Today’s Zealous Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Medieval London was dominated by the church. More than 30 monasteries, convents, priories and hospitals lined its narrow streets.
The religious Orders played a vital role in the community, carrying out the majority of charity work, tending the sick, burying the dead and praying for the dead and the living. The monks’ behavior, however, was sometimes less than perfect. [There’s a shocker! – DeSpair] Despite the Christian injunction to fasting and abstinence, monks ate better than the laity. Recent excavations at Bermondsey Abbey yielded skeletons with the symptoms of arthritis and obesity. (You can view photos of the skeletal remains here. – DeSpair) Living on a diet heavy in saturated fats and wine, London’s monks were condemned by Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, for wearing furs and eating fat.
Peter the Venerable, judgy much?
Influential convents and monasteries included the Greyfriars or Franciscans, later Christ’s Hospital, which took in underprivileged children; the Blackfriars or Dominicans; and the Crossed or Crouched Friars by Fenchurch Street. Outside the city walls were the Whitefriars or Carmelites, south of Fleet Street; the Abbey and Convent at Westminster; St Mary’s Spital, outside Bishopsgate; and Bermondsey Abbey. Some Orders were mendicants (beggars), who had no burial place of their own, but most establishments had a large cemetery or “cloister garth” for monks and nuns. At the Church of the Crutched Friars, by Fenchurch Street, rules for burial stated that:
When any Brother of Suster of the same Bretherhede is dede, he or she shall have 4 Torchys of Wex of the Bretherhede, to bring the Body in Erthe: And every Brother or Suster shall come to his Masse of Requiem, and offer 1d and abide still to the Tyme the Body be buryed, uppon Pain of a l.Wex, yf he or she be within the Cite.
Despite the reference to torches and tapers, burials did not always take place in the evenings. They were conducted after mass, before dinner, and with as little delay as possible. These were solemn proceedings, particularly if the deceased had been a Prior, or a Canon, with an impressive procession of monks bearing lighted tapers, chanting Psalms, sprinkling holy water, and the celebration of Requiem Mass. At Christ’s Hospital this practice persisted into the 18th century, with the Christ’s Hospital scholar or “blue” carried in a torchlight procession and buried within the school grounds as his fellow students sang the 39th Psalm. The boys also participated in London ceremonial funerals. Whenever a worthy died, one boy for each year of the man’s life marched in his cortège.
Builders demolishing the remains of the Blackfriars monastery after the Great Fire of London discovered four heads, in pewter pots, in a wall. The heads, which were embalmed, had tonsured hair. The historian Strype speculated that these are the heads of “some zealous priests or friars executed for treason, or for denying the King’s Supremacy; and here privately deposited by these Black Friars”.
The monastic Orders are responsible for a number of hospitals, which had their own burial grounds. These included St Bartholomew’s in the city and St Thomas’s in Southwark, devoted to the care of the “wounded, maimed, sick and diseased”. Greyfriars or Bridewell, a house “for the correction of vagabonds,” near the embankment, also had its own burial ground, which continued to be used into the 19th century.
Culled from: Necropolis: London and Its Dead
Civil War Injury Du Jour!
Photograph No. 199-200
Successful secondary amputation of the knee joint.
Corporal David D. Cole, A. Second New York Cavalry, age 23, was wounded at Amelia Courthouse Virginia, April 7, 1865, by a conoidal musket ball which passed through the left leg. It was thought the tibia and fibula were uninjured. He was admitted to Hick’s Hospital, Baltimore, on June 28. The tibia had become bare for nearly its whole length, the limb was much tumefied and inner muscular spaces were filled with pus. On August 1st, 1865, Assistant George M. McGill, U.S.A., amputated the limb at the knee joint by making a long anterior and short posterior flap and retaining the patella. The stump healed favorably. Four months after the injury, the patella having greatly retracted, was drawn over the supracondyloid space and fixed by a bandage. On November 22, 1865, Corporal Cole was discharged from service and sent to New York to have an artificial limb by Dr. E. D. Hudson. The broad condyles offered an admirable base of support. The Cicatrix was firm. The limb answered an excellent purpose. In 1868, Cole was living at his home in Spring Valley, New York, and walked without a cane. In March, 1874, he was still a pensioner.
Photographed at the Army Medical Museum.
Culled from: Orthopaedic Injuries of the Civil War
Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!
This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).
Here’s today’s entry:
November 18th. A new sergeant, who could not read very well, called our roll, and did not get through so that we could draw our rations, till after dark; so we starve on three spoonfuls of rice all day. Shepard’s lot of sick went way this time, and the surgeons are examining in camp for another load.
Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost