UK - London construction dig unearths 450-year-old graveyard of Bedlam's lost souls

The term "Bedlam" actually devolves from spelling changed to fit pronunciation: the hospital was originally called St. Mary of Bethlehem; the latter term was corrupted to "Bethlem" in common speech and, likewise, later, to "Bedlam."

The lost souls of 'Bedlam' are found: Asylum's ancient graveyard is unearthed beneath London as Crossrail dig reveals patients' bones

• 500-year-old graveyard near Liverpool Street found during Crossrail works
• Cemetery contains 20,000 skeletons including patients of Bedlam asylum
• Other finds include rare Roman coins and an entire stretch of Roman road
• A 13-mile high speed tunnel is currently being built under Central London

They were the tortured souls incarcerated in the world’s first mental asylum.
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Now the ‘lost souls of Bedlam’ are giving up their dark secrets, yards from one of London’s busiest railway stations.
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Hundreds of skeletons, including the remains of patients from what was officially called Bethlem – or Bethlehem – Hospital, have been discovered in an old graveyard a few feet beneath the ground at Liverpool Street station on what is now part of Europe’s biggest building site.
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The graveyard, built on the Bethlem Hospital’s vegetable patch in the 1560s after churchyards around the city started to overflow, was used to bury London’s poor and religious non-conformists as well as inmates from the asylum.

Bethlem was founded in 1247 by Simon FitzMary, a wealthy former Sheriff of London, as a priory dedicated to St Mary of Bethlem.

By 1403, the majority of its patients were lunatics. Others suffered from epilepsy, learning disabilities and dementia.

Inside the squalid single-storey building that housed 12 cells, a kitchen, staff accommodation and an exercise yard, inmates were manacled and chained – and treated as a tourist attraction by Londoners who paid a penny to stare at them. Patients, usually poor, were given treatments including restraint, dousing with water, beatings and isolation.
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many pictures and a video at Daily Mail link above

It is amazing the bones remain in such good shape after 500 years. What is in that soil?

Sonya610 said:

It is amazing the bones remain in such good shape after 500 years. What is in that soil?

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These people here will almost certainly answer that question properly for you;
http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/

I know that the water is very soft in London, without much chalk or stuff like that. Maybe that's something to do with it? I used to come across huge bones when I wandered on the little bit of the banks of the Thames a person can still access. They were very old, from the where tannerys and gluemakers had just tipped their waste into the river.

We walked from our house to the Tower of London and All Hallows church last Monday, and our route goes through Liverpool St Station, past both the original Bedlam site, where it was moved to and this excavation - really interesting.

A friend lives near to a brick wall put up in the 1800s which contains some old Bedlam bricks, they really stand out.

The Crossrail project is unearthing some incredible finds, right the way back to Neolithic times, fascinating - we're 20 minutes walk from St Paul's, the City, the old Roman walls etc and walk all around the area, very lucky!

Sunday Mail:

What did he die of? Grim job continues to excavate bodies of 20,000 corpses buried at Bedlam

⁍ Incredible pictures show massive excavation project continuing at site of future Liverpool Street station
⁍ Pieces of skulls, jaws, ribs, spines and more being pulled from site daily to make way for new rail line
⁍ Many of corpses are likely to have come from the nearby Bedlam mental health hospital, established in 1247

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