Hand of Glory
The mummified severed human hand in Whitby Museum was discovered in the early 20th century, concealed on the wall of a thatched cottage in Castleton by the stonemason and local historian, Joseph Ford. He immediately recognised it from popular stories of such objects as a ‘Hand of Glory’. It was given to Whitby Museum in 1935 and is the only alleged Hand known to survive.
A Hand of Glory was allegedly the meticulously prepared and ‘pickled’ right hand of a felon, severed while the body still hung from the gallows, and utilised by burglars to induce a coma in those asleep in a house from which they could not awaken. In one version, the clenched hand serves as a candleholder for a candle made from human fat, whereas in another (consistent with the Whitby hand), the outstretched hand has its own fingers ignited. In this instance, should one of the fingers fail to ignite, it signifies that someone in the household remains awake. In either case, the light cannot be extinguished by water or pinching, but only by blood or ‘blue’ (skimmed) milk – the typical method in these tales.
Stories about such hands became commonplace across Europe, from Finland to Italy and from western Ireland to Russia over the last four hundred years. At least two were known in North Yorkshire: one pertaining to the Spital Inn on Stainmore in 1797 and the other to the Oak Tree Inn in Leeming, supposedly from 1824. The following shorter, yet typical, version hails from Northumberland.
‘One dark night, when all was shut up, there came a tap at the door of a solitary inn in the middle of a desolate moor. The door was opened, and there stood outside, shivering and shaking, a poor beggar, his rags soaked with rain and his hands white with cold. He asked pitifully for a lodging, and it was cheerfully granted to him; there was not a spare bed in the house, but he could lie on the mat before the kitchen fire, and welcome.
So this was settled, and everyone in the house went to bed except the cook, who from the back kitchen could see into the large room through a pane of glass set into the door. She watched the beggar and saw him, as soon as he was left alone, draw himself up from the floor, take a seat at the table, extract from his pocket a brown, withered human hand, and set it upright in the candlestick. He then anointed the fingers, and applying a match to them, they began to flame. Filled with horror, the cook rushed up the back stairs and endeavoured to rouse her master and the men of the house. But all was in vain – they slept a charmed sleep; so in despair she hastened down again, and placed herself at her post of observation.
She saw the fingers of the hand flaming, but the thumb remained unlit, as one inmate of the house was awake. The beggar was busy collecting the valuables around him into a large sack, and having taken all he cared for in the large room, he entered another. At this, the woman ran in and, seizing the light, tried to extinguish the flames. However, this was not so easy. She poured the dregs of a beer jug over them, but they blazed up brighter. As a last resort, she grabbed a jug of milk and dashed it over the four lambent flames, and they died out at once. Uttering a loud cry, she rushed to the door of the apartment the beggar had entered and locked it. The whole family was roused, and the thief was easily secured and hanged.
An extract from https://whitbymuseum.org.uk