I don't have Dan Rather to watch anymore, so I switch to Peter Jennings. Couple days later, he's dead too. Fell over. Just like that. I'd have to invest some serious money in anger management classes. |
Posted on 01/11/2004 8:24:33 PM PST by blam
Return of the damned after 400 years
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday January 11, 2004
The Observer (UK)
Archaeologists have uncovered a mass grave which may throw lights on one of the strangest and most gruesome events of the Elizabethan age: the curse of Roland Jenks. More than 60 skeletons have been discovered between Oxford's former prison and its old castle. It is thought that many of them could be related to the fate of Jenks, a 'foul-mouthed and saucy' bookbinder who was convicted in 1577 of supporting the Pope. For his temerity he was sentenced to be nailed by his ears to the local pillory and responded by laying a curse on the courtroom and city.
'It appears to have been a very effective curse,' said archaeologist Dan Poore of Oxford Archaeology, which carried out the dig. Contemporary reports indicate that within several days hundreds of local men - but no women or children - had dropped dead.
Among the victims were two judges, a clerk, the coroner, the sheriff and many jury members who had been standing in the courtroom - which then stood just outside the castle - when Jenks shouted out his curse. The court proceedings become known as the Black Assizes and were reckoned either to be a judgment by God on Protestants, or a fiendish Papish plot, though most archaeologists now believe the deaths were the result of an outbreak of typhus.
The discovery of the skeletons of between 60 and 70 people, many dating from Elizabethan times, provides the first palpable evidence that the story has physical roots and may help in discovering the truth behind the legend of Roland Jenks.
The find was made thanks to development work to provide the area with housing, a hotel and a heritage centre near the site of the old prison. Oxford Archaeology was called in to study the site before building began. 'We dug a test pit and found eight skeletons,' said Poore. A more extensive excavation was launched last year and has uncovered 59 more or less complete skeletons and assorted bones from other bodies. These have been dated from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. 'The early bodies may well be those from the Black Assizes era,' said Poore.
The skeletons are mostly young men but also include five women in their late forties and fifties. Intriguingly, several of the skeletons also show clear signs of having been dissected. Three skulls had their tops skillfully sawn off and another had been carefully separated from its skeleton.
The most likely interpretation is that these are the bodies of executed criminals which were used by anatomists from nearby Christ Church college or the Old Ashmolean. But this interpretation also raises problems for archaeologists. In those days the dissection of criminals was strictly limited to only four murderers a year throughout Britain. The numbers of bodies at the Oxford Prison site suggests a great deal more illicit dissection may have been going on, though archaeologists remain cautious. 'The trouble is that we do not know if they were executed or not,' added Poore. 'In those days people were strung up and slowly strangled on the gibbet. There is no way to tell from their skeletons what killed them.
'It was not until later in the eighteenth century that the long drop - which snapped a person's neck and killed him or her instantly - was introduced. You can tell from their snapped neck bones what killed them.'
As the current issue of BBC History Magazine also reports, the level of suffering of those hanged was probably considerable. Many victims' hands were tightly clenched - a button and a fragment of clothing were found in two skeletal fists, for example.
Whatever else the numbers of deaths associated with the prison development means, it clearly reveals what a foreboding place it once was, as Poore acknowledges. 'There was a castle, a courtroom and a prison all standing beside each other. Each had a grim function. This was a place of death, so we should not be that surprised about the bodies that we are digging up and the state that some of them are in.'
FReeper 'farmfriend' manages the Gods, Graves, Glyphs ping list.
Damn.
I thought this article was going to be about hordes of zombies awaking from their graves to pillage civilization, only to be stopped by well-armed patriots, who after killing the zombies, enjoy the eternal gratitude of millions of women that they prevent from having their brains eaten.
I guess that fantasy isn't going to get realized today.
You have to wait until the general election to see that happen-- think Dean, think ghoul.
I don't have Dan Rather to watch anymore, so I switch to Peter Jennings. Couple days later, he's dead too. Fell over. Just like that. I'd have to invest some serious money in anger management classes. |
I suspect that this is not from 1577 but rather later. The medical use of cadavers was rare then but much more common later. These skeletons may date from the late 1700s and into the 1800s when much medical research was being done. It was also a period when "bodysnatchers" and "ghouls" would steal the newly dead for doctors desperate for knowledge. I wonder how long the mentioned Prison existed. These could be inmates executed much later than Jenks curse.
..In modern times...Yes. Unless, Your the Clintons..Do that, Then You take the "Arkansas Dirt Nap"...the Clintons' Dead Associates List is how @ 144 +/-, I think.
I'm with you. This was the courthouse/prison burial ground and the bodies are from over a long period of years. Pure speculation with regard to how the earlier subjects died.
As for the dissections, many were done illictly by the medical students on bodies provided by the "ghouls", and what better place to bury the evidence than the prison graveyard?
Burke & Hare alert!
According to this site, the county gaol has been on this site basically forever, although it was not one of H.M. Prisons until 1888. The prison was in use believe it or not until 1996. Most of the prison buildings are from the Victorian era, but it occupies most of the bailey of a castle that has been there since 1087 (and the tower keep is still there for that matter.) If they dig deep enough, they'll find 11th century burials in the old castle bailey as well.
Americans sometimes find it hard to comprehend that you can't put a shovel in the ground most places in England without disturbing something really, really old. It is fascinating to read the historical impact statements that are published by the various county councils. The London ones make especially good reading - you can almost see the poor archaeologist tearing his hair as he tries to list the Victorian, Georgian, medieval, Roman, and prehistoric remains before the bulldozers roll in . . .
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I wonder how rotten somebody would get inside if they could really do that. Like, I'm watching Dan Rather, and he pisses me off, so I wag my finger at the TV and I say, "Curse you, Dan Rather!" And the next day, Dan Rather drops dead.