Cold Case: The Pursuit of Justice | Full Episode

[Music] at the University of Dundee Centre for anatomy and human identification the history cold-case team is about to embark on a remarkable new investigation we have got a hundred and thirteen skeletons Oh male signs of unusual conditions we're not talking about one or two skeletons we're talking about hundreds so it's a very big story the case will be led by forensic anthropologist professor sue black dr. xanthi mallet will gather historical evidence while professor caroline wilkinson will rebuild the faces of the dead in York more than a hundred skeletons have been found in ten mass graves it's an extraordinary archaeological find and the biggest case the team has ever had to deal with why did so many people die here very very unusual I've never seen a grave like that to be honest with you the trail will transport us back 350 years to one of the most traumatic and pivotal events in British history you just lunge forward straight into the faces of the enemy there to a time when medical intervention could be as dangerous as life on the battlefield if I take it off of the shoulder the chances are you will die when men believed they were caught up in Armageddon they thought that they will fight him in the last battle between Christ and the forces of Antichrist and to one man's surprising story Oh gracious that will not only change our views on how the English Civil War was fought but provide a unique window into the birth of democracy itself [Music] in the heart of York the history cold-case team has set up its mobile forensic unit near where the remains of 113 people were recently excavated this is the biggest case the team has ever taken on members of the local archaeological community lay out a selection of remains from 10 mass graves discovered in 2008 just beyond the city walls every single skeleton is male but there are also the boxed remains of two further bodies that have especially troubled archaeologists since excavation their bones show signs of puzzling abnormalities why did 113 men end up buried together and what's the truth behind the disfigured bodies there's a lot of dead people here and so there needs to be an explanation for why you've got so many in one place every single one of those people will have a story some of them are going to have a really interesting story to tell [Music] professor sue black and doctors anthe mallet fly-in from Dundee HQ together they will carry out a preliminary examination of the recovered bones [Music] immediately they find many signs of healed trauma and bone breaks occasion it's really hard to dislocate that joint really really hard to dislocate it it looks as if there's a bit of remodeling going on at the wrist I wonder if that's a previous fracture and there are signs of serious infections oh look at this oh look at the amount of bone that's being made down that is nasty that without that's that's very nasty that's very painful for that time that it's been active it's a lot of bone being laid and that's that's infective you know you've got nerve endings that are inflamed we've got the past formation oh it's just and it's late but it's localized a simple course of antibiotics today and that's gone yeah yet all the bones are of strong young and middle-aged men I think we're looking at male quite well defined chin quite robust yeah I'm okay with that with no obvious cause of death they've got previous fractures and they've got they've got trouble associated with their previous life but why how did they die don't know there's no evidence of a cause of death on here any of them neither there's no obvious disease process there's no obvious trauma process there's nothing so whatever killed him may have killed them but it hasn't left me nothing and there's lots and lots of things that don't leave a mark they turn their attention to the two boxes that the archaeologists have marked out as being particularly strange inside the first the skeleton of an incredibly muscular male at first glance consistent with the rest of the group talking about quite a big but I think is interesting is that that clavicles being bone dying onto their really really tightly so there's huge muscle mass it's not only robust what you've also got within that bone is a huge amount of yeah torsion you can see as you can see and that's the muscle attaching onto there actually see moving trying to getting more of a grip yep so he's very well-built but he has one highly unusual feature that sets him apart oh wow his hand bones are fused together okay see that's interesting okay I'll tell you why that's interesting because that is a congenital fusion of the carpals congenital carpal fusion really really rare but there's not going to have been much in the way of disability you know all you losing is a little bit of movement like that so you know his his little finger gets stuck out there it doesn't ever come across here then there is the final set of remains for Sue and Xanthi to examine oh this man has an even more dramatic bone defect his elbow and knee are both fused the bones have grown together to sue this does not look like the trauma found on the other bodies oh boy you know it could be so many things if you take the left limb so there's the humerus sitting like that fused at right angles at the elbow but look how it's used and the fused knee joint is even more debilitating that is outrageous that's a very odd but look at that buttress that you've got on here so muscles huge amount of muscle that way you're asking somebody who is kind of wasting and not move right functionally that would it be better if it was fused of course Rakel yeah sue has found what she thinks might be a rare congenital condition in two different men her first thought could they be related that is the singularly most unusual set of carpal coalition's that I have ever seen and right next door to it is the most outrageous fusion of an elbow