His photographs offer a window into the real lives of Londoners over four decades.

His work starts with an austere post war London and includes his interest in demonstrations, immigrant communities, the rise of youth culture and children at play.

The Exploring 20th Century London project, which has over 300 of his pictures online, has made this audio slideshow (click here) about Grant and his 30 year documentation of London and it’s people.

Exploring 20th Century London will be posting Henry Grant themed tweets and facebook posts throughout the week from 16-21 August. You can follow these at twitter.com/Exploring20CLdn and facebook.com/Exploring20thc.London.

Prints of Henry Grant’s pictures can also be purchased through the Museum of London Picture Library.

Many of Henry Grant’s pictures feature in the Museum of London hugely successful free exhibition London Street Photography which you can catch until 4 September.

Have you ever seen such beautifully wrapped volumes?! If only all the archive could look so neat!

This is the work of Rosalind Foley, a student who has just completed a year’s training in paper conservation at University of the Arts, Camberwell. She loves to make boxes and re-package and is currently volunteering with us one day a week, helping to clean and pack the Port of London Authority Archive.

Working alongside her are Dominic Flook and Kate Barber. They are spending hours of their time gently hoovering and brushing away the years of London grime that’s gradually settled on the documents that are now so precious to us in the archives.

Out of interest, the little vacuum cleaner attachments are the same as the ones you can buy for when (ok, if) you clean the inside of your car!

Much of the volunteers’ time is spent gradually removing dirt from papers using ‘smoke sponges’. As there was so much chimney soot and smoke produced in London during the 19th century, this dirt attached itself to documents and now needs to be removed. Smoke sponges act like erasers, gently removing dirt without the need to dampen the documents. In some ways I suppose we are brushing away history, but then again we need to conserve the documents too!

The extra soft goat hair brushes were bought by one of our conservators when she was on holiday in Hong Kong.

We are making great strides with the cataloguing project. We’ll update you again soon.

Claire Frankland

Port & River Archivist and Project Manager.

This is a very different challenge: not only are there far more documents, but their structure is far more disrupted. Having learnt from our previous cataloguing, we decided to vary our approach. While it is essential to list some material at item level, others fall into sub-groups which can be adequately listed more briefly at series level.  This approach has been taken in relation to the documentation of a Working Agreement set up between the EWIDC and the main other dock company, the London and St Katherine Docks Company in an attempt to stop the competitive reduction of the rates charged for use of the companies’ docks which had brought the EWIDC to the brink of bankruptcy.

The Working Agreement heralded the beginning of the end for both dock companies as separate entities, and they merged in 1901. The EWIDC Minute Book for this period contains delightful evidence of the affection in which the company was held by some of its employees. At the end of the final entry, with the company formally wound up, an anonymous hand has added “Good Bye. R.I.P.”

It is interesting to see this sentiment in relation to the dock company, perhaps balancing the usual perception of the companies as the villains in contemporary labour relations. I should add that the more typical view is also reflected in the collection!

Written by our cataloguer, Marie-Claire Wyatt.

Look out for our next PLA Archive blog post as we focus on the work undertaken to conserve  these fragile paper records.

Cataloguer, Marie-Claire Wyatt, explains more:

A few months ago the project to document the PLA Archive entered an exciting new stage, with the start of formal cataloguing. As you can see from the examples above, the archive has a very broad range of contents. However, its primary purpose is to document the history of the docks of London since the creation of the first enclosed dock system (the West India Docks) in 1799, along with the administration of the River Thames. The archive was collected during the 1970s and 1980s and has hitherto received very little cataloguing. The archive is quite disorganised, with no trace of “original order” – the structure of the papers while they were in use by their creators.

We have therefore chosen to give the archive a structure based on business function. It is deeply satisfying reuniting records which have been separated ever since their arrival at Museum of London Docklands and creating a formal structure which will enable the full history of the dock companies to be properly interpreted.

Due to the size of the collection, as a first stage we are concentrating upon the records of the nineteenth century docks. The docks were built by private dock companies over a period between 1799 and 1886, and were subject to the normal practices of competition and the need to offer shareholders an annual dividend. Relations between the dock companies could therefore be highly strained at times, a subject to which I hope to return in a future post.

Each dock company is being catalogued individually, and to get a sense of how this might work we began by listing the records of the East India Dock Company and the West India Dock Company, both companies with relatively small archives and therefore a simple collection structure. The catalogues for these will eventually live on MIMSY, the Museum’s catalogue system.

