London is pockmarked with hidden plague pits

Like their compatriots on the European continent, Londoners have suffered through (too) many plague outbreaks. The first major pestilence, known to history as the Black Death, came in 1348 with the arrival of some unwanted fleas on Genovese cargo ships. The Black Death claimed some 40,000 lives before finally dissipating in 1350. The city would have to wait 300 years for the next major outbreak. But there were many minor ones in between: around 40 between the Black Death and the Great Plague.

The Great Plague — which by all accounts wasn’t that great at all — flourished in the putrid conditions of London’s streets. Between 1665 and 1666 it claimed well over 100,000 lives, some 15% of the city’s population, leaving the dead littering the streets or rotting away at home. The problem the survivors found themselves faced with was what to do with their dead.

Church graveyards were the most obvious port of call, but it wasn’t long before god’s terrestrial waiting rooms became a little overcrowded. Deciding to bring out your dead wasn’t an option since leaving bodies out in the open would only spread disease, and so London’s residents set about hastily digging out plague pits in which to throw the victims. Dozens of these have been discovered as various construction projects have forced us to scratch beneath the surface of this millennia-old city.

What’s more, more plague pits are still being discovered. In 2013, an enormous pit was discovered under Farringdon’s Charterhouse Square, just 8 feet (2.5 metres) below the ground. It’s cramped all right: the resting place of up to 50,000 victims of the Black Death. In 2017, another was discovered at the site of the 17th-century Bedlam cemetery, and after DNA testing, scientists were able to identify the bacteria that caused this plague for the first time.

But mass graves did not divert the London Underground

Wherever you go in London, you’re likely to be walking above some grave or another. As the author of Necropolis: London and its Dead recently put it, London is essentially one giant burial ground. But if you happen to be riding the London Underground, be aware that during your commute you’re likely to be skirting past thousands upon thousands of human remains.

The idea that the dead had a say in the design of the underground is, however, a myth. The most common anecdote is that between the stations of Knightsbridge and South Kensington, the underground line curves to circumvent an enormous plague pit hidden beneath Hyde Park. Filling this pit are the remains of thousands of victims of the Great Plague (1665 – 1666), hurriedly thrown in by friends, family, or strangers all desperately hoping they wouldn’t soon be following behind.

When constructing the London Underground, the authorities decided to drill around — rather than through (or rather 40 – 80 feet under) — the plague pit beneath Hyde Park. But it wasn’t because this pit is such a densely packed impermeable mass of twisted, tangled human bones that, even with the tools at their disposal in the nineteenth century, the workmen simply couldn’t drill through. It was because, where possible, line planners decided to follow the course of publicly owned roads (Brompton Road in this case) to avoid undermining housing foundations.

This isn’t to say that those working on the lines over the last couple of centuries haven’t come across human remains. Alan Jackson, in his detailed documentation of route digging between Paddington and King’s Cross in 1862, stumbled across the remains of many ex-Londoners. Rather than an impenetrable wall, however, it was a small enough number that he could call the trustworthy London Necropolis Company (basically Ghostbusters for the dead) and have them removed.

St. Sepulchre was a truly terrible place to live

Unless you were into robbing graves or attending public executions (in which case this would have been one of the hottest postcodes in London), the area around St. Sepulchre would have been a truly grim place to live.

Most of the action took place around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — still the largest parish church in the city centre — or at scaffolds a couple of miles west at Tyburn, where every six weeks thousands of spectators would assemble to gawk at dozens of condemned men, women, and children being sent to meet their maker.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was founded around the middle of the twelfth century. It was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666 (the 1600s truly was a shitter of a century) before being rebuilt in its present form. Its extensive graveyard provided tempting pickings for thieving opportunists, especially when its subterranean population would swell in the wake of one plague outbreak of another.

Grave robbing was, in fact, such a popular seventeenth-century pastime that the government ordered the building of a Watch House to deter potential miscreants. Grave robbers didn’t do it for the love of course. Medical students keen to get together for a good old-fashioned dissection paid handsomely for the bodies of recently deceased murderers (the only ones they would accept): around £50 which is a fortune in today’s money.

The church is still home to its original Execution Bell, the function of which is all too easy to discern. This bell would be rung whenever a public execution was scheduled: partly to announce the spectacle to those living close by, and partly to provide an eerie soundtrack as the condemned made their final journey from nearby Newgate Prison or the Old Bailey to the scaffolds at Tyburn.

