SUPERSTITION AND CRIME. 215 



The records of the criminal courts in West Prussia during the 

 last half century contain numerous instances of the violation of 

 graves from superstitious motives. Thus in March, 1896, a peasant 

 died in the village of Penkuhl; soon afterward his son was taken ill 

 of a lingering disease, which the remedies prescribed by the country 

 doctor failed to relieve. It did not take long for the " wise women " 

 of the village to convince him that his father was a " nine-killer," 

 and would soon draw after him into the grave nine of his next of 

 kin. The sole means of depriving him of this fatal power would be 

 to disinter him and sever his head from his body. In accordance 

 with this advice the young man dug up the corpse by night and de- 

 capitated it with a spade. In this case the accused, if tried in court, 

 might honestly declare that he acted in self-defense; indeed, he 

 might plead in justification of his conduct that he thereby preserved 

 not only his own life, but also the lives of eight of his nearest and 

 dearest relations, and that he should be commended rather than 

 condemned for what he had done. It is the possibility and sincerity 

 of this plea that render it so difficult to deal with such offenses 

 judicially and justly. Here is needed what Tennyson calls 



" The intuitive decision of a bright 

 And thorough-edged intellect, to part 

 Error from crime." 



Quite different, however, from a moral point of view, is the open- 

 ing- of graves in quest of medicaments, and especially of talismans, 

 which are supposed to bring good luck to the possessor or to enable 

 him to practice sorcery and to commit crime with impunity. In 

 ancient times, and even in the middle ages, physicians sometimes 

 prescribed parts of the human body as medicine, and in Franconia, 

 North Bavaria, a peasant now occasionally enters an apothecary's 

 shop and asks for " Armensunderfett," poor sinner's fat, obtained 

 from the bodies of executed malefactors and prized as a powerful 

 specific. The culprit was tried first for murder and then for lard, 

 and thus made doubly conducive to the safety and sanitation of the 

 community. Formerly many persons went diligently to public exe- 

 cutions for the purpose of procuring a piece of the criminal as a 

 healing salve, but since the hangman or headsman has generally 

 ceased to perform his fearful functions in the presence of a promis- 

 cuous crowd, such loathsome remedies for disease are sought in 

 churchyards. 



In May, 1865, a Polish peasant in Wyssokopiz, near Warsaw, 

 discovered that the grave of his recently deceased wife had been 

 opened and the corpse mutilated. Information was given to the 

 police, and a shepherd's pipe, found in the churchyard, led to the 



