Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/245

INFLICTED IN PUNISHMENT OF SACRILEGE. 187 On close examination of the old doors, which, as usual in principal entrances of large churches, were in several pieces, so that the lower leaves only, or a moiety of them, might be unfolded, unless some occasion of unusual ceremony rccpured the whole to be thrown open, ]Ir. Allies succeeded in oljtain- ing from the inner side of the door, where it was traversed by a massive bar of wood, several small portions of skin. The wooden bar corresponded in position with an exterior one of iron, attached by bolts or nails passing through the internal bar of Avood, and there riveted. He Avas decidedly of opinion that the skin had been laid upon the wooden leaves of the door, at the time of its original construction. " I recollect," observes IIr. Allies, " a horrid talc used to be told when I was a boy, that some person in times of yore had been skinned alive for sacrilege, and that his skin was nailed upon the inside of the north door of the cathedral. This tradition is still known to several persons in this city, who recollect seeing the skin on the inner surface of the doors, previously to their removal." The supposed human skin obtained from Worcester, in con- sequence of the obliging researches of Mr. Allies and JIr. Eginton, was forthwith submitted to a gentleman eminently skilled in the use of microscopic observation for investigating minute details connected with comparative anatomy. I allude to jlr. John Quekett, Assistant Conservator of the Museum of the Koyal College of Sm-geons, by whom I was favom*ed with the following report. " I have carefully examined the portion of skin which you forwarded to me for my inspection, and beg to inform you that I am perfectly satisfied that it is human skin, taken from some part of the body of a light-haired person, where little hair grows. A section of the specimen, when examined with a power of a hundred diameters, shews readily that it is skin, and two hairs which grow on it I find to be human hairs, and to present the characters that hairs of hght-haired people do. The hairs of the human subject differ greatly from those of any other mammalian animal, and the examination of a hair alone, without the skin, woidd have enabled me to form a conclusion. I may state that this is the second occasion in which, from the hairs alone, I have been enabled to pro- nounce an animal substance to be human." Encom-aged by this result, I lost no time in the endeavour