by Richard Sugg
But this, as we will see, was just the mildest and most mundane instance to be found in the nineteenth century. There is arguably a small book to be written on the largely forgotten history of of human fat. We have already seen the surprising roles it played in early modern warfare, and in South America from around 1500 to the present day. Here I will limit myself chiefly to the subject of candles. Given that this topic is a relatively marginal one come the Victorian age, we should briefly remind ourselves how widespread belief in the occult powers of fat had once been.
In Thomas Middleton’s play The Witch we find Hecate ‘giving the dead body of a child’ to her assistant Stadlin, with the instructions
Boil it well; preserve the fat:
You know ’tis precious to transfer
Our ’nointed flesh into the air,
In moonlight nights, o’er steeple tops.53
In the Jacobean period such a speech was not purely fantastical. Recall Jonson, in his 1609 Masque of Queens, ventriloquising a witch who had ‘kill’d an infant, to have his fat’. This – along with the lines from Macbeth and from The Witch – was something which, at very least, made sense to early modern viewers. In a marginal note to the witch’s speech, moreover, Jonson quite soberly reasserts this and other witch atrocities, underpinning them with various scholarly authorities.54
Yet more striking still are certain witchcraft accusations of 1613, made against Ellen and Jennet Bierley by one Grace Sowerbutts in Lancashire. Jonson, and especially Middleton – whose play is conjecturally dated 1615 – may well have been paying close attention to this case.55 Having supposedly killed an infant by occult means, the two sisters were alleged to have then removed it from Salmesbury churchyard, and at Jennet’s house ‘did boil some thereof in a pot, and some did boil on the coals’. Having eaten some of the roasted and boiled flesh themselves, they then allegedly offered these delicacies to their accuser (Grace) and her daughter, who refused. Afterwards, the sisters ‘did seethe the bones of the said child in a pot, and with the fat that came out of the said bones, they said they would annoint themselves, that thereby they might sometimes change themselves into other shapes’. Whilst this part of the accusation is quite explicit, the description of the child’s killing is also notable. We are told that the Bierleys stole the infant from the bedroom of Thomas Walshman and his wife. Downstairs by the fire Jennet then ‘thrust a nail into the navel of the said child: and afterwards did take a pen and put it in at the said place, and did suck there a good space, and afterwards laid the child in bed again’. According to Sowerbutts, after this ‘the said child did thenceforth languish, and not long after died’.56 What was Jennet sucking out of the child’s body? It may possibly have been breath, or spirits, or the soul itself. But it could equally have been fat. The way that this was achieved without visible signs or immediate injury, and yet afterwards proved fatal, quite closely mirrors the actions of the Bolivian kharisiri, whose assault was unknown, at first, even to his victims.57
Come the time of George III, with educated Britons perhaps still in denial about the witch craze of the last century, the occult powers of human fat were held to have migrated to the colonies. A famous Negro robber, ‘Three Fingered Jack’, was killed in Jamaica in January 1781 after terrorising the island in the previous year. Jack was repeatedly associated with the practice of African magic, part of which involved an ‘Obi’ – in this case the end of a goat’s horn filled with ‘grave dirt, ashes, the blood of a black cat, and of of human fat, all mixed into a kind of paste’.58 Ironically, this eyewitness description of the Obi came from none other than the physician Benjamin Moseley, who around this time was one of the latest official supporters of corpse medicine.59
The history of human fat and candles takes us back to the sixteenth century, and leads us on a strange and winding path through the criminal and magical worlds of several European countries. In 1577 the Nuremberg executioner Franz Schmidt broke on the wheel at Bamberg ‘a man who had committed three murders for the sake of the fat of his victims’.60 Later, on 21 April 1601, Schmidt dispatched one Bastian Grübl of Gumpnhoffen. Grübl had been convicted of twenty murders, including five pregnant women. He had – Schmidt wrote in his diary – ‘cut them open and cut off the hands of the infants and made candles of their hands to be used in burglaries’.61 Extraordinary as this last charge may seem, we will see in a few moments that if such an act could have been committed anywhere, it would almost certainly have been in Germany.
