TY  - CHAP
AU  - T. Hurren, Elizabeth
AB  - Those convicted of homicide were hanged on the public gallows before being dissected under the Murder Act in Georgian England. Yet, from 1752, whether criminals actually died on the hanging tree or in the dissection room remained a medical mystery in early modern society. Dissecting the Criminal Corpse takes issue with the historical cliché of corpses dangling from the hangman’s rope in crime studies. Some convicted murderers did survive execution in early modern England. Establishing medical death in the heart-lungs-brain was a physical enigma. Criminals had large bull-necks, strong willpowers, and hearty survival instincts. Extreme hypothermia often disguised coma in a prisoner hanged in the winter cold. The youngest and fittest were capable of reviving on the dissection table. Many died under the lancet. Capital legislation disguised a complex medical choreography that surgeons staged. They broke the Hippocratic Oath by executing the Dangerous Dead across England from 1752 until 1832.
ID  - OAPEN ID: 1000181
ID  - OAPEN ID: OCN: 1076664280
KW  - georgian england
KW  - convicts
KW  - murderers
KW  - homicide
KW  - early modern england
KW  - murder act
KW  - crime studies
L1  - https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/75a95994-0553-4b9f-927c-be64f94c48ad/The Condemned Body Leaving the Courtroom - Dissecting the Criminal Corpse - NCBI Bookshelf.pdf
LA  - English
LK  - http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/29767
PB  - Springer Nature
PP  - Basingstoke
PY  - 2016
SN  - 9781137582485
TI  - Chapter 1 The Condemned Body Leaving the Courtroom : Staging Post-Execution Punishment in Early Modern England
ER  - 
