Superstition and Force / Essays on the Wager of Law, the Wager of Battle, the Ordeal, Torture

by Henry Charles Lea

A drap it never bled.

The ladye laid her hand on him,

And soon the ground was red.”[1141]

This indicates that the belief was equally prevalent in Scotland. Indeed King James VI. gave it the stamp of his royal authority,[1142] and cases on record there show that it was occasionally received as judicial evidence, and even sometimes prescribed as an ordeal for detection. Thus in 1611, doubts arising as to the mode by which a person had met his death, the vicinage was summoned, as we are told according to custom, to touch the body which had been exhumed for the purpose. The murderer, whose rank relieved him of suspicion, kept away, but his little daughter, attracted by curiosity, approached the corpse, when it began to bleed and the crime was proved.[1143] One of the most noted cases in which crime was detected in this manner was that of Philip Standsfield, tried in 1688 for the murder of his father, Sir James Standsfield of New Milne. In this the indictment sets forth that after the body had been found in a pond and an autopsy had been performed by a surgeon, “James Row, merchant, having lifted the left side of Sir James, his head and shoulder, and the said Philip the right side, his father’s body, though carefully cleaned, as said is, did (according to God’s usual mode of discovering murders), blood afresh upon him and defiled all his hands, which struck him with such a terror that he immediately let his father’s head and body fall with violence and fled from the body and in consternation and confusion cryed Lord have mercy upon me! and bowed himself down over a seat in the church (where the corp were inspected), wiping his father’s innocent blood off his own murdering hands upon his cloaths.” When such was the spirit of the prosecution it need not surprise us that though the defence showed that in the autopsy an incision had been made in the neck, where there was a large accumulation of extravasated blood, and though high authorities were quoted to prove that such bleeding was not evidence sufficient even to justify torture, Philip Standsfield was condemned and executed in spite of the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence.[1144] A similar incident is recorded in the indictment of Christian Wilson, tried for witchcraft at Edinburgh in 1661.[1145] These cases are typical, inasmuch as they illustrate the two forms, the existence of which differentiates this from other ordeals. Sometimes, as in others, suspects were brought, under judicial order, to view or touch the body. Frequently, however, the occurrence is spontaneous, and serves to excite or direct suspicion where none existed before.

The belief extended throughout all the nationalities of Europe. Although there is no reference to it in the German municipal codes of the thirteenth century, there is ample store of cases both of its spontaneous occurrence and of its judicial employment. In 1261, at Forchheim, a manifestation of this kind brought home to the Jews the lingering death of a young girl slain by them according to their hellish custom, and the guilty were promptly broken on the wheel.[1146] More serious was an affair at Ueberlingen in 1331. The body of a child was found in a pond and from the character of the wounds it was recognized that Jewish fanaticism had caused the murder. The corpse was therefore carried in front of the houses of the principal Jews and when it began to bleed the evidence was deemed sufficient. The burgomaster endeavored to calm the populace, but his efforts were ascribed to Hebrew gold, and condign punishment was resolved upon. All the Jews of the town were skilfully decoyed into a large stone house and when they had been securely locked in the upper stories it was set on fire. Those that succeeded in throwing themselves from the roof were dispatched by the mob, and the rest, to the number of three hundred, were consumed by the avenging flames. Though sundry miracles ratified the justice of the act, yet the godless Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, punished the pious townsfolk by dismantling their walls and levying a heavy fine upon them.[1147] The judicial employment of the ordeal is seen in a case in 1324, when Reinward, a canon of Minden, was murdered by a drunken soldier and the crime was proved by a trial of this kind.[1148] More satisfactory, as showing how through the influence of imagination the ordeal sometimes resulted in substantial justice, was a case in Lucerne in 1503, when Hans Speiss of Etiswiler murdered his wife. She was duly buried, but suspicion arose, and after three weeks the body was exhumed and he was brought before it. As he approached, it flushed with color and immediately began to bleed. He had hitherto defiantly asserted his innocence, but at this sight he fell on his knees, confessed the crime, and begged for mercy. He was broken on the wheel and died most penitently.[1149] Numerous cases are on record of its use throughout Germany in the seventeenth century, of which it will suffice to refer to one in which the corpse manifested a discrimination greatly impressing the authorities. It had been dead for thirty-six hours and refused to bleed on the approach of two persons suspected. Then three others were brought, one of whom, George, had planned the murder and been present, but had not taken personal part in it: for him the corpse bled at the mouth. Then came Lorenz, who had held the victim when the blow was struck: for him the mouth frothed and the wound bled. Finally Claus, who had inflicted the blow, came, and for him the blood gushed forth from the wound.[1150]

The extent to which popular credulity was prepared to accept this miraculous manifestation is shown in a story which obtained wide currency. An Austrian noble journeying to Vienna passed through a wood in which his dogs scratched up some bones. Their whiteness struck his fancy; he carried them to the city and sent them to a cutler to be worked up into some ornament, when as soon as they were brought into the presence of the artificer they became covered with blood. The noble reported the fact to the magistrates, the cutler was arrested and confessed that twenty years before he had slain a comrade and buried the body where the bones were found.[1151] We may trace a more poetic form of this sympathy in the legend which relates the welcome given by the bones of Abelard to Heloise when, twenty years after his death, her body was consigned to his tomb.

