The Morthouse

Image: A post-medieval skull with a coin in each eye orbit, excavated from Bethnal Green, London. Copyright AOC Archaeology.

Via Bones Don’t Lie: Coin in the Mouth or Shoe in the Coffin.

Chaucer died in 1400. Just the year before, he had begun renting a garden tenement at Westminster Abbey, and so he was buried in a modest grave in one of the abbey’s chapels. It wasn’t until about a century and a half later, in 1556, that the ornate tomb shown here was constructed for him (elsewhere in the Abbey, in what is now known as Poets’ Corner) and his bones exhumed and moved into it.

mediumaevum:

Tomb Of Geoffrey Chaucer, Westminster Abbey

1904 
negative, gelatin on glass 

Cafe in the Crypt, St Martin-in-the-Fields

In my younger and more vulnerable years, I spent a semester in London (via Florida State University’s London Study Centre).

I was just a walk down Charing Cross Road from the historic St Martin-in-the-Fields Church. I’m not a churchgoer; I went there for their cafe. Which is inside a crypt. It was cool.

Check out their site, and if you’re ever in London, go there! Virtual Tourist has a nice gallery of images as well.

Healed cranial fracture by museumoflondon on Flickr:

Adult male cranium aged over 46 years old with a fracture to the left zygomatic bone.

Treponematosis by museumoflondon on Flickr:

Adult female aged over 45 years at death with pitted lesions to the cranial bones suggestive of syphilis. This individual had also undergone autopsy as is shown by the cut mark from a craniotemy.

Interesting post on the Museum of London’s blog about the “catastrophe cemetery” created at East Smithfield for victims of the Black Death:

The plague, or the Black Death, is a particularly interesting period in London’s history; it was both short and dramatic, hitting hardest in 1349 to 50. Whilst outbreaks of plague in London would continue throughout the following two centuries (and still occur throughout undeveloped parts of the world), the largest death toll occurred in a very brief period. Families were wiped out, whole neighbourhoods destroyed and the landscape of the medieval city was changed for good.

Image: Georgian London. (Shown: Jelena Bekvalac, osteologist at Museum of London.)

Pretty much the coolest thing I’ve seen all week.

Pipe notch by museumoflondon on Flickr:

Adult male skeleton showing wear pattern to teeth resulting from long term pipe smoking

Phossy Jaw by museumoflondon on Flickr:

Left mandible of 19th century male aged 26-35 years at death with bone changes suggesting possible phossy jaw.

“Phossy Jaw” (phosphorus necrosis of the jaw) was an occupational disease that afflicted 19th- and early-20th-century workers in match factories. It was caused by exposure to white phosphorous. From Wikipedia:

Those with phossy jaw would begin suffering painful toothaches and swelling of the gums. Over time, the jaw bone would begin to abscess. Affected bones would glow a greenish-white colour in the dark. It also caused serious brain damage. Surgical removal of the afflicted jaw bones could save the patient; otherwise, death from organ failure would follow. The disease was extremely painful and disfiguring to the patient, with dying bone tissue rotting away accompanied by a foul-smelling discharge.

The dangerous conditions that led to Phossy Jaw were among the reasons for the 1888 London matchgirls’ strike.

How could I not post about Jeremy Bentham and his “auto-icon”? From Wikipedia:

As requested in his will, Bentham’s body was dissected as part of a public anatomy lecture. Afterward, the skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the “Auto-icon”, with the skeleton stuffed out with hay and dressed in Bentham’s clothes. Originally kept by his disciple Thomas Southwood Smith, it was acquired by University College London in 1850. It is normally kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college, but for the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, it was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where it was listed as “present but not voting”.

The Auto-icon has a wax head, as Bentham’s head was badly damaged in the preservation process. The real head was displayed in the same case for many years but became the target of repeated student pranks, including being stolen on more than one occasion. It is now locked away securely.

The story of the exhumation of the artist and model Elizabeth Siddal by Dante Gabriel Rossetti has haunted me for years.

Siddal died of a laudanum overdose at the age of 32 in 1862. From Wikipedia:

Overcome with grief, Rossetti enclosed in Elizabeth’s coffin a small journal containing the only copies he had of his many poems. He purportedly slid the book into Elizabeth’s red hair. She was then interred at Highgate Cemetery in London. By 1869, Rossetti was chronically addicted to drugs and alcohol. He convinced himself that he was going blind and couldn’t paint. He began to write poetry again. Before publishing his newer poems he became obsessed with retrieving the poems he had slipped into Elizabeth’s hair. Rossetti and his agent, the notorious Charles Augustus Howell, applied to the Home Secretary for an order to have her coffin exhumed to retrieve the manuscript. This was done in the dead of night so as to avoid public curiosity and attention, and Rossetti was not present. Howell reported to Rossetti that her corpse was remarkably well preserved and her delicate beauty intact. Her hair was said to have continued to grow after death so that the coffin was filled with her flowing coppery hair. The manuscript was retrieved although a worm had burrowed through the book so that some of the poems were difficult to read. Rossetti published the old poems with his newer ones; they were not well received by some critics because of their eroticism, and he was haunted by the exhumation through the rest of his life.

You can read another account here.

(Image: Siddal as model in Ophelia, by John Everett Millais, 1852. Source: Wikipedia/Google Art Project.)