Skeletons found in London archaeology dig reveal noxious environs

[Judi Lynn]

The discoveries were made at a 19th-century burial site at New Covent Garden market
Dalya Alberge
Tue 4 Dec 2018 10.58 EST

News reports and social media anxiety may make us feel that life is tough in Britain today but the extraordinary findings of a new archaeological excavation have provided a salutary reminder that, a couple of centuries ago, it was so much worse.

Archaeologists who worked on an early 19th-century burial site at the New Covent Garden market in south-west London where about 100 bodies were found have said that they contain evidence of arduous working conditions, a noxious environment, endemic diseases, physical deformities, malnutrition and deadly violence.

The burials offer an extraordinary glimpse into life in early industrial London, between the 1830s and 1850s. They show the harshness of life for the industrial poor that Charles Dickens described so acutely in his classic novels.

The skeletal remains of those who might have been Dickens’ subjects, who could be deemed among the first “modern” Londoners, have been uncovered by Wessex Archaeology during the excavation of part of a cemetery originally situated on the site of New Covent Garden market in Nine Elms.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/04/skeletons-found-in-london-archaeology-dig-reveal-noxious-environs

[NBachers]

1. It doesn't mention alcohol, but I'm imagining that it may have been a factor in peoples' health.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. William Blake's "dark satanic mills," it would seem.