Bloody Bindings: Putting the “Man” in “Manuscript” — Part One
Anthropodermic bibliopegy using men’s skin: William Corder
Note: Cases of women’s skin being used to make anthropodermic books will be covered in a future post.
Anthropodermic Bibliopegy for Beginners
Anthropodermic Bibliopegy is a fancy and sanitised way of describing the art of binding books in human skin. When I first read the term, I immediately pictured the Necronomicon from Evil Dead (the Bruce Campbell trilogy, not the remakes). I pictured skin folds, a few stray follicles, and perhaps even a xanthic shimmer of leaking subcutaneous fat. But then, I’m a weirdo with an imagination that means I can’t sleep with my foot poking out of my duvet lest it tempt the monster under my bed.¹
The reality of anthropodermic books is somewhat more subtle. So subtle that a person mightn’t recognize an anthropodermic book if they happened to pluck one from a shelf in a bookstore, which might be more creepy than the more in-your-face comic horror induced by the wandering eye of Bette Midler’s Book in Hocus Pocus. Indeed, some of the examples discussed in my next few posts are genuinely beautiful in their artistry and craftsmanship.
So stealthy are these skin-wrapped tomes that The Anthropodermic Book Project has to rely on peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) to say definitively whether a book was bound in human skin. You can read about the science on their website, but it involves enzymes digesting mammalian collagens down to amino acids and peptides. As different mammalian collagens have different amino acid sequences, the test can “fingerprint” the type of mammal that was used to make the binding (or boot, or Gein-esque belt) being tested.
According to their website, The Anthropodermic Book Project has identified 51 alleged anthropodermic books. They’ve tested 32 of these, and PMF confirmed 18 to have used human skin.²
While I was researching anthropodermic bibliopegy, I noticed that when the skin of men had been used, it was often taken from criminals to bind accounts of their crimes. In my post “Murderous Medicine: Bunny-hopping, body-snatching, and books bound in skin” I talked about The Murder Act of the 1750s, wherein murderers were denied burial and instead sentenced to the gibbet or to be publicly anatomised. This was back before cremation made a return to the UK, and when people believed bodies should be buried intact so that they might RSVP in the positive for Judgement Day. Dissection and anatomisation were seen as a punishment, so it makes a yucky sort of sense that several anthropodermic books embody this.
However, where the skin of women was used, it was often taken by male doctors to bind case studies and documentation of notable medical breakthroughs. What was punishment for a male body was some kind of poetic collateral damage for female flesh. More on that in future posts as it deserves its own space. For now, here is the first of three of my favourite stories behind anthropodermic books bound in the flesh of men.
A sly fox, a red barn and a dream of death.
Ann Marten (sometimes Anne, depending on the source) was not the evil stepmother or wicked witch of a fairy tale, but if the stories are true then there was something of the supernatural at work in her — at least while she slept.
Ann had been dreaming of the Red Barn — a building belonging to her neighbour. The building was so named not due to a coat of paint, nor did it gain its moniker after Ann’s dreams directed her husband to the dreadful discovery buried therein. The Red Barn was thus named because every evening the setting sun bathed the building in a crimson wash of bloody red. At this time and in this place (early 1800s, Suffolk) superstitious townsfolk believed that places touched by this sanguine light were ill-fated — doomed for wretched luck and woeful tidings.
The events of May 1827 lent eerie credence to these superstitious notions.
Ann’s dreams of the Red Barn followed something of a scandal about her stepdaughter Maria. It was not Maria’s first scandal, as she was a pretty, vivacious girl who had a reputation for being a flirt. It’s always hard to tell whether such tales are true when looking back on a past so steeped in the silencing of so many. However, it was true enough that Maria was an unmarried mother said to have had intimate relationships with several men.
Maria had been told by a fortune teller that her love would arrive in her life on a grey horse, and she was enraptured by this notion. She tried to wait for love, but while waiting she was put to work as a maid for the local clergyman. Her time in this household afforded her the opportunity to learn how to read and write. The clergyman also gave her the charity of his daughters’ outgrown dresses — garments of a quality which apparently gave Maria tastes and notions somewhat beyond her allotted station as the daughter of the town molecatcher.
