How did graveyards and cemeteries cope with the vast number of burials during epidemics such as the Black Death? Most often bodies were piled in mass burial pits deep underground. Found during the excavation of a London cemetery, these lead crosses were said to have lain with victims of the Black Death outbreak of 1348-53.
What were they for? Do they represent faith at a time of fear and crisis? Or were they used simply as markers? Experts say that medieval burial crosses were believed to protect the bodily remains. These ones are pretty basic in design and production – undecorated, with irregular edges and a battered surface. Were they made in a hurry because of the rapid burial of plague victims?
Archaeologists Barney Sloane and Bruce Watson offer another explanation. Reviewing the evidence, they observed that the crosses were not found in mass burial pits but in smaller shafts suggestive of an institutional system of burial. They concluded that the bodies were most likely prisoners from nearby Newgate Gaol who had died of ‘gaol distemper’, or typhus, in the 1700s.
And the crosses? Since no other lead burial crosses of this date have been reported, and documentary evidence is not yet found, Sloane and Watson can only speculate. Made by unskilled hands, perhaps the prisoners produced them for dying inmates, or themselves? We may never know the details of the makers or the recipients, but it’s certain that each cross will have its own unique story.
maker: Unknown maker
Place made: England, United Kingdom
Wellcome Images
Keywords: mortuary cross; Plague
Credit line
This file comes from
Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom. Refer to
Wellcome blog post (
archive). This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal
copyright tag is still required.See
Commons:Licensing.
to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0CC BY 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 truetrue
Information
Captions
Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents
=={{int:filedesc}}== {{Artwork |artist = |author = |title = Lead mortuary crosses, England, 1300s and 1600s |description = How did graveyards and cemeteries cope with the vast number of burials during epidemi...
File usage
The following pages on the English Wikipedia use this file (pages on other projects are not listed):
L0058244 Lead mortuary crosses, England, 1300s and 1600s
Credit: Science Museum, London. Wellcome Images
[email protected]http://wellcomeimages.org
How did graveyards and cemeteries cope with the vast number of burials during epidemics such as the Black Death? Most often bodies were piled in mass burial pits deep underground. Found during the excavation of a London cemetery, these lead crosses were said to have lain with victims of the Black Death outbreak of 1348-53.
What were they for? Do they represent faith at a time of fear and crisis? Or were they used simply as markers? Experts say that medieval burial crosses were believed to protect the bodily remains. These ones are pretty basic in design and production – undecorated, with irregular edges and a battered surface. Were they made in a hurry because of the rapid burial of plague victims?
Archaeologists Barney Sloane and Bruce Watson offer another explanation. Reviewing the evidence, they observed that the crosses were not found in mass burial pits but in smaller shafts suggestive of an institutional system of burial. They concluded that the bodies were most likely prisoners from nearby Newgate Gaol who had died of ‘gaol distemper’, or typhus, in the 1700s.
And the crosses? Since no other lead burial crosses of this date have been reported, and documentary evidence is not yet found, Sloane and Watson can only speculate. Made by unskilled hands, perhaps the prisoners produced them for dying inmates, or themselves? We may never know the details of the makers or the recipients, but it’s certain that each cross will have its own unique story.
maker: Unknown maker
Place made: England, United Kingdom
made: Unknown Published: -