Mandrake: The Gallows Fruit

Guestpost by Costanza De Cillia

Growing, in the shadow of the gallows, is a monstrous fruit. It is a prodigious aphrodisiac, but it also serves as an indispensable ingredient in the witch’s recipe book-who, according to legend, mixes it with the fat of stillborn children, thus creating an ointment with which she can fly to the sabbath.
As Pliny and Dioscorides relate, this
anodyne natural was applied as an analgesic before surgical operations because of the discrete soporific and sedative properties attributed to it by learned medicine prior to the 16th century, which made use of it in various forms-from the extract of the fruit, to the seeds, to the actual root.

Countless ailments were said to be cured by the mandrake: it was used both for external and internal use, as well as to heal infertility and impotence (its renowned value as an erotic stimulant is even attested by one of the epithets of the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite Mandragoritis, and, by the more puritanical, by nicknames for it as the apple or even testicle of the devil), both against menstrual disorders, quartan fever, excess black bile (the dreaded melancholia, the cause of numerous ailments, including mental ones), diseases characterized by inflammation of one or more parts of the body, from the eyes to the anus, against abscesses, indurations, and even tumors.
Mandrake was used according to the many uses suggested by premodern pharmacopoeia, but also as a fetish: it was sold as an amulet by the
root-diggers, a branch of merchants who specialized in extracting the plant-who, however, apparently peddled in its place roots of bryony or other common plants, tactically carved.

A vegetable at the intersection with the other kingdoms-the mineral, because of its chthonic origin, and the animal, indeed, even human… – sought after yet feared, admirable and deadly, the mandrake belongs to the family of the infamous nightshade, associated like its “sister” with witchcraft for its psychoactive properties due to its high concentration of scopolamine, a tropane alkaloid found mainly in its roots. It is a solanacea, whose intricate, vaguely anthropomorphic shaped roots have intrigued the human imagination since ancient times, so much so that it has been attributed a sex (which determines its shape and color), human-like genitalia and a rather difficult character, which causes it, for example, to hide from impure people and allow itself to be tamed only by those who show it a cross or spray it with menstrual blood or urine.

This sort of personification has resulted in the plant sometimes being treated as a small individual, made of living flesh: a homunculus, literally, endowed among other things with a power execrable. Around the figure of this prodigious plant, in fact, hovers for centuries a gloomy legend : it is said that it screams, when extracted from the earth, with such shrieks as to make the unwary “pickers” lose their senses or even kill them on the spot. This deadly capacity of the prized booty then necessitates complex contrivances by which those about to dig the mandrake out of the ground can preserve their health (and survive it).
The most common contrivances follow a common pattern: at the center of all variants, there is in fact the sacrifice of a
dog (the only exception is the one Frazer attributes to the Jewish tradition, in which a donkey), most often with black fur; to this animal before dawn on Friday-not coincidentally, the day named after the goddess of love-the plant is tied, of whose roots a single strand is left still buried. The dog, purposely hungry, is then made to run away with the call of a tasty morsel; in doing so it snatches the entire plant from the ground, which bursts into deadly squeals, which, unfortunately, cause the sudden death of the unsuspecting animal. The humans present-who up to that point have kept their ears well covered or even plugged with cotton sealed with pitch or wax-can then approach and pick up the plant, which, thus “let loose,” is now rendered harmless.

A fascinating aspect of the mandrake is its origin, according to legend, which makes it a literal fruit of hanging-the product of thecross between man and the earth(Zarcone).
Certain Anglo-Saxon and Germanic traditions call this plant
gallows man, mad plant e dragon doll, terms that evoke the human and somewhat monstrous origin of the mandrake. Indeed, the seed from which this fabled “capestro flower” is formed would be precisely the human one, scattered on the ground at the moment of death by the criminal subjected to the infamous execution par excellence.

Already climbing the steps of the gallows, the dying man imagines himself suspended between heaven and earth, thrown into a limbo from which only divine forgiveness could pull him to safety, as well as rejected by the community gathered there to voraciously admire his agony, in all its physiological aspects.
The suspension of which the condemned man was a victim would obliterate his body(Tarlow – Battel Lowman), annihilating it as a social object, placing it in exile in a liminal zone both geographically and metaphorically (as, moreover, also occurred in the display of the corpse through
gibbet); the rope, the instrument of execution, which although theoretically should have fractured or dislocated the upper cervical vertebrae of the condemned man, leading him quickly to death, most often ended up strangling him, thus disrupting his features and causing him to inevitably evacuate feces, urine and, depending on the sex of the victim, menstrual blood or seminal fluid.