at 90 degrees and a knee at 90 degrees I'd really like to know if they're related yeah the condition suffered by these two men is entirely unexpected given the nature of the rest of the group he has a distinct disability a distinct disability it's now a two-fold investigation firstly the group as a whole over a hundred men who were they and what killed them all but also what is the story of these two men with their dramatically fused bones the evidence at the moment if we were looking at this in a purely cold light of day forensic scenario is we have two individuals male of mature age adult males who have got congenital abnormalities or we suspect them to be we can't make any other link at this stage but watch the space testing gets underway immediately including DNA sampling CT scanning isotopic analysis and carbon dating so what I'm gonna do now is take some samples of this femur which is the right leg bone of the male with the strange development I'm going to take two different samples one's going to be used for these stable isotopes looking at the provenance seeing possibly telling us about diet and maybe where they were the other ones going to be used for dating and sample so that's going to really pin down when these people died the team will need to wait some weeks of the results to come back in the meantime Shanthi needs to gather evidence from the area so next morning she meets local archaeologist Graham Bruce who supervised the excavations [Music] Grahame have been excavating a site just a hundred yards or so outside york city walls defenses that have stood since Roman times okay here we are this is the site where we found all the mass graves back in the Middle Ages there was a church on this site and Grahame expected to find a traditional medieval graveyard but instead he was shocked to uncover large pits containing the bodies of over a hundred men we've got some pictures of the graves themselves in here see on this one where you've got and they all lined up they're lined up within the graves where were the mass graves within booyah they were predominantly within the church itself respecting the main bound main wall lines so the walls must have still been standing and is partially when the graves were cut into the mass graves were dug inside the church and Graham believes this must have happened sometime after records show it fell into ruins in the 1580s and Graham also believes the graves must date from before the 1700s by the 18th century in New York is well you've got better cartographic but sources and the maps show this area is open agricultural land with no other buildings on it so you haven't got anywhere you'd be wanting to put a major 18th century burial ground there carbon dating will confirm whether Graham's theory is correct but if the mass graves do date from around the 1600s what does Graham think could be the cause looking at the actual way in which they've been buried what are your theories why aren't this when we started finding mass graves you do start obviously trying to work out why it's it's it's clearly a major fairly cataclysmic event that has created all these people being dying at the same time and in the mid 17th century you have the English Civil War Graham's theory is that these bodies could have been victims of the English Civil War with no women and children amongst the group could they in fact have been soldiers dating back to one of Britain's most brutal and savage periods of conflict back at Dundee HQ Xanthian sue get professor Caroline Wilkinson up to speed using computer graphics of the burial sites and the two most curious bodies now what you can see here is the church the church who is in ruins which was no ruins I understand so I'll reserve the wines of the room yes yeah and these are our two individuals but not treated any different them they're borrowed things I'll get the same exactly the same way a lot of them women 113 you can say that I'm we're really quickly but then when you actually see it no it's like an awful lot of people and somebody's taking care putting them all in like that we're beginning carbon dates but we don't have those yet so obviously they're going to help us pinpoint it but really we're looking at the civil war simply because of where they are and also the number of people in that type of demographic of population so we'll know more but this is quite helpful contextually the team agrees that the obvious starting place for the larger investigation is to gather more details on the Civil War and how it might have affected the city of York I'm absolutely happy that you know we can explain it in terms of a potential military because that fits that you've got a lot of men of fighting sort of aged together and how is it the man with severely fused knee and elbow came to be buried amongst what could be a group of soldiers we fought a lot more to find out about this guy I spoke what you would have been doing in this population for a start yeah because he is mean he's disabled yeah absolutely there's no getting away from the fact that he's got a physical disability as a disabled man do and military services and like the others he was strong sites of muscle attachment so he was active oh yeah yeah it's a big story [Music] even thinking about the occupations that he might have been involved in I was really quite exciting because wine earth is he buried with all these men who I suspect you know are relatively healthy if you can be when you're dead but you know relatively healthy young men of fighting age perhaps in a military background what's he doing there [Music] professor Caroline Wilkinson is going to reconstruct the faces of the two men with the puzzlingly fused bones she starts with the man in his early forties with just the fused hand hazel burn excellent so we've got quite a prominent nose but it doesn't look underdeveloped at this early stage this man's face seems unaffected by his bone condition though Caroline