For these we tried listing everything at a very detailed level, so each minute book, financial ledger and file of papers documenting the construction or extension of the docks has been given its own description.  This is how I prefer to catalogue: it improves my knowledge of the creator and the background to the collection, in most cases the individual items are interesting in themselves and the descriptions are the most useful to researchers. It is, however, very time-consuming!

Having cut our teeth on these two small sub-collections, we moved on to cataloguing the archive of the longest-lived of the companies, the East and West India Dock Company (EWIDC)….more on this in my next update!

Britannia (our gladiator re-enactors) recently attended a training session at the Lunt in Coventry (a reconstructed wooden Roman fort). The event was captured by professional photographer Pete Webb and will feature in the June issue of the science and technology magazine, Flipside (external link).

The Lunt is a great site and has the advantage of a sand filled wooden Gyrus (circular Roman cavalry training area).

Gladiators are starting to wear the full equipment as you can see from the images. Not only that, but this was their first training on deep sand, a surface we hope to have at the Guildhall in July.

The advantage of this material is the grip underfoot and the fact that it’s easier to land without serious impact injury – however it’s very tiring to work on, and it’s easier to see why excavated gladiator skeletons have more developed ankle bones than seen on other bodies from this time period.

Catch-up on our earlier training updates by clicking on ‘Special Events’ in the ‘Categories’ option to the right of this post and look our for more news from our gladiators as the games draw closer.

Images copyright Pete Webb / Flipside Magazine.

Yesterday, a group of Londoners roamed around the Museum creating photographs using shoe boxes as cameras. Inspired by images in the Street Photography exhibition, they used the pin-hole technique, pioneered in the 1830s. When working in pin-hole, anything can be your camera. You simply make a hole in a box to let a very small amount of light onto photographic paper. The photographers of the images above and below used shoe boxes.

The shoe boxes were painted black inside, with a sheet of photographic paper on the bottom. The photographers set them up at different points around the site and allowed light through in for about 2 minutes. The images were then developed in the museum dark room with the help of facilitator Kathryn Faulkner and the museum photographic team. The end product is an intriguing negative image, but a few clicks on Photoshop or the right type of phone, reveal the positive version.

This workshop was part of the Inclusion ‘Continue Creating’ programme.

Iron Mongers Hall - Original Negative

Iron Mongers Hall - Positive inversion

Jug and glasses - Original negative

Jug and glasses - Inverted positive

High walk - Original Negative

High walk - Positive inversion

Garden - Negative original

Garden - Positive inversion

Susanna’s book provides us with insight and context for both the preparations and the nature of the combat you can experience over the two days of our games taking place on the site of London’s original Roman amphitheatre, now the Guildhall Yard.

The First Amphitheatres

Amphitheatres had already existed outside Rome, in neighbouring Camania, since at least the end of the second century BC, and certainly from around 70 BC, when Pompeii’s amphitheatre was constructed. By the end of the republic, there were already more than 10 amphitheatres in Campania, Lucania and Etruria, with the majority of those in Campania, the main candidate for the origin of the gladiatorial combats, as well as for the amphithetares themselves.

An amphitheatre in the Guildhall Yard

The reign of Domitian coincided with a fresh phase of the London amphitheatre, and by that time the gladiatorial categories and the conventions of the arena were well known. Hundreds of amphitheatres across Europe and North Africa recreated in lesser scale what the Colosseum achieved at Rome.

Seating and tickets: social status set in stone

Contrary to the popularly held belief that the Colosseum was filled with the screaming mob, it is more realistic to assume that seats in this amphitheatre, as in most others, were allocated according to status, and in line with the client system of patronage which ran through every relationship in Rome.

Humbler Romans without family or business connections may have got in to the munera only by paying through the nose for the privilege (some magistrates rented out seats), some tickets undoubtedly filtered down to the lower orders, but not in significant numbers.

Reconstructing the spectacle

The first decision to be made in recreating this kind of spectacle is how far to go in bringing authenticity to an ancient entertainment whose central element was the unavoidably deliberate bloodshed. The decision was taken that the integrity of the original events that occured at the Guildhall in the middle to late first century AD should be respected.

Disclaimers would be necessary to ensure that everyone [is] aware that, although it was not real, we would be seeking a real response.

On the history side of things, the overall time period of the portrayal had to be carefully considered; a British based society such as Britannia would be best placed to recreate the dynamic Flavian period of the late first and early second centuries.

