New MOL Archaeology monograph: Black Death cemetery

3 November 2008

Indomitable spirit of Medieval Londoners revealed in new book on the Black Death

Over twenty years in the making, a new study of the Black Death by Museum of London Archaeology reveals that Londoners were extraordinarily resolute in the face of the world’s greatest ever natural catastrophe.

Findings from a remarkable excavation of a cemetery dedicated to Black Death victims, funded by English Heritage, suggest that despite apocalyptic accounts of medieval chroniclers and the terrifying and unfathomable spread of the plague, Londoners continued to treat their dead with respect, burying them with dignity and ritual.

Archaeological digs at the site of one of the two emergency burial grounds, set up at the height of the plague in East Smithfield, were undertaken between 1983 and 1988, providing the largest ever sample of people affected by the Black Death, which killed up to half of London's population. The long process of documenting the results, including the analysis of over 600 skeletons carefully removed from the site, has culminated in the Museum’s publication. It offers unprecedented scientific insights into a cataclysmic, largely misunderstood and much disputed event, and explodes a few popular and widely held myths about the Black Death and the Londoners it decimated.

Supported by the King, Edward III, it seems that Londoners organised themselves rapidly to deal with plague victims. Contrary to the popular belief that plague pits were desperately improvised, the East Smithfield cemeteries used a combination of well-ordered individual graves and mass burial trenches. A trench of some 125 metres in length was uncovered, where bodies were laid with their arms and legs straight and buried facing east/west as in a normal Christian burial. Others were buried in their clothes – a tradition known from many other medieval cemeteries.

Excavations at the Black Death cemetery, East Smithfield

Fear of the plague was also evident in the burials. Purses of silver coins, the largest of which had 181 coins dated to 1344 to 1351, were not removed by relatives of the two women they were buried with, nor looted by grave diggers.

Ian Grainger, of Museum of London Archaeology said: “The cemetery’s organisation suggests that the fabric of London society did not entirely collapse and the City of London and the Court of Edward III responded well to a truly frightening disaster - perhaps a lesson for modern times.”

Other findings include the revelation that young adults were particularly vulnerable to the Black Death and that men were more likely to succumb than women. Children accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the recovered bodies, but a surprisingly low proportion of them died in infancy. The elderly similarly were almost absent amongst the victims of the epidemic.

Contrary to many text book accounts of rats and bubonic plague, there is no evidence in the study to suggest that London’s much maligned rodent population had a role in its spread, with a human to human virus a more likely candidate for the pestilence.

Barney Sloane who was one of the archaeologists involved in the excavation in the 80s and now head of Historic Environment Commissions at English Heritage, added: “What comes across in the study – and what will resonate with people today – is how extraordinarily deadly the plague was and yet still there was a resilience on the part of the survivors. The cemetery shows that someone was planning these burials with a great attention to detail. Even in such terrible circumstances there was a feeling that life must go on.”

The Black Death cemetery, East Smithfield, London, by Ian Grainger, Duncan Hawkins, Lynne Cowal and Richard Mikulski, is published by MOL Archaeology (Monograph Series 43), priced £10.95, on November 3 2008.

For more information and images, please contact Tim Morley tmorley@museumoflondon.org.uk 020 7814 5607.

Notes to editors

1. The work of Museum of London Archaeology on the East Smithfield site represents the only published account of a large-scale excavation and post-excavation analysis of a proven Black Death cemetery in this country. The archaeology and the human bone assemblage derived from it, is of global importance, particularly given the international reach of the epidemic. The human bone assemblage now forms a permanent research archive held by Museum of London.
2. The Black Death struck in 1347 and killed an estimated 25 million Europeans in four years; it arrived in London in the autumn of 1348. In London alone, where the population was some 80,000, it wiped out possibly as many as 40,000 people. In most English towns and villages, up to half the population, men, women and children, are thought to have perished.  In total some 75 million people are though to have fallen victim to this truly global pandemic.
3. The 1348 outbreak in England was only the first. Plague struck again many times in the fourteenth century and later. Its economic and social impact was enormous and contributed to the decline of feudalism.
4. Museum of London Archaeology has been providing professional archaeological services to the property industry and academic community for the past 30 years, as an independent division of the Museum of London, one of world’s largest museums of urban history.  Meeting the requirements of the planning process efficiently and cost-effectively, Museum of London Archaeology designs innovative projects that lead to a greater understanding of our past.  At any one time Museum of London may have around a dozen excavations going on across London. www.museumoflondon.org.uk
5. English Heritage is the Government’s statutory advisor on the historic environment. The Black Death study was funded through the Historic Environment Enabling Programme, a central grants programme that English Heritage distributes to commission relevant research, training and community projects. In 2007-8 the fund disbursed £5.1m.