spots something that will affect his appearance he's lost one of his front teeth at the top and that's before he died so it's well healed this appears consistent with him being a soldier losing your front incisors is something that's common with people who fight the teeth next to it look pretty healthy there they're not showing signs of decay so you know maybe it being knocked out would be their most likely option but what are the more severely affected man with fused elbow and knee looks significantly younger that's a frontal bone very pronounced from tall boxing so in other words this brow Ridge very male characteristic big nasal bones they're similar to the last man and with this skull there are possible signs of abnormal bone development is there so yeah the height of the orbit looks very small that is quite a short distance as well between the nose and the mouth it's gonna be really interesting to put this all together to see what happens to the rest of the face Caroline scans in the fractured pieces of both skulls using a 3d laser scanner final rebuilding will happen using computer software then the full effects of any disorder on their faces will start to emerge [Music] but how did these two men and a hundred and eleven others end up in mass graves in York and how involved was the city in the Civil War the first English Civil War was fought from 1642 to 1646 when supporters of Parliament rebelled against the tyrannical rule of King Charles the first at the outset England was divided with parliamentarian forces controlling the south and the north under royalist control York was seen as the key to controlling the entire north of England and historical records recount that in the spring of 1644 parliamentary forces pushed north and laid siege to the city so what impact this have on York and its population high up on the city's walls Xanthi meets Civil War historian Martin Bennett who is fighting well inside the city you've got the royalist army avail of Newcastle about 4,000 of his soldiers inside the city for this side where we are okay he's outside outside are three parliamentarian armies when all three armies have gathered around there are about 30,000 foot the most but surely it would be easy thanks take the city with 30,000 men there are two ways of taking a city one is by storm and the other is to starve it out both of them carry their risks and parliamentarians initially attempt to starve the garrison out but that wasn't going to be easy it seems that the royalist soldiers had swept up all crops from the surrounding areas and were well-prepared the people inside in New York it's not as bad as it could be they don't get to the stage of eating dogs and cats and rats because there's plenty of food plenty of water plenty of breweries in town making beer which is cost safer to drink than water and effectively they have enough to survive the 11 weeks of this siege thirty thousand parliamentarian soldiers spent three months camped outside the city walls it seems that this was the critical moment for York's involvement in the civil war were our a hundred and thirteen part of this besieging force amazingly the siege is particularly well documented at nearby King's Manor Martin talked Xanthi through who took part in sine you've got the Earl of New Castle's trips with the Royalists retreating inside the walls parliamentarian forces gathered around the city what happens first is that the Scots arrive in this area between the ooze it flows into the city of news it flows out so all of this sector here is occupied by Scots forces and Fairfax's forces occupy on this side from views here right round deliver force what then happens is towards the end of May is the Earl of Manchester's army arrives and occupies the northern territories they kind of side of the city is completely ringed yeah and as soon as that is achieved then they begin to move inwards on the walls so the suburbs begin to fall into the hands of Parliament and Martin has a theory about which of these armies our men could have come from Fairfax this forces begin to take over the suburbs outside wounded aha so does that mean that all mass grave is over here it's in this area here ok that is good from the city walls Martin believes our men could have been soldiers from one very particular part of the parliamentarian army 6,000 men under the command of Lord Fairfax it's remarkable progress so early in the case but it will take the results from the isotope testing to tell the team exactly where our soldiers came from but what are the injuries to the bones sue & xanthi saw in the forensic tent are these consistent with soldiers fighting in the Civil War xanthan goes to Heslington Hall where Lord Fairfax set up his camp during the siege she meets Graham Webb and Richard [ __ ] from the sealed not to learn about the weaponry roles and injuries typical of 17th century warfare so here we have muzzle loading musket okay mainly used for firing a lead ball yeah it was inaccurate so you're unlikely to actually hit anybody with it although that's no comfort to anybody that's standing in front of it no although there are no signs of musket ball damage on our men's bones Richard thinks the musket could still be responsible occasionally somebody would get hit and you'd get a horrific smash injuries and your friends would perhaps be falling down next to you yeah eventually the morale of the group that you were firing at would perhaps break and they would run and at which point you turn it round the other way and you go chasing after them and this is the real damage that is done with the butt-end of the musket but how would this actually worked in practice Richard thinks a musket used this way round could be responsible for leg breaks dislocated elbows and broken clavicle bones in the shoulder these are exactly the kind of injuries Xanthian sue saw on the remains in the 10th but what of the large muscle attachments also found on the