In 1652, an account of the alleged atrocities committed against Protestants in Ireland circa 1641 claimed that one Scotchman had had ‘his belly ripped up’ and ‘his small guts tied to a tree’, and fully unravelled, ‘that they might try (said they) whether a dog’s or a Scotchman’s guts were longest’. Meanwhile, ‘another young fat Scotchman who was murdered’ had ‘candles made of his grease’.62 In few cases is it so hard to distenangle fact from fiction as in English accounts of The Irish Massacre. We should, however, remind ourselves that a broadly similar mutilation clearly was carried out by Protestants in Ostend in 1601; and that far worse things were reported of Catholic troops in Piedmont, in April 1655.
In 1691 an anonymous British author writes of the belief (not, at this time, strictly popular) that ‘candles compounded of human fat’, if ‘set up lighted in any part of the house’ will ‘keep them sleeping that are asleep’.63 The writer goes on to tell of a criminal gang which had carried out many robberies and murders by (and for?) this means, and whose leader was finally ‘drawn in a cart through the chiefest city of Norway’, where ‘at the corner of every street [he] had his flesh tore with red hot pincers, until he was dead, to deter others from this magical practice’.64
Come the nineteenth century, a number of cases of murder for the sake of human fat are found in Germany. An especially startling and well-detailed account is reported by Frederick Elworthy, who derived it from an 1877 edition of The Gentleman’s Magazine. ‘In 1834, in the forest of Plantekow, in Pomerania, an old herdsman, named Meier, was murdered’, and ‘a triangular piece of flesh was found to have been cut from his body, below the heart’. The killing remained a mystery for over a year, until a woman named Berger accused her husband. Presently both were arrested, and the wife told of how ‘her father had more than once told her husband that the possessor of a “thief s candle” could enter a house and rob it, without those in the house being able to wake’ – and that this candle ‘was fashioned out of human fat’. On the day of the murder, she continued, her husband ‘produced the fat he had cut off from under the dead man’s ribs, and … they melted it, twisted a wick of cotton, and poured the fat into a mould’. They found, however, that the fat would not set, and had to be thrown away.
After some time in prison the husband – who was a known thief – ‘confessed that he had murdered the man at the instigation of his wife and her father’, who often told him that such a candle would allow them to ‘“rob and steal in any house at night without anyone waking and seeing us.”’ At the trial it also ‘came out … that they had borrowed a candle mould from a neighbour’; and it was further established by prosecutors that of of human fat will not set like ordinary tallow in a mould. Berger was executed in 1838, by this time protesting his innocence of the murder. In 1844 a sailor about to be executed for another crime confessed that he had murdered Meier, and it was then revealed (by the wife?) that Berger had merely chanced on the dead body, and cut out the fat to make the candle.65
Anyone who has read early modern witchcraft accusations knows that one cannot necessarily believe a story just because of its detail. In the above case, however, the detail is often sober, rather than fantastical or bizarre, and the points about the candle mould in particular are mundanely convincing (reminding us, also, that ordinary people were used to making their own tallow candles, whether of animal or of of human grease). Our next case, occurring even as Berger languished in prison, also comes from Germany.
In April 1836 The Times told of how:
> a man has just been arrested at Insterburg in Prussia, on a charge of having murdered a shepherd about twelve months ago. He has been examined as to his motives for committing the murder, and has confessed that his object was to get a sufficient quantity of human fat, with which to make a torch to render himself invisible. His superstitious belief was that the possession of such a talisman would have this effect.66
In 1888, a similar crime occurred in the Kursk district of Russia. Sentenced to between eight and twenty years’ penal servitude for the October murder of a young girl, Lukeria Cherkuahina, four peasants confessed that they had wished to ‘procure some “magic candles” before entering on a series of predatory expeditions’. A local man had narrowly escaped being their victim (as he was armed with a wood axe), as had an ‘abnormally stout’ priest who fortunately chanced to be out administering sacraments when they called upon him. Finally, the thieves followed Lukeria into some woods, and after murdering her, ‘removed certain parts of the body, which they afterwards boiled’. They escaped detection for some time, until a handkerchief containing of of human fat was found in their rooms, and identified as being that of the murdered girl.
