At the Whitby Museum in North Yorkshire is a strange artifacta dismembered hand, dried and shriveled.
It once belonged to a man who was hanged from the gallows for an unknown crime.
The hand was cut off at his wrist when the lifeless body was still hanging.
The hand was then dried and pickled in salt.
The hand of glory is thought to have magical powers.
The hand of glory at Whitby Museum.
Mandrake has a long association with magic and witchcraft.
In sufficient quantities, it can even send a victim to unconsciousness.
Antique doctors often used mandrake as an anesthetic during surgeries.
To prepare a hand, first it had to be hacked off while the body was still hanging.
The hand was usually the one the crime was committed with.
Then a candle was prepared using the fat of the gibbeted person.
Sometimes, the fingers of the hand itself were lighted.
Each lighted finger represented a sleeping person within the house.
If a finger refused to light, it was a sign that somebody was awake.
Either that or there were fewer people in the house than there are fingers on the hand.
Once the fingers were lit the sleeping people were unable to wake until the flames were extinguished.
He then anointed the fingers, and applying a match to them, they began to flame.
On this the woman ran in, and, seizing the light, tried to extinguish the flames.
But this was not so easy.
She poured the dregs of a beer jug over them, but they blazed up the brighter.
The whole family was aroused, and the thief easily secured and hanged.
The hand of glory at the Whitby Museum is the only surviving specimen of such a hand.
It was donated to the museum in 1935.