Pictured: ‘Sickening' book bound with skin of murderer
A 'sickening' book bound by the skin of a murderer has been found in a museum office.
The skin is from William Corder who murdered Maria Marten in 1827, and was executed a year later.
Corder shot the woman, who he was believed to have been having an affair with, in an attack known as the Red Barn Murder in Polstead, Suffolk.
He had told her they would elope to Ipswich, but shot her before burying her body at the Red Barn, a local landmark.
Corder was later found, tried, executed and his body dissected.
Part of his skin was used to bind a book telling the story of his crime and has been on display at Moyse's Hall Museum, in Bury St Edmunds, since 1933.
Now a second book made from the same material has been found.
Dan Clarke, heritage officer, said the books had an 'incredibly important' historical value.
'We get things called museum losses, and it tends to be from the last century – things that have not been seen for a couple of decades,' he told BBC Radio Suffolk.
'This would be considered a museum loss which has been found.'
Unlike the original, the second book only has skin on the book's bindings and corners. This would have been done using 'left over pieces of skin', Mr Clarke said.
'Like to burn' both books
However, Terry Deary, the author of Horrible Histories, said the books were 'sickening artefacts'.
'A lot of criminals really dreaded this,' he said.
'This was worse than the hanging, the thought their body would be dissected after death.'
He said he would 'like to burn' both books, adding: 'I know you're not supposed to burn books, but quite honestly, these are such sickening artefacts, I'm not sure that I'd want them on display.
'Of course people will flock in, but the trick is, to get people in to see this great new discovery and while they're there, educate them.'
Mr Clarke said he had never had a complaint about the first book being on display.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Telegraph
Horrible Histories creator Terry Deary: ‘What's the use of universities?'
One day, it dawned on Terry Deary that his favourite crime novels are overrun with characters who have heaps of money, or a degree, or both. ' Agatha Christie, Lord Peter Wimsey, the golden age of crime writing – it's pure Establishment,' he says. The same holds true for his contemporary standbys, Anthony Horowitz ('That man is a genius') and Simon Brett. By contrast, says Deary – who is better known as the brains behind the Horrible Histories series for children – in Actually, I'm a Murderer, his first adult crime novel, 'only about two out of 20 characters went to university'. This will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Horrible Histories. Those books, 70-odd titles that have together sold some 30 million copies, have enlivened great tracts of the past for generations of children by relaying with irresistible delight the viscera of history and the experience of the common man. In them, monarchs and world leaders are usually depicted as monsters or figures of fun: the Romans are 'evil'; the Tudors, tyrants. Deary reserves a particular loathing for Elizabeth I, and he is not at all a fan of the British Empire. 'I get a lot of abuse for it,' he tells me; he's even been accused of 'poisoning the minds of children. But I can't believe anyone would possibly justify the British Empire.' Thirty-two years after the publication of the first Horrible Histories book, Deary says he's done with writing children's books. 'I've written hundreds of them. There's another mountain to climb now.' Actually, I'm a Murderer is the first instalment in what he hopes will develop into a long-running series (he's already written book two) featuring John Brown, an assassin-for-hire in 1970s Sunderland, where Deary grew up. The premise inverts the classic crime thriller setup: we know whodunnit from the beginning; the fun lies in the protracted game of cat and mouse between Brown and the police who, in the first book at least, Deary paints as incompetent, sexist and bigoted. 'Only the men,' he corrects me – the hero of the novel, Aline, is a policewoman fighting her repulsive, handsy colleague for promotion. 'Female police are underrated. When I published a murder mystery for young adults 20 years ago, the editor made me tone down the incompetence of the book's bent policeman,' he adds. 'I had to make the police look better and focus on solving the mystery. I don't think you would get that today.' In fact, Deary is quite a fan of the police, despite having been 'beaten blue' by them when he was a 'naughty nipper'; his dad ran a butcher's shop and Deary says his impoverished childhood 'in a postwar slum' taught him 'how real people lived'. I ask him what he thinks of the Metropolitan Police today, hit by a string of appalling scandals. 