Victorian Cold Case - History Cold Case - S01 EP04 - History Documentary

[Music] Britain's finest unit for forensic investigation he's marking on a new the  ground recognition experts in   human identification they use the full  arsenal of modern technology [Music] but now for the first time they're applying these  skills to identify bodies from the long distant   past it's very exciting for us to be able to take  the skills that we use on a daily basis and apply   them to look at historical skeletons to see just  how far we can go forensic anthropology facial   reconstruction and painstaking research will be  used to open new windows on history as dramatic   personal stories emerge from long-forgotten  bones historical research is allowing me to   investigate people's experiences at different  times throughout history we certainly had a nasty   crack to the top of his head but could well have  contributed to his death so we've got the face   the facial reconstruction and we've added some  textures yes are severe that that is just super the latest case surrounds the  heavily scarred skeleton of a   woman that has puzzled historians since she  was excavated by the Museum of London in 1992 [Music] the bones reveal shocking new  truths about life on the streets of   Victorian London this is an open wound  that's right and the case takes a dark   and dramatic turn men I'm afraid will  find children sexually attractive can   they piece together the woman's identity to  discover why she was left in an unmarked grave this is a mystery isn't it the cold-case team is   heading back to one of the darkest  chapters of the 19th century [Music] this is the Center for anatomy and human  identification at Dundee University professor   sue black will carry out the initial observation  on this mysterious skeleton with her colleague   doctors of this stage they have very little  information but as they lay out the bones   it's clear this skeleton has a story to tell  the gender and age quickly become apparent   everything about it female grassland so in terms  of supraorbital ridges flat sides yeah Nicoll   lines you can see just the edge of the epiphysis  now it's not finished growing so that puts her   down in into the 20s category quite comfortably  by measuring the long bones of the leg they can   estimate this young woman's height that's equals  four foot seven absolutely but the most dramatic   aspect of her skeleton are the scars visible  on almost every bone of her body we've got   a significant evidence of an infective okay  situation right which is throughout the body   very prominent within the skull well he even got  up on the back of the manubrium that's it says   just following absolute textbook syphilis the  whole thing syphilis was once one of the most   feared bacterial diseases in the world arriving in  Europe around 1490 it once affected up to 15% of   the British population it's just so heavy because  there's been so much bone alteration deposition   that must have been so painful okay female young  adult very very very short very very very short   with syphilis she's just a little small young  adult and at the same time what you've got are   superimposed upon this the horror that would have  been syphilis the fact that not only is her bone   being eaten away and the pain associated with  that but the disfigurement that comes with it   as well and the disfigurement that comes with it  is a cruel disfigurement because preferentially it   wants to go to your face it's not the kind of  face that children would happily look at it's   the kind of face that children would cry at and  that's quite sad for someone who's so very young so this is the body of a young  woman probably in her twenties   she was around four foot seven tall and  was ravaged by syphilis to reconstruct   the details of her life the team will  need to delve into a murky world of   cracks and agonizing treatments for a  disease that remained a medical mystery KACE reference suin xanthi bring together the rest  of the team at the evidence board dr. Caroline   Wilkinson will carry out the facial reconstruction  while dr. Wolfram Meyer organ Stein will analyze   trace minerals in the bones these will reveal  information about her diet her social status   and where she might have lived and died an area  of extensive area of alteration on the frontal   bone the other area of where the changes are most  extensive are down at the lower end of the lower   limbs and this is a fairly typical pattern for  syphilis which is quite far advanced it's not the   stage of syphilitic change where that the face is  eaten away in terms of bone there may be a little   going on on the nasal bones what those photographs  also show is extensive bowing on the legs as well   I think that's probably as a result of rickets I  think we've got a dietary deficiency in there as   well and then you would see BCD somebody for more  word about lower social speakers I think that's   probably presumably the archaeologists will will  be happy about the dating and the location you   need to go and find out so go need to come from  any artifacts associated with her anybody else   in that vicinity is she on consecrated ground or  a lot all of those sorts of things yeah in terms   of hard evidence all they have is a set of bones  but there are doorway into the story and for sue   black that's the beauty of the challenge [Music]  she was dealt a fairly mean set of cards it wasn't   a good hand she was given if you just looked at it  as being a skeleton nothing more than a skeleton   then you're just not seeing below the surface and  everybody every single person has got a story and   it's our job to try and find the story and the  more we can personalize that person the more we   can feel we get to know them zamp his job is to go  in search of historical clues about who the woman   was and what kind of life she had the trail will  start in London at the site where her body was   discovered facial reconstruction expert