Skin in Pieces: The Fragment as a Narrative Device

This chapter examines the use of skin fragments as a narrative device in Victorian news stories, exploring the interplay between fragmentation as a theme and as a publishing method. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, I demonstrate how the representation of skin in pieces reflected deep-rooted cultural, scientific, and literary tendencies of the period. The chapter begins by underscoring the value of fragmentation as an epistemological necessity and a marketing device. It then delves into a range of case studies, including the practice of binding books in human skin, the news coverage of alleged human skin fragments found on church doors analysed using microscopy, and stories surrounding the discovery of pieces from a body that was otherwise missing. In this chapter, I argue that, in addition to functioning as a narrative, an aesthetic and epistemological element, the development of stories around skin fragments represents an early example of modern news values such as drama, continuity, and magnitude.