The Hand of Glory

Today I'm writing about a grusome artifact that you can get to see down in Whitby Museum. 

And you can also visit the place it was discovered on the drive back to Rosedale from Whitby town.

This little post is sure to make for a memorable scary holiday story for anyone visiting the North York Moors with children.

I'm talking about the "Hand of Glory".

The mummified severed human hand was discovered hidden inside the wall of a cottage in Castleton.

The cottage is now transformed into the NatWest Bank in that village; which remains open and can be visited during weekdays.

It was found by a stonemason and local historian, Joseph Ford, who immediately identified it from local folklaw as the "Hand of Glory".

The severed hand was presented to the Whitby Museum in 1935.

It is the only original Hand of Glory known to survive in the whole of Britain.

So what is the Hand of Glory, I hear you ask?

The severed left hand was hacked from the body of a convicted murdered while the body still hung from the Gallows.

Folklaw suggests that a Gallows was in place at the top end of Castleton High Street, and that the hand came of a murderer hung there.

After being chopped-off, the hand was carefully pickled, preserved and mummified.

In local tales, the fingers of the outstretched hand were lit like candles, and the hand was given magical prperties to send sleepers in a house into a coma from which they were unable to awaken.

As such, the Hand of Glory was used by burglers and ner-do-wells to enter homes and commit crimes unseen.

But if one of the fingers refused to light, it was taken as a sign by the robber that someone in the household was awake.  That was a real "burgler-alarm".

It was also said that once alight, the fingers could not be extinguished except by the use of blood or "blue" milk (what we now call skimmed-milk).

Below is a little short-story that captures all the essential elements to frighten your children on the drive to Whitby.

"One dark night, when all was shut up, there came a knock on the door of a high moorland inn in the middle of the North Riding.

The door was opened, and shivering and shaking stood a poor beggar, his rags soaked with rain, and his hands white with cold.

He asked piteously for a lodging, and it was cheerfully granted him; there was not a spare bed in the house, but he could lie on the mat before the kitchen fire, and was welcome.

So this was settled, and every one in the house went to bed except the cook, who from the back kitchen could see into the large room through a pane of glass let into the door.

She watched the beggar, and saw him, as soon as he was left alone, draw himself up from the floor, seat himself at the table, extract from his pocket a brown withered human hand, and set it upright in the candlestick.

He then anointed the fingers, and applying a match to them, they began to flame.

Filled with horror, the cook rushed up the back stairs, and endeavoured to arouse her master and the men of the house.

But all was in vain - they slept a charmed sleep; so in despair she hastened down again, and placed herself at her post of observation.

She saw the fingers of the hand flaming, but the thumb remained unlighted, because one inmate of the house was awake.

The beggar was busy collecting the valuables around him into a large sack, and having taken all he cared for in the large room, he entered another.

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 even brighter.

As a last resource, she caught up a jug of milk, and dashed it over the four lambent flames, and they died out at once.

Uttering a loud cry, she rushed to the door of the apartment the beggar had entered, and locked it.

The whole family was aroused, and the thief easily secured, tried, and hanged."

You'll find the Hand of Glory in the Whitby Museum in Pannet Park.

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