Not to be overlooked is the fact that, by virtue of the magical-medical theory of the transfer of life energy from the dead person to his or her survivor, people eagerly sought contact with the body of the punished offender, still imbued with vitality (which gave him or her invaluable medical potency). These are the secrets of the corpse, passed down in a veritable consumer literature in which, as Camporesi explains, therapeutic occultism combines with necromantic pharmacopoeia and natural magic to crown a Faustian dream of long life and eternal youth.

According to a logic that considers putrefaction a black copulation capable of making the dead a “wellspring of health,” the living can keep healthy by preying on the deceased; it can even transmit its own ills to it, deriving from them the energy that the spirits, in turmoil in those last moments, still bestow on the corpse. The dead person is thus paradoxical dispenser of life (Camporesi).
That is why the
stroke, or the touch of the hanged man, was believed to be curative: the hand of the corpse was shaken or put in contact with the parts of the body affected by skin diseases, blemishes, goiters and excrescences (from leek to wart to sebaceous cyst), as Davies and Matteoni masterfully explain. Imagine, then, how much power may reside in the seminal legacy left by the hanged man: the mandrake, inhuman progeny of the gallows!

The plant that ignites eros and brings death arises from the intersection of these same two principles, that is, from the climax reached in so-called “angelic lust.”
This euphemism designates the post-mortem priapism observed since antiquity in the corpse of the executed, especially if it died by strangulation. This is a phenomenon that has inspired not only various essays on sexology and the psychology of deviance but also great novelists such as Sade, Musset, Joyce and Burroughs. We are thus speaking of a “mortal erection” that was sometimes followed even on the scaffold by ejaculation, and it was to this very phenomenon that ancient herbaria traced the origin of the mandrake, which arose from the semen emitted by the condemned at the moment of death.

The ability to exhibit an erection literally terminal and culminating in ejaculation, among other things, was a decisive component in the name that qualified this mode of execution as an “infamous death.” Indeed, hanging appears as the most shameful of departures throughout Western history (but not only, according to Old Testament Deuteronomy, where it is associated in this ignominious aura with crucifixion, another example of death by suspension). Whether it was considered degrading because it was imposed on criminals of the humblest background and/or despicable crime, or conversely imposed on them precisely because it was felt to be dishonorable, hanging was in any case the most common type of execution; according to tradition, it was also the death of the last and worst, as the apocryphal last events of Judas, the victim of a grotesque and studiously humiliating agony, remind us. Such an aura of infamy is probably why, as Owens notes in Stages of Dismemberment, hanging is almost absent in hagiography, and may have arisen precisely from the “embarrassing” physiological phenomena that accompany this particularly spectacular form of death.

Among these bodily events, the celestial orgasm we have already discussed-which in the female corpse has its counterpoint in the possibility of a loss of blood from the vagina, accompanied by a sprinkling of the labia and clitoris, in a spontaneous menstruation caused by the action of gravity on the uterus resulting in prolapse of the sexual organs-is simply the most “scandalous” because it involves the genitals. As Hurren vividly recounts in Dissecting the Criminal Corpse, many condemned men urinated and/or defecated, at the fatal moment; others, victims of suggestion, stained their robes with ejaculated semen; there were gaseous exchanges caused by the deceased’s digestion, and decaying blood leaked from the mouth and nostrils, in a purgation made all the more disconcerting by the rigor mortisduring which the gases, unable to escape entirely through the anus or nose, passed through the trachea, giving the impression that the corpse groaned and croaked as if it had still been alive and aching.

Although life, as commonly understood, no longer resided in the limbs of the hanged man, something remained that seemed to defy the justice that had been done. From the invicible erection, that is, from the last “tears”-as this ejaculation was poetically called in articulo mortis – shed by the criminal on the ground, would then form, under his corpse left hanging, the mandrake.

This therapeutic and dangerous plant-a veritable pharmakon, remedy and poison, in the dual Greek sense – constitutes in short, on a par with the rope used to execute the criminal or the healing touch of the hanged man’s hand, another example of the posthumous ways by which the condemned man, once dead, goes from nefarious to salvific for the community that expelled him. In fact, once he repents, it is as if the criminal is reintegrated into the community through his own execution, moving from the status of a tainted and defiling individual to that of a “salutary” element.

