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Roy Stephenson |
Regent’s Park bones ‘not Blitz victims but overspill from 1840s burial crisis’
University archaeologist challenges theory that fragments found by children are WWII dead
ELBOW-patched archaeologists at two of the capital’s most prestigious institutions, the Natural History Museum and the Museum of London, are sharpening their spades for a showdown over the mystery of how human bones came to be discovered in Regent’s Park.
In a New Journal exclusive last week, we revealed how the Royal Parks Agency which runs the park is considering whether to order an excavation of the site where a group of schoolchildren found the shattered bones while digging in the soil in early May.
Police and the St Pancras coroner called in a forensic anthropologist from the Natural History Museum, and the verdict was sensational.
Human remains from the Blitz, she concluded.
But just a week later, the explanation has been queried by a rival archaeologist at the Museum of London, pitting the two cathedrals of knowledge against each other in a clash of theories.
Far from the being victims of the Blitz, the bones actually date back to 100 years earlier and originate from the Victorian burial crisis which saw bodies moved out of central London cemeteries because of hysteria over the spread of disease, says Roy Stephenson, who has been archaeologist at the Museum of London in Barbican for more than 20 years.
He believes the bones may have been in the topsoil of the park in the 1840s, taken from saturated graveyards around churches like St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square.
Authorities took soil from the redundant cemeteries to cover the rubble, says Mr Stephenson.
“I think the Natural History Museum have got it wrong,” he said. “I suspect these bones are not connected to the Blitz. When they buried the rubble, they raided a lot of redundant cemeteries, sometimes not even knowing what they were. We’ve heard of at least two other instances of this in other parks, and I think it is the best explanation.
“When London was expanding in Victorian times, and every parishioner had a right to be buried in their local parish, there were hundreds of thousands of bodies buried in central London. Not all of them could be six feet deep.
“I bet my bottom dollar there is a redundant cemetery somewhere near Regent’s Park. There are lots all over London. Also, when all those people were blown to pieces in the Blitz, they didn’t just dump everything. They sifted through the remains and pulled out the bones. I think the Natural History Museum have got it wrong.”
Last week, a forensic anthropologist at the Natural History Museum, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the find, told the New Journal she believed the bones were buried in the rubble of nearby houses destroyed by the Luftwaffe raids in 1940 and 1941.
“We determined that the bones were a mixture of human and animal remains. The were discovered in context with household rubble which was deposited in the park after the Blitz,” she said.
Proving either theory could be difficult because the bones are being prepared for reburial – making it unlikely they will ever be carbon dated.
Camden was one of the areas in the capital most affected by the Victorian burial crisis, which was eased with the passing of the Cemeteries Clauses Act and the Burial Act in 1845 and 1852.
The Acts overturned the law that said parishioners had the right to be buried in their parish churchyard or burial ground, because so many of them had been deemed a health hazard and were closed down.
Thousands of bodies were exhumed and moved to suburban cemeteries. The churchyard of St-Martin-in-the-Fields, at just 200 square feet, was estimated to contain the remains of 60-70,000 people.
The discovery of the bones has split the community around Regent’s Park, which suffered significant bomb damage during the Blitz, with Harrington Square, Albany Street and St Mark’s Square all hit. Some have spoken out against any potential dig, calling on a “respect for the dead”.
But with a real possibility of hundreds more human bones beneath the surface, others say, the site should be properly excavated, with provision made for formal burials.
The Royal Parks Agency said they had not reached a decision over a course of action.
It regards the case as so sensitive it has not released details of the site the children found the bones, although it is thought they were found on the Camden side of the park near the Gloucester Gate playground.
A spokesman said: “We are not commenting further.”
‘Remember them’ My memories of war
PETER Russell, 80, who lives near Regent’s Park, said: “It’s been 63 years since the last bombing in London. The first bomb that fell in north-west London in 1918 fell on Warrington Crescent, 400 yards from the house that I later lived in. There was an old lady trapped in the basement. They put a tube down there and piped in hot Bovril. I’m surprised that these bones have only come to light now if they were only covered by topsoil.
Why would bones have been spread like that? Assuming that they are human remains from the Blitz and not the remainder of an abattoir or left over from the plague, I’m surprised that there wasn’t any sort of remembrance, like a garden, as a result.
“I’ve never heard of bones being spread on Regent’s Park.
“The area should be lined off, there should be some mention made of it so that people don’t entirely forget what happened.
“During the war people were much more reverent about remains. Just after the war the Evening News ran a series of maps showing where all the bombs had hit.
“Throughout the Second World War there was so much goodwill but you wouldn’t want to go through it again. Everyone pulled together. A lot of refugees came over, particularly Italian people, but they were just absorbed. It wasn’t like today, no one had hate sessions about them, we all had parties, everywhere. When you get as old as this you start not to remember so much about D-Day and other events. You remember when someone on your street was killed, when a boy you went to school with lost his father.
“The class system changed in war. When you’re all in the same uniform or all in the same hospital that’s being bombed, there’s no difference between you.”
INTERVIEW BY JESSICA GREEN |
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