How to get Ahead...

... steal one: a practice known as cranioklepty.

One of my favourite blogs, Morbid Anatomy (http://morbidanatomy.blogspot.com/) relates that:

"With the rise of phrenology, the early 19th century saw a host of bizarre grave robberies, in which the graves of famous men were plundered for their owners’ skulls. Both scientific curiosities and morbid fetishes, the skulls became subject to extended legal battles between religious and secular authorities over who owns these remains, while phrenologists continued to study them for visible proof of genius. "

Among the famous heads to have enjoyed a longer stay on earth than their shoulders, we find Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Swedenborg, Goya, Cromwell, Petrarch, Ned Kelly and Sir Thomas Browne, who had famously written what a “tragical abomination” it is to be “gnawed out of one’s grave,” a century and a half before his own cranium was half-inched in 1840.

It has not been publicly noted before, but to this list we can now perhaps add Dick Turpin.

York City Archives include, in a 19thC vicar's diary, the intriguing entry:

"A London paper published in June 1861 relates the following statement -

The skull of Dick Turpin under a glass shade many years in possession of the 'Morley family of York' that was one of the lots put up to auction at the sale of 'genuine furniture' last Friday in Church Street Soho, the piece of bone sold for 4s - glass shade and all."

This could have been quite true, an accidental fraud or a deliberate hoax. And we may never know which.

Still, needless to say, I will be investigating this further and will keep you posted as to my findings.