Manchester Mummy
Hannah Beswick (1688 – February 1758), of Birchin Bower, Hollinwood, Oldham, Greater Manchester, was a wealthy woman who had a pathological fear of premature burial.[1] Following her death in 1758, her body was embalmed and kept above ground, to be periodically checked for signs of life.
The method of embalming was not recorded, but it probably involved replacing the blood with a mixture of turpentine and vermilion. The body was then put in an old clock case and stored in the house of Beswick's family physician, Dr Charles White. Beswick's apparently eccentric will made her a local celebrity, and visitors were allowed to view her at White's house.
Beswick's mummified body was eventually bequeathed to the
Background
The mid-18th century saw an upsurge in the public's fear of being mistakenly buried alive,[2] and much debate about the uncertainty of the signs of death. Various suggestions were made to test for signs of life before burial, ranging from pouring vinegar and pepper into the corpse's mouth to applying red hot pokers to the feet, or even into the rectum.[3] Writing in 1895, the physician J. C. Ouseley claimed that as many as 2,700 people were buried prematurely each year in England and Wales; J. Stenson Hooker estimated the figure to be closer to 800.[4]
Hannah Beswick was born in 1688, the daughter of John and Patience Beswick, of Cheetwood Old Hall, Manchester. She inherited considerable wealth from her father who died in 1706.
Jessie Dobson, Recorder of the Museum of the
Embalming
There is no mention in Beswick's 1757 will of her desire to be embalmed. It has been suggested that White had been asked to keep Beswick above ground only until it became obvious that she was actually dead, but that he was unable to resist the temptation to add a mummy to his collection of "wet and dry" exhibits, and so made the decision to embalm her.[11] White had developed a particular interest in anatomy while studying medicine in London and was building up a collection of "curiosities", which by the time of his death included the skeleton of Thomas Higgins, a highwayman and sheep-stealer hanged for burglary, as well as Hannah Beswick's mummy.[12]
The method of embalming used by White is unrecorded, but in 1748 he had studied under the anatomist
Display
Beswick's mummified body was initially kept at Ancoats Hall, the home of another Beswick family member, but it was soon moved to a room in Dr White's home in Sale, Manchester, where it was stored in an old clock case. Beswick's apparently eccentric will made her a celebrity; the author
There are no pictures of Hannah Beswick. One of the few contemporary accounts of her is provided by Philip Wentworth, a local historian:
The body was well preserved but the face was shrivelled and black. The legs and trunks were tightly bound in a strong cloth such as is used for bed ticks [a stiff kind of mattress cover material] and the body, which was that of a little old woman, was in a glass coffin-shaped case.[21]
Shortly after the museum's transfer to
Treasure and alleged apparitions
Bonnie Prince Charlie entered Manchester at the head of his invading army in 1745, causing Beswick some apprehension over the safety of her money, which she therefore decided to bury. Shortly before her death, she promised to show her relatives where the treasure was hidden, but she did not survive long enough to do so. Her home, Birchin Bower, was converted into workers' tenements following her death. Several of those living there claimed to have seen a figure dressed in a black silk gown and a white cap, and described it as Hannah Beswick. After gliding across the house's parlour, the apparition would vanish at one particular flagstone. It is claimed that while digging to fit a new loom soon after Beswick's death, a weaver living there discovered Beswick's hoard of gold, hidden underneath that same flagstone. Oliphant's, a Manchester gold dealer, paid the weaver £3 10s for each gold piece, the equivalent of almost £530 in 2021.[7][25]
Birchin Bower was eventually demolished to make way for a Ferranti factory, but sightings of the apparition were still reported.[26]
When Beswick's family home, Cheetwood Old Hall, was demolished in 1890 to make way for a brickyard, contractors discovered a double coffin buried underneath the drawing room; the mystery of the burial was never solved, but at the time it was thought to be connected to the Beswick family and Dr White, who had resided at the hall after Hannah Beswick removed to Oldham.[27]
References
Citations
- ^ Hough & Randles 1993, p. 42
- ^ Bondeson 2001, p. 77
- ^ Bondeson 2001, pp. 56, 71
- ^ Bondeson 2001, p. 239
- ^ "Manchester Times". 22 August 1890. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
- ^ Hyde, O'Rourke & Portland 2004, p. 43
- ^ a b c d UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
- ^ a b Cooper 2007, p. 87
- ^ Clendening 2005, p. 325
- ^ Dobson 1953, p. 432.
- ^ a b Portland 2002, p. 86
- ^ Dobson 1953, p. 433
- ^ a b
Zigarovich, Jolene (2009), "Preserved Remains: Embalming Practices in Eighteenth-Century England", Eighteenth-Century Life, 33 (3), Duke University Press: 65–104, S2CID 143636284
- ^ Dobson 1953, pp. 434–435
- ^ Bondeson 2001, p. 87
- ^ Portland 2002, p. 85
- ^ Bondeson 1997, p. 102
- ^ Hyde, O'Rourke & Portland 2004, p. 44
- ^ Kohl 1844, p. 130
- ^ Sitwell 1933, p. 22
- ^ Portland 2002, p. 87
- ^ Cooper 2007, p. 88
- ^ Memoirs and Proceedings, vol. 58, Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 1913, retrieved 27 March 2009
- ^ Portland 2002, pp. 82–83
- ^ Hyde, O'Rourke & Portland 2004, pp. 43–44
- ^ Hough & Randles 1993, p. 43
- ^ "Dundee Courier". 3 March 1890. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
Bibliography
- Bondeson, Jan (1997), A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities, I. B. Taurus, ISBN 978-1-86064-228-9
- Bondeson, Jan (2001), Buried Alive: the Terrifying History of our Most Primal Fear, W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 978-0-393-04906-0
- Clendening, Logan (2005), The Romance of Medicine: Behind the Doctor, Kessinger Publishing, ISBN 978-1-4191-5172-9
- Cooper, Glynis (2007), Manchester's Suburbs, The Breedon Books Publishing Company, ISBN 978-1-85983-592-0
- Dobson, Jessie (1953), "Some Eighteenth Century Experiments in Embalming", Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 8 (4), Oxford University Press: 431–441, PMID 13109185
- Hough, Peter; Randles, Jenny (1993), Mysteries of the Mersey Valley, Sigma Leisure, ISBN 978-1-85058-355-4
- Hyde, Matthew; O'Rourke, Aidan; Portland, Peter (2004), Around the M60: Manchester's Orbital Motorway, AMCD (Publishers) Limited, ISBN 978-1-897762-30-1
- Kohl, Johann Georg (1844), England, Wales and Scotland, Chapman and Hall
- Portland, Peter (2002), Around Haunted Manchester, AMCD (Publishers) Limited, ISBN 978-1-897762-25-7
- Sitwell, Edith (1933), The English Eccentrics, Faber & Faber