Necropolis

London and Its Dead

Catharine Arnold

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781847394934
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

From Roman burial rites to the horrors of the plague, from the founding of the great Victorian cemeteries to the development of cremation and the current approach of metropolitan society towards death and bereavement -- including more recent trends to displays of collective grief and the cult of mourning, such as that surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales -- NECROPOLIS: LONDON AND ITS DEAD offers a vivid historical narrative of this great city's attitude to going the way of all flesh. As layer upon layer of London soil reveals burials from pre-historic and medieval times, the city is revealed as one giant grave, filled with the remains of previous eras -- pagan, Roman, medieval, Victorian. This fascinating blend of archaeology, architecture and anecdote includes such phenomena as the rise of the undertaking trade and the pageantry of state funerals; public executions and bodysnatching. Ghoulishly entertaining and full of fascinating nuggets of information, Necropolis leaves no headstone unturned in its exploration of our changing attitudes to the deceased among us. Both anecdotal history and cultural commentary, Necropolis will take its place alongside classics of the city such as Peter Ackroyd's LONDON.

1: A PAGAN PLACE

Celtic Golgotha and the Roman Cemeteries

High above London stands one of the city’s oldest burial grounds. The Bronze Age tumulus on Parliament Hill Fields predates Kensal Green and Highgate cemeteries by over 4,000 years. This tumulus, which dates from around 2,400 BC, is characteristic of the peaceful, remote spots where the earliest Londoners went to join their ancestors, although the city, as such, did not yet exist. The region was merely a series of rudimentary villages, inhabited by tribes who survived by farming and fishing in the marshy land around the tidal river.

The tumulus is a reminder that, since time immemorial, humans have demonstrated a universal propensity to bury their dead, to mourn their passing and to mark their passage into the next world with a series of mortuary rituals and religious ceremonies.

The earliest form of interment, during the Neolithic period (4,000–2,500 BC), consisted of long barrows. These were vast walk-in burial chambers covered by mounds of earth. Today, those barrows which remain are grassy mounds, but at the time they were decorated with stones or cobbles and had elaborate wooden entrances, sealed with massive rocks which could be rolled away when the occasion demanded. Used and adapted over the centuries, these communal barrows contained large numbers of ‘crouched inhumations’ (bodies buried in the foetal position).¹

When they first opened Neolithic barrows in the nineteenth century, Victorian antiquaries found that many skeletons had been disarticulated, and had bones missing, indicating that they had been moved about before full decomposition had taken place. It appeared then, that Neolithic people did not simply dispose of their dead – they handled them repeatedly and shifted them about.² The Victorians interpreted this as evidence of lack of respect, ritual sacrifice and even cannibalism – a view supported by Classical authors.

A more recent interpretation, in 1999, suggests that the bodies had been moved for a different purpose; it was possible that members of the tribe who had died and been buried elsewhere were exhumed and reinterred alongside their kith and kin, just as the bodies of loved ones are flown home today, for burial in the family plot. Repellent as the practice of reburial may have seemed to the Victorians, there are also anthropological explanations for placing the dead in specific locations, in order to ‘invest the monument with the spiritual power of the dead person’.³

There were no individual gravestones in the burial chambers, but the bodies were often framed by rudimentary rows of stones and buried with ‘grave goods’ – personal items to accompany the dead person into the afterlife. These included arrowheads, pots, and jewellery made from shells or jet. Many graves also contained the remains of cattle, sheep and even reindeer, and there is evidence that cherished domestic animals followed their owners to the grave; archaeologists have found the bones of dogs and cats in Neolithic barrows.

By the Bronze Age, the long barrows had fallen into disuse. Cremation had become the primary means of disposal, with bodies burned in pits and the cremated remains buried in collared urns beneath smaller, rounded burial mounds. These tended to be the preserve of chieftains, whilst more humble members of the community were consigned to a shallow grave or ditch. The hero’s funeral in Beowulf conveys the spectacular nature of such an event:

The warriors kindled the bale [bonfire] on the barrow,

Wakened the greatest of funeral fires,

Dark o’er the blaze the wood-smoke mounted;

The winds were still, and the sound of weeping

Rose with the roar of the surging flame

Till the heat of the fire had broken the body . . .⁴

Beowulf’s comrades spend ten days fashioning a mound high on a cliff, where the hero’s ashes are buried along with his hoard of treasure. Twelve warriors then parade around the burial mound, singing dirges, praising his deeds and ‘bemourning the fall of their mighty lord’. Beowulf was, of course, composed around AD 800, nearly 3,000 years after the Bronze Age, but it provides a superb poetic evocation of the event, allowing us to imagine a similar procession on Parliament Hill Fields, as the Beaker People bade farewell to a slain warlord or tribal elder beneath his newly constructed tumulus.

