Boston Athenaeum
Historic membership library holding rare books, sculpture, and one volume famously bound in human skin.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Boston Athenaeum turns on a convict named James Allen, who died in a Massachusetts prison in 1837 with an unusual deathbed request tied to a failed robbery years earlier on the road out of Boston. You'll hear about the traveler who fought back instead of handing over his money, and the odd instructions Allen left behind before he died. The guide also traces how the resulting object passed into the library's collection decades later, and how modern science finally tested the old legend attached to it.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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