Caroline  wilkinson often has to deal with badly damaged   skulls when trying to rebuild a person's face  Caroline and I have known each other for a number   of years and I actively sought to take Caroline to  Dundee because she has a skill set that that I am   not aware that anybody else possesses she is the  best at what she does so that anything that comes   into here that involves faces its Caroline because  that's her area and nobody will beat her in that   but the diseased head of our woman will pose a  unique challenge the for Caroline starts work on   the reconstruction she examines the skull with her  colleague Caroline Needham we need to know about   these nasal bones because there's quite a bit  missing and that would obviously have an effect   on what her noses mmm well this is an interesting  skull because it's clearly got some pathological   condition that we need to take into account with  the reconstruction things like syphilis can affect   the shape and form of the soft tissues of so  we need to assess the severity of it how long   standing it will have been how long the person  had it for so that we can make a best estimate   of how that would have affected the features of  their face I always enjoy reconstructions where   we've got more of a challenge and it's nice to  be able to show conditions especially conditions   that we might not necessarily see in contemporary  population in an archaeological investigation with   the visual examination complete laser technology  creates a detailed 3d representation of the skull   the laser scan will be used as a base on top of  which the complex layers of muscle and tissue   can be added but it will be a few weeks before  the unique face of our woman starts to emerge   we all have the same muscles on our face but  because each skull is a slightly different   shape one school may be thinner and longer than  the other another may be fatter and so when she   model each of those muscles in place then  you will automatically get a different face   shape with different proportions because it's  the skull that dictates the muscle structure [Music] zamp he arrives in London to learn more  about where the skeleton was found and   start building a picture of her life what this  historical research is allowing me to do is to   really investigate people's experiences at  different times throughout history because   normally I actively don't look into the  person's history because your report has   to be objective scientific there can be  no personal influence I start with the   science and it ends with the science because  it has to because part of a forensic process [Music] tucked away in a back street of burrow near London  Bridge is a burial site known as crossbones this   was the last resting place of the young woman  vampy is here to meet Adrienne miles from the   Museum of London who excavated the body in 1992  these sites was actually underneath this big   brick building here which is an electricity  substation that was built as part the Jubilee   Line extension so you wanted to excavate the site  before that building was actually yes yes I think   we had six weeks to do this in six weeks what  happened this site after you excavated it did   you remove all of the remains all the remains  from underneath the building were removed the   unexcavated areas still have the power we are  now standing on untouched burial grounds yes   there are several thousand burials beneath their  feet there's a theory that it was a single woman's   burial ground prostitutes basically by the period  that we're excavating at it's very much the poor   ground for the parishes and saviours and the  people who would be buried here would be the   the poor of the parish bodies found in the river  people from the workhouse people couldn't afford   to pay for their own burials the history of the  site immediately suggests this woman came from   a very poor background all the burials were  in coffins but there are the poorest standard   that I've ever seen really you're looking at  reused wood it's probably cheap wood that's   coming off the docks I mean there's a couple  of photos here from the excavation as we're   very tightly packed honestly yes very much so  not only are they tightly packed horizontally   they're also up to 9 or 10 d really so this  whole Ground basically would have been eight   or nine ten deep in coffins that's basically what  you're walking on with some soil over the top yes   and not a lot of soil really and how far down  was the young we've been talking about within   a meter at the top of the excavation so she was  a fence so she would have been one of the latest   burials that we've dug in is there anything  that could help was really pin down a date or   at least time specifically when she might have  actually been interred the burial ground closes   in October 1853 so we know it's obviously so it  must be pre that given the intensive use of the   burial ground and the amount of burials that  were going in you wouldn't have survived in   place long yeah maybe as little as 10 or 20 years  so really from post 1830s really 1830s to 1853 yep   the crossbones woman was clearly not among  those benefiting from the burgeoning wealth   of the Victorian Empire at that time the Barrow  area of London was a slum filthy and overcrowded having learned that the woman was most likely  buried around the mid 19th century this gives the   team a window in which to research historical  records [Music] the Victorians are known for   keeping detailed population registers but  could the young woman be among the names [Music] Zonk has come to the London Metropolitan  archive to meet dr. David green from King's   College London we found this young woman she's  in an unmarked grave I was really hoping you   could find a potential name for her is that  something you think you could do is possibly   year of death is gonna be difficult because it's  unmarked but I've got a time period when I think   she may have been buried