BONES UNDER CITY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22850, 4 October 1937, Page 2

BONES UNDER CITY

DISCOVERY IN LONDON POSSIBLE PLAGUE VICTIMS [FROM OUR OWN" correspondent] LONDON. Sept. 11 More than UOO skulls and 2000 other bones, believed to be those of victims of the plague of 1665, have been dug up during excavation in Farringdon Street for the new Evening Standard building. Dr. A. J. E; Cave, assistant conservator of the Royal College of Surgeons' ifttseum, has examined the skulls and bones.

"They are all of the same racial type," he said. " Their condition indicates that they are the remains or men, women and children who died in the 17th century. It is more than probable that thev are from a plague pit. In 1665, the year of the Great Plague, thousands of bodies were thrown, day by day, into pits, without any record being made of death or-identification, and then buried and forgotten. " The skulls are, perhaps, rery slightly different from skulls of to-day. The vault is a little pointed, but, ot course, there has not been time for a racial change. They are not yet oUU years old. and a real change would not come about in 3000. . " L should estimate that there Are between 200 and «500 skeletons here. A', the bones are completely mixed up. is difficult to say exactly. 1 Or. Cave picked up a bone from tne 2ft. high pile, and said: " This is a mail's leg. It was hit by an axe, 0 something of that sort, belore dea • rhe blow sliced the bone a little, 1 it healed in part before the owner died." ... j.],, Dr. Cave found a bone unlike tne others. "This is a cow's bone," he wen* in. " Hcjw it got here I cannot thins. Perhaps" animals also were thrown ;j *he human burial pit. . ' Similar pits come to lisrlit occaMonally in different parts of They are always interesting as sfaoww# the tvpes of Londoner at periodi."-