Waterbury evening Democrat., 1893-02-24
FOLKLORE AND CRIME.
Strange Superstitions That Inf1u-
 .ence Criminals.
tihastiy Implements Employed by Thieves in Their Nefarious Eusiness-The Dead Mans Hand and the
 Corpse-CaadIe.

Gnc Of the most curious and strange phases of superstition is that which re- latcs to the cri pinal classes Tho
 mystic code which regulates the lives
 If these enemies of society is in many cases a survival of fetichism of the old est kind. Relieving tcuaniously in the Tread efficacy of certain ghastly charms and incantations. the malcfactOr bold. ,y enters on his enterprise occasionally carrying with him "a dead mans hand"-takcn from one who had died a violent death. Such a charm being supposed to overpower with sleep those who come under it's influence, it is nat urally an invaluab blc adjunct to the i'm plcl0Cnts employed by thieves, says the Pail Mall Budget.
 Some years agoan attempted robbery was made by burglars on an estate in the county Meath, and, to quote con temporary account of the affair, 'thcy | entcrr'l the house armed with dead | mans h&nd, with lighted candlo in it, | believing thatS candle so placed will not be seen by any but those by whom | it is used, and also that if a candle in a | dead mans hand be introduced in a house it will prevent those who may be | asleep from awakening. The inmates however, were alarmed; the robbers < fed, leaving the dead mans hand be- l hind them"
 Many similar stories are told of the use of the dead hand by thieves, one 1 communicated by Rev. S. Barring Gould | being worthy of notice. Two men, hay ing come to lodge in a public house with view to robbing it, asked per ! ,,,iS +,, i,rl,+ 6,> and obtained it. When the house was \ quiet, the servant girl, suspccting mis- chief, crept downstairs and looked through the lleyholc. when she saw the
 men open a sack and take out dry, withcrcd hand. They anointcd the | fingers with some ungucnt, and lighted them. Each finger famed except the thumb, which indicated that one of the household was not asleep.
 Grose gives full account of this charm as used by French houscbrcakers, and variation of tho same belief pre- Ivailcd in Belgium. Not far from Bail leIi, in West Flanders, thief was cap tured on whom was found the foot of a man who had been hanged, which he use1l when engaged in his robberics, for putting persons to sleep. Similar in \ many. and it is noteworthy that Mex Iican thieves have been known to carry
 with them the left hand and arm of a woman who died at the birth of her Afrst child.
 | Then there is tho corpsc-candle, a awcird implement of the robbers trade,
 which, although common throughout
 Europe, seems to have been more gen.
 cral in Germany than any other coun- try. Not so long ago, it may be rcmem-
 bcrcd, four peasants in the south Rus
 sian government of Kursl1 murdered a girl in order to make candles of her
 body, the notion being that such q
 hidcous light not only renders the per
 octrators of robbcrics invisible, but ! actually throws tho victim or victims
 into n state of somnOlcnce. In the Ger
 man criminal codes of the seventeenth | and eighteenth centuries we find cN Iprcss mention made of penalties against | crime the motive of which was tho (malling of ''thicvcs" or 'slccp- -produc ling candles" This superstition has fig
 nrcd in many trial, and seems to be
 even to the present day, implicitly
 believed in by the criminal classes. In 1ecd, it was suggested that tho White | ,napcl murders were lnStlSatcu py th1;
 idca-a theory which the celebrated pr
 Bloch, q member of the Austrian reichs
 rath. was induced to support. An in
 stance of this piece of criminal lore
 occurred during the trial of the German
 thief. Theodore Unger, who was exc
 cutod at Mngdcburg in 1910, when i
 was brought out in evidence that ;
 regular traffic existed for the supply O
 these grewsome implements of the bur
 glars trade. But, instead of making
 the criminal invisible, this grim ligh has moro than once done the reverse and>caused him to be brought to justice