Can it really be true that underground lines between Knightsbridge and Kensington Park were diverted to avoid the skeletons packed into plague pits beneath Hyde Park? More egregiously, tales that look suspiciously like urban myths are recounted unreferenced. With the concealed, private burials of dissenting sects there could be grim secrets: in 1839 it was found that a Baptist minister had stacked thousands of bodies in a vault under his chapel, having charged 15 shillings for each burial.Īlthough it is an elegant saunter through the land of the dead, the book's excellent work in obscure sources is often let down by sloppiness: Cardinal Wolsey died on his way to face trial, not on the scaffold, and the dead Cromwell was desecrated as a regicide not a 'war criminal'.

Remains were often put on display: for 300 years, right up to the 18th century, Katherine de Valois lay in Westminster Abbey, 'to be seen and handled of any who will much desire it' Samuel Pepys gave her a kiss. Closer to the Hammer Horror version were the events of the great plague of 1665, such as an entire horse and cart ending up in a plague pit when a driver lost control. She finds some surprising material: despite the huge pressure of the newly dead during the black death of 1348, Londoners were not hurled into mass graves but were usually stacked neatly, five deep, with their heads to the west so they were correctly aligned for Judgment Day.

Necropolis catharine arnold