London Bones July 29, 2008
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden, Reviews , trackbackIn a rotunda on a traffic island, the Museum of London stores the bones of 17,000 former denizens, recovered from burial sites dating from Roman times through to the 19th century. Their names are rarely remembered and even the date of their death is often unsure. Some come from the outskirts, Merton Priory and Chelsea Old Church, but most are from the older parts of London itself, the City, Spitalfields, Holburn.
Twenty six of these skeletons can be seen until 26 September at the Wellcom Collection’s Skeletons exhibition, which had a private viewing last night. Most of the people on display were the victims of awful diseases with symptoms showing in their bones. Syphillis, tuberculosis, osteoarthritis, healed and unhealed fractures, all making me very grateful to live in an age with antibiotics and anesthetics.
A few showed signs of bathrocephaly, where the skull has a step at the back. This can occur for many reasons, including diseases and being born in a breech position, and affected 1/10 of the population well into the nineteenth century but is now very rare. The cause of the change wasn’t clear in the exhibition, though I wonder if it reflects a change in the way breech babies are delivered?
It was a fascinatingly macabre way to spend the evening, arousing curiosity but at the same time disturbing. Looking closely at the skeltons, its easy to get some idea of their lives, and to wonder about them. Those broken ribs had healed, but how did they happen? How did deformities of leg-bones affect the person’s mobility? The private viewing was for members of the Wellcome Collection’s club, many of whom are medics, so there were plenty of people with well-informed ideas.
I’m always a little ambivalent about exhibitions of dead bodies, whether its that sad naturally mummified body in the British Museum, or the proud Pharaohs reduced to spectacle in Cairo, and it is important to remember that these were real people, who lived around here. This is a very respectful presentation and, in an odd sort of way, renders them more human. I wouldn’t mind if that was me, in a few hundred years time.
The exhibition is on until 26 September, free, and well worth seeing. Oh, and if you’re a bloke who doesn’t fancy a prostate check, go and have a look at the skeleton who died of prostate cancer, and then pluck up the courage for a doctors visit.
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