4,000 Dead Bodies Accidentally Dug Up In London
Workers for the Crossrail project, which is a huge construction enterprise taking place in London to expand its rail system, came across 4,000 dead bodies during their dig.
Many of the bodies are believed to have been patients at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, Europe’s first ever insane asylum, which was so notorious that it created the word bedlam.
It has been alleged that some of the deceased, which date back as far as the 16th century, were merely 60 centimeters below the road’s surface. Nicholas Elsdon of the Museum of London stated that around 3,000 bodies were found in an area the size of a soccer field and added that this means there were three or four carcasses per cubic meter.
He then noted, “This is one of the densest burial grounds we have excavated in London. It’s an overflow burial ground when the parish churches just couldn’t cope in the city and so they bought a piece of land from Bedlam hospital and set out this new burial ground.” Elsdon then confirmed, “They just kept putting more and more people in. It was absolutely chock-a-block.”
The project, which began in 2011, continues to make bizarre discoveries across the English capital that shed further light on London’s past.
Other historical artifacts to have been found include the remains of a Roman road, which linked London to both Lincoln and York. This information was gathered due to the large number of Roman horseshoes that were gathered in the area, whilst a tiny Venetian coin that dates to between 1501 and 1520 has also been discovered.
The coin also had a hole in the top, which indicated that a wealthy individual wore it decoratively. This has only raised further questions though, as historians are now trying to figure out how it ended up in one of the poorest areas of London in the 1600s.
