Today’s Resentful Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
On March 13, 1996, a social misfit named Thomas Hamilton walked into the primary school in Dunblane, near Edinburgh, Scotland, and opened fire in the mroning assembly, killing 16 children and a teacher, and wounding 14 others before killing himself. The cause seems to have been resentment (as it is in the majority of such cases). Hamilton was a gun fanatic who had run a local boys’ club until parents intervened because he was subjecting their children to what they regarded as physical ordeals. (One child on a boating trip was made to sleep on deck all night in only his shorts.) He was widely suspected of being a homosexual paedophile, although this was never proved. The massacre was his way of lashing back at the community. Later that year, as a consequence of the massacre, the British government banned all handguns, to the fury of hundreds of legitimate gun clubs.
Culled from: The Mammoth Book Of The History Of Murder
Facts
Today’s Wildly Popular Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Francis Xavier was a saint with a few too many fans. In the early 16th century, the Spanish missionary was sent to Asia by the king of Portugal to convert as many souls to Christianity as possible. Turns out, he was pretty good at the job. Francis Xavier became wildly popular, and after his death in 1552, so did his relics. In fact, demand out-fueled supply. Throughout several years and multiple exhumations, his body was whittled away. Today, half his left hand is in Cochin, India, while the other half is in Malacca, Malaysia. One of his arms resides in Rome, and various other cities lay claim to his internal organs. The leftovers? They went to Goa, India.
Culled from: Neatorama
Generously submitted by: Reno Dave
Facts
Today’s Disgusted Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Suicide note left by the French surrealist poet René Crevel (1901-35):
I am disgusted with everything.
Culled from: Weird Wills & Eccentric Last Wishes
I like it. I think I’m going to make a t-shirt with that phrase on it. It really kind of sums up my mood as of late.
Facts
Ancestry.co.uk (yeah, you have to pay, but you can always do the free trial) has recently published Victorian criminal records complete with mugshots (and by the look of ‘em I might have some new profile pics – they are delightful). The punishments are fascinating to modern eyes. Women locked away for 5 years for stealing an umbrella or some bacon? Why, yes, indeed. Them were harsh days!
Victorian Criminal Records
Thanks to Fergus for the link.
Sundry
Today’s Conducive To Insomnia Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
In 1700′s England, different prisons used different methods of restraint. In Ely Gaol in Norfolk, England, felons were pinned to the floor by iron bars which were chained to staples, and in Worcester Castle the sleeping arrangements were similarly conducive to insomnia, its inmates being chained together at night, the chain passing through their fetters and its ends then padlocked to rings set in the floor.
Culled from: Rack, Rope and Red-Hot Pincers
Facts
Today’s Quick Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Epitaph from the gravestone of Mary Richards (1740-71) in St. Mary, Doddington, England:
All ye who stop to read this stone
Consider how soon she was gone.
Death doth not always warning give
Therefore be careful how you live.
Culled from: Eccentric Epitaphs by Michelle Lovric
This epitaph makes me wonder how she died? “Be careful how you live”? I’m thinking she must have died during sex. Your theory?
Facts
I’m currently reading a 1949 criminology textbook called The Sexual Criminal
by J. Paul de River. As with any old sexuality textbook, this one is loaded with hysterical homophobic and sexist sentiments common to its era. I thought I’d share some choice snippets as I stumble upon them. For example, were you aware of this?
The woman who derives a supreme thrill from being manhandled by a lover of the caveman type or who acquires the acme of pleasure from some abnormal act such as cunnilingus rather than indulging in the normal intercourse is a true type of masochist.
Note: This is talking about women who take pleasure in cunnilingus rather than missionary style sex from a man. This isn’t talking about cunnilingus administered by another woman. That, my friends, is criminal. More about that to come…
Library
Today’s Unwary Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Using classifieds as a way of snaring potential victims is a ploy that dates back at least as far as the early 1900s. That’s when the infamous American Black Widow, Belle Gunness, lured a string of unwary bachelors into her clutches by placing matrimonial ads in newspapers across the country: “Rich, good-looking widow, young, owner of large farm, wishes to get in touch with a gentleman of wealth and cultured tastes.” There was a certain amount of misrepresentation in this classified, since Gunness was actually fat, fiftyish, and bulldog ugly. She wasn’t lying about being a rich widow, though, since she had murdered at least fourteen husbands after separating them from their life savings.
Culled from: The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers
Facts
Today’s Devastating Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
In World War I various chemical agents were used in an effort to break through the lines of trenches that stretched for hundreds of miles along the Western Front. The Germans used chlorine gas on April 22, 1915 and this had a devastating effect on the unprotected British soldiers as it rolled over no-man’s-land and into their trenches. 5,000 men died and more than 15,000 were permanently lung-damaged.
Culled from: The Elements Of Murder
Facts
Today’s Uncomposed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
George Henry Lamson (1852-1882) was an American doctor and murderer. In his early career he had been a volunteer surgeon in Romania and Serbia, and decorated for his work. He returned to England and practised in Bournemouth. He became addicted to morphia and his financial situation grew desperate. In 1881 he visited his 18-year-old brother-in-law Percy John, a hemiplegic, at his boarding school and gave him a slice of Dundee cake. He also gave him a capsule from a batch that were later tested and found to contain the poison aconitine. Lamson was tried in March 1882 and found guilty of murdering Percy in order to secure a share of the family inheritance. He had poisoned his victim with aconitine in the cake, a substance which Lamson had learnt about from Professor Robert Christison in university. Christison had taught that aconitine was undetectable but forensic science had improved since Lamson’s student days.
Lamson’s execution was ultimately fixed for Friday, April 28, nearly six weeks after the conviction, and the well-meant efforts of his friends to win a reprieve served only to aggravate the prisoner’s anguish. Fear rather than remorse dominated him, and his mental agony must have been in proportion to the physical suffering he had inflicted upon his victim. It was not to be expected that he would meet his end with fortitude. Here was no stoic, but a poor, weak soul, appalled at the prospect of death. Realising upon that fatal morning that his time had come, he abandoned all effort at composure and was helped, almost unconscious, to the scaffold. There, unable to stand, he was held upon the drop by two warders. Even as the hangman was pulling the lever, he tried to snatch another minute of life by begging the chaplain to recite just one more prayer.
Culled from: Wikipedia and Medical Murders
Facts