The corpse of the executed criminal, through the medicinal virtues of his mortal remains or through the generation of the mandrake, thus acquires a “posthumous” social life through the distribution of his energies, and becomes the site where, in a tangible way, the salvation that resides in repentance occurs.

Costanza De Cillia has a PhD in Philosophy and Science of Religions. Her main fields of research are the aesthetics of violence and the anthropology of capital execution

Links, Curiosities & Mixed Wonders – 20

Monday morning according to Gustave Doré.

First of all some quick updates on my upcoming activities.

  • On November 1st, together with my friend Luca Cableri, I will be a guest of the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival. We will talk about wunderkammer and space, in a conference entitled The Space Cabinet of Curiosities. — November 1st, 10 am, Teatro Miela in piazza L. Amedeo Duca degli Abruzzi 3, Trieste.
  • On November 3rd I will speak at Sadistique, the BDSM party organized every first Sunday of the month by Ayzad. The title of my speech: “Pains are my delight”: Erotics of martyrdom. Obviously, given the private context, access is forbidden to the curious and to those who have no intention of participating in the party. Consult prices, rules of conduct and dress code on the event’s official page. — November 3rd, 3-8 pm, Nautilus Club, via Mondovì 7, Milano.
    [BTW, Ayzad recently launched his own podcast Exploring Unusual Sex, you can listen to it on Spreaker and Spotify]
  • I remind you that on November 14 we will inaugurate the collective art exhib REQVIEM at Mirabilia Gallery in Rome. The exhibition, organized by l’Arca degli Esposti and curated by Eliana Urbano Raimondi and myself, will feature works by 10 international artists within the context of the only Roman wunderkammer. — November 14th, 7 pm, Galleria Mirabilia, via di San Teodoro 15, Roma.

Without further ado let’s start with our selection of links & weirdness!

  • In his encyclopedia of natural history L’univers. Les infiniment grands et les infiniments petits (1865) Felix A. Pouchet recounts this case which allegedly happened in 1838 in the French Alps: “A little girl, five years old, called Marie Delex, was playing with one of her companions on a mossy slope of the mountain, when all at once an eagle swooped down upon her and carried her away in spite of the cries and presence of her young friends. Some peasants, hearing her screams, hastened to the spot but sought in vain for the child, for they found nothing but one of her shoes on the edge of a precipice. The child was not carried to the eagle’s nest, where only the two eagles were seen surrounded by heaps of goat and sheep bones. It was not until two months later that a shepherd discovered the corpse of Marie Delec, frightfully mutilared, and lying upon a rock half a league from where she had been borne off.
  • The Halloween special which caused the death of a young boy, pushing the BBC to pretend it never even aired: a nice video tells its story. (Thanks Johnny!)
  • Fungi that turn insects into zombies: I’ve already written about them a few years ago in my little ebook (remember it?). But this video about the cute Entomophthora muscae has some truly spectacular images.

  • Italian creativity really tops itself when it’s time to put up a scam. A small business car ran over a wild boar in the Gallura countryside, forest rangers were alerted so that the accident damage could be reimbursed by the municipality. It turned out the boar had been just taken out of a freezer. (Article in Italian, via Batisfera)
  • In 1929, the Australian writer Arthur Upfield was planning a detective story and while chatting with a friend he came up with a method for the perfect murder. So perfect in fact, that his novel couldn’t even work, because the detective in the the story would never have solved the case. He needed to find a flaw, one small detail that could expose the culprit. To get out of the impasse the frustrated writer began to discuss the plot with various people. Little did he know that one of these listeners would soon decide to test the method himself, by killing three men.
  • I sometimes think back to a little book I had as a kid, Idées Noires by Franquin. Here is an example of the Belgian cartoonist‘s very dark humor.

“The law is clear: everyone who kills another person will have his head cut off.”

  • An since we’re talking about beheadings, I took the above photograph at Vienna’s Kriminalmuseum di Vienna. It is the head of criminal Frank Zahlheim, and on the cultural implications of this kind of specimens I wrote a post last year that you might want to re-read if you’ve got five minutes.
  • Greta Thunberg becomes a pretext to clarify what autism and Asperger’s syndrome really are (article in Italian).
  • In England, back in the days, whenever someone died in the family the first thing to do was tell the bees.
  • To conclude, I leave you with a picture of a beautiful Egyptian mummified phallus (circa 664-332 a.C.). See you next time!

