D.N.R

 

It contains the works of Paradise Lost poet John Milton and to the naked eye appears to be like any other book from the 19th century.

 

But a closer inspection of this 1852 edition of The Poetical Works will reveal a macabre discovery - it is bound with human skin.

 

Executed murderer George Cudmore's body was stripped of its flesh shortly after he was

hanged for killing his lover.

 

Cudmore, a rat catcher by trade, poisoned Sarah Dunn with a potion of roasted apple and milk, laced with arsenic. He was tried and sentenced to death in March 1830, in front of a thousand-strong crowd in Exeter, Devon. Cudmore's body was then sent to the Devon and Exeter Hospital for dissection and a portion of his skin fell into the hands of a Mr W Clifford, an Exeter bookseller.

 

The skin was used to bind Milton's prose and the volume is now to go on public display for the first time after it was donated to the Westcountry Studies Library in Exeter.

 

Senior assistant librarian Tony Rouse said: 'It is certainly an unusual and grisly thing, but if it weren't for the description, it would be difficult to discern its past.

'There is no hair or stray nipple or anything like that. It is outwardly unremarkable but a closer inspection reveals it to be a surprising artefact.' 

 

   ( the above text was ripped from a news paper that shall not be named - but rhymes with scaley fail )

 

 

                                       On with the images.....