“Hand of Glory” at the Whitby Museum

Even though I’ve been to Whitby, I’m sad to say I have never seen the “Hand of Glory”. On display at the Whitby Museum (it’s even on the freakin’ entrance sign), this mummified severed human hand was discovered hidden in the wall of a nearby thatched cottage over a hundred years ago by a local historian. A “Hand of Glory”, common throughout Europe for over four hundred years, is the dried and pickled hand of a man who had been hanged for murder. Supposedly the hand, usually the left because everyone knows that’s the sinister one, was cut off while the body still hung from the gallows. It symbolized that the person “did the deed”, while also holding mystical powers. If only all our hands can one day be cut off and live on in museum collections. Cross your fingers!