bones could this be explained by another weapon commonly used by soldiers of the time the pike the biggest and heaviest men carried these right now if when you charge your pike if you drop that Pike straight down to your own wobble behind yes you can then charge your Pike at the enemy that we're at right under it you feel a way to better keep that on your cheek and if you are hunched back a bit and put your elbow on your hip there you should take the weight there you feel like oh I'm sorry so we have to do now is you just lunge forward straight into the faces of the enemy there ah and again I would have gone I would go straight for the eye it takes a lot of strength to wear this as well as balance and technique so you'd expect quite well both guys absolutely the people that used them were particularly selected from their strength and height and stature so the pikemen are really the Brawn of the outfit absolutely yes all the historical evidence appears to indicate our men were soldiers from the Civil War but will the carbon dating results confirm this 1482 1687 model 1480s so that's fine yes these dates cover a broad period with the Civil War lying at the latter end but the team know they can eliminate the earlier dates because of the archaeological evidence on the ground the Church if you remember was finished usage in 1580 that's why it was ruins when it looks like these men have gone in there were no 1582 1687 and in the middle of that right slap-bang almost in the middle of that is siege date yes with the siege being the only time in this period when so many men were gathered together in York dating the burial to the English Civil War now seems certain what's important is that that it supports yeah what what everything is telling us so I think like those large numerous the regimentation of the burials the fact that they're in the church they're close to the the city walls everything is saying it's got a big seat yeah it's gotta be our 113 men likely never lived long enough to see victory when the Royalists gave up and left York in July 1644 and whether they were definitely parliamentarian soldiers under Lord Fairfax's command will only be confirmed when the isotope results come in the team also still don't know what the cause of death of the men was although the skeletons showed no fatal wounds many did have healed injury and there were signs of infection could infections like these have killed all 113 of the men to help understand what the cause of death might have been Xanthi meets up with historian Rory McCready in a typical Civil War surgery she starts by showing Rory some of the injuries from our men's bones here we've got sharp force trauma to the elbow so outside of the elbow pretty deep actually yeah what would have caused this well that was probably made by a sword quite a deep cut probably in that sort of direction so some sort of defensive injury yes it seems the surgeons did have some understanding of infection and how to manage it what we'll do then is we would get something like oats and I'm gonna get honey I'm gonna mix the two together to make it into a paste and then this will be put into the wound and then would sew the wound up with that inside the wound why do they need that in because it helps to heal the honey will be used as an antiseptic we didn't understand that but we knew that it worked in fact today in some hospitals when antibiotics don't work they're using honey again to fight infections but as these treatments were nowhere near as effective as modern solutions if the infection continued to spread the surgeons had one last resort amputation if I take your arm off of the elbow you have about a 50/50 chance of surviving the operation if I take it off at the shoulder the chances are you will die amputation was actually a highly sophisticated procedure surgeons were well versed in what we do first of all is we at this memory knife like this one here but cutting edges on the inside it's pretty sitting that's nice it is my assistant would hold your arm extremely Tikes act like a torniquet huh the surgeon would then plunge the knife into the limb till he hits bone and then in a very fast motion go round in a circular motion to become back where we started open in a can it is he or she would then yank the skin and muscle up the bone tweaks to expose the bone yeah the bone sort would then be used and as high as possible I would soar through the bones hopefully I'm unconscious might not necessary be okay when you've sawn through the limb yeah we then cauterized the wound this would then go on the end of the stump yeah what happens then if it's done if they'd done it right the skin and muscle should be longer than the back yeah this should come down over the end and now I've got squidgy bits to play with yeah this will be pinned through the wound and then put another pin the other way why that way you can clobber tightness you'd put a figure of eight loop of thread over the two ends of the pin right are coming on the next day and what I'd do is if I'd make that figure of eight tighter and tighter and tighter to draw the skin of muscle over the end of the stomach that's very clever very clever they may not have had today's medical expertise and equipment but Civil War surgeons were certainly competent enough to stop all our 113 men dying in one go simple infection can't be our cause of death back in Dundee sue is taking a closer look at the two skeletons with the extraordinary fused bones this individual was exceptional because this is the one where we had the most outrageous fusion that occurred at the elbow so the hand permanently fixed in that position and then as if that wasn't enough quite frankly the absolute and utter PS de resistance look at that it's just the most outrageous specimen I think I've ever seen so that we've got the the long shaft of the femur the thigh bone we've got the tibia the shin bone at right angles and where there should be a knee there isn't a knee it's it's fix bone Sue's research has led her to believe that this could be a condition with the rarest classification possible occurring in a maximum one person in every two hundred thousand and best illustrated by the other man's fused hand they call it carpal coalition syndrome because that's the most common bits that fuse together all of these little bones when bone forms before it becomes bone it's a big mass of cartilage and if you think of it like cheddar cheese that big lump of cheese was never cut and so we think that this is about a malformation of the joints this is a rare genetic condition to find one of those is rare to find two individuals that may be displaying the same thing it can't be a coincidence it absolutely can't be a coincidence sue has discovered that the man with the dramatically fused knee and elbow also has fused bones in his wrist it's significant new evidence to link the conditions of the two men he has a carpal coalition - but it's only two of the bones and the bones that it is are the bones that are sitting down at the base of the thumb so this one that's called the trapezium and the trapezoid these two little bones have fused together carpel coalition syndrome is a genetic condition that's passed from parent to child it's inherited if it's in your family it stays in your family and what's the likelihood of that occurring randomly alongside somebody else with that yeah I don't like coincidences I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy and I don't believe in coincidence but sue has to be sure so the bones are put through a CT scanner which looks inside the bones to give detailed images viewable from any angle [Music] will the results confirm or disprove Sue's diagnosis [Music] along with her colleague dr. Roos Ozma she scours the images these are the whole tree laid out as eventful to scanner business isn't that amazing I look at that me huge and look at that Alba this is the meaning this go back go back go back go back go back go back go back go back look isn't that interesting when you've got the two pillars of the joint they're continuous all the other bits of the Bona forms all the normal growing bits are there what isn't there is the joint space in between yeah yeah there's no joint space that isn't trauma that isn't disease that that embryologically yep that's that's our multiple synostosis syndrome that's the most amazing image Sue's instincts are confirmed the only question now is okay we know they've got that syndrome we've diagnosed the syndrome are they related DNA samples have been taken from the bones of the two men under sterile conditions these results could confirm any familiar link between the two soldiers but the results are still some days away [Applause] what is already clear is that the man with the fused arm and leg would have had to live with his disability from birth but how would he have coped with such severe disability 350 years ago and what function could he have served in a civil war army Xanthi heads to Kent University to meet Julie Anderson specialists in the history of disability Julie has brought along a range of wooden replica crutches and supports the disabled soldier could have used they looked pretty simple just whatever is gonna help somebody get around yes crutch designed remains very simple until the 20th century they were generally pieces of wood carved with some padding put on the the support area under the arm so how mobile would the man have been to find out Julie's assistant jack is given replica crutches and a knee support the man would likely have used let's see if you can not fall over yeah now imagine if you like this all the time you'd obviously get a bit more efficient but he's moving all right isn't he we're not looking at somebody who were just you know had to sit down or not do anything and he's still got use of this hand even though it literally it's here that's fused so you could still use all the movement at the shoulder and you've still got a viable wrist right he wouldn't have fought but Julie is sure there were plenty of other jobs he could have done his job would have perhaps been an ancillary worker perhaps a cook or maybe even as he was a big man who guarding at the Ordnance where or where the munitions and the muskets and things like that were kept despite a permanently fused elbow and knee he could have functioned quite well you're standing a bent right balancing now what do you think you managed to be a cook or a guard or something imagine to balance my finishing but you get used to it so yeah with the right arm you can actually do a lot of things so it's about time you imagine see yeah I mean it's great to see it firsthand how this could have looked because when you just see the remains you think this guy would have been pretty much stuck doing nothing exactly and Julie has rare illustrations of how people affected by disability may have lived around that time I've got some images here of a range of disabled people from the period so I've got musical instruments and things well they would have been working people you have to remember that there was no institutionalization really before the 19th century so people had to just go out and make their own living which a lot of people did as best they could but some of these were in pairs that this person looks blind and they're being led by somebody else yes that was common - they would probably get together in bands yeah and and look after each other it's the same for our man in the military he would have been part of a group and they would have looked after him they wouldn't have seen him as unusual no not at all in fact the word normal doesn't really come into common usage in the English language until the early part of the 19th century who is that it's no purpose for it no it wasn't necessary people were just who they were but despite this apparent tolerance relatives often suffered extreme religious