pongo Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 The Guardian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barrie Stevens Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 Personally I do not believe this story.... Where is the proof? A cataclysmic change and the monks of the day seem not to have written about it other than to record the usual plagues and famines of the times? "Spitalfields" is a bastardised version of "hospital fields"...There was a monastic hospital on the site....then outside the walls of the City of London... The fields were used as burial grounds and there have been TV programmes such as "Meet the Ancestors" carrying out forensic tests on some of the tens of thousands of skeletons found there many layers deep... Roman London also used the area for burials... Even back then London was a world trade centre as we know from the quality of materials and items imported... Many ships came to London bringing trade and information. The story comes from the Guardian which is the newspaper for people keenly interested in climatic catastrophe and the staff writers lean towards this..... Academics have to make a name for themselves and putting a new slant on old plagues and famines is one way of reprocessing that which is already well known. There is so far as I know no folk tales corresponding to the volcano theory....There are many folk tales of Spitalfields, of the burial pits, of the plagues, the rats that brought plagues, the overcrowding of London, the massive immigrant population....We all know "Ring a Ring o' Roses", and "London Bridge is Falling Down" & etc....all folk tales handed down But one third of London wiped out by climatic catastrophe.....Where are the parchments, the diaries, the accounts, the work of the authorities, the King, the Church? The accounts? The tales? The legends? The rhymes? The London Metropolitan Archives contains much written material as do the National Archives...But no monk or hospitaller seems to have left a substantial record...No Lord recounts fleeing the City to the country estate... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
When Skies Are Grey Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 Personally I do not believe this story.... I worked for some time as a volcano and can't recall this ever happening.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manshimajin Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 A massive eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland in 1783s was followed by major crop failures in Western Europe for a number of years in the same decade. The years following the eruption saw the death of over half of all livestock in Iceland and the associated famine is believed to have killed about one quarter of the Icelandic population. One of the exacerbating factors that led to the French Revolution in 1789 was public unrest caused by food shortages and the consequential rise in food prices. A study of parish records undertaken by Dr John Grattan of Aberystwyth University over a ten year period has estimated that about an additional 23,000 British people died as a consequence of the eruption which would make it the largest natural disaster in modern British history. I don't know about the London hypothesis but undoubtedly volcanic activity can occasionally lead to crop failures, starvation and mass death. http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/articles/Iceland/Laki-Volcano-Eruption-Iceland/529 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lxxx Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 What a disappointment. I read the thread title and thought I'd missed a natural disaster earlier today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 Isn't Barry amazing - 16 years of scientific research, 10,500 skeletons exumed, 5387 of them given an Osteological analysis, Medieval Chronicles examined, Ice layers in Antarctica compared - but Barry knows better! FFS Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses is not a plague ryhme. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quilp Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 What a disappointment. I read the thread title and thought I'd missed a natural disaster earlier today. Me too - 1/3 Londoners dying in a volcanic eruption would have been a great way to end the Olympics! Careful people, 'Chinahand' warning.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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