Criminal Heads

Two dissected heads. Color plate by Gautier D’Agoty (1746).

Starting from the end of the Middle Ages, the bodies of those condemned to death were commonly used for anatomical dissections. It was a sort of additional penalty, because autopsy was still perceived as a sort of desecration; perhaps because this “cruelty” aroused a certain sense of guilt, it was common for the dissected bodies to be granted a burial in consecrated ground, something that would normally have been precluded to criminals.

But during the nineteenth century dissecting the bodies of criminals began to have a more specific reason, namely to understand how the anatomy of a criminal differed from the norm. A practice that continued until almost mid-twentieth century.
The following picture shows the head of Peter Kürten (1883-1931), the infamous Vampire of Düsseldorf whose deeds inspired Fritz Lang’s masterpiece M (1931). Today it is exhibited at Ripley’s Believe It Or Not by Winsconsin Dells.

Cesare Lombroso, who in spite of his controversial theories was one of the pioneers and founders of modern criminology, was convinced that the criminal carried in his anatomy the anomalous signs of a genetic atavism.

The Museum dedicated to him, in Turin, retraces his reasoning, his convictions influenced by theories in vogue at the time, and gives an account of the impressive collection of heads he studied and preserved. Lombroso himself wanted to become part of his museum, where today the criminologist’s entire skeleton is on display; his preserved, boneless head is not visible to the public.

Head of Cesare Lombroso.

Similar autopsies on the skull and brain of the murderers almost invariably led to the same conclusion: no appreciable anatomical difference compared to the common man.

A deterministic criminology — the idea, that is, that criminal behavior derives from some anatomical, biological, genetic anomaly — has a comforting appeal for those who believe they are normal.
This is the classic process of creation/labeling of the different, what Foucault called “the machinery that makes qualifications and disqualifications“: if the criminal is different, if his nature is deviant (etymologically, he strays from the right path on which we place ourselves), then we will sleep soundly.

Numerous research suggests that in reality anyone is susceptible to adopt socially deplorable behavior, given certain premises, and even betray their ethical principles as soon as some specific psychological mechanisms are activated (see P. Bocchiaro, Psicologia del male, 2009). Yet the idea that the “abnormal” individual contains in himself some kind of predestination to deviance continues to be popular even today: in the best case this is a cognitive bias, in the worst case it’s plain deceit. A striking example of mala fides is provided by those scientific studies financed by tobacco or gambling multinationals, aimed at showing that addiction is the product of biological predisposition in some individuals (thus relieving the funders of such reasearch from all responsibility).

But let’s go back to the obsession of nineteenth-century scientists for the heads of criminals.
What is interesting in our eyes is that often, in these anatomical specimens, what was preserved was not even the internal structure, but rather the criminal’s features.

In the picture below you can see the skin of the face of Martin Dumollard (1810-1862), who killed more than 6 women. Today it is kept at the Musée Testut-Latarjet in Lyon.
It was tanned while his skull was being studied in search of anomalies. It was the skull, not the skin, the focus of the research. Why then take the trouble to prepare also his face, detached from the skull?

Dumollard is certainly not the only example. Also at the Testut-Latarjet lies the facial skin of Jules-Joseph Seringer, guilty of killing his mother, stepfather and step-sister. The museum also exhibits a plaster cast of the murderer, which offers a more realistic account of the killer’s features, compared to this hideous mask.

For the purposes of physiognomic and phrenological studies of the time, this plaster bust would have been a much better support than a skinned face. Why not then stick to the cast?

The impression is that preserving the face or the head of a criminal was, beyond any scientific interest, a way to ensure that the memory of guilt could never vanish. A condemnation to perpetual memory, the symbolic equivalent of those good old heads on spikes, placed at the gates of the city — as a deterrent, certainly, but also and above all as a spectacle of the pervasiveness of order, a proof of the inevitability of punishment.

Head of Diogo Alves, beheaded in 1841.

Head of Narcisse Porthault, guillotined in 1846. Ph. Jack Burman.

 

Head of Henri Landru, guillotined in 1922.

 

Head of Fritz Haarmann, beheaded in 1925.

This sort of upside-down damnatio memoriæ, meant to immortalize the offending individual instead of erasing him from collective memory, can be found in etchings, in the practice of the death masks and, in more recent times, in the photographs of guillotined criminals.

Death masks of hanged Victorian criminals (source).