beliefs or disability as a sign that the person's family had committed a sin they would be ostracized and they would be shunned by their communities and it was difficult some families had to move away but often when the disabled person grew up they would leave home and the military could prove useful in these circumstances what disabled people actually have gone into the military to relieve their families of that burden absolutely and because unemployment was a problem amongst disabled people often the military provided a haven for them in order for them to be paid at a job so it's not a surprise to have found the disabled in the Army even holding down a key job nor is it a surprise to find two disabled men grouped together for support [Music] back in Dundee Caroline and her colleague Chris rin are close to reconstructing what our two men may have looked like the older man is missing his front tooth from the blow to the face he took likely in battle but the more severely disabled man's face has been more complicated it's been a really challenging process for me with this one this was very definitely a symmetry that was extreme it's just been really interesting to try and show the face of someone with a congenital condition and we're seeing some dysmorphia some changes to the facial structure that may be connected to this condition what I've done is to take in their nose from a database and then try and distort that to fit with the bones you can see that we've got quite a bent shape to the lateral nasal bones the bones on the side of the nose which is suggesting this shape here and one of the things that I've noted a lot in the literature for this condition and we may have to consider giving him cross eyes because that seems to be a likely option but were these two men really related as their shared rare condition suggests [Music] to find out the team gather to hear the results of the DNA analysis with sue especially on tenterhooks frustratingly they came back like that now you've already gone too far they don't have the same mother but we've got DNA artists yes DNA was viable it does not appear to be contaminated okay but apparently they're looking for the male lineage on the Y chromosome is much you've got to don't go right down to the nuclear level and the DNA is not viable at that level don't look at me like that so because of this we can't say that suddenly Knox Rather's maternal brothers but we can say that they we can't tell and they're not maternally related frustratingly for Sue the DNA shows the two men aren't related by mother and it isn't good enough quality to prove whether they were related by father or not but Sue's not going to give up on her theory easily so it is possible that they could still be related yeah but we just can't show it I think you know that the chances of having this condition in individuals who are not related and are in the same pretty much almost the same grave at the same time it would be stretching it a bit far they could still be cousins or half-brothers but where were they from the isotope results are also in will these help to determine whether the men were part of Lourdes Fairfax's parliamentary army the to do have the same isotopic signature and I've got some interesting data for the diet which is which is quite specifically interesting to these guys they had a 20 to 25 percent fish intake in their diet which is really high normally we'd be looking at 0 to 5 percent in York you can have an unless it's fresh water but these have got a really high fish both of the brothers so it has to be coastal this is a fascinating discovery for the team the isotopes say both our men had high marine diets but how does this fit with the theory that they were part of Fairfax's Army in York Civil War expert Andrew hopper thinks he has the answer and has invited xanthi to the Yorkshire port of Hull to explain Pohl was the most important northern port town held by Parliament during the civil wars prior to the siege of York it was also the base of the parliamentarian commander in Yorkshire Lord Fairfax quite a large proportion of Lord Fairfax is parliamentarian army from Yorkshire came from Holland in the parishes around it that was a large merchant fleet based here and many of the seamen volunteered to fight for Parliament so you say that these guys I've been looking at that I presumed soldiers would actually have originally been sailors it's very likely that they had been yes but why would sailors be useful to Lord Fairfax in the siege of York wholesalers would overall have been experienced cannoneers experienced artillerymen they would have served on merchant vessels that had been armed and they'd also been probably quite Hardy folk having sailed across continued notes across the North Sea there would have been prized commodities in a siege situation so our men's experience with cannon or board ship could have made them highly useful in a siege war though Fairfax invested the city from the southeast between the rivers force and whose and set up his gun batteries on LAN or Hill and from there they will pour down fire where the Royalists defenses were that's really interesting because the mass graves and specifically these two brothers in arms' they were buried very near there so they were probably had to part of this actual military operation where they yes I should think it's very likely do we have any documentary evidence available from the time well the garrison accounts of whole in 1642 and 1643 survived and they're very detailed and they give us the names of three of the Gunners really of the cannoneers in Hull oh is this is this actually from the original document a copy that yes we have here Thomas Coates further than the cannoneers at the blockhouse James Hunter and the cannon is in the town and another gentleman here cowling the gunner mentioned in the accounts it's a bit of a reach but theoretically one of these men could be one of the the men