A Fate Worse than Death - Dr Lindsey Fitzharris on the history of displaying criminal's corpses
In the wake of images of Muammar Gaddafi's corpse being splashed across the mdeia, Dr Lindsey Fitzharris, Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of History has been writing for the Guardian on the history of the display of criminals' bodies.
"The display of one's enemies after death reaches across cultures and across time. In 1540, Henry VIII granted the Barber-Surgeons Company the annual right to the bodies of four executed criminals. With it, he formally bound the act of the executioner to that of the surgeon: one executed the body, the other executed the law."
You can read the whole article here.