Guillotined: Juan Vidal (1910), Auguste DeGroote (1893), Joseph Vacher (1898), Canute Vromant (1909), Lénard, Oillic, Thépaut and Carbucci (1866), Jean-Baptiste Picard (1862), Abel Pollet (1909), Charles Swartewagher (1905), Louis Lefevre (1915), Edmond Claeys (1893), Albert Fournier (1920), Théophile Deroo (1909), Jean Van de Bogaert (1905), Auguste Pollet (1909).

All these heads chopped off by the executioner, whilst referring to an ideal of justice, actually celebrate the triumph of power.

But there are four peculiar heads, which impose themselves as a subversive and ironic contrappasso. Four more heads of criminals, which were used to mock the prison regime.


These are the effigies that, placed on the cushions to deceive the guards, allowed Frank Morris, together with John and Clarence Anglin, to famously escape from Alcatraz (the fourth accomplice, Allen West, remained behind). Sculpted with soap, toothpaste, toilet paper and cement powder, and decorated with hair collected at the prison’s barbershop, these fake heads are the only remaining memory of the three inmates who managed to escape from the maximum security prison — along with their mug shots.

Although unwittingly, Morris and his associates had made a real détournement of a narrative which had been established for thousands of years: an iconography that aimed to turn the head and face of the condemned man into a mere simulacrum, in order to dehumanize him.

Collectible tattoos

For some days now I have been receiving suggestions about Dr. Masaichi Fukushi‘s tattoo collection, belonging to Tokyo University Pathology Department. I am willing to write about it, because the topic is more multifaceted than it looks.

Said collection is both well-known and somewhat obscure.
Born in 1878, Dr. Fukushi was studying the formation of nevi on the skin around 1907, when his research led him to examine the correlation between the movement of melanine through vascularized epidermis and the injection of pigments under the skin in tattoos. His interest was further fueled by a peculiar discovery: the presence of a tattoo seemed to prevent the signs of syphilis from appearing in that area of the body.

In 1920 Dr. Fukushi entered the Mitsui Memorial Hospital, a charity structure where treatment was offered to the most disadvantaged social classes. In this environment, he came in contact with many tattooed persons and, after a short period in Germany, he continued his research on the formation of congenital moles at Nippon Medical University. Here, often carrying out autopsies, he developed an original method of preserving tattooed epidermis he took from corpses; he therefore began collecting various samples, managing to stretch the skin so that it could be exhibited inside a glass frame.

It seems Dr. Fukushi did not have an exclusively scientific interest in tattoos, but was also quite compassionate. Tattooed people, in fact, often came from the poorest and most problematic bracket of japanese society, and Fukushi’s sympathy for the less fortunate even pushed him, in some instances, to take over the expenses for those who could not afford to complete an unfinished tattoo. In return, the doctor asked for permission to remove their skin post mortem. But his passion for tattoos also took the form of photographic records: he collected more than 3.000 pictures, which were destroyed during the bombing of Tokyo in WWII.
This was not the only loss, for a good number of tattooed skins were stolen in Chicago as the doctor was touring the States giving a series of academic lectures between 1927 and 1928.
Fukushi’s work gained international attention in the 40s and the 50s, when several articles appeared on the newspapers, such as the one above published on Life magazine.

Life

As we said earlier, the collection endured heavy losses during the 1945 bombings. However some skin samples, which had been secured elsewhere, were saved and — after being handed down to Fukushi’s son, Kalsunari — they could be today inside the Pathology Department, even if not available to the public. It is said that among the specimens there are some nearly complete skin suits, showing tattoos over the whole body surface. All this is hard to verify, as the Department is not open to the public and no official information seems to be found online.

Then again, if in the Western world tattoo is by now such a widespread trend that it hardly sparks any controversy, it still remains quite taboo in Japan.
Some time ago, the great Italian tattoo artist Pietro Sedda (author of the marvelous Black Novel For Lovers) told me about his last trip to Japan, and how in that country tattooers still operate almost in secret, in small, anonymous parlors with no store signs, often hidden inside common apartment buildings. The fact that tattoos are normally seen in a negative way could be related to the traditional association of this art form with yakuza members, even though in some juvenile contexts fashion tattoos are quite common nowadays.