I've been looking at well if they weren't one of the men you were looking at it's very likely they would have been very well known or personally known to them that's pretty close isn't it but why would a group of sailors give up their livelihoods and sign up to fight in Fairfax's land army was there a greater motivation behind their actions [Music] shanthi meets Civil War specialist Diane Perkis at Holy Trinity in York a simple Church she believes the parliamentarian soldiers would have approved of they felt this was what God wanted absolute plainness and spanis anything else was an insult to him this plainness permeated people's whole lives you'd live the right way you'd be chaste you'd be abstinent you'd read the Bible every day many ordinary Englishman joined the parliamentarian cause because they hated the elaborate ritual estate Church King Charles the first stood for as well as his belief he was appointed by God to rule by divine right he tried to impose on the Church of England a much more posh hierarchical glittering Bishop driven kind of model of what the Church of England ought to be and these people didn't want to borrow of it but they also thought that was actually icon worship something that pretended to represent God that actually broke the second commandment where God says thou shalt not make him to thyself a graven image how do we go from religious fervor to war well some of these guys actually thought that they were fighting in the last battle between Christ and the forces of Antichrist some of the more radical ones believed that if they acted rightly it would actually inspire Christ to come down from heaven and rule the world and save the world and save the world and create an ideal world that's worth dying for then it's a massive cause yeah exactly and Diane has written evidence of the soldiers religious fervor this is actually a letter that was sent to London this man plainly thought he was God's soldiers it's actually headed a relation of the great victory obtained by God's assistance by the parliaments forces and the letter itself says sir by God's blessing I can tell you I am alive and so are you and by God's victorious armed the Church of God is alive so each and every man thought he was God soldier yeah and they thought the army was the Church of God so now the opposing Royalists in the field are God's enemy is them radicalized that's how we see it today that's right yeah so the experience of serving in this army and thinking these kinds of religious thoughts has radicalized this man was it this same religious conviction that drove our men to the siege of York and their eventual demise the team believed they now know where the men were from they know who they were fighting for and what their motivation was but they still don't know how they died there is evidence of having fracture occur to bone but it's very well healed there's an evidence of of infection to bone but again it's very well healed all of this is consistent with them being a fighting force but it's not consistent with what caused their death and if you can rule out the infection side and the trauma side the only thing that's really left is a feasible cause of death is going to be disease has to be disease as the most likely cause of death for so many individuals our doctors have dealt with disease back in the 17th century Xanthi goes to the Museum of the history of science in Oxford to meet medical historian dr. Erica charters the box erica has a remarkable device used to treat disease and fever until the late 19th century and similar to those doctors would have used during the English Civil War this is actually to let blood right now this is where the exciting that happens this would go right up against your skin yeah Oh before you know it it would cut into your skin it would make very small incisions and this would allow you to let some blood out and of course bloodletting was well it's been very popular for a long time so definitely in the 17th century they would have been doing this so you just press the button there oh it's quite powerful it's quite powerful and you can see oh yeah where it's cut into the pin yeah so was there an idea that there were poisons in the blood that you actually wanted to release why bloodletting very much so and what we do see especially for fevers remembering if you think of how someone looks who has a fever they're flushed they're very warm their pulse is beating very quickly so it almost looks like they have an excess of blood so it's not surprising that some people felt that letting out some of that excess of blood would return you to health does it actually have any benefits not that we know I know with little more than bloodletting as a treatment and with thousands of men camped closely together during the siege erica believes she knows what could have killed the 113 men something like typhus fever the incubation is probably around three weeks and very commonly what we see in Diaries of seizures is that after about three weeks during a siege we see outbreaks of disease how does it spread well it's very contagious typhus is interesting because it's spread through body lice and they actually live in the seams of your clothing so it's a particular kind of insect which is a vector for the pathogen and what's interesting about it is the lice only like living at the temperature of your body so they will only stay in your clothes when you're wearing your clothes which is why we often see it in sieges it's very common in winter time when people keep their clothes on so it could possibly have been there even during the summer in York what are the symptoms well it's a general fever a kind of weakening very often a very intense headache sometimes you see a rash how many people died of typhus well it depends we know that when we look at a case fatality rate so if you catch it what the chances are that you will die we've seen during the First World War it reached