within yeah we're gonna  look at burial registers yeah each parish kept a   borough register all right we could look at  hospital records there's a couple hospitals   in a locality there's also a workhouse in the  locality and if she was poor well she may well   have died in the workhouse she was very poor  and interesting we know that she was suffering   from syphilis I don't know is it over that  she's been treated for that but certainly   she had a medical condition so that might be  a good place as well well those would be the   three places I'd star once we've got a set of  names we might even get an age let's see what   we can find I'm gonna go over the next few weeks  David will look through hundreds of Records from   the borough area he will cross-reference the  results of the team's forensic investigation   with hospital and burial records it's a long  shot but can he put a name to the skeleton [Music] the context of where and how the skeleton was found points to the woman having  come from a very poor background now it's up to science to confirm whether  her bones back up the historical evidence   [Music] in Dundee wolfram is carrying  out further analysis of the bones he knows what he's talking about he to  my mind as the grandfather of all stable   isotope analysis there is nobody else that I  would go to there is nobody else that I would   trust in terms of relaying that information for  a forensic investigation by studying the carbon   and nitrogen isotopes within the bones he can  discover details about the person's diets and   geographical movements during their lifetime  but in this case the fact that she was riddled   with syphilis has broken down the composition  of the bone and is affecting the results just   by looking at the bone you can see the attack  that has taken place her born no matter which   bone you're looking at in the skeleton that  has a pitted appearance so the chances are   that we will not get any meaningful data which  would give us an indication about geographical   provenance although he won't be able to reveal  the woman's geographical movements wolfram has   been able to uncover vital information about her  diet the carbon signature was suggesting a diet   that sort of it'll lower end the omnivore not  that much meat in the diet more vegetables and   whatnot this means our woman ate very little  protein confirming that hers was not a life   of privilege xanthus arrived to the Museum of  London one of the world's largest collections   of skeletons holding an extraordinary 17,000  bodies in its vaults the crossbones woman was   one of 148 skeletons found at the same  burial site a high proportion of them   were infants reflecting the high mortality  rate in poor areas of Britain at the time Huntley is meeting curator yelena beck valack  to see if the bones of the children can shed   new light on the early life of the cross bones  woman that bad Arabic he wasn't wasn't a very   nice area taught I mean it really was named for  being quite a sort of a slum area bad cases of   things like cholera infection so not not a very  good environment at all for being born into and   then trying to survive and living so you were  doing very well actually to sort of live and   survive in that sort of condition so is there  anything within the actual skeletons that can   indicate that they had poor diet so you know a  relationship to their lifestyle yeah there are   something like rickets is something that we might  see in the skeletons this is a femur so nice your   leg bone this is on the right hand side this  individuals 28 about one and a half years old   what we were seeing in these children is that we  saw a much higher rate of rickets active rickets   so things like scurvy as well which right  would indicate to us the sort of environment   and nutrition that they were getting but they're  not eating fresh fruit and vegetables no they had   got a very good diet now you've got pollutants  industrialization and poor diet so we're seeing   that in in in the skeletons 19th century borough  would have been covered in thick smoke caused by   industrial pollution and the bending of the bones  that characterized rickets was caused by lack of   exposure to sunlight as well as a poor diet don't  fear starting to build up a compelling profile of   our young woman her circumstances weren't unique  but if we can reclaim her as an individual what   can we learn about the time she lived in seen  through her eyes come out from talking to Yellen   knows that the people buried in this gravesite  and the people living in that area of London at   that time really were the poorest of the poor they  were suffering from disease poor diet she was only   in early 20s when she died so really I mean she's  had quite a sad desperate existence back in Dundee   caroline is starting the facial reconstruction  [Music] the first thing that we do is to build up   the muscles of the face one by one onto the skull  so we have a database of pre modeled muscles we   import each one and then alter it to fit the  new shape of the skull each muscle will give   the shape of the face at that point so that the  school detect dictates the muscle structure and   the muscle structure dictates the overall facial  appearance and then we can look at the details   of the face such as some of the features like the  nose and the mouth and the eyes and the ears and   position those from looking at the morphology  which is the shape of the bone the next stage   will be to uncover precisely how the syphilis  would have disfigured the woman's face [Music]   with the different areas of the investigation  having made good progress the team reassembles at   the evidence board died towards the end of use of  this particular graveyard because of where she was   located she's quite close to the top but she was  left in stitching the grave wasn't marks and we   don't know who she is exactly when she was buried  but there may be records may help us indicate who   she might