Despite the less forgiving climate of Britain compared to Rome or its Mediterranean environs, the indications are that the climate was slightly warmer, so wherever possible the principle of exposed flesh and partial armouring [are] retained to re-inforce the image of the gladiator.

All extracts (c) The History Press / Susanna Shadrake.

The World of the Gladiator (ISBN 978-0-7524-3442-1) by Susanna Shadrake is published by the History Press and is available from the Museum’s Shop.

Uncover more background on the upcoming Gladiator Games via our previous blog updates here.

The Museum of London Learning Department has teamed up with the Institute of Physics (external link) to take you on a tour of some of London’s famous and lesser known places of scientific discovery. A brand new smartphone game will guide you around the city, giving you activities and photo opportunities along the way.

Take a new view of the city and uncover the fascinating stories behind the places you wander past each day. The trail will take you around central London and will be a great way to fill a lunchtime or a summer’s day.

To enjoy the tour, you will need a smartphone, either an iPhone or Android phone with an internet connection, and the free SCVNGR (external link) app available from iTunes (external link) and the Google App Store (external link). Simply login to the app, choose treks and then search for “London Science Uncovered”.

Once you’ve completed the trail, answered the questions and snapped your photos, come along to the Museum of London. Show your phone and congratulations message to the Museum’s hosts at the entrance desk to claim your goodie bag of prizes!

We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions too, so send us a message:

aflowers@museumoflondon.org.uk

Blog author: Alex Flowers, Project Coordinator (Digital Learning)

On the weekend of the royal wedding the gladiators from Britannia were performing at Flag Fen Bronze Age Centre in Peterborough.

Following their scheduled Roman shows, and after the public had left the site, they took the opportunity to squeeze in a little extra training before the Guildhall Yard shows on 30 & 31 July.

The routine between a Thraex and Hoplomachus is beginning to take shape and everyone was pleased with the results.

Testing of new large scutae (shields), planned to be used in the games, were also supported by two Provocators.

The routines are still mainly rehearsed un-armoured and as soon as a combat sequence is mastered, the armour gets added.

Our gladiators also recently heard from Tim Rees, who wanted to run this year’s London Marathon dressed as a Roman Legionary.

Britannia were only too happy to support Tim by lending him some ‘classic’ legionary kit from the Flavian period (late 1st Century AD).

Tim ran in improvised caligae (Roman miltary sandals) – without the hobnail base! He also found the wool tunic worked brilliantly, as when wet, it kept him nice and cool.

Tim completed the marathon in just under 5 hours and was pleased to report he did not walk a single step.

Catch up on previous Gladiator Games blog posts here.

To complement the games, the Museum has joined forces with TV channel HISTORY™ to launch this free app, following the huge success of Streetmuseum launched in May 2010. The new app will bring Roman London to life using a combination of never-before-seen technologies, with users able to ‘excavate’ artefacts, view augmented reality scenes of Londinium and explore overlaid maps of the ancient and modern city.

Britannia’s gladiators were used in the filming  of one of these scenes of Roman London life for the app. Using ‘green screen’ technology, they recreated scenes of gladiators battling it out in the amphitheatre that once stood in the Guildhall Yard (the location for the upcoming Gladiator Games).

There are some different requirements when filming in front of green screen backgrounds, for instance sometimes you’re required to react to things that aren’t there and more importantly for the film makers, nothing must be too reflective, so armour has to be dulled down with grease or wax polish. If any large areas of green are reflected, then the odd appearance of what is jokingly called ‘holes in time and space’ can occur on the armour, making the special effects editor’s job very hard to patch up.

So the gladiators deliberately didn’t clean the armour before hand, and chose to wear padded armour on their limbs, to cut down chances of reflection. Larger shields were also ditched because of the chances of injury and damage to other props and camera equipment in the confined space. A net was chosen with larger holes to cut down the chance of a mesh effect in front of the background.

The film crew had sand delivered as a fighting surface, and after several rehearsals - the gladiators were ready to go!

You can see the completed scene in all its glory when Streetmuseum Londinium launches on iTunes on 25 July. Until then we can share an example of  Britannia’s film work with you in this extract from the children’s series Horrible Histories on YouTube (external link).

“We have undertaken our second major training session of the year as we prepare for the Guildhall show and we’re certainly moving things along.

At our training ground, we were able to mock up an area with ropes and spikes that should match the dimensions of the Guildhall arena.

We’ve also started to stream gladiators into categories, recognising where people’s strengths and skills best match the weapons and equipment to be used on the day.

In total 22 gladiators ( 11 pairs of varied age and size) worked through the heat of the weekend of the 16th and 17th April.

We have two promising recruits to the category of Retiarius gladiators to keep our senior Retiarius, Ferrox, company. They showed excellent promise with the net and trident.

Our biggest surprise over the weekend was a young lad who exceeded everyone’s expectations as one of the best Thraex gladiators we’ve seen. He has little experience (apart from playing rugby) but has proved swift and confident  with the curved sword (Sica) and was able to match a very experienced Hoplomachus to give a varied and exciting performance that had us all cheering!

We initially train with what looks like an odd combination of 21st century clothes and gradually introduce elements of equipment and armour.

We feel that comfort and getting participants used to the armour, belts and weapons is vital for a good performance.

We then sort our trainees into categories, let them work out a basic routine, then get them kitted up…

They soon realise how they are inhibited or indeed enhanced by what they intend to wear, then adjustments are made accordingly.

We finished the weekend with a full walk-through and individual combats to match the timetable on the day.”

Find out more about our gladiators via their website here and look out for further updates coming soon to our blog, as the gladiators undertake media appearances and visit their armourer’s workshop.

Anyway as promised here is some information all about the pre 2007 history of the Olympic site before redevelopment had begun.

Hackney Wick

 Hackney Wick was a highly industrialised area around the canal and the railway with its best known products including Clarico Mints (still available but made elsewhere). Petrol was first given its name here (a company called Carless Berger started making paints around here in 1780). The world’s first synthetic plastic parkesine was made here. There were chemical works and they were also pioneers of the synthetic dye industry. Dry cleaning in the country started here too. Other factories made pies and processed foods, jam and much more besides including Lesneys Matchbow Toys  from 1947-1983. Around 1900 Old Etonian Major Arthur Villiers, a Director of Barings Bank bought an area of land to be used in perpetuity as allotments, a bequest that was sadly ended in 2007 when the holders were evicted and had to make way for the London 2012 Olympics.

 Hackney stadium – on what was Waterdon Road in Hackney Wick (and is now within the Olympic Park) was opened in 1932 and used for Greyhound Racing and the Speedway. In 1994 a £12 stand and restaurant was built and the stadium was renamed the London Stadium, Hackney. In December 1997 the company that owned the stadium, London Stadium Hackney Ltd, went out of business. The stadium was left derelict for several years until it was bought by the London Development Agency and demolished in 2003.

Photograph of the Royal Corps of Signal Display Team courtesy of John Skinner, www.defunctspeedway.co.uk

is area will become the site for the new 2012 Olympic Media and Broadcast Centre and after the Games, will be turned over for commercial use.

Hackney Marshes

 Hackney Marsh covers 339 acres of flat meadowland to the East of Hackney and alongside the River Lea it has a long history of Munitions and Lead Manufacturing from the early days of Lead Paint and crude munitions through to First World War “Projectiles” and the Matchbox die cast model factory which closed in 1990.

 The Marshes were drained during medieval times and in the late 1700’s a Roman Causeway was discovered. However the low lying area was victim to several floods and eventually in the 19^th century a canal system was developed which revealed a land rich in wildlife – attracted hunting parties which targeted the birds and rabbits. The sporting theme continued with bear baiting until later when they were replaced with rabbit coursing.

The London County Council bought the marshes for £75,000 in 1893 and they became part of the Lea Valley Park in 1967. They now play host to cricket, Hockey and Rugby and hold the world record for the most number of full sized football pitches in one place.

The East Marsh will be tarmaced and turned into a temporary disabled coach Park for the Olympics in 2012.  This has proved controversial with residents but in return for the inconvenience they have been promised that following on from the games there will be considerable investment to improve facilities  for amateur sport on the marshes.

Photograph of Hackney Marshes taken from The Topical Times Football book 1963-64 © D.C.Thomson&Co.,Ltd

And that concludes the first part of my history of the Olympic site. Come and check on my blog next week when I will look at the Stratford Railways Terminal that used to be where the present day Olympic stadium is plus the archaeological finds discovered round the Olympic Park with a focus on the Aquatic Centre area.

Peter

Richard’s photographs now join those taken by Viv, Hazel and Mahesh with a number of images from across this project appearing in a forthcoming edition of The Big Issue. Images will then be selected to be displayed in the London Street Photography exhibition which continues until 3 September at the Museum of London.

The following five images from Richard highlight unguarded snapshots of moments that are in turn curious, busy, unusual, relaxed and, finally, tender.

