Museum of London's Skeleton Key to the Bodies Under City's Streets

Times Online ^ | 06.28.2008 | Jack Malvern

[Coffee200am]

snip...Tens of thousands of skeletons that lie hidden beneath the streets, houses and offices of London have been revealed for the first time on a map, in a collaboration between the Museum of London and The Times.

snip...Another skeleton was found with a metal spike lodged in its spine. Its owner, a man who was buried in Smithfield, East London, in about 1350, was probably hit with an arrow or spear, but the attack did not kill him. He survived only to catch bubonic plague in his late thirties or early forties. “Somehow the injury didn't cause an infection,” Mr White said. “The body has reacted by building bone around the projectile. He survived for months or possibly years. He was found in a large plot of land set aside for burying victims of the Black Death.” It is not known why the man was attacked, but it is thought that he may have been a soldier in the Hundred Years War.

snip...“At Christchurch in Spitalfields they found someone with smallpox scars in soft tissue. They dropped it and ran away. They sent it to one of the two laboratories in the world that can deal with smallpox.” The labs said that smallpox spores were present, but not enough to be a danger. It is now routine to rebury unbreached lead-lined coffins without opening them in case the disease that killed the occupant is still a threat.

[Grizzled Bear]

They were later identified as belonging to a walrus. An explanation for the animal's dignified burial has not yet surfaced.

What? LOL

The walrus was buried next to the egg man.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I don’t think the demographics worked like that.

Many people died in childhood, a few lived into their thirties or older and raised several surviving children. We are the descendants of the survivors, obviously.

The “averages” or “medians” don’t explain everything.

[IronJack]

There’s little point in arguing with someone who is determined to simply be a jerk. In fact, there’s little point in arguing at all. I suspect the other readers of this thread already understand the distinction you’re laboring balefully to avoid.

[patton]

Be that as it may, the average person lived the average life span.

Hello? That is why it was the average.

You know, some lived longer, some lived shorter, but, the average parson, lived on average, the average life span.

Regardless of your personal statistical math.

[mware]

Ok, lets start a small pox epedemic in london by opening all these old graves!

If there ever was another outbreak of smallpox in this country, we would lose thousands of people.

The last innoculation for sm.pox was in 1971.

I happen to be traveling overseas that year and got the booster shot.

The immunity is said to last for about two decades.

Most of us over 50 would have a chance of surviving, those born after 1971 might not be as lucky.

[razorback-bert]

Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average life span (average length of survival) of a specified population. It most often refers to the expected age to be reached before death for a given human population (by nation, by year of birth, or by other demographic variables).

[SunkenCiv]

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[uglybiker]

Headstone shaped like a “bukkit”?

It's Bouquet!

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I suspect that the graves were either moved prior to construction or uncovered during construction of roads or major works. It’s nearly impossible to construct a road or railroad through an old city without either hitting a graveyard or taking a ridiculously serpentine route.

P.D. James reports that as late as the nineteenth century the bodies of murderers were buried unmarked at a crossroads so that they would be constantly defiled by the hooves and feet of passers by, though I doubt the collection includes these.

I am in your camp with the idea of displaying these remains. While they may be the object legitimate scientific study, these kinds of exhibits, it seems to me, draw the morbidly curious.

[ExGeeEye]

Oh yes...there are more...

[Mrs_Stokke]

Now, that's a good lookin' walrus.