Untitled

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18758, 11 January 1923, Page 6

AAlhen John Ziska. the one-eyed priest of the Hussites, died, he left directions that his skin should he tanned and made into a drum. “The noise which my skin will make, 1 ” he said, “will frighten all our enemies, and put them to flight.” It was at the time n! the French Revolution that the human skin industry had its biggest boom. A man appeared before the Oommittee of Public, Safety, and announced that ho con hi supply any amount of leather at bargain prices. He was given accommodation at the Castle of iUeudon, and begun operations in secrecy Soon the members of the committee were seen to bo wearing new top hoots the leather having been made from human skin 1 Til is tannery at Mctidon became notorious. A great number of books were bound there in bit man skin covers. Philip Kgalite, Duke of Orleans, encouraged (he tannery by wearing a pair of breeches made from a human skin at a ball in Pans, while the Republican General Beysser always wore a similar pair of trousers at. battles and reviews. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the French Encyclopaedia gave a recipe for tanning human skin, and stated that n, Mr Sue, a. Parisian surgeon, had presented the King with a pair of slippers made according to these directions. In 1823 one of the leaders of the infamous Black Band of France, which for a long time terrorised country districts, wore a jacket of the sumo “material.”