NEWS: What a Lovely Human-Bound Book You're Reading!

Nic said:
In Surgeon's Hall in Edinburgh there is either a book or a wallet made from the skin of famous grave robber/ murderer William Burke. Burke and his partner, William Hare, used to provide cadavers for the medical school at a time when it was illegal to study dead bodies. However, they got sick of digging up fresh graves and instead decided to cut out the hard work and killed drunks and prositiutes to sell to the school instead. When they got caught, Burke was hung but Hare was exiled to England for giving evidence against his partner. Spoooooky stuff. The medical school also kept his skeleton.

Nic said:
In Surgeon's Hall in Edinburgh there is either a book or a wallet made from the skin of famous grave robber/ murderer William Burke. Burke and his partner, William Hare, used to provide cadavers for the medical school at a time when it was illegal to study dead bodies. However, they got sick of digging up fresh graves and instead decided to cut out the hard work and killed drunks and prositiutes to sell to the school instead. When they got caught, Burke was hung but Hare was exiled to England for giving evidence against his partner. Spoooooky stuff. The medical school also kept his skeleton.

Wallace said:
i don't understand the problem. i mean, they were dead already, right? and no one else claimed their bodies, right? and the skin was just being used to bind books, good & seemingly important books like the quran & stuff about medicine & science. that doesn't seem so bad to me.

i'm one of those people who will probably put it in my will to have my ashes turned into diamonds when i die, and i have considered having my cat skinned when he passes & having his pelt made into a stole or something. does that make me a bad person? i dunno..

at least it's not like what that one SS captain's wife did during the holocaust, which was go "shopping" for prisoners with interesting tattoos, have them killed & skinned and then use their skin to make lampshades & gloves & stuff, and shrink their heads & put them up on her mantlepiece. now that is fucking sick & wrong.

Wallace said:
i don't understand the problem. i mean, they were dead already, right? and no one else claimed their bodies, right? and the skin was just being used to bind books, good & seemingly important books like the quran & stuff about medicine & science. that doesn't seem so bad to me.

i'm one of those people who will probably put it in my will to have my ashes turned into diamonds when i die, and i have considered having my cat skinned when he passes & having his pelt made into a stole or something. does that make me a bad person? i dunno..

at least it's not like what that one SS captain's wife did during the holocaust, which was go "shopping" for prisoners with interesting tattoos, have them killed & skinned and then use their skin to make lampshades & gloves & stuff, and shrink their heads & put them up on her mantlepiece. now that is fucking sick & wrong.

Tilia said:
There is virtually no difference between animal leather and human leather..... after reading this I thought wierd, I couldn't have one in my house it would be creepy. Then I remembered the skull. My mother is a doctor and baught a human skull before the they outlawed the selling of human remains in India.... this was probably stolen from a grave. When my dad was stalking my mom he took the womans teeth and then her jaw. Anyhow I'm around this thing all the time (I used to work in the office with it) doesn't bother me at all. So I could probably read the book and not be bothered. However not if it was suspected the person was murdered and then utilized..... as in the Holocaust.

Some1Good said:
Hey, we aren't too far from doctors being able to grow "Humane" leather out of human DNA through clever cloning related technologies... Humane in the sense that it would just be cloned skin, with no cloned person attached, that is. They are doing something similar with that creepy "bone ring" news story that has been floating around for a while, actually. Definately interesting

Of course it could also majorly help burn victims and those with skin cancer, but that's just a happy bonus when compared to the chance to send your enemies a supple and high quality leather jacket... MADE OF THEIR OWN SKIN! BWAHAHA

Evil, me? Never!

[Edited on Jan 10, 2006 by Some1Good]