A tattoo stygma existed in Western countries up to half a century ago, ratified by explicit prohibitions in papal bulls. One famous exception were the tattoos made by “marker friars” of the Loreto Sanctuary, who painted christian, propitiatory or widowhood symbols on the hands of the faithful. But in general the only ones who decorated their bodies were traditionally the outcast, marginalized members of the community: pirates, mercenaries, deserters, outlaws. In his most famous essay, Criminal Man (1876), Cesare Lombroso classified every tattoo variation he had encountered in prisoners, interpreting them through his (now outdated) theory of atavism: criminals were, in his view, Darwinianly unevolved individuals who tattooed themselves as if responding to an innate primitiveness, typical of savage peoples — who not surprisingly practiced tribal tattooing.

Coming back to the human hides preserved by Dr. Fukushi, this is not the only, nor the largest, collection of its kind. The record goes to London’s Wellcome Collection, which houses around 300 individual pieces of tattoed skin (as opposed to the 105 specimens allegedly stored in Tokyo), dating back to the end of XIX Century.

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The edges of these specimens show a typical arched pattern due to being pinned while drying. And the world opened up by these traces from the past is quite touching, as are the motivations that can be guessed behind an indelible inscription on the skin. Today a tattoo is often little more than a basic decoration, a tribal motif (the meaning of which is often ignored) around an ankle, an embellishment that turns the body into a sort of narcissistic canvas; in a time when a tattoo was instead a symbol of rebellion against the establishment, and in itself could cause many troubles, the choice of the subject was of paramount relevance. Every love tattoo likely implied a dangerous or “forbidden” relationship; every sentence injected under the skin by the needle became the ultimate statement, a philosophy of life.

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These collections, however macabre they may seem, open a window on a non-aligned sensibility. They are, so to speak, an illustrated atlas of that part of society which is normally not contemplated nor sung by official history: rejects, losers, outsiders.
Collected in a time when they were meant as a taxonomy of symbols allowing identification and prevention of specific “perverse” psychologies, they now speak of a humanity who let their freak flag fly.

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(Thanks to all those who submitted the Fukushi collection.)

Il Museo Criminologico di Roma

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Nella seconda metà dell’800, in Europa e in Italia, divenne sempre più evidente la necessità di una riforma carceraria; allo stesso tempo, e grazie agli intensi dibattiti sulla questione, crebbe l’interesse per lo studi delle cause della delinquenza, e dei possibili metodi per curarla. Mentre quindi la Polizia Scientifica muoveva i primi passi, il grande criminologo Cesare Lombroso studiava le possibili correlazioni fra la morfologia fisica e l’attitudine al delitto, e grazie a lui prendeva vita il primo, grande museo di antropologia criminale a Torino.

A Roma, invece, si dovette aspettare fino al 1931 perché potesse aprire al pubblico il “Museo Criminale”, che ospitava la collezione di reperti utilizzati precedentemente per gli studi della scuola di Polizia scientifica. Il Museo ebbe poi fasi e fortune alterne, tanto da venire chiuso nel 1968, e riaperto solo nel 1975 con la nuova denominazione “MUCRI – Museo criminologico”. La nuova sede, all’interno delle carceri del palazzo del Gonfalone, è quella in cui il Museo si trova ancora oggi. Dalla fine degli anni ’70 il museo è stato nuovamente chiuso per quasi vent’anni, per riaprire al pubblico nel 1994.

Il Museo oggi conta centinaia di reperti, divisi in tre grandi sezioni: la Giustizia dal Medioevo al XIX secolo, l’Ottocento e l’evoluzione del sistema penitenziario, il Novecento e i protagonisti del crimine.

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La prima sezione, che ripercorre i metodi di punizione e di tortura in uso dal Medioevo fino al XIX secolo, è ovviamente la più impressionante. Dalle asce per decapitazione cinquecentesche, alle gogne, ai banchi di fustigazione, alle mordacchie, agli strumenti di tortura dell’Inquisizione, tutto ci parla di un’epoca in cui la crudeltà delle pene eguagliava, se non addirittura superava, quella del crimine stesso. Fra gli oggetti esposti segnaliamo la tonaca del celebre boia pontificio Mastro Titta, la spada che decapitò Beatrice Cenci, una forca e tre ghigliottine (fra cui quella in uso a Piazza del Popolo fino al 1869).

