Crossbones Cemetery, London
Jizo statues in Crossbones Cemetery, offering protection for the souls of the lost children of London
Crossbones Cemetery and the Outcast Dead
South of the River Thames in the area now known as Southwark lies what was once the medieval pleasure district of the city, filled with theatres, bear-pits, taverns, and, of course, brothels. Everything one needed for a good old medieval night out on the town. This area, called The Liberty of the Clink, lay outside London’s city walls, and so the laws of the city no longer applied to both its residents and its guests. Activities such as prostitution were not only allowed here, but encouraged, being overseen by the Lord of The Liberty of the Clink, the Bishop of Winchester himself. And so the Bishop and the church profited greatly from the brothels and their workers of South London, who became known as ‘The Winchester Geese’. These women worked their whole lives for the church, giving their earnings in exchange for protection, but when they died, they were not allowed a good Christian burial due to their trade, and instead, upon their death, their bodies were buried in unhallowed ground, in the area they lived and worked, and died. This cemetery became known as the single women’s churchyard and was often referred to as Crossbones.
By the Victorian times, this area, now called The Mint, had hardly changed since its earlier days. Still associated with prostitution, the Mint was notorious for its high crime rates, severe poverty, and the grim realities of life and death that came with it. The burial site at Crossbones continued to serve as the final resting place for the poor and the destitute who were buried in unmarked, mass graves, one on top of each other, and often attracting grave robbers eager to make a sale to the nearby Guy’s Hospital. Overflowing beyond capacity, the cemetery was ultimately closed in 1853 for public health reasons.
After a brief period as a fairground and later a timber yard, the site was partially excavation in the 1990s when the London Underground began expanding the Jubilee Line in the vicinity. During the excavation, hundreds of bodies were uncovered, which led to the involvement of archaeologists. They soon learned the extent of the burial site and were able to estimate that over 15,000 bodies were buried within that small plot of land, with sadly over half of the remains belonging to children. Today, the site is known as Crossbones Cemetery and Garden of Remembrance, which is a public space dedicated to honoring those buried here: the lost children, the working girls, the poor, the destitute, and all those forgotten by history.
The Trans-Angel, a memorial sculpture to Trans-people who have been murdered by acts of transphobia
The Crossbones Girl
During the excavations at Crossbones in the 1990s, the archaeologists from the Museum of London who were working the site unearthed over 100 skeletons that were taken for further research. Among those exhumed was that of a skeleton belonging to a teenage girl whose remains were dubbed The Crossbones Girl. She was estimated to have died in 1850, just before the cemetery's closure in 1853, and was buried in an unmarked grave. Her bones not only had signs of severe malnourishment, but sadly, also those of advanced syphilis, as evident from the moth-eaten appearance of her skull.
But what was syphilis, and how did this young girl carry advanced signs of the disease at such a young age? The answer is, unfortunately, a bleak one. Syphilis is transmitted through sexual contact with an infected carrier and was believed to have arrived in Spain with Columbus’s return from the New World in 1493, who brought not only riches but also the bacterium Treponema pallidum with him. With no effective cure or treatment, the disease quickly spread throughout all of Europe.
The first sign of the disease, known as Primary syphilis, presents as a painless lesion of the genitalia known as a chancre, which often goes unnoticed. This is soon followed by Secondary syphilis, in which the infected person develops fevers, rashes, and patchy hair loss. After this stage, the sufferer could enter a latent period in which they had no symptoms at all, which could last for many years. However, in the pre-antibiotic days, with no effective treatment available, a large number went on to the irreversible stage of Tertiary syphilis. Tertiary syphilis is utterly devastating to the body, affecting the organs, bones, as well as the mind of the sufferer. As the bones became affected, they would collapse and rot away, giving rise to the facial disfigurements once so strongly associated with the disease, and when the infection reached the brain, it could cause seizures, headaches, and profound mental decline that often ended in asylums for the afflicted.
Syphilis not only carried with it the horrendous pain and suffering from its physical manifestations, but it also carried a huge social stigma, branding its sufferers as sinners deserving of their fate, and often resulting in ostracization and isolation from family and society at large. A sad fate for one so young as the Crossbones Girl.
Redcross Way, showing its tokens of remembrance for the outcast dead at Crossbones
Top Tips
Location: The garden is not far from the London Bridge area and Borough Market, just south of the Thames.
Opening Times: Wednesdays, Thursdays & Fridays and every first Saturday of the month, 12-2pm, but check the website as it is run by volunteers. https://crossbones.org.uk/
If closed, all is not lost as the garden is still visible through the gates that surround it.
The garden is free to enter, but donations are accepted, and ribbons of remembrance can be bought to tie to the walls of the garden.
The volunteers on site are happy to share information about the garden and also have laminated handouts in various languages if desired.
The garden itself is quite small and can be seen in under 15 minutes, depending on how much you want to linger. There are no facilities on site, but ample restaurants and public toilets are available at the nearby station or Borough Market.