ALUMINUM CHROME WHEELS

Alice in Wonderland was the theme yesterday. And it could’ve quite easily have been wonderland, but instead it was a day both good and bad, which started off with having to wake up after 3 hours sleep.

A slow journey on the Metropolitan Line yesterday ended up being one of the factors to make me late for a doctor’s appointment I’d been waiting weeks for. To add insult to injury, I had to endure an iBus-infected smelly metal thing on wheels, which crawled through the daytime traffic and then stalled to a halt on the approach to the Barking road when we got stuck behind a hearse. A hearse.

A bloody hearse.

I get to the doctor’s surgery about 15 minutes late and no sooner had I walked in through the front door and my name was called to see the most miserable doctor alive in Room 6. There was no time to turn off my iPod, which was blaring out some power metal, and when I walked into the tiny room, my playlist had started the next track.

Before the song was even finished I was dismissed from the doctor’s with a in hand (for something I stated wouldn’t work – and it doesn’t), not even being allowed to mention my other ailments at the time (which include some sort of neck muscle strain, a possible trapped nerve and a respiratory problem) and simply being told to book another appointment with somebody else (this was just regarding my asthma – he wouldn’t even look at anything else I had). I left the surgery bewildered (and my iPod was still playing – and just ending that track that had started playing when I’d walked into Room 6). Cue angry face.

Somewhat peeved, I decided to move onto the next activity for the day, which involved me having to make my way to North Greenwich and get picked up by one of my friends in his car as we were going to somewhere in Kent he knew for a country pub lunch, but this was not without its hiccups; like a close head-on collision we had on a winding country road, and me pointing out omens like a police car already involved in a crash along the way and a fire engine somewhere else. To cap it all off, an ambo (which seemed huge as it drove quite close past the window we were sitting next to) decided to make an appearance, something I scoffed at, until I realised the paramedics were now making their way through the pub to attend to something. With my angry face now having dissipated, I cowered in my seat in fear, whilst I tried to eat my beer battered haddock (and ‘frites’) without too much distraction.

Omens aside, the place was quite picturesque – the pub was off the beaten track in some little village somewhere, right next to a little river, which was right next to some huge arsed field full of hairy looking cows that were grazing opposite the window. It was weird for the city girl like me, and whilst all this country living was just a stone’s throw away from where Kenneth lived (some place called Swanley), I wasn’t exactly finding it easy to be told that the nearest Tube station was North Greenwich – which was a good few miles away in another county. It was all quite pleasant though, and the drive (even down to the near-miss accident) reminded me of going out for drives with Mike in a place call Sarratt, which had winding roads and what I called a ‘tree tunnel’ (where the trees on either side of the road reach over and across to each other to form a continuous leafy ‘tunnel roof’ above the road). I had lots of fun pointing out pretty Porsche 911s (there seem to be lots in Kent) on the drive back on the M20 to North Greenwich.

About three hours later, I found myself back at North Greenwich heading onto the train, going towards Hounslow as my Father had told me that him and my Mother would be making a surprise visit to my aunt’s as it was her birthday and because she needed some cheering up (she hasn’t had much luck recently, what with some bastards snatching her banking card off her whilst she was using a cash machine inside a bank). I decide to head straight there as doing so would mean I would get enough time to sit around for a bit before heading home and getting back in time for dinner. So I make the journey I loathe so much via the nightmare that is the Piccadilly Line and then walk the long walk from Hounslow East Station to her house, only to find that nobody is in.

I call up my Father to find out where everybody is and what’s going, and he comes out with something along the lines of 1) nobody is home, so my parents have decided to go out to Oxford Street and 2) they thought I’d call them first before making my way down there (despite the fact I already said that I would go there straight away). Cue annoyed face. They tell me I might as well go home. (More annoyed face appears.)

At the same time, I get a text message about something that more or less crushes my creative world completely. With a tiny rage beginning to bubble its way to the surface, I catch the Route No. 111 back down towards Hounslow East Station,

John Horwood was convicted of murder in Bristol, England, in 1821.

He was the first person to be hanged at Bristol New Gaol. His skeleton was retained, and most recently was kept hanging in a cupboard at Bristol University with the noose still around its neck.

He was buried alongside his father on 13 April 2011 at 1.30pm, exactly 190 years to the hour after he was hanged.

