Tattoo collection...

Yoinked from Morbid Anatomy, I highly recommend checking out the ‘photo story’ documenting a collection of tattoos found in the Department of Forensic Medicine at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

Image: Morbid Anatomy

Accompanying the images is a fascinating article, an excerpt from which is provided below!

Preserving the Criminal Code

Photo Stories

Katarzyna Mirczak

In Poland, tattoos are common among criminals. Traditionally, they could be found on people who exhibited a tendency towards perverse behaviour: such as burglars, thieves, rapists and pimps. It was noticed that a significant percentage of tattooed people showed signs of personality disorders and aggressive behaviour. In the 1960s in Poland, getting a prison tattoo required special skills and criminal ambition – it was a kind of ennoblement, each tattoo in the criminal world was meaningful…

The tattoo collection at the Department of Forensic Medicine at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland consists of 60 objects preserved in formaldehyde, a method devised by one of the experts employed by the Department at the turn of 20th century.

The tattoos were collected from the prisoners of the nearby state penitentiary on Montelupich Street as well as from the deceased on whom autopsies were performed.

The majority of the prison tattoos represent connections between the convicts. Besides gestures and mimics it is a kind of secret code – revealing why ‘informative’ tattoos appeared on uncovered body parts: face, neck or arms.

The collection was created with a view to deciphering the code – among prisoners known as a ‘pattern language’.

By looking closely at the prisoners’ tattoos, their traits, temper, past, place of residence or the criminal group in which they were involved could be determined.

The entire photo story, with the full article and image collection can be found here.

WW1: Finding the Lost Battalions

Just finished watching the very moving WW1: Finding the Lost Battalions…

In 2009, in an astonishing discovery, the bodies of 250 British and Australian World War I soldiers were found in unmarked graves near Fromelles in northern France. It’s the largest war grave to be found in Western Europe in modern times.

Channel 4 was granted exclusive access by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to document the exhumation of the soldiers’ remains and their subsequent burial in the new Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery – the first to be built in 50 years.

This film tells the story of how, over the course of a year, the bodies have been carefully exhumed and many of them identified via DNA matches with living relatives.

WWI: Finding the Lost Battalions features three British families who hope to discover whether their relatives are amongst the dead, and lay to rest family mysteries that have lasted almost a century.

Their relatives are men who went missing in action, but no confirmation of death could ever be given by the War Office. Two are from the sleepy Buckinghamshire village of The Lee, which gave most of its young men to the 2nd Bucks Battalion, whose story this film follows in particular detail.

Drawing on personal possessions found with the bodies, including a bible with handwritten annotations, a heart-shaped leather pouch and a return train ticket, as well as astonishing personal diaries and letters from the men who went missing, the film brings the horrifying truth of the Battle of Fromelles, and its impact on the subsequent generations, vividly to life.

The fighting took place at the same time as the Battle of the Somme, at the height of WWI. More than 1,500 British and 5,533 Australian soldiers were killed, wounded or taken prisoner during 12 hours of carnage between 19 and 20 July 1916. The Allies failed to gain an inch of ground.

Keep an eye out for it on 4OD, it should be up soon and is definitely worth a look.

The Victorian Pharmacy...

Image: Wellcome Library blog

With a growing obsession about medical history, I’m really looking forward to the first airing of the historical-observational documentary series Victorian Pharmacy tomorrow (BBC Two, 9pm). Historian Ruth Goodman, Professor Nick Barber and PhD student Tom Quick are recreating an authentic 19th-century pharmacy and the series kicks off with a look at the world of pills and potions at the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1837. Bring on the leeches…

In Loving Memory...

Image: We English

I watched a really interesting programme last night on BBC Two about contemporary ways of dealing with the grief of losing a loved one. ‘In Loving Memory’ examined how, as an increasingly secular country, we are moving away from the traditional setting of the church and graveyard as the locus of our grief and mourning to more individual, and often public, displays of loss. The programme features a myriad of interviewees and the ways in which they have coped with the loss of someone close – from roadside memorials to bedroom shrines and Facebook groups to memorial tattoos. An extremely emotive documentary that probes the complex emotions and needs of those who are left behind, as well as the inevitable friction caused when private grief spills into the public domain as with the case of roadside tributes, I highly recommend catching this on iPlayer if you can.

Hande with Care...

Image: Metro

Held in Chiltern Woodland Burial Park, the exhibition will run for two days from 10-11 July 2010 and will provide visitors the opportunity to visit the grounds and view a bewildering array of coffins. Manufactors of said coffins will also be on hand should you feel the sudden urge to make a purchase…for further details see the website.

Museums and restitution...

For anyone who is not attending the ‘Museums and Restitution‘ conference at the University of Manchester, but is interested in following the proceedings, then good news! The Institute of Cultural Practices will be blogging from the conference and updates will also be posted to Twitter, with the hashtag #mrest.

Stitch yourself...again!

Image: Stitch London

Remember the Stitch Yourself competition being held at the Science Museum? Well, here are the end results…259 teensy stitched people from all over the world, from Australia to Abu Dhabi. Impressive! For the rest of the story, check out the Stitch London blog here…