have been the team now turned their  attention to finding out how this young woman   caught her disfiguring disease congenital syphilis  here are we know what we're talking about sexually   transmitted chrysalis because if this was this  is congenital syphilis that means you know it   was passed to her from her mother yep then the the  effect as the bones and the teeth are growing that   they are deformed congenital syphilis show  specific symptoms the most obvious of which   and notches in the teeth the crossbones woman's  however tell the story of syphilis caught through   sexual contact the syphilis comes at a later age  the bones of the teeth are already formed you're   looking at her an aftereffect if you like and so  with the lesions that you have in the forehead   it's a taking away of bone and a laying down  of new bone it's not a malformed bone if you   like in terms of its development and so this has  to be sexually transmitted I agree ate that yeah   I think the next thing that we have to do is go  back to the clinicians yep so I think you've got   to go and speak to them about how long will she  have been infected by this to get to this level   of a presentation all of treating her almost  like a patient yeah but I do think we can we   can quite happily ignore this as congenital  syphilis this has to be sexually transmitted everything points to the fact that  we're looking at somebody who's low   socioeconomic status she has a sexually  transmitted disease so it's not it's not   painting a wonderful Victorian Christmas  card scenario for her it's the much more   gritty realistic side of where do I find the  next meal that will keep me alive [Music] by the 19th century syphilis was a plague  in London affecting up to 20 percent of the   population known as the great scourge  that was the AIDS of the Victorian era the disfiguring effects of the disease  are well-documented Joseph's town was   a medical artist at Guy's Hospital in  19th century he created hundreds of Wax   anatomical models of patients showing  a range of diseases including syphilis xanthi is meeting dr. Patrick French who  still treats syphilis in the 21st century   the remarkable thing about syphilis is that it's  a condition which has these very distinct stages   some in the first stage two or three weeks after  having sex if somebody's got syphilis you develop   an ulcer but this is what it looks like this  is that an old 19th century from a wax model   over a syphilis ulcer of the lip you know if  you ignore it it will just get better on its   own and it looks as though it's healed up okay  but it hasn't all right if you ignore it it will   go away we'll get better and then later you feel  quite sick fever and the characteristic thing that   happens in secondary syphilis is that you develop  a rash yes this is a pretty extreme model of a   secondary syphilis rash affecting the face these  kind of pustules again it gets better if you if   you leave it untreated so after about a month or  two it would have would have got better right and   of course she'd be living at a time when there  all sorts of illnesses going around and if you   had something that didn't get you know didn't get  worse and you got better from you and then just   ignore that yeah and then a large minority of  people maybe about 40 percent of people develop   tertiary syphilis and there are three sorts of  tertiary syphilis there's syphilis affecting   the heart as it was affecting the brain which  sometimes could take decades here occur but also   and tell you what she had was something called  gamma to syphilis where you get these pretty nasty   lumps of dead tissue of scar tissue which affect  bones and particularly affect skin and this is you   know someone with better Adamo well these these  horrible areas of dying tissue affecting there's   no frozen tissue right in the center of her face  exactly the general view is that it's probably   infection with syphilis that causes Kamata so one  really know for certain but that's the the likely   likely course then in the minds of moralizing  Victorians repeated infection of syphilis could   mean only one thing STDs including syphilis were  as strongly associated with with prostitution at   that time thinking about what patrick said about  the faculty sexually transmitted and how this was   associated largely rightly or wrongly with  prostitution so I mean I think that's quite   a dark line to travel down but certainly there's  some indications that this young woman could have   caught it as a result of being a prostitute  now the team has more information about how   the disease would have affected the woman's  face Caroline can start adding the scarring   on her facial reconstruction I'm now trying  to add the disease process the syphilis so   that we can see the lesions and I can make the  skin layer transparent so that can see the bone   beneath and I can use the lesions on the bone  to tell me where the lesions on a soft tissue   will be so I've just been positioning lumps of  clay over the surface of the skin coming through   the skin that are related to the lesions  on the bone and then we can go in and once   we've got the position correct we can alter the  detail so that we can see more of these type of   lesions and more of the destruction of the soft  tissues slowly she's coming back to life [Music] the prompt and prosperity of the Victorian era  must a dark side of poverty in prostitution unless   you were born or married into wealth 19th century  London could be a harsh place for a woman sadly   with few employment options in barely any state  support it was all too easy for a single woman to   fall on hard times many found themselves trying to  gain entry to the refuge of the destitute founded   in 1806 it was a charitable alternative to prison  for petty criminals who the authorities thought   could still be reformed Xanthi has come to the  Hackney archives in London she's here to look at   the details of people who applied for entry