MFDJ 10/19/24: Charnel Houses of London

Today’s Fleshless Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

As the distinguished historian Dr. Vanessa Harding has observed, the dead were everywhere in mediaeval London, ‘neither out of sight, nor out of mind’.  The Romans had feared their dead, and banished them to distant cemeteries; by the Middle Ages, Christians buried their dead close to home. Londoners were born, baptized, married and buried in the Church. Literally, in many instances, as burial within the walls and vaults was considered the most distinguished form of interment.

Although St John Chrysostom had directed Christians to continue the Roman practice in the fourth century AD, warning them that burial in the church was analogous to placing a rotting cadaver near the limbs of Christ, his caution was ignored. The custom of burying within the church derived from the concept of martyrdom. Christians revered those who had died for their faith, turning their tombs into shrines. The faithful clamoured to be buried alongside the martyrs, as close as possible to the venerable remains, a custom which, in anthropological terms, recalls Neolithic beliefs that certain human remains possessed supernatural properties. It was believed that canonized saints did not rot, like lesser mortals, but that their corpses were miraculously preserved and emanated an odour of sanctity, a sweet floral smell, for years after death. In forensic terms, such preservation is likely to be a result of natural mummification in hot, dry conditions.

The tradition of martyrdom informed a different attitude towards human remains. Corpses per se were not regarded as objects of fear. Nowhere was this more evident than in the charnel house of St. Paul’s. Built over a shrine to St Erkenwald, an Anglo-Saxon bishop of London, following a great fire, beneath its soil lay the graves of Britons, Saxons and Romans. St Paul’s was London’s principal church after Westminster Abbey. Weddings were celebrated here, sermons preached, plays enacted and burials conducted.

The institution of the charnel house was a particularly gruesome aspect of mediaeval burial. Christians then had little concept of one man, one grave, and many, of course, could not afford an elaborate burial. Fees consisted of payments to the gravedigger for breaking the ground, to the priest and to the parish church, and to the sexton who tolled the passing bell. Those who could not pay were buried “on the parish”, in pits, wrapped in shrouds. When one pit was full, it was covered in earth, and  previous one reopened. The bones were dug up, and taken to the charnel house for safekeeping. The term derives from the French charnier: flesh. In France and Italy, skeletal remains were used to create artistic displays, including chandeliers, which were exhibited in the ossuary—a gallery above a charnel house.


The bone crypt at St. George’s Church in Doncaster, depicted before the fire of 1853. 

Eventually, even the bodies of the wealthy, buried under the stone flags of the church, submitted to this fate. But it was not regarded as violation. The French historian Philippe Aries has observed that the significant thing was to be buried in or near the church. What actually happened to your body after that was immaterial. Tombs and headstones were reserved for the nobility. Although the faithful visited the shrines of saints, the concepts of returning to the grave of a loved one, and communing with their memory, was unknown.

The dead were also at the heart of the city. Saturated with Christian theology, the attitude of the average Londoner was, in the words of Aries, ‘et moriemur — and we shall all die’. With land at a premium, churchyards were communal spaces as the core of parish life, more like street markets than parks. Laundry fluttered above the graves; chickens and pigs jostled for scraps. Bands of travelling players enacted dramas, and desecration was inevitable, with ‘boisterous churls’ playing football, dancing, drinking and fighting on the hallowed ground. Just how rough these activities got is indicated by entries in parish registers of deaths resulting from participation in such pastimes. Church services were frequently disturbed, and the erection of booths for the sale of food and drink caused serious damage to the graves. Before condemning such irreverence, we should remember that the bond between the living and the dead was very different from today. It was an extension of the mediaeval belief that the dead were, in some sense, still close by, and probably grateful to hear the merrymaking.

Culled from: Necropolis: London and Its Dead

 

Car Crash Du Jour!

One of my favorite books is Car Crashes and Other Sad Stories by Anaheim photographer Mell Kilpatrick. It’s a collection of car crash photos from the 40’s and 50’s, often with corpses still strewn across the enormous interior (or out of it, since there were no seat belts in those days). It combines my love of old cars with my love of morbidity and is the perfect ambulance chaser book!


1/4 mile north of Katella Ave.

 

Garretdom: Olde News

An Italian Murders Another.

NEW YORK, Sept. 23.—Frank Pieren and Antonio Fiero, Italian junk dealers, of South Brooklyn, between whom a bitter feud has existed for some time past, met this morning opposite No. 465 Carroll street, South Brooklyn. A quarrel followed, which culminated in Pieren’s death. After a war of words Pieren, it seems, snatched an iron bar, with which he struck his adversary in the face. Fiero wrenched the weapon away, whereupon Pieren seized a stick. Michaelo Daly, a brother-in-law of Piero, seeing his relative getting the worst of the battle, interfered, and with a broad-bladed sheath-knife stabbed Pieren in the abdomen, a breast, left arm and left side. He died in a little while. Daly was arrested.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

 

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