It is a long established principle of English law that there is no property in a corpse. As church lawyers in the middle ages used to say in that scholarly way of theirs (with a solemn nudge and a wink), a dead person – a cadaver – is cara data vermibus: flesh given to worms.
It wasn’t until 1804, though, that the practice of arresting a corpse against a debt was made illegal.
Yesterday’s Mail, among others, carried the pic, above, of Ronnie Biggs greeting the press at the funeral of fellow train robber Bruce Reynolds attended by the great and good of the criminal underworld. Check out the scene here.
Bruce Reynolds’ son Nick is a member of the Alabama Three whose song Woke Up This Morning is the title music to the Sopranos. There’s a neat symmetry there, perhaps.
You may recall that Nick is also a sculptor and specialist in death masks. We last brought you to his attention back in 2010 in this post, which describes the cast he took of a freshly executed prisoner in the US. Don’t just glide over that link and pass on. Check it out. It’s an extraordinary story. Here it is again.
Nick is one of the essayists in the latest Natural Death Handbook and a friend of its compiler, Rupert Callender, whom Nick has appointed official undertaker to the ‘Bamas.
Now check out that Nick story.
“Death Mask Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1769-1830”
Can be seen at Presence: The Art of Portrait Sculpture
With portraits by artists from Giacometti to Ron Mueck, Presence is a terrific gathering of people carved, cast, modelled in clay or turned to stone. The Observer’s Laura Cumming takes a look at some of the works on show
Presence: The Art of Portrait Sculpture is at the Holburne Museum, Bath, until 2 September
Posted by Vale
A young girl went missing. A body was found. A young man went to the police and said that she might be his sister. They said that was not possible; her age is wrong. That was how it happened back in 1994.
Today, police are looking for this man. The man who said that the young unidentified girl found in Pogonip Park was his sister. She still might not be his sister, but they need to find him to make sure.
The young girl was murdered in an area of the park where homeless people stayed. Now new tests have shown that she might have been younger than the police first thought…
I was an African American Male, about 50 years old, I stood about 5’8 and I wore a gold loop earring in my left ear. Now you know what they know. What they don’t know and maybe you do is my name.
Let me back up for a minute.
On July 23, 2006, a man and his son were crossing Mosquito Lake (Cortland, Ohio – Trumbull County) in the swampy area. While they were crossing they saw what they believed to be human remains. The authorities were contacted. Tests were run, they figured out my general description, the one I gave you above; but they couldn’t match me to any of their records on file, missing persons, etc. In time, the phone stopped ringing and all leads simply dried up.
The unknown victim is one of many whose stories are told on an American blog called Can You Identify Me? In its own words:
The site was started in 2007 as a blog dedicated to America’s Unidentified. It brings these individuals back to life if only for a brief moment to share some invaluable information along with their forensic reconstructions. Can You Identify Me gives the victim a first-person narrative and temporary Doe name until someone out there recognizes them. Once they are identified, they can be reunited with their families and the victims can rest in peace with a tombstone shining with their given name.
As one of their readers says ‘Not many blogs make me stop and read almost all their current posts. Topics like these bring be extreme sadness. Its a great thing you are doing. It saddens me to see how many lives go off without any closure.’
You can find the site here.
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition
A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, Maggi Hambling, Graham Harvey, Gary Lachman, Nick Reynolds, and Dignity in Dying.
It’s out in May 2012!
