Skeletons: London’s buried bones

This exhibition at the Wellcome Collection contains skeletons found in excavations during the redevelopment of various parts of London. They come from the Museum of London’s collection which contains 17,000 skeletons covering 16 centuries. Each skeleton reveals its own story and it is quite amazing how much empathy one can feel for a skeleton. The marks on their bones show how they lived and what they died from. One particularly poignant skeleton of a young woman also contains the skeleton of a small fetus. The skeletons are well displayed, each in its own case but when we went it was difficult to read the labels as there were so many people looking at each case. It would have been better if the cases had been labelled on each side rather than just one. However, it was encouraging to see so many people interested in history and medical archaeology.