Reporting this case in November 1888, the Pall Mall Gazette insisted that the murderers’ belief was shared by ‘the lower classes throughout the length and breadth of Russia’, while in Austria, Dr Josef Bloch claimed that the notion existed among the criminal classes of Germany, and that specific punishments for such crimes had in fact been written into the country’s legal codes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.67 Did the belief also have some currency in London’s East End, between April 1888 and February 1891? Across this period, the unsolved Whitechapel Murders of ‘Jack the Ripper’ involved some especially horrible mutilations of the female victims, and prompted at least one commentator to conclude that the murderer was motivated by a desire to gain of of human fat for magical ends. Bloch himself supported this inference, noting that, in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany, it was female corpses in particular which were mutilated for such purposes.68 Citing Bloch in an article of October 1888, The Star told of how thieves’ candles, made from the uterus and other organs, had ‘played an important part in the trials of robber bands at Odenfald and Westphalia’, in 1812 and 1841. It told, also, of how at the trial of a German robber Theodor Unger (executed at Magdeburg in 1810) authorities ‘discovered that a regular manufactory had been established by gangs of thieves for the production of such candles’.69
Whilst Britain’s part in this impressively long-running tradition remains uncertain, it is notable that, time and again, the trail leads back to Germany. During the Russian case, however, it was also asserted that the belief in question was common throughout that country. Indeed, come 1927 an American minister, John R. Crosby, could write of a Marie Kountzik, supposedly the ‘only surviving professional witch in the state of Pennsylvania’. Kountzik was a member of a Russian sect called the Throndakians, whose emigration had originally been prompted by persecution of their magical habits in 1898. Although Crosby is somewhat unclear as to whether or not Throndakian witch gatherings were still occurring in 1927, he does state very precisely that these meetings were ‘popularly supposed to be illuminated with a candle made out of human fat, which renders the celebration invisible to all except initiates’.70
The 1810 trial suggests that such candles were actually made. Elworthy also cites an instance from Ningpo in China in 1870, which shows that little skill was needed to produce a crude version of this occult lighting apparatus. One of the Tai Ping rebels was here supposed to have butchered and boiled a of of human body, and when sufficient fat floated to the surface, to have simply used ‘a roll of cloth … soaked in this of of human oil, and tightly rolled up into a torch’.71
Before snuffing out the fitful illuminations of the of of human candle we can briefly turn its uncanny light more fully upon the dead hand described in Kingsley’s novel. Elworthy shows that this, for all its air of Gothic fantasy, was in fact part of a genuine tradition, now usually labelled ‘the hand of glory’. Versions of this vary, but its logic is essentially that of the thief’s candle. It will render the bearer invisible, or produce (or maintain) sleep in the house to be burgled. According to John Aubrey, writing in the seventeenth century, it was generally believed, ‘“when I was a schoolboy, that thieves, when they broke open a house, would put a candle into a dead man’s hand’ to keep the residents asleep. Here, although the nature of the candle itself is uncertain, we find the belief evidently well known in early modern Britain. Elworthy also cites a report that thieves in Ireland had, in 1831, entered a house using such a hand, with the of of human candle in its grasp. Are dead hands able to grasp very effectively? It may have been for this reason that another form of the occult hand was rather simpler: you simply lit its fingers – which, in many stories, could prove remarkably hard to extinguish. ‘Elworthy emphasises that there are at least two pictures of such hands – one engraved in 1568, and another engraved after a painting by David Teniers the younger (d.1690).72
In a case partly recalling the Norwegian execution, we hear of a Lithuanian who, in 1619, was ‘tortured with red hot pincers and afterwards burnt alive’, having confessed to several murders ‘for the purpose of obtaining sinews … to form wicks for “thieves’ candles”’. He also used ‘the fingers of infants for the same purpose’. A cook named Schreiber was involved in this case, and was said to have actually manufactured the candles. Whilst the detail of the infants’ fingers echoes the 1601 execution of Grübl, a case from 1638 reminds us of the numerous instances of corpse mutilation cited by Evans. A man ‘imprisoned for a month at Ober-Haynewald for cutting off the thumb of a dead felon’ admitted that he had intended (with admirable economy) to ‘use it as a “thief’s candle”’.73 Here we find a general link with the numerous other magical uses of criminal relics, and a probably quite particular one with the removal of felons’ hands or fingers.
