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Crossrail, a 15 billion pound ($23 billion) railway link
connecting east and west London due to open in 2018, is
conducting a marathon digging operation for the 42 km (26 miles)
of new tunnels under the British capital.
Sixteen volunteers working with Crossrail did a different sort
of digging, combing through parish records to provide the names
of more than 3,000 people at the Bedlam Burial Ground under
Liverpool Street Station.
The majority of those identified were buried between 1570 and
1729, a period which included the English civil war of 1642-51,
the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of London of 1666.
"This research is a window into one of the most turbulent
periods of London's past," Jay Carver, Crossrail's lead
archaeologist, said in a statement.
Among those identified was Nicholas Ambrose, a mayor of London
buried in 1575, and John Lamb, an astrologer with noble clients
who was stoned to death by an angry mob in 1628 after
allegations of rape and black magic.
But most of those buried at Bedlam were London's poor, and the
records paint a picture of a fragile existence where disease and
infant mortality were never far away.
One man, John Smith, buried three of his children within a month
in 1574, and made his own final trip to Bedlam four years later.
Hundreds more of the people identified had fallen victim to the
plague or other epidemics such as small pox and tuberculosis.
The burial ground took its name from the nearby Bethlehem
Hospital for the mentally ill whose name was commonly shortened
to Bedlam.
The ground did not keep its own records, so the volunteers
searched the records of over 100 parish churches in central
London which sent their members to Bedlam to be buried.
Crossrail will begin excavating the ground next month, and will
submit the skeletons to scientific analysis before reburying
them in consecrated ground.
The railway, which will link Heathrow Airport and central London
to suburbs and satellite towns, is Europe's largest
infrastructure project and is now half complete, on budget and
on schedule.
(Editing by Stephen Addison)
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