'Police are human beings. No one can live up to the expectations that are placed on the police.' Deary, who lives in County Durham with his wife, Jenny, with whom he has one grown-up daughter, was already a successful children's author when he was commissioned to do a history joke book in the early 1990s. He had begun writing in 1976 while working as a drama teacher in Suffolk. He maintains he didn't know much history at the time, although he studied it at A-Level. But then, his intention was never to educate. 'I didn't set out to enlighten their little minds or even get them to read,' he says. 'That just happened.' His main influence was his previous career as an actor: he had spent a few years in the early 1970s with Theatr Powys, in Wales. 'The aim of drama is to answer one question only – why do people behave the way they do? I applied that to my books. Look how they behaved in the past and learn from that.' Today, Horrible Histories is part of the cultural landscape – widely read in schools and embraced by the middle classes. 'Isn't that sickening?' says Deary. 'It's like Mick Jagger. He presents himself as anti-Establishment and then he accepts a knighthood. I hope I never sell out like that.' Fair enough, but the brand is already enormously lucrative – there are theatre, film and television adaptations, and even a Horrible Histories interactive cruise along the Thames, for which Deary writes the voiceover. Is he worried that the brand's original rebel spirit is becoming diluted? 'Horrible Histories is not my brand. I just write the books,' he says. 'And I take no credit for the spin-offs.' He rejects, too, the suggestion that Horrible Histories inculcate an inherently flippant attitude towards the past. 'You forget how boring history books for children were before I came along. Endless parents tell me their child never read a book until they picked up Horrible Histories. Although when people tell me that thanks to my books they studied history at university, I say 'Don't blame me, mate', because what use are universities?' Deary can come across as a bit of a throwback 1980s anarchist. He's famously against the education system, partly because he was caned repeatedly at his primary school. 'I'm against schooling. Not against education,' he clarifies. 'But you need to get rid of the muppets in Whitehall who write the curriculum which applies to every child in this country, when they wouldn't know a child from Newcastle or Sunderland if it thumped them on the kneecap.' He spits at whatever Labour might be planning to address this: it launched a review of the school curriculum at the end of last year. 'It's just tokenism, sorry. You need to get rid of it.' I assume, then, that he is not too concerned by the drop in students reading history at university? He himself never got the chance to go: his teachers suggested when he was 18 that he 'get a job down the pits'; instead, he worked at the electricity board. 'People don't have to waste taxpayers' money spending four years going to this place called university and not working when they can read my books [instead],' he says. I think he means it. 'But it's not my problem. I'm a book writer.' But surely, I suggest, the facts and intellectual rigour taught at university are important tools both for understanding the counter-imperialist view of history he favours and also for combating the growing threat of AI-generated misinformation? In lieu of an answer, Deary tells me how when people hear about a mother who lost her children in a bombing raid during the Second World War, they assume it took place in London or Coventry. 'But it took place in Dresden, too. Everyone comes up with a British-educated answer. But it happened to them as well as us.' I try again. What does Deary think about the ways in which we are rethinking our imperial past – the growing acknowledgment of the extent to which modern Britain was built on profits from the slave trade; the Rhodes Must Fall movement, which argues for the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford? That, he says, is 'actually quite a good idea. Although they should be arguing to take all the statues down, including Lord bloody Nelson in Trafalgar Square. But it's a minority view. Imperialists are taking over the country.' Including, perhaps, in Sunderland – Deary left the city in the early 1970s, but maintains close links – where Reform won 27 per cent of the vote in the last election. Why does he think that happened? 'Because Farage is a big personality,' he says. 'People aren't voting for his policies, but for the man. So don't ask me to condemn my Sunderland friends.' Quite the opposite, I say. Isn't it only because such voters feel let down by the Establishment that they find themselves drawn to Reform in the first place? 'That, I admit, does sway people,' Deary says. 'They think the Conservatives have had their chance but they mucked it up, so we'll try Labour. Oh, they aren't doing so well, so we'll try a third option.' Deary is a tremendous force in publishing – and proud of it: he points out that the paperback edition of his recent nonfiction book A History of Britain in Ten Enemies topped the bestseller charts. 'Not bad for a lad from Sunderland, eh?' He has no plans to stop, nor any intention of toning things down. 'I'm an entertainer, not an academic. And if I don't entertain people, they won't engage.' Actually, I'm a Murderer by Terry Deary (Constable, £18.99) is out on June 12