By the time she turned eighteen, Maria had all but given up her notions of her stallion-seated love and had gained a bit of a reputation as the town tease. Then she caught the eye of Thomas Corder — son of a wealthy farmer and brother to the man who would be her murderer. Maria likely imagined (not for the last time) that she was to become the future Mrs. Corder, but her suitor had no such notions, even when Maria fell pregnant just before her nineteenth birthday. He refused to marry her, but promised to send monetary support for the child.
The baby lived only a few weeks and Thomas Corder — free of his obligation — cut ties with Maria thereafter.
Distracting her from whatever disappointment she might have been feeling, a new interest arrived on the foreseen grey horse. Peter Mathews — a visiting Londoner — was tall, handsome and a bit of a rake. Just hours after he and Maria set eyes on each other, they fell into bed together for the first — but certainly not last — time.
Peter Mathews didn’t lead Maria on; he was clear in his disinclination to marry. However, he was happy enough to spoil Maria with clothes and London society. When she once again fell pregnant, he still refused her hand, but made arrangements for her to receive £5 per quarter for the raising of the child. The money was likely the reason Maria’s family did not leave her to ruin, as the sum was sizeable for a family used to the salary of a molecatcher. Mathews galloped back out of Maria’s life.³
Maria’s appetites for fine living and high society had been whetted, but her perceived promiscuity and illegitimate child were unlikely to win her the sort of husband who could sate them. Instead, Maria exchanged her abilities in the satiation of other appetites for fine beds in which to sleep and fine dresses in which to make merry.
Her life might have continued in this fashion had Maria not met with her first beau’s younger brother, William Corder.
Various prints and drawings of William — as well as the cast taken upon his death — can attest to the fact that William was no Adonis. He was on the short side, had a bit of a stoop and a certain slyness to his features which earned him the nickname “Foxey”.⁴ And yet, he was charismatic and charming enough to be a favourite with the ladies (one of whom was the brilliantly named criminal — Hannah Fandango) and town gossip suggested he lived an exciting life of pleasure-seeking until he had to come back to Suffolk — tail twixt legs — and beg his father for more money.
Maria Marten caught William Corder’s eye and, perhaps because she had suffered the barbs of town gossip herself for so long — Maria felt a kinship with the man.
William offered no promises of marriage at first, but he did show Maria enough kindness that she was willing to give up the luxuries granted by her prior intimate exchanges. It has been suggested that she gave herself to Thomas Corder in his father’s fields; she bedded Peter Mathews in an Ipswich hotel. She lay with William Corder in the Red Barn.
Then, Maria fell pregnant once again and William knew his fun was at an end. Perhaps he lay too long in the bloody light cast over the Red Barn, as this was the beginning of a spate of ill-tidings for the man. First, Corder intercepted Maria’s £5 allowance from Peter Mathews who promptly traced the misdeed back to him. He was forced to confess and beg Maria to exonerate him. Before that could be neatly swept under a rug, Thomas Corder (Maria’s first lover and William’s older brother) drowned to death in an icy pond. With his father (who disliked William) and other brother suffering from poor health, it suddenly fell to William to shoulder responsibility for the Corder affairs.
It seems that William was not so burdened that he could not perceive an opportunity when it was offered, though.
Over the last months, his association with Maria had not gone unnoticed by the town. With another baby on the way, Maria wanted William to marry her so that this child wouldn’t be born a bastard. Some sources suggest that she was growing increasingly concerned about the punishments and penalties imposed for having illegitimate children. A fear William would use against her.
William had confessed to Maria’s father and stepmother that he was the unborn child’s father. He swore that he would make an honest woman of Maria, but not just then. After all, his mother was already going through so much with his brother’s death and his father’s ill health. The slightest scandal might break her.
So it was all hushed up. Maria went to a town twelve miles away and gave birth to a baby boy. Both mother and son returned to Polstead in secrecy so that the rest of the town (and any interested constables) wouldn’t know of the latest scandal. Maria and the boy were both unwell, but while Maria recovered the baby did not.
William’s relief was clear and he apparently celebrated rather publicly with the aforementioned Hannah Fandango. To Thomas Marten — Maria’s father — this was an insult too far. He demanded William wed Maria, and this time he would not take “no” or “not now” for an answer.
William acquiesced, and what he did next later convinced a jury that the murder of Maria Marten was premeditated. William told Thomas Marten that he would marry Maria, but it would have to be done in Ipswich and they would have to leave soon. In fact, they would have to leave the very next day, William told Thomas, because a local constable was looking to arrest Maria on charges of having bastard children.
