Drawing on oral histories with men and women who grew up in Sheffield across the post-war period this chapter explores the relationship between consumption, leisure, and identity. Moving away from the study of ‘spectacular’ youth it demonstrates the importance of placing young people’s experience of leisure and consumption within their lived and local environment.
Shortly after the burial of Hannah Beswick’s body at Harpurhey Cemetery, James Dronsfield published an account of her life, death and afterlife that would influence subsequent retellings of the story. In this account, Dronsfield not only gave the woman a full name, but also situated her story in Hollinwood, a small village on the outskirts of Oldham. Introducing a supernatural element to the story, Dronsfield transformed Hannah Beswick from a museum curiosity into a ghost story and a piece of folklore. This chapter explores that transformation, considering the relevance of local geography and history, and examines various iterations leading up to the twentieth century. The chapter goes on to show that the ghost story version of the story led to questions being raised about the validity of the woman’s will, introducing the question of inheritance to the story. Although the story given by visitors to the museum had suggested an ‘eccentric testatrix’, the more romanticized elements of the ghost story created a sense of mystery around the terms of the woman’s will, despite the fact that the identification of the woman’s name and date of death meant that her will could finally be located and examined. This chapter argues that this complex response to ‘Madame Beswick’ would shape and influence twentieth- and twenty-first-century retellings of the ‘legend’.
In 1966, Harry Ludlam published an account of the Hannah Beswick story that combined ghost story with some research into the woman’s life and family. Although this story replicated some details from older versions, specifically in terms of the woman’s desire to be left unburied and the supernatural phenomena that followed her death, it was notable for its inclusion of careful genealogy and details of local geography. Nevertheless, as the Hannah Beswick story began to circulate on the internet towards the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, this care and detail was obscured by confused and inaccurate variations. This chapter explores some of the more recent iterations of the narrative, arguing that the story of the Manchester Mummy remains a ‘curiosity’ to be understood through fanciful and sensationalized story rather than serious academic scrutiny. The chapter goes on to explore some of the ways in which a type of civic amnesia (the forgetting or obscuring of aspects of Manchester’s past, such as the response to the Jacobite rebellion of 1745) has created a space in which the more fanciful narratives can circulate without any challenge. The first part of the book concludes that almost all the versions of the story explored so far should be treated with a degree of suspicion or cynicism.
This chapter explores developments and changes in the medical profession during Hannah Beswick’s lifetime. Specifically, it considers the separation of the barbers and the surgeons, and the impact this had on the teaching of anatomy in London and Edinburgh. This provides context for a narration of the career of Charles White, the man responsible for mummifying Hannah Beswick’s body, but also the scientific impetus for the ‘body-snatching’ and public dissections discussed in previous chapters. Various techniques for preserving a corpse are described, which illustrate the scientific principles being tested and demonstrated. Not only does this explain the intentions of the surgeons who embalmed body for display and teaching purposes, but it also suggests possible reasons why an individual might consent to the post-mortem procedure.
The period between the early 1950s and mid-1960s was one of meaningful transition and significant change in the development of post-war youth cultures. Across Britain, young people carved out spaces for themselves in coffee bars and beat clubs, talking with friends and dancing. This chapter argues that the growth of commercial youth spaces reflected a new era of leisure provision, one that prioritised access to leisure as a sign of the modern city.
This chapter explores the foundation of the Manchester Infirmary, and the social circumstances that led to its establishment. It gives an overview of the socio-economic background of eighteenth-century Manchester, as well as the public health challenges the expanding town faced. The foundation of the Infirmary is illustrated through the use of a triumphant poem that appeared on the front page of Manchester’s newspaper, and the role of Charles White and other surgeons and physicians is explained. Hannah Beswick was an early, and generous, supporter of the new infirmary, and her donation is presented within the context of other members of the gentry. The chapter argues that Hannah’s early contribution suggests that she was familiar with the plans for the infirmary and was likely contacted directly by one of the founders during the fundraising stage of the hospital’s development. The chapter goes on to suggest that the level of trust such a donation requires means that Hannah had some prior knowledge of the person requesting the donation, and that her subsequent actions certainly allow us to believe that Charles White would be a person who commanded that degree of trust.
In the post-war period various local authorities including police, health and safety inspectors, council officers, and licensing magistrates worked to mediate and regulate the public spaces of youth leisure, particularly those that were open until the early hours of the morning. These spaces, which had a transformative effect on the urban environment after dark, held clear potential to disrupt established ideas about appropriate leisure. Charting the attempts to regulate youth leisure at a national and local level, this chapter considers the meaning that leisure came to hold in the second half of the twentieth century.
This chapter continues the narration of Hannah Beswick’s life, including consideration of her social circle. It offers minute examination of Hannah’s will, exploring the implications of her bequests. Using archival and genealogical sources, the identities of Hannah’s heirs and executors is revealed, including Mary Greame, a woman who has previously been overlooked in earlier versions of the story. The chapter gives biographical information about Mary Greame, suggesting a close but non-familial relationship between the two unmarried women. There is also some consideration of other previously overlooked, but nevertheless revealing, bequests in the will, including Hannah’s somewhat pointed reference to the practice of the ‘heriot’ (a form of feudal inheritance tax). The chapter argues that the will contains indications of Hannah’s character, as well as her final wishes in relation to property and money.
In 1890, labourers in Cheetham, a suburb to the north of Manchester, uncovered a coffin in what had been the floor of Hannah Beswick’s former residence, Cheetwood Old Hall, and this led to a revival of interest in ‘The Manchester Mummy’, with numerous stories appearing in the local and national press, and letters from readers purporting to tell the ‘true story’ of Hannah’s life, death and mummification (including from people who claimed a familial relationship to either Hannah or someone who had known her during her lifetime). Unlike the ghost stories discussed in the previous chapter, these stories followed a pattern of appealing to authority and attempting to close the generational and geographic distance between teller and listener, and so they can be understood as a form of urban legend. This chapter argues that the events of 1890 allowed for the creation of a Hannah Beswick that can be understood through the lens of the Gothic; the discovery at Cheetwood was literally the result of the industrialization of Cheetham Hill (with the post-medieval manor house being torn down to create a brickworks), and thus the reception of the story and subsequent retellings of the Hannah Beswick story reveal as much about the late Victorian popular imagination as it does about the circumstances of the discovery.
The book explores the story of Hannah Beswick, a woman who was embalmed by her doctor in the eighteenth century, and then displayed as a museum exhibit in Georgian/Victorian Manchester. It is the first full-length study of the case of the Manchester Mummy, and it offers a carefully researched journey through Hannah Beswick’s life, death and afterlife. This book explores museum history, attitudes to mummification and the display of human remains, and the Victorian turn to the macabre, alongside eighteenth-century ideas of anatomy, corpses and ‘curiosities’, to debunk the legends and uncover what the story of Hannah Beswick can tell us about the cultural history of death and dying, mummies and museums. In uncovering the true story behind this particular ‘curiosity’, the book explores the social and cultural history of public health, funeral practices, class, urban development and education that underpin an understanding of how the ‘legend’ of Hannah Beswick came into existence. Significantly, the book also offers a humane and sensitive consideration of the woman's life and relationships, bringing Hannah Beswick ‘to life’ through extensive and wide-ranging archival material and concluding with a more nuanced explanation for the mummification and display of the woman’s body.