THE FIVE-FINGERED BEAST -The Sinister History of the Hand of Glory

A Live, Illustrated Zoom Talk with Historian Dr. Shane McCorristine

From ‘Thing’ in the Addams Family to Dr. Strangelove’s ‘alien hand’, contemporary audiences are familiar with images of sinister, dismembered hands. But this grisly gothic motif can be traced back to a medieval legend: the ‘hand of glory’ was a pervasive and rooted northern European folk belief that the severed hand of a hanged man (in its most common articulation) could give its owner magical powers when it was turned into a candle. These powers varied according to region and time period, but were, among others, said to make housebreakers invisible and the house’s inhabitants unable to wake up. 

In this talk, Dr Peter Gill, a world-renowned British forensic scientist, reveals how he was invited to use the then fairly new science of DNA profiling techniques to solve this historic mystery. Gill will describe the history, methods and protocol of this forensic practice, unveiling how he and a small group of scientists were able to extract DNA from bones that had been buried for nearly three quarters of a century.

Tickets £5 including a 20% donation to the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery. 

Dr Shane McCorristine
Shane McCorristine is a Lecturer in Modern British History at Newcastle University. An interdisciplinary historian, his research focuses on the 'night side' of modern experience. Drawing approaches from cultural history and the medical humanities, he explores social attitudes toward dreams, ghosts, death and the supernatural. He is the author of Spectres of the Self: Thinking about Ghosts and Ghost-seeing in England, 1750-1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Spiritualism, Mesmerism, and the Occult, 1800-1920 (Pickering & Chatto, 2012), and most recently, The Spectral Arctic: A History of Dreams and Ghosts in Polar Exploration (UCL Press, 2018).

PLEASE NOTE - This talk will take place virtually via Zoom. Ticket sales will end at 5:00 pm BST on the day of the lecture. A link to the conference will be sent to the email used at checkout at 3:00 pm BST on the day of the event. Please email suzette@acuriousinvitation.com in the event your link fails to arrive. 

Image credit - A hand of glory was a hanged man's hand which was used as a macabre candle holder by burglars to evade discovery. When alight, it was said to put all the sleeping people in a house into a trance from which they couldn't be awakened. Sometimes the fingers of the hand itself were lit. It was believed that if the thumb refused to light, it signified that someone in the house was still awake. This hand was discovered in the early 20th century on the roof wallpate of Hawthorn Cottage in Danby. It is thought that it might have originated from Gibbet Howe, Castleton and been in use as late as 1820. Source: www.badobadop.co.uk