10
Drum



A fifteenth century, undefeated Hussite military commander, Jan
Ziska – real name Jan z Trocnova – wouldn’t let a little thing like
dying bring an end to his Protestant uprising against the Catholic
church. He’d already led his forces into battle to whip the Holy
Roman Emperor’s armies, invaded Austria and Moravia, and
participated in a civil war even after losing both his eyes!


Legendarily, when he lay dying from the plague while on the
march to Bohemia, Ziska ordered that after his death, his body
should be flayed, and his skin cured and stretched over a drum to
continue terrifying the enemy on the battlefield with his sheer
badassery.

http://listverse.com/2012/12/11/top-10-bizarre-uses-for-human-skin/

9
Waistcoat


During the Reign of Terror in an eighteenth century France torn
apart by revolution, Saint-Just rose to become a political leader,
military commander, and close friend of Robespierre as well as a
member of the Committee of Public Safety, which condemned
quite a few people to the guillotine.

In a story attributed to de la
Meuse’s “Anecdotes”, Saint-Just’s romantic advances toward a tall,
young, beautiful woman were spurned. In a hell-hath-no-fury
moment of madness, he had her arrested, executed, her skin
removed by a surgeon, cured by a tanner, and made into a
fashionable waistcoat which he wore every day.

Another version
of the story is that the woman was a thieving maid who got her
just desserts.

Cc: seun lalasticlala

8
Cigar Case


Henri Pranzini, the late nineteenth century French conman-turned-
murderer – nicknamed the “Splendid Darling” – made a splash in
more ways than one. He trial caused a worldwide sensation, and
he ended his days with a visit to the guillotine.

As a grotesque,
unconfirmed, but entirely possible coda, it’s said that bits of his
body were sold to collectors hungry for a piece of the infamous
killer, including one of his teeth knocked out for a woman who
had it set into a ring.

The report goes that a member of the Sûretè
(secret police) got hold of some of Pranzini’s skin as a souvenir du
jour, and had a cigar case made from the leather.

Cc: seun lalasticlala

7
Book


One of the more famous items on this list. Today held in the
collection of the Boston Athenaeum library, the book has the title,
Hic Liber Waltonis Cute Compactus Est (this book ia bound in
Walton’s skin). James Allen – real name, George Walton – was a
notorious nineteenth century highwayman who died of
tuberculosis while incarcerated in 1837.

Before he died, he
requested that his skin be removed and used to bind a volume of
his autobiography to be presented to John Fenno, a former
robbery victim who’d bravely stood up to him after being shot.


The book remained in the Fenno family until donated to the
library.

6
Calling Card Case



The nineteenth century body snatchers and murderers, William
Burke and his partner, William Hare, killed seventeen people in
Edinburgh, Scotland, and sold their bodies to a doctor for
dissection.

Burke was convicted and hanged, but didn’t go
peacefully to his grave. His body was dissected – his skeleton and
death mask are in the University of Edinburgh’s Anatomical
Museum – and other parts of his corpse made into useful items
such as the binding of a pocketbook, and a very elegant calling
card case made from the skin of his left hand, now on display at
the Police Information Centre on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

5
Wallet


In Morristown, New Jersey, in 1833, French immigrant Antoine
LeBlanc battered three people to death, stuffed a pillowcase full of
their valuables, and fled the blood splattered scene. He was
caught, convicted, and sentenced to hang. The judge also ordered
that the infamous killer’s body be dissected after death. According
to reports, LeBlanc was flayed, his skin tanned, and some made
into wallets and change purses. Other strips of the skin signed by
Sheriff Ludlow (the man who’d caught LeBlanc) were sold as
mementoes to curiosity seekers.

Long considered mere rumor,
the stories were proved plausible in 1979 when LeBlanc’s death
mask and what appeared to be a human leather wallet were
discovered in the house of the town’s unofficial historian and
collector of nineteenth century artifacts.

4
Boot


In this case, the skins’ unwitting donors are unknown. In 1876,
Mr. Mahrenholz of H&A Mahrenholz in New York, a shoemaker
who enjoyed experimenting on various types of leather including
catfish and anaconda, procured the stomach, back, and buttock
skins of a pair of unidentified elderly men who’d died and been
previously dissected.

After tanning the pieces of skin in dog
manure and water – yes, there was a roaring trade in dog poop
gathered and sold to tanneries, it was called “pure” – he made a
handsome display boot and sent it to the Smithsonian Institute in
Washington, D.C. where it remains in their collection.

Ok

3
Slippers



Around 1633, the French king Louis XIII founded the Cabinet du
Roi, a private museum or cabinet of curiosities at the Palace of
Versailles containing some interesting oddities. In the late
eighteenth century, it’s reported by Valmont De Bomare in his
Dictionnaire that a Paris surgeon, Pierre Sue, donated a pair of
slippers made of human skin to the Cabinet du Roi, which already


contained a human leather belt (nipple still visible). Eugène Sue, a
descendent of Pierre, continued the family tradition by having an
1854 volume of Le Mystères de Paris bound in peau de femme –
the skin of a woman who loved him.

2
High Heeled Shoes



A noted Dutch physician and botanist in Leyden in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Hermann Boerhaave is
said to have owned a private collection of curiosities – including
what’s been reported as a pair of ladies’ high heeled shoes made
from leather obtained from the skin of an anonymous, executed
male criminal.

The contributor’s nipples were neatly centered on
the uppers to form a grisly accent. How Boerhaave acquired this
fashionable footwear is not known, but in Notes and Queries
Volume II, Series II (1856), Henry Stephens wrote about seeing
the shoes himself in 1818.

1
For the People, of the People



During the French Revolution, as the story goes, someone noticed
that a potentially valuable resource was being wasted – the
corpses of people executed by the guillotine. Accordingly, the
Committee of Public Safety gave permission to use the castle of
Muedon outside Paris as a tannery to process leather from human
skin. Quite a number of gentlemen allegedly wore breeches and
boots made from the product, which is said to have been supple
and high quality. In fact, if you believe the author Montgaillard,
men’s skins were preferred for fashion, having the texture of
chamois.


Women’s skins were too soft to be very useful.


Over the centuries, a few of the deceased have taken on new life
by contributing body parts to dentures, fertilizer, fashion, the
decorative arts, and other pursuits.


Does the thought make you
shudder? You’re in good company.

The living will probably
always have a morbid fascination for objects made from the dead

… perhaps a reminder of our own mortality.