue at this time, so it is more than possible that Richard Smith is no more ghoulish than any of the others who performed the act of binding a book in human skin.
Do I think Dr. Richard Smith Jr. murdered Eliza Balsam? No, not really. But the conspiracy theorist, the writer and the storyteller in me certainly suspects, as others have before me, that it was his medical “care” that killed her. I think he knew it, too. And I suspect others in that lopsided trial also knew it. And I keep picturing Smith sitting that courtroom, with one hand pointing a finger at a seventeen-year-old working-class boy, while in the pocket of his fancy suit, his fingers worried at the trepanned cranium of a dead girl.⁷
⁷I’m not an expert and I’m often told that I’ve too much imagination for my own good. It’s very possible the doctor was a lovely chap with an innocent pocketful of skullcaps.
At Peace
Mary Halliwell, the great-great-great granddaughter of Horwood’s brother, upon learning that John Horwood’s remains had ended up gathering dust under some stairs at the University of Bristol, arranged for the skeleton to be buried in a plot beside his father’s grave. He was laid to rest on April 13th, 2011, at 1.30pm, exactly 190 years (to the very minute) after his execution.
The anthropodermic binding of the Horwood Papers is held in the collections of Bristol Archives, ref: 35893/36/v_i
I wrote a whole series on Anthropodermic Bibliopegy. It’s pretty awesome. You should read it.
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