Arizona republican., 1893-05-23
FOLKLORE AND CRIME.
Strange Expectations That Influ-
 ence Criminals
Ghastly Implements Employed by Thieves In Their NefariOus Business-The Dead Mans Hand and the
 pse-Candle.

One of the most curious and strange phases of superstition is that which re- lates to the criminal classes. The mystic code which regulates the lives of these enemies of society is in many cases a survival of fetichism of the old est kind. Believing tenaciously ;n the dread efficacy of certain ghastly charms and incantations, the malefactor bold ly enters on his enterprise occasionally carrying with him "a dead mans hand"-.aken from one who had died a violent death. Such a charm being supposed to overpower with sleep those who come under its influence, it is nat urally an invaluable adjunct to the i'm plements employed by thieves, says the Pall Mall Budget.
 Some years ago an attempted robbery was made by burglars on an estate in the county Meath, and, to quote con- temporary account of the affair, ''they entered the house armed with a dead mans hand, with lighted candle in it, believing that a candle so placed will not be seen by any but those by whom it is used, and also that if 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 fled, leaving the dead mans hand be- hind them"
 Many similar stories are told of the use of the dead hand by thieves. one 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 mission to pass the night by the fire. and obtained it. When the house was quiet, the servant girl, suspecting mis- chief, crept downstairs and looked through the keyhole, when she saw the men open n sack and take out dry, withered hand. They anointed the fingers with some unguent, 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 housebrealSers, and variation of the same belief pre- vailed in Belgium. Not far from Bail leui, in West Flanders, a thief was cap tured on whom was found the foot of a man who had been hanged, which he used, when engaged in his robberies, for putting persons to sleep. Similar in- stances are quoted from Spain and Ger many. and it is noteworthy that Mex ican thieves have been known to carry with them the left hand and arm of a woman who died at the birth of her first child.
 Then there is the corpse-candle, weird implement of the robbers trade. which, although common throughout Europe, seems to have been more gen eral in Germany than any other coun- try. Not so long ago, it may be remem- bered, four peasants in the south Rus sian government of Kursk murdered girl in order to make candles of her body, the notion being that such a hideous light not only renders the per petrators of robberies invisible, but actually tlr'ows the victim or victims into a state of somnolence. In the Ger man criminal codes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we find ex- press mention made of penalties against a crime the motive of which was the making of thieves" or ''sleep-produc- ing candles" This superstition has fig ured in many trial, and seems to be, even to the present day, implicitly believed in by the criminal classes. In- deed, 1t was suggested that the White chapel murders were instigated by this idea-a theory which the celebrated Dr. Bloch, 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 Ungcr, who was exc cuted at Magdeburg in 1sl0, when it was brought out in evidence that a regular traffic existed for the supply of these grewsome implements of the bur glars trade. But, instead of making the criminal invisible, this grim light has more than once done the reverse, a m A1 1, | |