“Curiosity”

“Rush hour on the bridge”

“Sound Man”

“Lovely day for a walk”

[no caption]

Project website: http://bit.ly/hInshX (needs updating!)

On BBC London’s Inside Out programme: http://bit.ly/7hpm8p (takes you to YouTube site)

Publications:

Owens, A, Jeffries, N, Wehner, K and Featherby, R, 2010, Fragments of  the modern city: material culture and rhythms of everyday life in Victorian London J Victorian Culture 15 (2), 212–225

Owens, A, Jeffries, N, Featherby, R, and Wehner, K, 2010 From the unusual to the banal; the archaeology of everyday life in Victorian London Research Matters 4

Owens, A., Jeffries, N., Hicks, D., Featherby, R. and Wehner, K. (2008) ‘Rematerialising metropolitan histories?: people, places and things in modern London’ in M. Palmer and A. Horning (eds) Crossing Paths, Sharing Tracks: Future Directions for Archaeological Study of post-1550 Britain and Ireland, Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge

This picture was taken at Embankment and Viv has added the following extract from her diary regarding help provided to the homeless in this area of London: “…one of the biggest soup runs in London [is located nearby] and they come out once a week and it’s run by the same family for the last 20 years or more.  The street people call it The Stew. 50 – 200 people come to get fed”.

This image is from East Street Market where,Viv comments in her diary: “Charlie Chaplin used to go there as he lived nearby”.

Viv’s travels took her to many different parts of London as captured in the photographs below:

Viv wanted to capture ” a variety of street life”  and ”really enjoyed the project and would have liked to have done it for longer!”

You can catch up on previous blog updates here from both Hazel and Mahesh.

Here, Jelena explains more:

“My paper presentation was based around the analysis of the 227 individuals retained in the crypt of St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, London.

They are a particularly interesting and unique group of individuals as they have a substantial amount of biographical information associated with them provided by coffin plates and detailed parish records.

This provides a mine of information to assist with further research on the individuals allowing access to numerous documentary data such as birth and marriage certificates, all of which aids greatly in building up a more complete picture of individual lives and the times in which they lived.

I mentioned in my paper that during the analysis of the individuals many disease processes and trauma were discovered, further research of which, would be enhanced with radiographic investigation.

The nature and logistics of the skeletal material and the crypt itself did not make taking the elements off site to be x-rayed a feasible proposition and so the only real option available would be for a portable x-ray machine to be brought into the crypt.

Luckily, one of the people listening to my presentation was Jerry Conlogue from Quinnipiac University, USA, who has had many years experience with radiography and archaeological material, particularly mummified remains.

Jerry was fascinated by the crypt individuals and saw the opportunity for a challenge to be overcome in being able to implement an x-ray project at St Bride’s and he secured funding from the School of Health Sciences at his university to be able to come to London and establish a project with us.

The premise of the project was to ultimately create a digital x-ray archive of the individuals which would be available online from our Centre for Human Bioarchaeology website for research purposes.

So in the summer of 2010, Jerry was able to come to St Bride’s and with the assistance of Dr Mark Viner at Cranfield University and Xograph, hired a portable digital x-ray machine.

The Xograph x-ray system was set up in the crypt and Jerry, with the assistance of student Kelly Eggleton, was able to x-ray all the sub adults (those individuals less than 18 years old) and 70 of the skulls and mandibles. 

We quickly established the speed and efficency of having a digital x-ray machine available providing images of excellent clarity.

The following images are from x-rays taken of a young girl who died aged three years, seven months and nine days in 1840.

Due to the success of the first phase of this project, further funding has been secured from the School of Health Sciences to complete, this year, the x-raying of the remaining  skulls and mandibles.

It is hoped that there will be a continuation of the x-ray project and that the next phase will concentrate on the diseases and trauma identified in the bones.

This will then provide a unique x-ray archive and an invaluable resource for research that will hopefully be readily accessible to researchers via our website.

An added bonus to the nature of this project is that it is non destructive and acts in tandem with the skeletal database as a means of conserving the remains without continual handling of them.”

And now, as the weather (we hope) turns milder, we are able to add a specially grown cutting to our Central Courtyard.

Planting our buddleia

Here you can see our Visitor Services Manager, Gerald, with Louise Nichols whose parents run a plant nursery and garden design business and who kindly donated the cutting to the Museum.

The reason the buddleia proved to be the most popular seems to be its hardiness and its ability to adapt to what London throws at it (a striking metaphor?) as is highlighted by this related tweet: “…found growing wild all over London in scrubland, cracks in walls, tops of buildings – attracts butterflies too”.

