Mary’s “christ is coming” egg

Mary Bateman was a disciple of Joanna Southcote, the woman who proclaimed in 1792 that she would be giving birth to the Second Messiah. This momentous event never happened but it didn’t stop followers like Mary from believing that the possession of a “Southcote Seal” would ensure a trip straight to heaven.

Mary owned a hen which laid eggs inscribed with religious messages such as “Christ is coming”. She also had a bad habit of defrauding people and attempting to poison them when they stopped paying up. One unlucky victim was Rebecca Perigo from whom she extracted a large sum of money as well as other interesting items

“a goose, two pair of men’s shoes, a goose pie, a tea caddy, two pillow slips, sixty pounds of butter, two or three hundred eggs, a pair of black silk stockings, a piece of beef and three bottles of spirits.

Mary, who became known as the Yorkshire Witch, was tried and hung for the murder of Rebecca Perrigo. Such was the morbid fascination with her that the hospital which dissected her body charged 3d  each to 2,500 people who came to view her remains. They also had her skin tanned and pieces distributed as souvenirs.

Mary’s body is preserved to this day at the Thackray Medical Museum. There is no truth to the rumour that her special hen absconded with the Southcote Seal…..

corset friday 3.7.2009

ok, so not really a corset but this outfit will have to do, I’m freezing! But the good news is, I’ve decided to go to Singapore for a holiday in August, so I won’t be freezing for much longer. Any readers who have been/are living there, leave me your Singapore tips in the comments…..

I like these nearly opaque tights with the fishnet thigh inserts. Though they do tend to show skin bulging around the net like  salami oozing out of muslin. No photos of the netting print left on my flesh after I swapped them for a pair of trackydacks…….

they should be so lucky

The gimcrack is a very modern asylum, but still the patients whine and snivel about the lack of amenities like roulette tables and sherry before dinner. The next time one of our ingrates complains about the three-ply toilet tissue being too scratchy for their delicate arse I’m going to tell them about Haydock Lodge

“The register of patient deaths said that 18 had died of exhaustion, 20 of diarrhoea, 13 from general debility, 12 of epilepsy and 17 of apoplexy.

The commissioners said that the diet “was as liberal as most, and more liberal than many” of those in pauper private houses.

However, there was a uniform deficiency in the amount of milk used in the “rice milk”. Fourteen, out of the forty-six quarts that should have been used, was made up of water.

The evidence proved  that the dinners were occasionally ill-cooked and unpalatable, that the potatoes were for a time indifferent, but no fault was ever found with the bread or the beer.

It appears to be now generally allowed that the insane require a liberal and nutritious diet. Meals containing large quantities of peas and other flatulent vegetables are seldom adapted to the wants of the insane.

The wonderfully named Lunacy Commission was sent in to investigate. They found the kitchen to “extremely dirty, wholly insufficient in size and staffed by slovenly persons.”

As the majority of the inmates were Welsh, the management were obliged to engage Welsh speaking staff. Again, the Lunacy Commission was distressed to find that the “two respectable Welsh women were dismissed in September because one of the two (whose respectability was very much in question) stayed out until midnight, without leave, with one of the male attendants.”

bearded women and unbearded men

Cesare Lombroso and Johan Lavater thought that external appearance demonstrated that criminals were inferior to the law abiding. Bearded women and unbearded men were looked upon with suspicion. Such facial features as shifty eyes, weak chins or arrogant noses were also thought to be suspect.

Ernst Kretschmer analysed over 4,000 criminal cases using his 3 body type model: 1. asthenic (tall and thin) 2. athletic (developed muscles) 3. pyknic (short and fat). He concluded that there is a greater number of violent criminals who correspond to the athletic type, while the asthenic are more likely to be involved in petty theft and fraud. Finally, Kretschmer found that the pyknic tended toward crimes involving deception and fraud but were also sometimes involved in violent crimes.

“The picture above comes from a book of mug shots. The mug shot originated in the 1880s, in studies designed to explore the relationship between appearance and criminal behavior. These men are all forgers. The New York Police Department compiled this record in part to see if all forgers looked alike, or all murderers looked alike, or if all burglars had the same facial features.

This is a composite photo of twelve Boston physicians, from McClure’s Magazine, September 1894. Why produce such an image? Maybe you could use it to find out what the ideal type of a doctor should look like. Then maybe you could judge how good your doctor was by how much he looked like the ideal type of a doctor.

Or, you could use it to weed people out of medical school–admit one person who looks like the ideal type, and deny another who looks different. Maybe the result would be a society where only people who “really were” doctors could be doctors. Or maybe it would result in a society where you could only be a doctor if you looked something like the imaginary gentleman in the middle……..”

a travelling chinaman called bruce

nursemyra is lucky enough to have had two mothers. One is alive and well and living on the beautiful Mornington Peninsula. My other mother passed away some years ago. She did, however, hand down some strange maternal advice that I’ve never forgotten. But before I share it with my readers first let me tell you about the “Bruce Effect“

The Bruce effect is a form of pregnancy disruption in mammals in which exposure of a female to an unknown male results in pre or postimplantation failure.

Laboratory experiments show that when a recently inseminated female is exposed directly to an unfamiliar, nonsire male or to its urine or soiled bedding, this causes her to prevent implantation or to abort or reabsorb her embryos.

This response supposedly is adaptive for the male, in that termination of pregnancy results in the female coming into estrus, providing the male with a mating opportunity.

(Jayne Mansfield succumbs to temptation)

The advice my mother passed on was this: “Never marry a travelling salesman, a Chinaman or anyone called Bruce”

The rationale behind this strange piece of maternal ‘wisdom’ being her sister’s cheating husband, Bruce, was a travelling salesman who kept a mistress in every other town. The entire Chinese nation got a bad rap because of the greengrocer down the road who let his cat sleep on the fruit in the front window of his shop.

This could also have been the reason I wasn’t allowed to put a Bruce Lee poster on my wall when I was teenage Enter the Dragon fan………….

cock cutting coconuts

Tu-Jin Sheng is a master of penis qigong.

“Tu exalts this practice as a penile panacea. He claims it can prevent old age and diseases, increase energy and vitality, make muscles and bones stronger, reduce arterial blockage, cholesterol levels, diabetes, allergies and ear problems.

With just a half-hour to an hour of practice a day, Master Tu promises quick results. After only one week, your hips will loosen. In two weeks, you will not feel thirsty as easily. After the first month, your vision will become clearer. By two months, your complexion will improve and the bags under your eyes will disappear, and by three months, you will require less sleep and feel powerful all of the time. Eventually, you won’t feel the need to go the bathroom as often and any plaguing maladies will vanish. And what about sex? Master Tu says “Of course! This is really great for sex!” One of his students fathered a new baby at age 82. Another student fathered a son 20 years after the birth of his daughter. Master’s Tu’s most incredible claim is that the highest masters of penis qigong can use it to pull cars, break ice blocks and even cut coconuts.

Master Tu has another extraordinary stunt in the works. He is in the process of getting clearance from the Taiwanese government to borrow a 747 jet airplane. Tu figures 20 to 24 of his top students, by strapping their penises, 6 to 8 men per wheel, can generate combined penis pulling power to move the 18,000-kilogram (39,780 lbs!) 747. That’s over a ton and a half per penis.

“Combined penis pulling power”?

*swoon*…….

you can’t just jam it up

Alfred Kinsey is known for his encyclopaedic surveys of human sexuality. He wanted to set up a dedicated laboratory in which to observe the responses of the body to sexual stimulation. Unable to secure enough funding for this project, he instead filmed himself and others in his own attic in Indiana.

“Kinsey inserted a swizzle stick into his urethra, tied a rope around his scrotum and then simultaneously tugged hard on the rope while he manouevered the stick deeper. He paused just long enough to explain to his fellow staff member and camerman why the knob on the end of the swizzle stick posed a problem. “There’s a little flap as you go partly up the urethra that you have to bypass, so you can’t just jam the thing in.”

Somehow I doubt that Kinsey was using anything as classy as these Memento Mori sticks which can be found at the link belowD.L & Co.

He was also known to have used a toothbrush. Though there is no word on whether or not he cleaned his teeth with it afterwards.

t shirt friday 26.6.2009

Is anyone else joining in T-shirt Friday? I’ve been saying goodbye to a work colleague, toasting her health with ToffeeAppletinis….. I’m such a cheap drunk that just one is enough to make me feel quite pissed. About to pass out on the couch so will link back to anyone playing along in the morning….. Happy Friday

Here’s Azahar’s

and Sledpress’

and renalfailure’s

and Mudpuddle’s

where are we mother?

Helga is starting to piss me off. At first it was kind of funny having an 89 year old patient think you’re having it off with her propellor headed boyfriend but the joke’s wearing a bit thin now.

Today she sidled up to my desk, all blue eyeshadow and brillo pad perm, hearing aid shrieking feedback and upper denture clacking as she wheezed. Clapped out old people constantly make noises with every conceivable part of their body. Even the bits that we’ve amputated.

“I asked him how good a fuck you are” she said. “He told me it hadn’t gone that far yet…….” Then she batted her eyelashes and sidled back to the elevator farting in time to the squeak of her walker. Quite frankly I wanted to stick an enema bulb up her nose but she might have thought I was making a pass at her so I just wrote “patient to be woken and toileted 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m.” on her chart. Then I drew a cartoon cock and balls on a post it note and stuck it on her back as I walked past.

In other Gimcrack news today, the pastor had his hands full with Llewellyn, one of the 3rd floor dementia patients. In the middle of the sermon, Llew stood up to announce  ”a month ago I had a wristwatch.” He got shushed and shouted at by his fellow inmates and sat briefly, only to rise again during communion with “I say, where are we mother?”

Nothing fazes our good reverend, I’m sure he could conduct a service underwater. He just stuck a host in Llew’s mouth and carried on dispensing wafers to the rest of his congregation. Llew pulled his back out of his mouth and looked at it for a moment.

“I say, mother. This is not my wristwatch.”

Tomorrow I’m going to buy him a cap with a propellor on top and take him for a walk round Helga’s ward. Let him forage around in her drawers to see if he can find that missing timepiece……

I’ll hold it for you darling

Remember Helga? The deaf and dotty 89 year old who imports a 60 year old lover from China every year? She suspects nursemyra of a heinous crime…. boyfriend snatching!

The Chinese doctor is not her only lover. She also has an unsavoury friend who turns up each week wearing a propeller hat

He’s been missing in action for the past few days which has fuelled the paranoia Helga is prone to. Another patient told her Mr Propeller Head was seen walking past the Gimcrack gates last Sunday, apparently in hot pursuit of a woman with red streaks in her hair. I suspect this story is fabricated…. most of our patients don’t notice odd hats or streaking of any kind, even when it’s on their underwear.

So the latest gossip according to Helga is not only am I seeing her hat-wearing hottie on the sly, I’m also giving out free hand jobs in the elevator. The next time the door to the lift starts to close on some hapless geriatric as he calls out “Hold the lift, I’m coming in a minute….”

….. I will NOT be replying “Take your time darling, I’m happy to hold it til you come”