Medieval England's murder hot spots revealed

KILLER MAP'

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A SADDLEMAKER ambushed outside a brewhouse. A man stabbed to death after he stumbled over a heap of dung while trying to flee a fight. And a priest killed by three knife-wielding assailants, possibly on the orders of a noblewoman accused of having an affair with him.

Each of these attacks took place at the same violent “hot spot” in medieval London, and they were among more than 350 homicides committed across three English cities that have been chronicled in extraordinary detail by a small team of academics and enthusiasts.

Using 14th-century coroner's rolls and other archival sources, Manuel Eisner, a criminologist at the University of Cambridge, has spent 15 years working on interactive tools he calls “murder maps” with the help of a team including his wife and daughter.

“Each of these stories shines a little spotlight on an event in some corner of London,” Eisner said in a phone interview this week.

Taken together and analysed in a peer-reviewed paper published last week, their findings offer a glimpse into the dark underbelly of medieval life in London, Oxford and York. They also reveal some trends that may surprise modern readers: Some of the deadliest hot spots were in the most affluent areas, and male college students were among the most frequent killers. The authors also found that slayings tended to cluster in high-footfall outdoor areas and that the majority of killers enjoyed impunity.

“Homicide was much more frequent than it is in modern times,” Eisner said. The deadliest of the cities was Oxford, which he estimated to have a homicide rate of about 100 per 100000 inhabitants in the 14th century, while London and York hovered at 20 to 25 per 100000. (In 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, London's homicide rate was about 1.2 per 100000 inhabitants.)