into  the refuge of the destitute the entries revealed   just how many young women turned to prostitution  sixty-eight narrative of Mary Harris 18 years of   age of both her father and mother died when she  was very young about three months since she was   entice from the service of a mr. levy Westcott  Street bath by a gentleman's footmen and walked   to London he forsook her a week after the trial  in town and a ship in she has been a prostitute   in the house to which he brought her to about  the region wreck the petition of Sarah Wade   18 years of age isn't saviors parents borough  for she became a prostitute she lived a servant   with a mrs. Beaumont a foreign lady upon whose  leaving England the petitioner was left destitute   when she was seduced by some young women who  persuaded her that she might earn more money   by prostitution on a counter disagreement she  left her father and has since been a prostitute all of these women even though they're  any young they're only 17 18 years of age   oh really the stage of desperation where they  need somebody to help them I mean this is you   know their last hope but if that last hope of  Refuge failed them then prostitution was often   the only option it's very plausible the cross  bones woman to survive by these means Xanthia   has discovered that the burial ground where  her body was found has a long association   with the profession in the medieval period the  area around the burial ground was owned by the   Bishop of Winchester he licensed prostitutes who  became known as Winchester geese when they died   they were buried at crossbones to this day  people tie names of so-called single women   known to have been buried in the area to the  gates whose become a shrine to their memory [Music] by the 19th century prostitution was a  major industry in Victorian Britain bringing in   over 20 million pounds a year London was known as  the [ __ ] shop of the world it's been estimated   that 1/5 of the female population of London were  involved in the profession although disapproved   off by some prostitution was not illegal xanpe is  meeting historian Hallie Reuben holes to find out   what life was like for the Victorian prostitute  woman's work is so poorly paid you can never   support yourself and maybe your six children and  so you find yourself in a situation where you   quite literally have to exchange sexual favors for  food in many cases and that's what a lot of these   women were forced into prostitution was rife and  especially in the slums and and borough actually   was one of the worst slums in all of London what  dangers would have been involved for her she was   doing this on a daily basis well obviously  there are tremendous dangers involved in a   life of prostitution disease being the foremost  among them people didn't use prophylactics in   the same way that we would use them today and  those they did use the condoms tended to be   reusable and weren't always the cleanest things  you would wash it and reuse it and they weren't   always the most effective things either so taking  what we know about the woman where she was buried   a particular female we've been looking at we  know from the skeleton that she she had syphilis   was that a common problem for prostitute it most  certainly was and actually the lowest prostitutes   were generally those who had contracted syphilis  and they were on the way out so she would have   been in that very possibly lowest class yes it's  where where prostitute meets beggar basically so   really destitute and these are the people who  generally were found dead the next morning in   in the anyways having frozen or starved or or died  of whatever illness they were suffering from sadly   the evidence for our young woman having been  one of these lower-class prostitutes is growing   she was ravaged with syphilis presumably  through repeated sexual contact and her   body was discovered in a burial ground with a long  association with prostitutes [Music] but what can   the woman herself tell the team sue is putting the  skeleton through a very 21st century examination   to see inside the bones this CT scanner can  create a three-dimensional x-ray image of the   skeleton this allows you to look for signs of  trauma or illness not visible to the naked eye   [Music] and the data has revealed some information  that will take the investigation in a new and   horrifying direction we'd felt that by looking at  everything that we could find on the skeleton she   was probably into her 20s the x-rays tell us  something very very different if you can see   there's a very well-defined line passes across  there and there's another one that passes across   there and that tells us that that growth that  fusion that's happened there wasn't that long   ago so I think in terms of putting her into her  20s I'm afraid we were making her a little bit   older than she probably was I think it's more  likely that she was a late teenager so that   she may be in 1718 perhaps even nineteen years of  age so in some ways it's really even sadder that   what we're looking at is a teenager wracked  with the amount of disease that we could see   a parent on her skeleton and she's actually  a whole lot younger than we thought [Music] it means that if she was suffering from  advanced tertiary syphilis which often   takes years to develop that she was  probably infected as a child [Music] so calls the team back to the evidence board to  discuss the disturbing discovery that this isn't   the body of a woman in their twenties we didn't  expect to see anything terribly interesting in   the CT scans we thought we might pick up some  Harris lines and other things but what we did   pick up is something that's likely to change  what we thought was the original age for the   the young lady so I think we need to bring her  down into a teenager it's the truth so if you   think that we're looking at a teenager maybe  even 15 or 16 years of age and you're saying   that the level of disturbance that we're