History series which sees skeletons of everyday people from across the ages analysed in staggering detail, opening new windows on the history of our Ancestors by literally revealing the person behind the skeleton.
The York 113:
In 2008, construction workers just beyond York's city walls uncovered 113 bodies in a mass grave. The History Cold Case team spots an incredibly rare genetic peculiarity in two of the skeletons among the 113 and wonder whether they have stumbled on a pair of brothers, one of whom was severely disabled. The trail to find out who these two men could have been and how they ended up dead in a mass grave outside York opens up a new personalised vantage point on the events surrounding the English Civil War and also gives us a perspective on disability which can perhaps teach us something about so-called modern attitudes today.
The York 113:
In 2008, construction workers just beyond York's city walls uncovered 113 bodies in a mass grave. The History Cold Case team spots an incredibly rare genetic peculiarity in two of the skeletons among the 113 and wonder whether they have stumbled on a pair of brothers, one of whom was severely disabled. The trail to find out who these two men could have been and how they ended up dead in a mass grave outside York opens up a new personalised vantage point on the events surrounding the English Civil War and also gives us a perspective on disability which can perhaps teach us something about so-called modern attitudes today.
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00:00At the University of Dundee's Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, the History Cold
00:08Case team is about to embark on a remarkable new investigation.
00:13We have got 113 skeletons, all male, signs of unusual conditions.
00:21We're not talking about one or two skeletons, we're talking about hundreds, so it's a very
00:28big story.
00:30The case will be led by forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black.
00:34Dr Xanthi Mallett will gather historical evidence, while Professor Caroline Wilkinson will rebuild
00:42the faces of the dead.
00:45In York, more than 100 skeletons have been found in 10 mass graves.
00:51It's an extraordinary archaeological find, and the biggest case the team has ever had
00:55to deal with.
00:58Why did so many people die here?
01:01Very, very unusual.
01:02I've never seen a grave like that, to be honest with you.
01:06The trail will transport us back 350 years to one of the most traumatic and pivotal events
01:13in British history.
01:15You just lunge forward, straight into the faces of the enemy there.
01:19To a time when medical intervention could be as dangerous as life on the battlefield.
01:25If I take it off at the shoulder, the chances are you will die.
01:29When men believed they were caught up in Armageddon.
01:32They thought that they were fighting in the last battle between Christ and the forces
01:37of Antichrist.
01:39And to one man's surprising story.
01:41Oh boy, that is outrageous.
01:45That will not only change our views on how the English Civil War was fought, but provide
01:50a unique window into the birth of democracy itself.
02:19In the heart of York, the History Cold Case team has set up its Mobile Forensic Unit,
02:24near where the remains of 113 people were recently excavated.
02:32This is the biggest case the team has ever taken on.
02:36Members of the local archaeological community lay out a selection of remains from ten mass
02:41graves, discovered in 2008 just beyond the city walls.
02:47Every single skeleton is male.
02:52But there are also the boxed remains of two further bodies that have especially troubled
02:56archaeologists since excavation.
03:01Their bones show signs of puzzling abnormalities.
03:05Why did 113 men end up buried together?
03:09And what's the truth behind the disfigured bodies?
03:14There's a lot of dead people here, and so there needs to be an explanation for why you've
03:18got so many in one place.
03:21Every single one of those people will have a story.
03:25Some of them are going to have a really interesting story to tell.
03:34Professor Sue Black and Dr Xanthe Mallett fly in from Dundee HQ.
03:39Together they will carry out a preliminary examination of the recovered bones.
03:43There's a lot here.
03:46Immediately they find many signs of healed trauma and bone breaks.
03:50Oh, look, look, there's a problem in the elbow.
03:53Whether it's a dislocation, it's really hard to dislocate that joint, really, really hard
03:58to dislocate it.
03:59It looks as if there's a bit of remodelling going on at the wrist.
04:02I wonder if that's a previous fracture.
04:05And there are signs of serious infections.
04:08Oh, ho, ho, look at this.
04:12Ouch.
04:13Look at the amount of bone that's been laid down.
04:16That is nasty.
04:17That's very nasty.
04:19That's very painful for the time that it's been active.
04:22Whether it's still active or not, I don't know.
04:24It's a lot of bone being laid down.
04:25That's, that's infective.
04:27You know, you've got nerve endings that are inflamed.
04:29You've got the pus formation.
04:31Oh, it's just not nice at all.
04:33Look, it goes all the way through.
04:35But it's localised.
04:37It's a simple course of antibiotics today and that's gone.
04:40Yeah.
04:42Yet all the bones are of strong, young and middle-aged men.
04:46I think we're looking at male, quite well-defined chin.