rates such as 70% and because it's so contagious if you're in a small area together there's a good chance that almost everyone will catch it because it was so contagious did they die from this more so than from fighting it would be much more likely that you might die of disease and of course it's not a very glorious death know one thing to die on the battlefield it's another thing to die of something like diarrhea or a fever it's not exactly the way that you want to go the team finally has a plausible if tragic explanation for how the men in the mass graves died a virulent outbreak of typhus fever a disease that has afflicted besieging armies from ancient times right up to Stalingrad in the Second World War with the final part of the puzzle in place it's time for the story the bones have told to be relayed back to the local community the cold-case team has returned to York there to hear their findings are those who originally excavated the site and experts who have assisted the team I'm hoping to find out more of why they died more about why they were buried in that particular spot and who buried them and the what period of the civil wars they were buried in all those questions that purely the historical evidence isn't able to answer the facial reconstructions is something I haven't been involved with before and hopefully that alert gives an insight in a closer insight into the people who were dealing with ghoulishly exciting sue reveals the bigger story of the Civil War it's reasonable to suspect that they're going to be fighting men she unpacks how the men would have died what do we find in terms of a cause of death well we don't find trauma what we've been told is that in fact more people died as a result of disease the more intimate story of disability his right leg would have been fixed that way a condition that is so rare we don't have an incidence for the rarity of it and how the science tied to remarkable men's lives together in death so now what we've got are two individuals buried in the same location with the rarest of genetic conditions not with the same mother hopefully their father had a bike but not with the same mother with exactly the same stable isotopes in terms of where they've come from and with exactly the same unusual marine based diet of a very high proportion they have got to go together the final part of the investigation is to bring these two soldiers back to life beginning with the man with just a fused hand it's a strong face it's very strong face yes that require a pleasant face he would fit it and amongst us with me then there is the more severely affected man [Music] now I don't know whether his squint I who was inward pointing or outward pointing and when we looked at the literature inward pointing seemed to be more common these guys would have been used to seeing people he'd had much more major battlefield wounds and you know like your face cut in half by a cavalry saber you're losing an eye to a pike that asymmetry is relatively slight in comparison with what they would have seen and for sue it's this man's story that has been the greatest revelation he was active so he's not he's not a passive person he's been with the rest of them treated the same way as the rest of them whether we know might think of him differently in terms of a disability that disability wasn't being recognized as him being an outcast he was treated very very much like the others it is an absolutely unique set of remains it is fascinating [Music] they give us that opportunity to bring the science in use the historical background and it really fleshes out those people that were dealing with during that quite mulch or speriod of english history the science gave you everything I was hoping for it gave you that element that the historical document can't deal with it gave us something beyond the paper beyond the page and beyond the text the guy with the disabilities I was just fascinated that such a guy could find a place in Fairfax's ami I think that tells us something so important about the way this mall was developing and the way people were thinking because plane we've got an evolving meritocracy here every man was supposed to be good for their job and if they were good for their job that was good enough and that was what led really to the modern parliamentary democracy that we all enjoy the cold-case team has uncovered two remarkable tales the larger story of the hundred and thirteen strong committed men fighting for a cause tragically cut down by disease before their victory was assured but also the personal story of two men likely closely related who despite huge disadvantages stayed together in life and death forever brothers in arms the story complete their remarkable bones are now handed back to the community this has been such an amazing story because it brings so many different elements together it is a huge historical story but it's also an incredibly important story I'm not aware in the literature of anywhere of this type of remains ever having been recorded before I think this is a first I may be wrong but I think it is a first in a specially extended news night the dramatic end of the news of the world newspaper and they expected arrest of former editor Andy Coulson tomorrow we speak to ed Miliband news of the world employees MPs and editors and the veteran journalist Bob Woodward [Music]

Channel: Banijay History

Views: 200,050

Keywords: cold case, cold case detective, cold case files, cold case files episodes, cold case files new episodes, crime investigation, crime scene investigation, documentary film, documentary full, documentary history, facts, forensic science, full documentary, full length documentaries, history, history channel, history documentary, investigation, top documentaries, true crime, true crime show, watch cold case files, world history

Id: WW7CG0jpryE

Length: 58min 55sec (3535 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 17 2018