Horwood was an 18 year old miner from Hanham and the tenth child of Thomas Horwood.

Horwood's relationship with girlfriend Eliza Balsom ended in 1820. In 1821 he saw her with a new boyfriend, and threw a stone which struck her on the temple. The stone only caused minor injury, but she was treated at the Bristol Royal Infirmary for a depressed fracture and Dr Richard Smith decided to operate, causing a fatal abscess, and she died, four days later, on 17 February 1821.

Dr. Smith gave Horwood's name to the police. The trial took place at the Star Inn in Bedminster on 11 April 1821, and Smith testified against him. He was hanged two days later and his body was handed back to Dr. Smith for dissection. Smith also had the body skinned, tanned and used to bind the papers in the case.

This document is now kept in the Bristol Records Office. It is embossed with a gallows motif. The practice of anthropodermic bibliopegy is known to have been practiced since the 17th century, and it was common to use the murderer's skin in this manner during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Smith kept the skeleton at his home until his death, when it was passed to the Bristol Royal Infirmary and later to Bristol University.

The funeral was arranged by Mary Halliwell, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Horwood's brother.

The coffin was draped in velvet and carried on a wheeled bier in the manner of funerals of the period of his death.

Horwood went on trial for murder, was convicted and sentenced to death at the New Gaol in Cumberland Road. In the days leading up to his death he became grateful for the comfort of religion and said:

‘Lord, thou knowest that I did not mean then to take away her life but merely to punish her: though I confess that I had made up my mind, some time or other, to murder her.’

Image Above: The new Gaol in Cumberland road Bristol John Horwood was hanged above the gatehouse door - this is the only part of the old gaol that remains today.

Horwood went to the gallows on Friday, 13th April 1821, three days after his eighteenth birthday. He left behind a verse which was printed and sold on the day of execution. It reads:

'JOHN HORWOOD IS MY WRETCHED NAME

AND HANHAM GAVE ME BIRTH

MY PREVIOUS TIME HAS BEEN EMPLOYED

IN RIOTING AND MIRTH.

ELIZA, OH ELIZA DEAR!

THY SPIRIT, OH, IS FLED!

AND THY POOR MANGLED BODY LIES

NOW NUMBER’D WITH THE DEAD.

CURS’D IS THE HAND THAT GAVE THE BLOW

AND CURS’D THE FATAL STONE

WHICH MADE THY PRECIOUS LIFE BLOOD FLOW

FOR IT HAS ME UNDONE '.

John Horwood was publicly hanged on top of the prison gatehouse in front of an assembled crowd.

Such was the appeal of these open air executions that some parts of the crowd risked being pushed into the unfenced New Cut river by their sheer weight of numbers.

After the execution, a group of friends and family lay in wait hoping to prevent the conclusion of the boy's sentence - his dissection.

They planned to ambush the cart carrying his body and spirit it away by boat back to his home village of Hanham.

However, the gaol authorities thwarted this plan by delivering the corpse under cover of night to the Bristol Royal Infirmary, where the surgeon Richard Smith carried out the dissection as one of his classes.

Murder's Skin

Horwood's body after the execution was given to a surgeon at Bristol Royal Infirmary to be dissected for the benefit of medical students. The anatomist kept a detailed record of his findings and, after completing his work, had them bound together with a transcript of Horwood's trial.

His flayed skin was taken to a tanner, who turned it into leather for the equivalent of ?1.50. The surgeon, Richard Smith, spent a further ?10 having the book bound and the front cover embossed with the skull and crossbones at each corner. The words Cutis Vera Johannis Horwood ('The Skin of John Horwood') were added in gilt letters.
A book bound with a murderer's skin is on public display for the first time.

For decades the book languished in the infirmary's library before being transferred to the Bristol Record Office, where it has gone on display as an exhibit in the National Archive Awareness Month.

The book, bound in Horwood's skin, which resembles tanned pigskin, is beautifully hand-tooled around the edges and bears a picture of a gallows on the front cover.

Horwood enjoyed the distinction of being the first prisoner to be hanged at the new Cumberland Road gaol (the original was burnt down during the Bristol Riots). The moment he was pronounced dead, Horwood’s body was commandeered by Richard Smith, the surgeon who accused him of the crim

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