It was also one of the first plants to grow in bombsites during The Blitz and continues too hold a special significance for many Londoners.

Our buddleia will complement the existing planting in the courtyard and whilst “butterfly friendly” will also be popular with bees from our hive.

The planting location is important as this pot is easily seen from within the Museum.

The next step is to work with our Design Team and Curators to add a message to the pot that highlights the plants significance and that it was chosen by social media followers of the Museum.

Bringing a little of the outside into our galleries.

With thanks to Linda and Ralph Nichols and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Having been briefed to capture life as its happens on the street and avoid posed pictures, Hazel has contributed the following ’street photographs’ for possible inclusion in the exhibition. This project finishes at the end of March after our fifth volunteer has submitted their images. It is planned that the chosen images from this project will be included in the exhibition from June.

Hazel’s final image featured on our blog sees an Evening Standard newspaper distributor reflectively lighting up a dark London evening and is accompanied by the following extract from Hazel’s diary:

“The Evening Standard has been part of London street life for 170 years. As commuters pass through one of London’s busiest stations,Waterloo, they pass hard and fast day in day out”…

Look out for our third volunteer Big Issue vendor’s images and thoughts in the coming weeks.

Here Hazel explains her initial thoughts on the project: “when I was told about this project and then given this camera, I thought, no, I have too much clutter in my mind to define what I see and what I want to say. But then what the heck I opened the shutter and these are some of the pictures I took”.

Hazel also provided the captions that accompany these two images.

“Street People”

Hazel has recently given a talk to a group of teenagers and volunteers, they asked her about ‘begging’ and Helen told them: “I don’t use that word because the name you give someone affects how you see them. The ones you call Beggars I call Cup People and the homeless, I call Street People“.

“This is Vauxhall/Oval where a lot of the people have been re-housed. A lot of the people are very poor. You can’t take pictures of children but this is where the children play”

Although not strictly meeting the exact ’street photography’ criteria, the strength of Hazel’s caption for the above image ensured its inclusion in this post and highlights the personal nature of this project.

Hazel admits to initially having problems fitting in taking photographs and selling copies of the magazine as this diary extract from the first two days of February highlights: “…still having trouble working the camera. I’ll sell a few issues and get back to it…next day, I’m clicking away. I hope the camera has accepted them cos I can’t find them”.

 Images from this project will feature in our our upcoming London Street Photography exhibition at the Museum of London.

Catch up on Mahesh’s first blog for this project here.

This month Sarah Matthews talks about the process of excavating human remains from cremation vessels. Click on the images to see further details of the excavation.

Archaeological investigations in 2010 by the Museum of London Archaeology revealed a number of Roman cremation vessels from a site in Surrey. While many of the vessels had been badly damaged by ploughing, 10 remained intact enough for further study.

The purpose of excavating cremation vessels is to ascertain how efficient the cremation process was, determine the distribution of bone in the vessel, gather knowledge about the pyre, and information about the individual cremated (age, sex and any pathological bone changes) skeleton (McKinley, 2004).

The excavation is carried out by carefully removing the soil from the vessel in spits (2-3cm layers). To begin, a piece of string is placed horizontally across the bucket dividing the vessel into two halves. One half is then excavated carefully and delicately by removing the soil and leaving the bone in place. To do this a variety of small trowels, wooden skewers and small brushes are used. This takes a great deal of patience, even the slightest knock to the bone can cause it to fragment. A plan and section is then drawn before excavating the other half.

The first spit (Picture 2) often contains very little bone, the overall the density of bone increases at the bottom of the vessel. After removing both halves of the spit, any bone uncovered is left in situ, photographed and planned.

Picture 2 (Pot B): Top of Spit two 

Picture 3 (Pot B):  top of Spit Three

Picture 3 shows the bone excavated from spit two revealing a dense quantity of bone. The majority of this bone comprises fragments of long bones, these often fracture in crescent or ‘U shapes’ (McKinley, 2004) running along the shaft. To the lower left corner of the urn a large, flat piece of bone has just been uncovered but is so far unidentified. Due to the density and overlapping nature of cremations often several pieces of bone need to be removed before elements can be uncovered enough to be identified. 