BBC News
4 days ago
- BBC News
The Faversham explosion that killed 108 and rocked the town
During World War One, Faversham in Kent was rocked by an enormous explosion which killed at least 108 men and boys and left a permanent mark on the Sunday 2 April, workers at a gunpowder site were loading shells when the explosion the cause of the explosion was never discovered, there were theories of a dropped cigarette, sparks from the boiler house hitting TNT sacks, and the sacks naturally combusting in the Tonge, one of the authors of Terrible Tudors in the Horrible Histories series, said: "The gunpowder still haunts Faversham, so it still lives in the history of the town." The site caught fire and there was an enormous explosion which was followed by other detonations as the flames reached other explosion was ruled to be accidental following an a worker later gave a testimony and said staff had become careless and stacked sacks of TNT outside without any consideration of what could happen to Tonge said: "That was the principle problem, is that they had to produce as much as possible for the Western Front to obviate this terrible scandal that was erupting about the shell shortage."Many of those who died were buried at Love Lane Cemetery in the town, and a memorial grave was placed there. Mr Tonge added: "The problem was when they tried to recover bodies, they were recovering parts of bodies, so some were never identified."Some boys as young as 12 were thought to have been working at the site."There are some really very poignant photographs of the parade [and] the funeral cortege through the town and it's attended by inevitably hundreds of people," Mr Tonge the war ended it was decided that the gunpowder business was vulnerable to attacks from Europe, so it was moved to Ayrshire in Scotland.
South Wales Guardian
14-05-2025
- South Wales Guardian
Care home resident, 97, ‘arrested' in birthday surprise
Maggie Clarke, a former children's nurse and resident of Elizabeth Lodge in Enfield, London, had joked with staff that she had always wondered what it would be like to be arrested. To mark Ms Clarke's birthday, the care home team got in touch with local Metropolitan Police officers who volunteered to take part in the surprise. On the morning of her birthday, officers from Wood Green Police Station arrived at Elizabeth Lodge with a set of handcuffs and a spoof arrest warrant. Ms Clarke gleefully put her hands together and smiled for the cameras as Pc Benjamin Flint 'arrested' her. She was charged on the grounds of consistent speeding in her wheelchair. 'I have been too good for far too long, I think. It was definitely on my bucket list to be arrested by a handsome policeman,' said Ms Clarke. 'My list is complete, I loved it!' Following her brief 'arrest', Ms Clarke was treated to a birthday cake and a party, where she shared stories of her younger years and entertained guests with lively anecdotes. The Metropolitan Police said they were 'honoured' to take part in Ms Clarke's birthday celebrations. Sergeant Eren Emin, from Oakwood Ward neighbourhood police team, said: 'We attended the care home with a birthday card signed by the teams across Enfield and some token gifts for Maggie, as well as making sure she was duly arrested for consistently speeding in her wheelchair. 'We were honoured to celebrate Maggie's birthday with her and hope we made her day. 'I'm proud of the efforts of my teams, who will always do their best to support our elderly residents wherever possible.' The stunt formed part of Elizabeth Lodge's Wishing Tree initiative, which encourages residents to put wishes forward, allowing them to reconnect with a past hobby or try something completely new – from flying on a plane to enjoying a fish and chip supper. Michelle Sampang, home manager at Elizabeth Lodge, said: 'Maggie has always had a lot of fun, but this was something else. She's really full of surprises! 'When we learned of Maggie's wish to be arrested, we were delighted to help make it happen. Care UK's Wishing Tree initiative is a wonderful way for residents to share their passions and it's hugely rewarding to be able to make these wishes a reality – even if it means a run-in with the local police! 'It was really a great community effort, and it made Maggie's day that much more memorable for her and her family. 'I'd like to thank the Metropolitan Police for being wonderful sports and helping to fulfil Maggie's hilarious fantasy.'