London’s Execution Bell At St Sepulchre Church

Wapping, on the north bank of the Thames, was even worse

The River Thames, often seen as the lifeblood of London, also served as a Styxian final journey for those who met their end at Executions Dock, in modern-day Wapping. It was here, on a creaking wooden scaffold jutting over the river outside today’s Prospect of Whitby pub, that the condemned would face their fate. The dock was not just a place of execution; it was a stage where the drama of crime and punishment played out before a captivated audience. The condemned were typically taken from Newgate Prison and paraded through the city in a sombre procession, before being brought to this windswept spot on the edge of the river.

Pirates were the most notorious of those hanged at Executions Dock. Their crimes were considered so heinous that ordinary execution on dry land was deemed insufficient. Instead, they were subjected to the “maritime gallows,” where they would be hanged with a shortened rope to ensure a slow, agonizing death by strangulation. After, their bodies were often left to dangle in the river’s tidal waters for three tides, a gruesome spectacle that served as a stark deterrent to any who might consider following in their footsteps.

One of the most infamous pirates to meet his end at Executions Dock was Captain William Kidd. Convicted of piracy and murder, Kidd was brought to this very spot in 1701, where a massive crowd gathered to witness his demise. His execution was infamously botched; the rope broke on the first attempt, a moment of macabre irony that only added to the legend of Captain Kidd. On the second attempt, the execution was successful, and his body was then tarred and gibbeted—encased in iron and hung further down the Thames as a warning to others.

The scene around Executions Dock during these events would have been one of both horror and morbid fascination. The Prospect of Whitby, a tavern that has stood by the river since the early 16th century, offered a prime vantage point for those who wished to witness the spectacle. Patrons could sip their ale and look out over the water as the bodies of the condemned swayed in the breeze—a chilling juxtaposition of life and death, revelry and retribution.

Today, the Prospect of Whitby still stands, its ancient timbers steeped in the history of London’s darker past. Inside, you can find a replica of the gallows, a nod to the pub’s grim heritage. The cobblestone streets outside and the views across the Thames give visitors a sense of the eerie atmosphere that once pervaded this place. But while the executions have long since ceased, the stories remain, etched into the very fabric of Wapping.

As you stand by the river, it’s not difficult to imagine the cries of the condemned carried on the wind, or the hushed murmurs of the crowd as they watched justice—however brutal—being served. Executions Dock, now a quiet corner of London, was once a place where the law meted out its harshest penalties, and where the Thames carried away the souls of the damned, leaving only their legends behind.

For nearly 100 years, London ran a train service only for the dead

The dead of ancient Greece would have coins placed over their eyes so they could pay the infernal boatman Charon to ferry them across the River Styx to their final resting place. The dead of nineteenth-century London would be brought a train ticket and ferried from Waterloo’s Necropolis Station to a purpose-built cemetery 23 miles southwest in Brookwood, Surrey.

The thought of free rail travel (for the dead, never mind the living) might sound like the stuff of sheer fantasy today. But in nineteenth-century London, there was a dire need owing to a worrying lack of burial space. Just 218 acres y had to accommodate around 50,000 deaths every year. The situation was getting so critical that it was becoming common practice to exhume rotting corpses at night and illegally cremate them to save up room for newcomers. Lovely. Parliament eventually voted to ban new burials in the center and divert funds to building necropolises in green spaces surrounding the city.

Brookwood Cemetery opened in 1854 with its station opening 10 years later. The latter provided a service to friends and family; unlike the journey across the Styx they had the option of going with them without also having to shuffle off their mortal coil. Typically in keeping with the British class system, first, second, or third class tickets were available both for the living and the dead (god forbid corpses of different classes should have to ride together)

Not everybody felt comfortable with the idea though. In 1842, the Bishop of London described the whole as “improper” and at odds with the solemnity that should characterise a Christian funeral. In 1902, a new railway station opened on Westminster Bridge Road to replace the old one. However, it wouldn’t stay in service for long. To a large extent, the mass influx of automobiles made trains redundant when it came to shipping the dead off for burial.

Necropolis Station arrived at its final destination during the London Blitz. In 1941a German bomb went and tore right through it, marking the end of what a 1904 edition of Railway Magazine described as “the most peaceful railway service in the three corners of the kingdom.” What we can say for sure is that for 87 years, London ran the only service in the city’s history in which none of its passengers submitted a single complaint.

Executions took place in the Tower of London until recently

Built between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, the Tower of London has hosted a fair few famous residents over the centuries. Rather than serving as a battlement, however, its most famous function has been that of a holding place for the condemned, featuring such big names as Henry VIII’s wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, the Scottish king John Balliol,



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