seeing  physically in relation to her could be anything   that's three to ten years in the making then you  take three years of that you're in 13 don't take   ten or ten years of that know it don't take ten  years off it have you any idea on a daily basis   how many cases we work on pedophiles so that  you know men that I'm afraid will find children   and teenagers sexually attractive what's really  tragic is you're talking about a first infection   that that was certainly at a very young just  even possibly even preteen for early tees with the age of consent at 13 years old girls  were sexualized at a young age in Victorian   Britain it was also wrongly believed that  sleeping with a virgin could cure a man of   syphilis in the absence of medical knowledge  about syphilis quackery and superstition often   took hold so for the Victorians the syphilis  that seemed to go away and then came back and   seemed to go away and came back must have been a  really difficult thing to try to manage when you   have this lack of knowledge and lack lack of  understanding of why something occurs how it   progresses how to stop it you are in many ways  open to the quacks there will be an entire raft   of treatments that will have no effect whatsoever  and there will be those that just become myth for   people who can't even afford those remedies  what else could I try that might try to save   me it's a desperation element but if you're  desperate you'll try almost anything [Music] zonkers returned to london to discover how the  Victorians tried to cope with the disease that   was so little understood at the Science Museum  she's meeting Julie Pikmin who has researched   Victorian treatments for syphilis so what we've  got here are some of the treatment bottles that   looks like a lotion or a cream which might have  been applied to the skin right and there are also   treatments which can be ingested so this is a  mercury based treatment now I'm looking at this   vial here it says mercurial cream poison so this  is obviously a very poisonous treatment it was a   poison but mercury was thought to be the best  cure for syphilis mercury was believed to help   expel syphilis from the body but the hideous side  effects were well-known as illustrated in this   Victorian cartoon on the left hand side here we  have a man who's purging and and being sick into   the the bowl and that was one of the symptoms of  mercury because it was a poison yes spitting and   salivate and salivation was very important one  of the VEX was bolding as you can see this man   in the chair here having his head attended to by  one of the hospital interns would you lose your   hair in patches or would you lose it all over it  had to drop off rather light with chemotherapy   now as the top seed starts to work it would  start to fall out so because I think you'd lose   patches through the syphilitic change wouldn't  you've got the pustules on your head but then   the mercury which caused yesterday's finish you  off alright okay and as you can see to the right   here this man having his his teeth seen too and  that was another problem that the teeth fell out not only did the mercury do nasty things to you  he was also expensive so if you were poor and   suffering from syphilis in Victorian London you  had little choice but to throw yourself on the   mercy of charitable hospitals some of which  had wards for the condition only one the LOC   hospital was dedicated to treating venereal  disease but getting in was no easy matter   she would have had to plead her case to access  that hospital she would you have to go through   the governor's to be accepted and they would have  had to vet her and see her as a person that they   would have wanted to support but even if a woman  had managed to gain access to mercury treatment   would it have had any positive effect Xanthi is  meeting chemical engineer house or Sabarsky to   recreate a Victorian mercury treatment we're gonna  start making an appointment now an old-fashioned   San C syphilis appointment using a recipe from  this pharmacopoeia british pharmacopoeia this   is the 1869 version this is an wenton hydra  hydra Hiram sobriety that's the ointment of   liquid silver the subfloor right there off  there's only got two ingredients it has it's   got the active ingredient which is the mercury  chloride and the lard which is dispersed yeah   this is mercury two chloride this is usually  called corrosive sublimated and the reason   this is so toxic is it's got mercury ions in it  rather than elemental mercury and mercury ions   are a very soluble in water and B are just the  right form to do damage to cells by damaging the   enzymes it just makes me to make sure we have any  of this since this really is hideously top Singh healthiest halt so as you can see there's the  two parts of the ointment so this would be sort   of what you'd be given by the apakah 3a chemist  of the day it's a pharmacist and that would be   spread on the pustules so if I rub this on to  my skin regularly as a treatment what would   the effects be well you couldn't have designed  a better way of them getting mercury into the   body in its worst possible form and what had  happened is the patient would be absorbing   mercury into the bloodstream effectively  and therefore they would get the bleeding   gums the irritability the amnesia the perhaps of  depression all associate of mercury poisoning so   this is a really bad idea incredibly bad okay  if we were in Victorian England now this would   be one of the or the treatment for syphilis  then but did mercury have any medicinal value   at all well there's some evidence in stage  three syphilis it was a spy recital I would   kill the bacterium for cause of syphilis by  that point you'd certainly reach the point   of no return and there was no penicillin  at that time yeah if once you got it you   got it so what it did is slow down there's no  cure for syphilis perhaps severe we are nice although mercury couldn't cure advanced  syphilis