In Denmark, though this form of trial finds no place in the codes of law, we are told that it was generally used during the seventeenth century in all appropriate cases.[1152] In Holstein there was a custom known as Scheingehen, in which, when a murderer remained undiscovered, a hand was severed from the corpse with provident care and preserved as a touchstone for the future. A celebrated case is related in the books in which a dead body was found and buried, and the hand was hung up in the prison of Itzehoe. Ten years later a thief was arrested and brought there, when the hand immediately began to bleed freely, and the thief confessed the murder.[1153]

Italy shared fully in the belief. The most distinguished exponent of the New Learning in the fifteenth century, Marsiglio Ficino, the Platonist, does not hesitate to adduce it as a fact well known to judges, in his argument to prove the immortality of the soul against the Averrhoism fashionable in his day.[1154] Equally distinguished as a jurist was Hippolito de’ Marsigli (died in 1528), who relates that in his youth he was governor of Alberga, near Genoa, when a murder occurred without affording evidence as to the perpetrator. By the advice of an old citizen he had the body brought before him and summoned all liable to suspicion to pass near it one by one. When the homicide approached, to the surprise of Marsigli, the wounds burst out afresh, but his incredulity was such that he did not consider this to warrant even an arrest until he had collected sufficient collateral evidence, when the culprit confessed without torture.[1155] In Venice this ordeal was sometimes used and likewise in Piedmont, though in the latter region some magistrates regarded it as fallacious, for their experience showed that blood had not flowed in the presence of those subsequently proved to be guilty.[1156] In Corsica the belief, if not still existent, has been widely diffused until within a few years.[1157]

France seems to have been even more addicted to this superstition. About 1580 President Bertrand d’Argentré, in his Commentaries on the Customs of Brittany, treats it as an indisputable fact and one affording good evidence.[1158] In Picardy we are told it was constantly used by magistrates, it was approved by the courts in Bordeaux, and Chassanée, whose authority in Burgundy was great, argues that its occurrence justifies the torture of the accused without further evidence.[1159] Spain likewise was not exempt from it. A celebrated case is cited in the books as occurring in Aragon, where the accused was brought before the corpse of the victim in the public square and appealed to God to perform a miracle if he were guilty, whereupon the body raised its right arm, pointed with its fingers to the several wounds and then to the accused; this was regarded as sufficient proof, and under sentence of the Council of Aragon the culprit was executed. Another case which occurred at Ledesma, near Salamanca, shows the existence of the belief in Castile.[1160]

English colonists brought the superstition across the Atlantic, where it has never been fairly eradicated from the popular mind. In January, 1680, in Accomac County, Virginia, a new-born illegitimate child of “Mary, daughter of Sarah, wife of Paul Carter” died and was buried. It was nearly six weeks before suspicion was aroused, when the coroner impanelled a jury of twelve matrons, whose verdict recorded that Sarah Carter was brought to touch the corpse without result, but when Paul Carter touched it “immediately whilst he was stroaking ye childe ye black and settled places above ye body of ye childe grew fresh and red so that blud was ready to come through ye skin of ye childe.” On the strength of this verdict an indictment was found against Paul Carter, but with what result the records do not show.[1161] Nearly a century later, in 1767, the coroner’s jury of Bergen County, N. J., was summoned to view the body of one Nicholas Tuers, whose death had led to suspicion of murder. Johannes Demarest, the coroner, attests that he had no belief in bier-right and paid no attention to the experiment, when one of the jury touched the body without result. At length a slave named Harry, who had been suspected without proof, was brought forward for the trial when he heard an exclamation “He is the man,” and was told that the body had bled when touched by Harry. He then ordered the slave to place his hand on its face, when about a tablespoonful of blood flowed from each nostril, and Harry confessed the murder.[1162] So recently as 1833 a man named Getter was hanged in Pennsylvania for the murder of his wife, and among the evidence which was allowed to go to the jury on the trial was that of a female witness, who swore “If my throat was to be cut I could tell, before God Almighty, that the deceased smiled when he (the murderer) touched her. I swore this before the justice, and also that she bled considerably. I was sent for to dress her and lay her out. He touched her twice. He made no hesitation about doing it. I also swore before the justice that it was observed by other people in the house.”[1163] This is perhaps the latest instance in which bier-right has figured in regular judicial proceedings, but the popular belief in it is by no means eradicated. In 1860 the Philadelphia journals mention a case in which the relatives of a deceased person, suspecting foul play, vainly importuned the coroner, six weeks after the interment, to have the body exhumed in order that it might be touched by a person whom they regarded as concerned in his death. In 1868 at Verdiersville, Virginia, a suspected murderer was compelled to touch the body of a woman found murdered in a wood; and in 1869, at Lebanon, Illinois, the bodies of two murdered persons were exhumed and two hundred of the neighbors were marched past and made to touch them in the hope of identifying the criminals.[1164]