“The Passion to be Reckoned upon is Fear”: Understanding the Social, Cultural and Legal

Power of the Criminal Corpse in Mid-Eighteenth Century Scotland.

Rachel BennettUniversity of Leicester

Aims of the Public Execution

1752 Murder Act

• The bodies of executed murderers were to be either sent for dissection or to be hung in chains.

• (In England and Wales) All persons condemned for murder shall be executed on the day next following sentence (unless that day was a Sunday).

• “In no case whatsoever the body of any murderer shall be suffered to be buried.”

• Between sentence and execution the offender is only to be fed upon bread and water and is to be kept apart from other prisoners.

Executions in Scotland 1750-1765

No. of Executions Dissected Hung in Chains Other

Men 51 6 10 1

Women 15 10 1

Dissection as a Punishment

- Clydesdale in the Anatomy Theatre. Depicts the dissection of Matthew Clydesdale in Glasgow in November 1818.