Picture 4 (Pot B): Top of Spit Four

As the excavation continues, the anatomical features of the bone become apparent and the large fragment in the lower left can now be identified as part of a pelvis. Spits are not always easy to keep to an approximate depth and there maybe variations in the depth across the pot. In the centre (Picture 4) the depth could only able to be taken down by 1.5cms due to a large patch of trabecular bone lying just below the surface. It is sometimes necessary to leave soil in place rather than risking destroying the bone.

Picture 5 (Pot B): Top of spit five

Towards the bottom of the pot large pieces of identifiable bone are present. The right side of the pelvis can be seen in Picture 5 with the auricular surface facing towards the centre. Each element is measured, photographed and planned in case it disintegrates further during lifting. Any colour variation is recorded as this may suggest temperature deviations during the cremation. Large identifiable elements are bagged separately with the context and spit numbers marked on the bag. 

Picture 6 (Pot A): Large areas of skull.

Picture six shows the importance of correct planning and excavation. Burning of the bone and shrinkage due to dehydration produces microfractures, these can result in the bone fragmenting during excavation and recovery (McKinley, 2004). The two large areas of skull can be seen in situ and once planned it is possible to tell that a very large piece of skull remained after burning.
 
The most important aspect of excavating cremations is to gain as much information as possible about the bone, the colour and disposition and any finds discovered inside the vessel. Once the bone is washed and dried, further analysis can be carried out to gain further evidence about the individual inside. This helps our understanding of the ritual and processes regarding cremated remains from the past.

For further information see..
Brickley, M. and McKinley, J. 2004. Guidelines to the standard for recording human remains IFA/ BABAO.

As a magazine and movement that was born and lives on the streets, The Big Issue has a unique take on life in the capital.

With this in mind, a number of vendors around London have volunteered to take pictures over a two week period representing their view of London’s streets according to the ’street photography’ criteria of un-posed, spontaneous moments that can sometimes provide a brief encounter or momentary juxtaposition.

Vendors will also keep a diary of their experiences and we will share both this and their images here and in upcoming editions of  The Big Issue before selecting one image to form part of the exhibition.

Our first vendor to participate, Mahesh, would like to dedicate his diary and pictures to “the people of this great city, both past and present, who have in the past and continue to make this city vibrant”.

Mahesh’s images from Kensington High Street show an ever-evolving city by capturing construction works in progress:

“Construction workers busily arranging to off-load huge girders and reinforced steel rods on this busy London street”.

 ”More material being unloaded. Reminds me of the disciplined Leaf Cutter Ant’s activities. Excellent deployment of resources”.

“Major construction work in the centre of the West End of London so cleanly, clinically undertaken. Impressive. Sad reminder of the apparent lack of reasonable constructive activity in post-earthquake Haiti”.

Mahesh leaves us with this striking picture which he introduces so eloquently…”an elegant senior citizen relaxing with a hurried smoked cigarette. It is cold.

Following on from their audio slide-show ‘Semi-detached London: 1930s Suburbia’ . Jason and the team have recently launched ‘Operation Pied Piper: Evacuating London’s Children’ 

This slide-show explores the experiences of children as they left the capital to escape the threat of enemy bombers during World War II.

The slide-show is curated by museum curator Jim Gledhill, who is also curating future slide-shows on 1950s kids’ TV, The Festival of Britain and Oswald Mosley.

Exploring 20th Century London Web Manager, Jason Webber, has this to say on using this format to offer an insight into London’s past:

“Our suburbia slide-show did well, getting a nice write-up on the Londonist website who called it ‘an informative and soothing way to spend five or so minutes, taking in pictures of a bygone era.’  The audio-slide show does indeed seem to be a great way to showcase the high-quality images from our website, and is a way to tell short, engaging stories, giving users a bite-size piece of London’s history.”

For those who are not familiar with the Exploring 20th century London website , it was launched in 2006 and brings together the collections of nineteen museums, libraries and archives (including the Museum of London).

It is an unparalleled online resource on London’s modern history with a diverse range of  subject matters.

Amongst the more than 9,000 objects to explore online you will find a tooth from H.G Wells’, tube train upholstery and photographs of First World war zeppelin attacks on London.

The aim of this vast web resource is to help people find their own story of London.

The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, East London is a venerable institution with a rich history of serving the local community, and was featured in a series of historical medical dramas produced by the BBC (‘Casualty 1906’ and ‘Casualty 1907’). The hospital was founded in 1740, and opened on its current site in 1757.

One of the functions of the hospital was as an accident and emergency department accepting ‘special cases necessary to the preservation of life’. Emergency treatment would have saved the lives of many, but the less fortunate would never leave the hospital alive, with the poorest being buried in the hospital grounds.