The death and burial of warriors would prove to be a recurring theme, for over the following centuries, many Ancient Britons and Roman soldiers were to be slain in battle.

Although Julius Caesar had attempted to conquer Britain in 55 and 54 BC, the Romans did not mount a successful invasion until AD 43, under Claudius. Arriving at the south coast, the Romans made their way up the Thames Estuary. Finding a spot where the tidal river proved deep enough for shipping but narrow enough for a crossing, they immediately grasped its strategic significance and created a makeshift settlement of forty acres along the waterfront. ‘Londinium’, capital of the Province of Britannia, was born. But Londinium soon became a target for the oppressed Britons.

In A.D. 60, the Britons, led by Queen Boudicca, rebelled. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, Boudicca hated the Romans as they had stolen her land when she was widowed, flogged her and raped her daughters. Intent on wiping out their oppressors, Boudicca’s army descended on London and burned it to the ground. This first Great Fire of London was so intense that it melted bronze coins, scorching the earth so profoundly that archaeologists discovered a seared layer of soil centuries later. Boudicca took no prisoners. Tacitus recorded that over 70,000 Romans and their allies – men, women and children – perished in the massacre; they were lynched, burned and even crucified. Romans were beheaded and thrown into the river. The number of skulls recovered from the Walbrook near Finsbury Circus, and the Thames around Battersea and Mortlake prompted the Victorian archaeologist Henry Syer Cuming to name the river ‘our Celtic Golgotha’.

The Romans soon retaliated, however, crushing the insurgents and, once they had regained control, set about creating London in the image of a Roman city. A defensive wall, nine feet wide, eighteen feet high and nearly two miles long was constructed – sections of which survive to this very day. Inside the wall was the Forum (on what is now Gracechurch Street in the City), a combination of law court, council chamber and shopping mall. With their passion for town planning, the Romans laid out streets, villas and temples. In a policy shift which the historian Guy de la Bédoyère has compared with modern Western Imperialism, the Romans converted militant Britons to their way of life with consumer enticements, introducing them to the urbane pleasures of hot spas and fine dining, encouraging them to wear togas and speak Latin.⁵

This cultural imperialism extended to the Roman way of death. Roman law forbade burial in urbe. To preserve the sanctity of the living, cemeteries were located on roads leading out of town, such as the Appian Way. These laws derived from a need to keep the dead at a distance. The Romans feared their dead. In fact, Roman funeral customs derived from a need to propitiate the sensibilities of the departed.⁶ The very word funus may be translated as dead body, funeral ceremony, or murder. There was genuine concern that, if not treated appropriately, the spirits of the dead, or manes, would return to wreak revenge.

Technically, all that was necessary to make burial legal under Roman law was to scatter a handful of earth over the body. However, funerals were as significant to the Romans as they would later be to the Victorians. A lavish funeral, conducted by professional undertakers, was considered essential. Burial clubs enabled individuals to save for their last rites; even slaves could join.⁷ Funerals normally took place three days after death. The corpse was washed and anointed with oils, as it was believed that the body was polluted by death and would not rest easy without ceremonial cleansing. It was then wrapped in a special toga and placed on a bier. This was carried from the house as a chorus of paid mourners wailed, in contrast to the studied calm of the household. The funeral procession observed strict hierarchy, with the heir at the forefront, dressed in a black toga, the folds of which he held before his face, his hair deliberately dishevelled to signify bereavement. The wearing of black was significant, as black garments were thought to confer invisibility upon the bereaved, protecting them from vengeful spirits.

Following directly behind the bier were the servants who would, in earlier times, have been slaughtered at the graveside, along with a warrior’s horse. Musicians and torchbearers came next, with the rear taken up by the mimes – sinister, silent figures in wax masks modelled on dead members of the family. The cortège would stop at the Forum, where a funeral oration was given, before the procession made its way out of the city walls to the cemetery where, after burial, a funeral feast took place at the graveside, with libations poured to appease the spirit of the dear departed.

The Romans, like the British, practised cremation; in their case, the custom derived from the Greeks and the Etruscans. Cremation was well established in London by the first century AD. In Urne Burial, the seventeenth-century divine Sir Thomas Browne referred to the urns of ‘Spittle Fields by London, which contained the Coynes of Claudius, Vespasian, Commodus, Antonius, attended with Lacrymatories, Lamps, Bottles of Liquor, and other appurtenances of affectionate superstition’.⁸ Browne also reminds us that, in Classical Antiquity, there was an element of noble sentiment to cremation. More than a hygienic method of disposing of the dead, cremation enabled lovers and comrades to be mingled together for eternity:

The ashes of Domitian were mingled with those of Julia; of Achilles with those of Patroclus; All Urnes contained not single ashes; Without confused burnings they affectionately compounded their bones; passionately endeavouring to continue their living Unions. And when distance of death denied such conjunctions, unsatisfied affections conceived some satisfaction to be neighbours in the grave, to lye Urne by Urne, and touch but in their names.⁹

Members of the aspiring British middle class, persuaded to embrace all things Roman, had little difficulty in embracing the Roman way of death, as many of the practices, such as burying the cremains in a sanctified spot, corresponded with existing ritual. Under Roman conditions, the body was burned in a special pit at the cemetery. The bones were removed, washed, and placed in an amphora for the family to bury. A small number of urns were available, although sometimes cooking pots, which had cracked during the firing process and were not suitable for tableware, would be used. This practice was similar to the Beaker custom of burying the cremains in collared jars. The major cultural difference was that, instead of barrows, the Romans buried their dead in purpose-built cemeteries.

The remains of three major Roman cemeteries have been found on roads leading west, north and east out of London.¹⁰ Recent excavations at Prescot Street, near Aldgate, have uncovered over 670 burials and 134 cremations. The original site, which lies on either side of the Colchester Road, covered fifty-one acres and contained over 100,000 dead from the 400 years during which it was used. Burial took place in a series of plots, divided by ditches. As well as the major road which dissected the cemetery and formed a route for funeral processions, a number of smaller roads were created and a quarry dug nearby for producing brick. Many of the plots had been used several times during the life of the cemetery, and the remains of lead coffins were found, along with traces of mausolea. Overlapping graves indicate that overcrowding was a problem, even in those days.

Grave goods included jars of food and wine (one motto beaker, now at the Museum of London, bears the inscription utere: use me), chickens, always buried to the left of the body, and coins for Charon, the ferryman, to row the deceased across the Styx. Hobnailed boots, for the long walk to the Underworld, were provided for both adults and children. Many grave goods offer clues to their owner’s personality. The Harper Road Woman, who died around AD 70, was buried with her bronze torc necklace, a mirror and a jug of wine, suggesting a pleasure-loving character. At West Tenter Street, near Aldgate, another woman was sent on her way with two Medusa amulets to ward off the evil eye, a gaming set, to prevent boredom in the Netherworld, and a jet pendant. The Romans believed jet possessed magical properties to ward off evil spirits.

The Romans practised cremation up until AD 200, when it began to fall out of favour. Under the influence of Christianity, which emphasized the physical resurrection of the body, the first wooden coffins were introduced. Christian burial rites, derived from Judaic law, included washing the corpse before burial and anointing it with oils. Once the corpse had been washed, and the orifices plugged to prevent leakage, it was wrapped in a shroud. The belief persisted that a body must be entire for resurrection on Judgement Day, so, when possible, items such as missing teeth and even amputated limbs were carefully preserved and buried with the corpse.

Traditionally, bodies went on display for at least two days before burial, so that mourners could pay their last respects, and the important practice of ‘watching’, also derived from ancient Jewish ritual, might be observed. ‘Watching’ also seemed to develop from a natural reluctance to leave the dead person to whom so much care had been devoted during their final hours.

Roman coffins ranged from the simple wooden box to the elaborately decorated sarcophagus, placed in a marble mausoleum large enough to accommodate an entire family. The concept of the mausoleum was inspired by the monument to King Mausolus of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Raised by the King’s devoted wife, Artemisia, it consisted of a massive marble tomb, surmounted by an Ionic colonnade supporting a roof-like pyramid. At its foot stood a four-horse chariot containing statues of the King and Queen. Since then, the term ‘mausoleum’ has been applied to any massive tomb containing shelves upon which the dead could be laid in lead coffins.

The most remarkable discovery of recent years is that of the Spitalfields Woman.¹¹ In 1999, archaeologists were working on the excavation of a site e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Map
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 A Pagan Place: Celtic Golgotha and the Roman Cemeteries
• Chapter 2 Danse Macabre: London and the Black Death
• Chapter 3 Memento Mori: The Theatre of Death
• Chapter 4 Pestilence: Diary of a Plague Year
• Chapter 5 Et in Arcadia Ego: A Vision of Elysian Fields
• Chapter 6 Gatherings from Graveyards: The Dead are Killing the Living
• Chapter 7 Victorian Valhallas: The Development of London’s Cemeteries
• Chapter 8 Great Gardens of Sleep: Death Moves to the Suburbs
• Chapter 9 The People Who Invented Death: The Victorian Funeral
• Chapter 10 The Vale of Tears: The Victorian Cult of Mourning
• Chapter 11 Up in Smoke: The Development of Cremation
• Chapter 12 Our Darkest Hours: World War and the Decline of Mourning
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Web Resources
• Index
• Copyright