they could have given the sufferer   like our woman some relief [Music] it  may seem ridiculous that people would   have inhaled mercury or rubbed it on their  lesions or taken it as a pill but it could   be argued that we use treatments that equally  is damaging now if you think of chemotherapy we   know it has beneficial effects obviously  but the harmful effects are clear to see [Music] but this has highlighted  another unknown aspect to this case soompi still doesn't know whether  or not our woman ever received any   medical treatment for a disease that she  clearly lived with for some time [Music] archaeologist fiona tucker might have the  answer fiona has been analyzing skeletons   from the Victorian era for traces of the mercury  treatment one of the skeletons in her study is   the cross bones woman and the amount of mercury in  our woman's bones is significant in your opinion   did she show signs of having mercury treatment  and poisoning in her skeleton on the icp-ms test   which measures the elemental makeup of her bones  we found seven point three three parts per million   of mercury which is substantially higher than both  modern levels where you expect about naught point   naught 5 parts per million because we don't come  into contact with mercury much in everyday life   anymore and other individuals from her period  who I looked at who had 1 to 1.5 parts per   million which I think in an age where mercury was  much more prevalent would be a reasonable amount   to find her raise levels suggest she came  into contact with a lot more mercury during   her life is there anything here that indicates  that she was having mercury treatment from the   actual bones I think it seems to affect it most  often is the teeth that's something we have from   historical sources that mercury weakens teeth  and could make them fall out and she does have   particularly poor teeth for her age in terms of  tooth loss and dental care I think this girl had   it a long time it was very serious but it was  she was living with it the pattern of healing   suggests that she was living it with it for a  long time and I think it's unlikely that it killed despite her poor background an advanced stage  of syphilis it appears our woman did manage   to access mercury treatment her bones also  show signs of healing I've got a slightly   more optimistic impression of the kind of  society in which our young woman would have   been living it I mean she had syphilis it is  a debilitating disease but she had managed   to access some treatment obviously there was no  cure but certainly I'm fairly sure now that she   didn't die of syphilis even if the syphilis did  not kill her it was still disfiguring back in   dundee caroline is almost ready to reveal the  woman's face what we have now is this surface   shape of the lesions as well as her face shape  we need to do now is to take those lesions and   have texture to them so that some of them will  become transparent so they'll be fluid filled   and some of them will be more hard and scar  like and that's where the texture comes in it   gives it a more realistic surface so she's gonna  look less like her faces made of porridge which   is what it looks like now and more like she's  got syphilitic lesions well we can take this   reconstruction that we have with the syphilis and  we can try and depict her as she would have looked   it without this severe disease part of it will  involve some degree of estimation because some   her nasal bones have been disrupted through the  disease process and so we'll have to estimate   the nose but we should be able to get enough of  the likeness of her she would have looked without   the syphilis which would be nice to see as well  as specially as she had this mercury treatment presently has one last crucial job to do in London  at the Metropolitan archive [Music] for the last   few weeks dr. David Green has been going through  nineteenth-century records for the area around   crossbones cemetery he's been cross-referencing  burial records and hospital records trying to find   the names of people with similar stories to the  cross bones woman David has focused his research   on the last three years of the cross bone cemetery  from 1851 to 1853 because the skeleton was found   near the surface if we go to burial registers  we've done it for about three years or so we   can narrow it down because that age group was it  was quite rare someone of that age group to die   either died young or you died old but actually in  the middle there's relatively few people David has   narrowed down his research to a few names but one  of them stands out so here we have the dead book   yeah the barrel registers Austin Thomas's Hospital  in in Southwark it's a charity hospital it takes a   lot of poor patients and she died in a hospital  then it may be that she's in here we went and   looked at the ages of people who died and here we  have this woman called Elizabeth Mitchell she's   aged 19 the day she was admitted 5th of August of  1851 the date that she died 15 through August she   only lasted 10 days there this woman there's  something about her because she comes from or   she's in the hospital in modeling ward that was a  ward for been in with venereal disease Oh oh right   so and on the right hand side is a column marked  medical remarks cause of death these are scrawled   in so doctor doctor's handwriting it looks like it  says ask the physician came in for discharge and   sores died under physicians care and it looks like  that then says with pneumonia Elizabeth Mitchell   fits the profile of the skeleton age 19 she came  to San Thomas's syphilis ward for treatment of   sores and discharge but died on the 15th of August  1851 of pneumonia [Music] next David looks at the   burial records of the parish of st. Saviour's  where the crossbone cemetery was located well   here we are August of 1851 we know that she  died in August 1851 and 2019 so thomases as   she said 22nd of August 1851 19 years that mr.  