The Morthouse

Post Mortem Man in a Chair by The Post Mortem Archive & Research on Flickr:

I just got this image and three people have commented that the man pictured had been hanged, but there is some missing emulsion by his neck that has the appearance of a rope. His head lolling to the side only enhances this look. The back of the cdv is not pictured, but there is the outline and paste remains of a stamp that had been removed, dating this image between 1864 and 1866.

From Wikimedia Commons:

Public guillotining in Lons-le-Saunier, 1897. Picture taken on 20 April 1897, in front of the jailhouse of Lons-le-Saunier, Jura. The man who was going to be beheaded was Pierre Vaillat, who killed two elder siblings on Christmas day, 1896, in order to rob them and was condemned for his crimes on 9 March 1897.

The guillotine is most famous for its role during the Reign of Terror in the 1790s, but did you know that it was used by the French government to execute criminals until 1981?

Other governments have used it, too, including (for a time) the Third Reich.

Jean-Baptiste Tropmann, a notorious French murderer, was executed by guillotine in 1870. You can read about his crimes here.

Image: Exécution de Jean-Baptiste Tropmann. Source: Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée. Via Réunion des musées nationaux et du Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées.

AP Wirephoto, 1963: Makeshift Morgue. Source: Photographic Morgue of the New York Journal-American, Harry Ransom Center.

Bodies of victims lay covered on the ice rink floor after an explosion rocked the Indiana State Fair Coliseum in Indianapolis during a Holiday on Ice show. 

You can read more about the explosion at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, which happened on Halloween night 1963 and killed 74 people, here.

La Salle Hotel fire showing corpse spread on third floor hallway. Mark Kauffman, 1946. Source: LIFE Photo Archive, hosted by Google.

The La Salle Hotel was built in 1909 and was one of the grandest in Chicago for a time. It suffered a devastating fire in June 1946, which killed 61 people. From Wikipedia:

The fire began in the Silver Grill Cocktail Lounge on the lower floor on the La Salle Street side adjacent to the lobby before ascending stairwells and shafts. The fire started either in the walls or in the ceiling according to the Chicago Fire Department around 12:15 a.m. but they didn’t receive their first notification of the fire until 12:35 a.m. The fire quickly spread through the highly-varnished wood paneling in the lounge and the mezzanine balcony overlooking the lobby. While a significant number died from flames, a greater number of deaths were caused by suffocation from the thick, black smoke. Around 900 guests were able to leave the building but some 150 had to be rescued by the fire services and by heroic members of the public, including two sailors who were reported to have rescued 27 people between them. Two-thirds of hotel fire deaths in 1946 occurred in the La Salle and Winecoff (Atlanta) fires. The hotel fire was so devastating, it resulted in the Chicago city council enacting new hotel building codes and fire-fighting procedures, including the installation of automatic alarm systems and instructions of fire safety inside the hotel rooms.

Kearny coffin on caisson (LOC) by The Library of Congress on Flickr. Bain News Service, publisher, 1912.

Photo shows flag-draped coffin of Major General Philip Kearny (1815-1862) on Broadway in New York City. Kearny died in battle during the Civil War and was buried at Trinity Churchyard until 1912, when the body was moved to Arlington Cemetery. 

[Post-mortem portrait of Eloise Channing Cook], ca. 1855. Source: Zelda Mackay pictorial collection/Hoff, Cook, and Bunce Families; Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Via Calisphere.

Label (typewritten): Corpse of Eloise Channing Cook / daughter of Elisha and Willie / Cook of San Francisco. Age 3. / An ambrotype. / (handwritten): famous gold rush lawyer [referring to Elisha]. 

From The Metropolitan Museum of Art (www.metmuseum.org):

Artist: Aleksey Ivanovich Saveliev (Russian, 1883–1923)

Title: Peasant Carts with Funeral Wreaths

Title: [Funeral of Leo Tolstoy, Astapovo, Russia]

Date: 1910

Medium: Gelatin silver print

Dimensions: Image: 8.9 x 13.3 cm (3 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.)

Credit Line: Gift of Pierre Apraxine, 2010

Accession Number: 2010.423.6

Classification: Photographs

Human Skeleton by TWAM - Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums on Flickr.

Blind adults are listening to a short lecture at Sunderland Museum before examining a human skeleton. 1913 […] From 1913, John Alfred Charlton Deas, a former curator at Sunderland Museum, organised several handling sessions for the blind, first offering an invitation to the children from the Sunderland Council Blind School, to handle a few of the collections at Sunderland Museum, which was ‘eagerly accepted’.

Thought I’d get back to bog bodies again, folks.

This is Haraldskær Woman. She was found in Denmark in 1835 and was one of the first bog bodies studied by archaeologists. Found on her back, she was naked (though a leather cape and some woollen clothes were laid on top of her), and she was pinned down by branches and wooden poles. 

Some more gories from Wikipedia:

The complete skin envelope and the internal organs were both intact. The body had a lancing wound to the knee joint area, where some object (possibly one of the sharp poles) penetrated to some depth. Her skin was deeply bronzed with a robust skin tone due to tannins in the peat, and all the body joints were preserved with overlying skin in a state as if she had died only recently. Doctors determined she had been about 50 years old when she died and in good health without signs of degenerative diseases (such as arthritis) which are typically found in human remains of that age.

In 1979, doctors at Århus Hospital undertook a further forensic examination of the Haraldskær Woman. By this time, the body had desiccated, shrunken, and the skin was leathery, severely wrinkled and folded. A CT-scan of the cranium more accurately determined her age to be about 40 years old at the time of her death. The body height now measured only 1.33 m (4 ft 4 in) but doctors used the original 1835 descriptions to estimate she would have stood about 1.50 m (4 ft 11 in).

In 2000, Lone Hvass of the Elsinore Museum, Miranda Aldhouse-Green of Cardiff University, and the Department of Forensic Science at the University of Århus performed a re-examination of the Haraldskær Woman. Forensic analysis revealed stomach contents of unhusked millet and blackberries. Her neck had a faint groove as if someone applied a rope for torture or strangulation. The scientists concluded bog acids caused the swelling of the knee joint and that the woman was probably already dead before the branches pinned her down. Because of her careful placement, and since cremation was the prevailing mode of interment during that period in Jutland, the examiners determined the Haraldskær Woman was a victim of ritual sacrifice.

A case of mistaken identity was perhaps the best thing to ever happen to Haraldskær Woman (at least, in her postmortem life). When she was first discovered, she was believed to be the 10th-century Norwegian Queen Gunnhild, who (according to an Old Norse saga) was ordered bog-drowned by Danish King Harald Bluetooth. Soon after her discovery, Danish royalty had a sarcophagus crafted specifically to house her, and this V.I.P. treatment likely has contributed to her excellent state of preservation (minus some drying and shrinking) today, nearly 200 years after her discovery. (Later research revealed that Haraldskær Woman was not Gunnhild, but actually much older, living during the Iron Age in about 490 B.C.) 

Not all bog bodies have been as lucky in their conservation. For instance, Tollund Man: he’s pretty much gone now, except for his head. Alas, poor Tollund Man.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

“James King of William: the patriot martyr of California / Portrait of Mr. King after death.” J.M. Hutchings, ca. 1856. Source: Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; via Calisphere.

Bust and postmortem portraits of editor of San Francisco Evening Bulletin, who was assassinated by James P. Casey on May 14th, 1856. The latter showing entrance and exit of fatal bullet. 

You can read more about James King of William and his storied death here and here on the Museum of the City of San Francisco website.