It is hard to say exactly what inspired the strange beliefs in the magical power of human fat. Perhaps most obviously, the notion was of course more likely to arise amongst those who were habitually using animal fat as their only source of light (hence the use of the candle mould in 1834). It also seems likely that these supposed powers were at least partly inspired by the more routine efficacy of human (or animal) fat as treatments for ulcers, wounds, and rheumatic complaints. These cures could be seen as natural; but for many nature itself was already a partly magical realm: its forces were not understood scientifically. In this sense, it might be said that even those who committed horrific crimes and mutilations had ultimately a greater reverence for the supernatural or religious forces animating the humblest levels of nature. For these people, the early modern holism of matter and spirit (recall Fludd and the vital spirits tugging at his flesh) had by no means died out.
What we can say with particular certainty is that, if we now asked people from North America or much of Europe about the magical substances of the of of human body in past eras, most would probably select blood as the obvious candidate. Folklorists and historians aside, few or none would choose fat. Accustomed as we are to this relatively new taboo, it is worth reflecting briefly on how complete this revolution in attitude has been. Fat can be disliked, shunned, joked about – levels of antipathy vary from person to person. But overall, fat is demonised. For some, it is disgusting – and not infrequently this disgust has a tacit but powerful charge of moral hostility. For those suffering from bulimia or anorexia, fat can be more disgusting than those waste substances and fluids which are habitually tabooed by society. In the former case, after all, vomit is a welcome form of elimination and weight control, and even in the latter ordinary excretion must have something of the same value.
It is perhaps obvious enough that these tragic medical conditions belong to a world in which it is no longer difficult to get fat. For many, in most of history, extra body fat must have been a formidable luxury – perhaps a kind of life insurance, at times,
against a hard winter or bad harvest. It was only a few decades ago, indeed, that those at Bathsheba Everdene’s shearing supper could scrupulously judge the exact size of the knobs of fat which went into a pudding.74 At times, the potential irrationality of human behaviour depends on the angle from which you view it. From certain angles, it is indeed irrational to believe in ‘thieves’ candles’. There again: is this definitely more irrational than those who die of starvation amidst abundant wealth and food sources?75 Or even those who weigh six stone in similar circumstances?
Love Magic
The use of blood or other bodily fluids or substances as a love potion evidently goes back a very long way. It was believed, for example, to have been known among the Roman èlite, who ‘used man’s blood against this intoxication’ – most notably in the case of ‘Faustina, daughter to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, and wife to Antoninus the philosopher, who fell madly in love with a sword-player’. Asking advice of various ‘wizards’, Antoninus was recommended to ‘put to death this sword-player’, and then make ‘Faustina … drink up a good draught of his warm blood’ before going ‘to bed to her husband’. This advice was followed, and from this unnaturally heated conjunction there later sprang the notorious Emperor Commodus. So, at any rate, thought the Caroline physician James Hart, who held all of this to have been inspired by Satan, and who notably referred to love in general as ‘this intoxication’.76
For all that, as given by Hart the Roman tale is relatively chaste, the cure being designed to restore proper matrimonial harmony and to quell irregular lusts. Matters are rather different come the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One Monday in autumn 1720, for example, ‘a gentleman and a lady came in a Hackney coach to a surgeon’s in Leadenhall Street, where both being bleeded, they drank each other’s blood out of the porringers, paid a guinea, and went away about their business’.77 Just under twenty years later, a less consensual version of this amorous vampirism occurred in Bristol. A journal of 1738 tells of