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Nella seconda sezione, dedicata all’Ottocento, troviamo traccia della nascita dell’antropologia criminale, e dell’evoluzione del sistema carcerario. Possiamo vedere il calco del cranio del brigante Giuseppe Villella (su cui Lombroso scoprì nel 1872 la “prova” della delinquenza atavica: la “fossetta occipitale mediana”); lo spazio dedicato agli attentati politici espone, tra l’altro, il cranio, il cervello e gli scritti dell’anarchico lucano Giovanni Passannante, che attentò alla vita del re Umberto I a Napoli, nel 1878. Ugualmente impressionanti il letto di contenzione e le camicie di forza che testimoniano la nascita dei manicomi criminali.

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Ma forse la parte più sorprendente è quella delle cosiddette “malizie carcerarie”, ovvero i sotterfugi con cui i detenuti comunicavano tra di loro, occultavano armi o inventavano sistemi per evadere o compiere atti di autolesionismo. Un’estrema inventiva che si tinge di toni tristi e spesso macabri.

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L’ultima sezione, quella dedicata ai grandi episodi di cronaca nera del Novecento, è una vera e propria wunderkammer del crimine, dove decine e decine di oggetti e reperti sono esposti in un percorso eterogeneo che spazia dagli anni ’30 agli anni ’90. Una stanza ospita armi e indizi trovati sulla scena dei delitti italiani fra i più celebri, come ad esempio quelli perpetrati da Leonarda Cianciulli, la “saponificatrice di Correggio”; tra gli altri, sono esibiti gli oggetti personali di Antonietta Longo, la “decapitata di Castelgandolfo”, le armi della banda Casaroli, la pistola con cui la contessa Bellentani uccise il suo amante durante una sfarzosa serata di gala. Vi si trovano anche materiali pornografici sequestrati (quando erano ancora illegali), ed esempi di merce di contrabbando, inclusi numerosi quadri ed opere d’arte.

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Altre vetrine interessanti ripercorrono le testimonianze relative alla criminalità organizzata, al banditismo (con oggetti appartenuti a Salvatore Giuliano), al terrorismo, e a tutte le declinazioni possibili del crimine (furti, falsi, giochi d’azzardo, ecc.). Nella sezione dedicata allo spionaggio si può ammirare uno splendido e curioso baule dentro il quale fu rinvenuto, dopo un rocambolesco inseguimento, un piccolo ometto seduto su un seggiolino, legato con le cinghie e avvolto da coperte e cuscini. Si trattava di una spia che cercava di imbarcarsi clandestinamente all’aeroporto di Fiumicino.

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Il Museo Criminologico si trova in Via del Gonfalone 29 (una laterale di Via Giulia), ed è aperto dal martedì al sabato dalle ore 9 alle 13; martedì e giovedì dalle 14.30 alle 18.30. Ecco il sito ufficiale del MUCRI.

AGGIORNAMENTO: dal 01 giugno 2016 il MUCRI è chiuso, e non è stata comunicata una data di riapertura.

Le scarpe del bandito

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Era l’epoca d’oro dei fuorilegge, quella in cui Jesse James e suo fratello terrorizzavano il far west, gli anni delle rapine alle diligenze e alle ferrovie. In quel tempo, nella seconda metà dell’800, Big Nose George Parrott era lontano dall’essere una leggenda: un outlaw di mezza tacca, ladro di cavalli e borseggiatore. Le cose sarebbero cambiate, la fama l’avrebbe infine raggiunto, ma non nel modo in cui Big Nose si sarebbe potuto aspettare.

Nel 1878, Parrott e la sua banda erano al verde e cercavano un bottino più ghiotto delle solite razzie nelle stalle. Così il 19 agosto decisero di fare il colpo grosso: avrebbero fatto deragliare un treno della Union Pacific e l’avrebbero saccheggiato. Sette fuorilegge si nascosero nei cespugli aspettando l’arrivo del treno, quando una pattuglia di guardia arrivò sul posto e scoprì che la ferrovia era stata manomessa. La polizia venne chiamata e in poco tempo due ufficiali scovarono i malviventi. La gang però ebbe la meglio, e uccise i due poliziotti. Secondo alcune fonti, i banditi smembrarono i corpi come avvertimento a chi avesse tentato di inseguirli.

Questa crudeltà fece imbestialire la Union Pacific Railroad, che moltiplicò gli sforzi per trovare i fuggitivi, e offrì una taglia di 10.000 dollari, più tardi raddoppiata a 20.000, per la loro cattura.

