There are some museum exhibits which might make visitors stop because they are beautiful, and some because they are historically important. Then there are others which have an exhibition label next to them noting that “This book was bound in human skin” and it’s a little hard to not do a double take at that. This book relating to John Horwood (1803–1821), displayed at M Shed, is certainly a surprising exhibit to discover.
Horwood was an eighteen year old from Hanham, near Bristol, who became the first person publicly executed at Bristol New Gaol. He had been convicted of the murder of Eliza Balsum, who died after being struck on the head by a stone he had thrown. After his execution, his body was dissected by the surgeon Richard Smith (1772–1843), and part of Horwood’s skin was tanned and used to bind a collection of papers relating to the case, trial, execution and dissection. I like archiving and all that, but less so when there are bits of human anatomy involved with the whole process, it’s not something that I’d want to handle.
What makes the story even more unsettling is also the afterlife of Horwood’s body. His skeleton was retained long after his death and, for a long time was kept in a cupboard, with the noose still around its neck. Eventually, that part of the story was corrected as in 2011, Horwood’s remains were buried beside his father in Hanham, exactly 190 years after his execution. That burial really matters in many ways as it gave him, belatedly, something that the legal, medical and civic systems of his own time had rather comprehensively failed to provide which is a measure of human dignity. And his guilt has been questioned by historians, so it’s not entirely clear that his punishment was just or fair.
The difficult question is whether the book should be on display at all, although the museum doesn’t seem to address that at all, although others have. Although it might not be possible to bury the book in the way that Horwood’s skeleton was, I wonder whether human remains need to be almost a centrepiece in a museum like this. The museum is very much on the side of social history, inclusion and diversity, so I’m a little surprised that they haven’t addressed the subject of human remains on display, even if just by changing how they’re exhibited.