The Martens were too worried for Maria to be suspicious of Corder’s changed tune and the next day Maria, poorly disguised as a man, left out the back door to the Marten house, while William left by the front. Ann Marten saw them come together again in the road. It was the last time anyone ever saw Maria Marten alive — walking with William Corder towards the Red Barn.
Reports of what happened next are painful and frustrating to read. There are tales of an ongoing back-and-forth which paint William Corder as a much colder man than he might have seemed thus far. When speaking of Maria to concerned friends and family, he told half-truths which suggest something akin to amusement in the murderer.
When (after their supposed marriage) a neighbour asked if he and Maria would have more children he replied, “Maria Marten will have no more children.”
When asked if she was far from her home town he said, “No, she is not far from us: I can go to her whenever I like.”
He said, “whenever I am not with her, nobody else is.”
William Corder told a great many lies, but these were not among their number. For Maria would not have more children. She was dead and buried in the Red Barn. She was not far from home and William could visit her often, because she was dead and buried in the Red Barn. Nobody was with her. She was dead, and buried and alone in the Red Barn.
Corder also said, “I’ve got her a comfortable place.” But if the dead feel comfort, it’s likely not in shallow graves in ill-fated Red Barns.
Ann Marten kept dreaming of that Red Barn until finally she confessed to her husband that she felt he should check it. The man took his mole-poking stick and prodded at the loose earth in the barn.
He found the body of his daughter in a stage of active decomposition; she was identifiable by her garb, two missing teeth and a cyst on her neck.
The local authorities discovered wounds consistent with stabbing, choking and dragging, as well as a gunshot wound to the face.
William Corder, for all his apparent desire to eschew matrimony and disappear from Polstead, Suffolk, was certainly not a difficult man to find. He was busy in Brentford running a newly-established boarding school with a wife he had found by placing an advertisement in The Morning Herald and The Sunday Times!
The trial of William Corder for the murder of Maria Marten began on August 7th, 1828 and it was a spectacle. So many turned up that a ban which excluded women from watching trials was lifted so that said women would not threaten the structural stability of the roof by climbing up to catch a glimpse of the goings on inside.
The trial took two days. On the first, the prosecution put forth their case, damning Corder with little effort. The next day, Corder (who decided to represent himself) mounted a defence which was flaccid at best. He claimed Maria had killed herself and he covered it up because he got scared.
The jury pronounced his guilt after less than half an hour of deliberation. The lord chief baron announced “the approaching end of [his] mortal career” and sentenced him to be hanged, dissected and anatomised. [See my last post for more on this.]
Thousands watched Corder’s short drop and sudden stop at the end of the hangman’s noose.⁵ An hour later the county surgeon was unseaming the cadaver from navel to neck, drawing the flesh apart like stage curtains, opening up Corder’s chest for the public to ogle in an act customary to the time.
The corpse was later taken to the hospital in Suffolk and anatomised, at which point a large section of the man’s skin was removed and later used to bind a book about his trial. A pound⁶ of flesh to pay for his crimes.
The book is still kept in Moyse’s Hall Museum in Bury St. Edmunds, and if you are the sort of person who doesn’t read the item/catalogue descriptions you likely wouldn’t see its significance. It just looks like any other old, leather book.
There are many ethical questions surrounding the display of anthropodermic books (and other items) in museums, but there is also truth in the fact that such pieces are valuable historical artefacts. Death remains a taboo in most cultures to some degree or another, and most of those cultures have rituals and practices to allow dignity in death. It doesn’t fall to me to decide here what is right for such artefacts; all I know is that I find the history and philosophy surrounding them to be fascinating. Stories, at least, are almost always deserving of care and careful handling.
But if the dead feel comfort, I imagine Maria’s rest is easier than William’s.
¹ Two things: I’m nearly 40 so feel I should have outgrown this fear, and I sleep on a divan mattress, so there’s no “under-the-bed” let alone an under-the-bed-monster!
² As of April 2024. The team’s work is currently on hiatus.
³ Perhaps literally, if the grey steed was still around.
⁴ If you’re thinking of Garth singing to his “Foxy Lady” in Wayne’s World, same. But it wasn’t meant as a compliment in Corder’s case.
⁵ The enterprising gent apparently kept the “very good rope” as a souvenir.
⁶ Or more. Or less. I have no idea how much skin it would take to bind a book.
Part two can be read here, and part three here.
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