MOLA excavated 170 burials from the Royal London Hospital grounds, and some of the skeletons revealed evidence of injuries from which they never recovered.

In one example, the skeleton of a 26–35 year old male had an unhealed spiral fracture of the mid-shaft of the right femur (upper leg) (Fig 1). Such a fracture would have required considerable force, probably causing extensive soft tissue damage. The fracture was probably an open, or compound fracture, where the bone was exposed through the skin. In modern times such injuries are often found in young adult males, due to participation in activities with risks of high impact collisions and falls from height (Galloway 1999, 180). Doctors at the London Hospital would have admitted the man on the basis of this life-threatening injury.

Close inspection of the fracture site revealed the early stages of healing in the form of new bone growth, which represents initial callus formation. This indicated that the individual died within approximately three weeks of receiving the injury (Lovell, 1997, 145) (Fig 2).

There are a number of serious complications associated with femoral mid-shaft fractures, some of which may have contributed to the death of this individual. These include blood loss, arterial injury, fat embolisation, shock, infection, as well as associated life-threatening injuries to the viscera or cranium (Resnick 2002, 2870–2). Prior to the availability of antibiotics, infection was common in open wounds and fractures, and this would certainly be a candidate for the cause of death of this man.

There are frequent contemporary reports of victims of accidents being sent to the London Hospital. In one account from The Times of 11th August 1806, a group of bricklayers who were sitting on top of a newly completed house and celebrating their achievement with a gallon of beer, fell to the ground, “one of whom was killed on the spot, and the others were taken to the London Hospital, one of whom has died since the incident, and the other two are not likely to recover” (The Times, Aug 11, 1806). The study of the skeleton of the young man found within the hospital cemetery tells us he suffered a life-threatening injury from which he unfortunately never recovered.

In a further example of unhealed injuries, a 26–35 year old female from the hospital cemetery had fractures to some of the vertebral bodies of the spine, possibly due to a fall onto the feet or buttocks (Galloway 1999, 95) (Fig 3; Fig 4).

In this case, there was no evidence of healing at all, suggesting that she died immediately or soon after the incident (known as ‘perimortem’ injury). From an osteological point of view, the illustrated vertebrae provide good examples of unhealed bone lesions, with sharp edges and an absence of new bone growth or repair.

Galloway, A (ed), 1999 Broken bones: anthropological analysis of blunt force trauma, Springfield, IL
Lovell, N C, 1997 Trauma Analysis in Paleopathology, Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 40,139–70
Resnick, D, 2002 Diagnosis of bone and joint disorders, Philadelphia
The Times, Aug 11, 1806; pg. 3; Issue 6813; col C

The archaeological excavation of a possible 13th century medieval hospital burial ground at St Peter’s Wharf, Maidstone, Kent by MOLA between 2008-2009 revealed one individual who had suffered severe injuries to the skull. These were most likely the result of blows to the head from a bladed weapon (sharp force trauma).

An adult male had a fine, linear cut mark running across the right side of the forehead. Above this, a large rectangular, scooped out flake of bone had become detached revealing areas of underlying polished bone. Similar linear cut marks were observed to the right side of the head (temporal and parietal). These injuries only penetrated the outer surface of the skull and may have resulted from repeated glancing blows that caused the bone to fracture. At the back of the skull there was an extensive deep horizontal wound that had penetrated the internal structures (endocranium) and may have made contact with the brain.

In total this individual had evidence of at least four separate blade wounds. Multiple head injuries appear not to have been an uncommon occurrence. Examples of multiple wounds have been found at several contemporary sites in Britain suggesting that the head was often the main target of attack.

The linear nature of these lesions without large irregularities, absence of terminal fractures, defined clean edges and one surface that was flat and smooth suggested a sharp bladed weapon was used. The cut to the back of the skull had a minimum length of 104mm suggesting a longer blade, possibly a sword (Wenham 1989).

The severity of the penetrating injuries would most likely have ended this individual’s life. There was no evidence of new bone formation that would indicate healing. This suggested that the injuries were received immediately before or shortly after death.

Whether this individual died in the heat of battle, was attacked or even suffered the injuries when already disabled or dead cannot be determined. However, a healed depressed fracture to the top of the skull indicated the survival of an old wound. This may have been received during a previous fight, possibly warfare, and may tentatively suggest a professional soldier who lived to participate in further battles.

Further details of this excavation will be covered in an upcoming article in the journal Archaeologia Cantiana