days the minister mr. David Minister buried her   so she went from the hospital and was buried by  the parish her abode was Anna Thomas's Hospital   so they didn't know where all right okay I don't  know why but for some reason I come I never got a   feeling about this one I think she's a possibility  oh that's quite exciting that's exciting not   for her but for enough yet historically  it's quite uncertain historically exactly shanthi heads back to dundee the investigation  of the crossbones woman is nearing its end when   it began all the team had was an unknown skeleton  from a burial ground in burrow but a combination   of historical and forensic analysis of the bones  has brought the case to its conclusion [Music] the team gather for the last time at  the evidence board caroline is ready   to reveal the face of the woman but first  simply reveals the name and profile she   discovered so the name that came up was  Elizabeth Mitchell and she was 19 so kind   of top end of 19 not an issue two pounds of  the possibility jayvees admitted to modeling   ward which is known as the foul ward so  anywhere where the venereal diseases was   foul in Thomas's Hospital which I have records  that know very well I used to work there okay   in the records from the hospital it says  she died of pneumonia on the 15th August the records show that she was later buried in  the parish of st. Saviour's which is where the   cross bones graveyard is okay I've got some  some documentary evidence of somebody like yes   girl yes quite obviously we'll never know no  but this does fit with her very you're in the   right ward you're a right kind of age thanks  a lot well dolls really impressed on [Music] with the historical research complete it's now  time for Caroline to reveal the final piece of   evidence we've done - yeah so first of all we've  got the reconstruction that stood with the disease   so showing the signs of syphilis [Music] the  face shows how the young woman would have been   horribly disfigured by sores associated with  the disease so the position as these reasons   is based on the position on the on the skull and  you can see there was some destruction - a nasal   bones at the top but not at the base of the in  temperature so we've got a loss of shape of the   nose a little bit here with these lesions  but you can still see the overall structure   yeah and it's a quite extensive isn't it covers  quite a lot of the certain in fact some of them   are fluid-filled and presumably there's a bad  smell element to this as well well I would have   I would have thought so this is a an infection  at the end of the day you can't hide any form   of a disfigurement really that occurs on face as  there's no escaping your portrayal to the world   that you're carrying this disease yeah so she  would it would have been quite obvious that she   was suffering then what we decided we were going  to do was try and depict her without the syphilis   okay because it would be useful for us I think in  terms of seeing her as an individual to see her   my facial appearance without this awful disease  which had such an effect on her unless she'd have   access to penicillin or such things she could  technically have been cured from as universally [Music] we had to obviously estimate some areas so  the nose for example because we've lost some   of the nasal bones is it an estimation but  certainly her facial proportions will be   accurate and the details of the mouth I know  you don't seem to think so I was a little bit   disappointed no perspective I think the  kind of smell with Baba this is the holy so it might be Elizabeth Mitchell so I think if we  bring this one to a close because I think we are   as far as we can go the summary on this seems to  be that we have a teenage female probably working   as a prostitute certainly suffering from sexually  transmitted syphilis who did receive treatment for   it because we know that there's mercury within  her bone we suspect that she may have ended up   like many would have done in a in a poor hospital  receiving some treatment and like so many she may   have succumb to a secondary condition presumably  as a result of her own decreased immune system   pneumonia would be a very common one and as a  result she's buried effectively in a pauper's   grave that's very sad really isn't it we kind  of knew this was never gonna be a happy I think   this has gone as far as it can and I think it's  information really that we hadn't anticipated   soon the team have been on an extraordinary  journey to piece together the identity of a   girl who died more than 150 years ago I think  the the first impression that we had of of the   cross bones lady was just how small she was  and we had no understanding of the enormity   and the strength of the story that was going to  eventually materialize from this investigation   being able to go back in history and using science  as the tool to take you back in that history and   still working at the lowest almost the lowest  level of the sector of society to still come   out with a possible name that's astounding  that really is a sign that's not something   we could ever have predicted as a possibility  Elizabeth Mitchell was one of thousands of   people buried around crossbones in its time it  was a pauper's burial ground but now it's become   a shrine one night a month a group of volunteers  assembled to remember and pay tribute to the dead   we gather here to remember the outcasts dead  a porpoise and the prostitutes who were buried   here people like the woman discovered a  crossbones led a life cursed by poverty   and disease and her story would have stayed  buried forever if it weren't for the efforts   of the cold-case team willing to dig up the truth  and dysentery stirry along with the bones [Music]

Channel: Banijay History

Views: 1,077,139

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Id: a9Bc4Zw8gos

Length: 58min 43sec (3523 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 14 2018