L’anno successivo alcuni membri della gang vennero arrestati; uno di loro, Dutch Charlie, non riuscì neppure ad arrivare al processo: una folla inferocita lo strappò dalle mani dei poliziotti e lo impiccò a un palo del telegrafo. Nel 1880 fu la volta di Big Nose George. Dopo essersi vantato in un saloon, da ubriaco, di aver ucciso i due ufficiali della rapina al treno, Parrott venne arrestato nel 1880 a Miles City.

Riportato nel Wyoming, dove il doppio omicidio era avvenuto, Parrott venne condannato all’impiccagione, prevista per il 2 aprile 1881. Ma Big Nose George non si diede per vinto. Il 22 marzo, con una pietra e un coltellino che era riuscito a nascondere, scassinò le pesanti catene alle sue caviglie; aspettò nascosto nella stanza da bagno e aggredì il secondino, fratturandogli il cranio con le manette che aveva ancora ai polsi; ma la guardia riuscì a resistere e chiamare sua moglie che, arrivata a pistole spianate, costrinse il bandito a ritornare in cella.

Alla notizia dell’ennesima malefatta di Parrott, un gruppo di uomini mascherati fece irruzione nella prigione e, minacciando con una pistola la già malmessa e convalescente guardia carceraria, portò Parrott con sé. Ma non si trattava certo di un salvataggio. Gli uomini mascherati, spalleggiati da più di duecento paesani urlanti, appesero Big Nose George ad un palo e, dopo due tentativi falliti, riuscirono finalmente ad impiccarlo.

Secondo le leggende, una volta tirato giù il criminale dalla forca improvvisata, il becchino ebbe difficoltà a chiudere la bara per via dell’enorme naso di George. Siccome nessun parente si sarebbe mai sognato di reclamare il corpo, le spoglie di Parrott passarono in possesso del dottor John Osborne, affinché potesse studiarne il cervello e capire cosa lo distinguesse da quello di una persona sana di mente e non criminale.

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Quello che fece il dottor John Osborne, però, fu del tutto particolare. Assistito dall’allora quindicenne Lillian Heath, Osborne aprì il cranio di Parrott, esaminò il cervello e (sorpresa!) non trovò nulla di particolare. Realizzò una maschera funeraria in gesso del cadavere del bandito: ancora oggi visibile, a questa maschera mancano le orecchie, perché erano state strappate accidentalmente nei tentativi di impiccagione. Ma fin qui, nulla di veramente strano.

Poi però Osborne decise di rimuovere la pelle dalle cosce e dal petto di George, capezzoli inclusi. Li spedì a una conceria, con istruzioni per farne una borsa medica e un paio di scarpe. Quando gli arrivarono, lustrate ad arte, il dottore rimase un po’ deluso che i capezzoli non fossero stati usati; ma le indossò comunque con grande orgoglio (perfino, si dice, nel giorno della sua inaugurazione a governatore dello Stato)… e Big Nose George divenne l’unico cittadino americano della storia ad essere trasformato, dopo la sua morte, in un capo di vestiario.

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Il dottore condusse i suoi esperimenti sul cadavere per un anno, conservandolo in un barile di whiskey riempito di una soluzione di sale. Una volta che ebbe finite le sue dissezioni, il barile venne sepolto nel cortile. La calotta cranica venne regalata, come simpatico souvenir, alla giovane assistente, Miss Heath, che sarebbe poi diventata la prima dottoressa femmina del Wyoming, e che negli anni avrebbe usato il macabro resto come posacenere o come fermaporta.

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L’11 maggio del 1950, durante gli scavi per la costruzione di una banca, alcuni operai dissotterrarono il barile contenente le ossa del fuorilegge… e anche il famoso paio di scarpe. Per fortuna all’epoca la dottoressa Heath era viva e vegeta, e possedeva ancora la calotta cranica di Big Nose George: combaciava perfettamente con il teschio scalottato ritrovato nel barile, e più tardi la prova del DNA identificò senz’ombra di dubbio i resti ritrovati.

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Oggi il teschio di Big Nose George Parrott, la sua maschera funebre e le scarpe forgiate con la sua pelle sono l’attrazione principale del Carbon County Museum a Rawlins, Wyoming, insieme alle scarpe che egli stesso portava durante il suo linciaggio, alle manette e ad altri oggetti. La calotta è conservata allo Union Pacific Museum a Council Bluffs, Iowa. Il resto delle ossa fu seppellito in un posto segreto, e la borsa medica non venne mai ritrovata.

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