It’s a well-known fact that human beings are morbidly fascinated by the macabre, and this held especially true in the Victorian Era when there was nothing better to do but poke at dead bodies. Human corpses were not rare, but were still seen as a commodity, something interesting to be used and viewed. A very popular form of entertainment in those times was having a mummy unrolling party. This is exactly what it sounds like.

The host would buy a mummy, typically Egyptian, and then invite friends, family and acquaintances over to watch as the corpse was slowly unveiled and taken out of its cloth wrapping. This was a very common form of entertainment. Some sold tickets to come and see the corpse, the event idea started with Giovanni Belzoni who held an event near Piccadilly Circus and was then made popular by Thomas Pettigrew. Not all parties went off without a hitch however. In one case, a ‘princess’ turned out to be a man. In another, the bandages had become fused to the decayed corpse. Mummies were also often kept in homes and shops and put on display. One example is a candy store in Chicago that boasted having a Pharaoh’s daughter in his shop.

Of course, humans weren’t only interested in the long dead, but fresh bodies as well. This was where morgues came in. They were treated like corpse zoos, as many as 4,000 people would enter a morgue per day and examine all the bodies that was held within. Most of the bodies in the morgue had died violently, often murder, and needed to be identified within four days, so the spectators that came through would also occasionally help to identify one of the victims held within.

Cemeteries were also a common place to visit. Many people would bring their children there and have a picnic, treating the graveyard like a modern day park. Back then, parks were next to nonexistent, and graveyards were one of the very few places that held fresh air and were well maintained. This combined with the love for the dead made cemeteries very popular.

Another thing that cemeteries were good for was grave robbing. This was much more common in the Victorian era due to the belief that eating certain parts of a human could heal and prevent diseases of the consumer. Crushed human skull was a common remedy for a headache, and when combined with chocolate was often used as a cure for apoplexy. Crumbled mummy allegedly helped stop internal bleeding when ingested.

Once again, Egyptian mummies were preferred–at least, in the beginning. As time went on, the medicinal cannibalism slowly became more advanced, and recipes began popping up. For example, an alchemist named Oswald Croll urged people to “Take the fresh corpse of a redhaired, uninjured, unblemished man, 24 years old and killed no more than one day before,” and “leave it one day and one night in the light of the sun and the moon, then cut into strips. Sprinkle on a little powder of myrrh to prevent it from being too bitter. Steep in spirit of wine for several days. As the foulness of it causes an intolerable humidity in the stomach, it is a good idea to macerate the mummy with oil,” in his 1608 book Basilica Chymia. Who knows what this was supposed to have helped or even how it would have been accomplished.

It was also a common practice to drink the blood of someone so recently deceased that the blood was still warm. It was believed that this would help with vitality and staying young due to the belief that the spirit was contained in the blood. For a small fee, a cup of lukewarm blood could be bought from an execution after the criminal was killed. For some, this was a bit too much and would instead eat blood by turning it into marmalade through a 1679 recipe that came from a Franciscan apothecary.

The pseudo-science of medicinal cannibalism ended in 1908, a little more than 110 years ago. If someone were to try to bring the 300 year old fad back, do you think it would stick? I certainly hope not.

More Information

• https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-of-eating-corpses-as-medicine-82360284/
• https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2015/12/why-did-seventeenth-century-europeans.html
• https://allthatsinteresting.com/medicinal-cannibalism
• https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/victorian-party-people-unrolled-mummies-for-fun
• http://mentalfloss.com/article/67423/9-strange-uses-ancient-egyptian-mummies
• https://www.geriwalton.com/hanging-out-at-la-morgue-in-19th-century-paris/
• https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/our-first-public-parks-the-forgotten-history-of-cemeteries/71818/
• https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/09/24/picnic-in-the-cemetery/
• https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2012/12/early-modern-drugs-and-medicinal.html