04:49Quite robust.
04:50Yeah, I'm OK with that.
04:51With no obvious cause of death.
04:54They've got previous fractures and they've got trauma associated with their previous life.
05:00But why did they die?
05:02Don't know.
05:03Don't know.
05:05There's no evidence of a cause of death on here either.
05:08There's no obvious disease process.
05:10There's no obvious trauma process.
05:12There's nothing.
05:13So whatever killed him may have killed them, but it hasn't left a mark.
05:18And there's lots and lots of things that don't leave a mark.
05:21They turn their attention to the two boxes that the archaeologists have marked out
05:26as being particularly strange.
05:29Inside the first, the skeleton of an incredibly muscular male.
05:34At first glance, consistent with the rest of the group.
05:37We're talking about quite a big, robust adult.
05:41But I tell you what I think is interesting is that that clavicle is being bound down
05:45onto there really, really tightly.
05:47So there's huge muscle mass going on up here.
05:50And this is pretty robust as well.
05:51It's not only robust, what you've also got within that bone is a huge amount of torsion.
05:57You can see it's twisted.
05:58Because you can see.
05:59And that's the muscle attaching onto there that's just trying to get more of a group.
06:04So he's very well built.
06:06But he has one highly unusual feature that sets him apart.
06:11Oh, wow.
06:13His hand bones are fused together.
06:16OK.
06:17See, that's interesting.
06:18OK.
06:19I'll tell you why that's interesting, because that is a congenital fusion of the carpals.
06:26Congenital carpal fusion.
06:28Really, really rare.
06:30But there's not going to have been much in the way of disability.
06:34You know, all you're losing is a little bit of movement like that.
06:38So you know, his little finger gets stuck out there.
06:41It doesn't ever come across here.
06:44Then there is the final set of remains for Sue and Xanthi to examine.
06:49Oh.
06:52This man has an even more dramatic bone defect.
06:56Oh, my.
06:58Mm. OK.
07:00Well. Well. Well, well, well.
07:03Oh, this is very, very, very unusual.
07:07His elbow and knee are both fused.
07:11The bones have grown together.
07:14To Sue, this does not look like the trauma found on the other bodies.
07:18Oh, boy.
07:19You know, it could be so many things.
07:24If you take the left limb, so there's the humerus, sitting like that,
07:29fused at right angles at the elbow, but look how it's fused.
07:34And the fused knee joint is even more debilitating.
07:37I have to say, that is outrageous.
07:42That is a very odd angle.
07:45But look at that buttress that you've got on here.
07:47So muscle. Huge amount of muscle that's reorganised.
07:50This is not a waist. You're not talking somebody who is kind of wasting and not moving.
07:54Right. Functionally, that would be better if it was fused vertical.
07:57Of course, straight. Yeah.
07:59Sue has found what she thinks might be a rare congenital condition in two different men.
08:06Her first thought, could they be related?
08:09That is the singularly most unusual set of carpal coalitions that I have ever seen.
08:16And right next door to it is the most outrageous fusion of an elbow at 90 degrees and a knee at 90 degrees.
08:27I'd really like to know if they're related. Yeah.
08:31The condition suffered by these two men is entirely unexpected, given the nature of the rest of the group.
08:38He has a distinct disability. A distinct disability.
08:45It's now a twofold investigation.
08:49Firstly, the group as a whole, over 100 men.
08:53Who were they and what killed them all?
08:57But also, what is the story of these two men with their dramatically fused bones?
09:05The evidence at the moment, if we were looking at this in a purely cold light of day forensic scenario,
09:11is we have two individuals, male, of mature age, adult males,
09:17who have got congenital abnormalities, or we suspect them to be.
09:22We can't make any other link at this stage.
09:27But watch this space.
09:29Testing gets underway immediately, including DNA sampling, CT scanning, isotopic analysis and carbon dating.
09:44So what I'm going to do now is take some samples of this femur,
09:50which is the right leg bone of the male with the strange development.
09:54I'm going to take two different samples.
09:58One's going to be used for the stable isotopes, looking at the provenancing,
10:02possibly telling us about diet and maybe where they were.
10:06The other one's going to be used for dating the samples.
10:09That's going to really pin down when these people died.
10:17The team will need to wait some weeks for the results to come back.
10:23In the meantime, Xanthi needs to gather evidence from the area.
10:28So next morning she meets local archaeologist Graham Bruce, who supervised the excavations.
10:40Graham had been excavating a site just a hundred yards or so outside York City walls,
10:46defences that have stood since Roman times.
10:50OK, here we are. This is the site where we found all the mass graves.
10:54Back in the Middle Ages, there was a church on this site,
10:58and Graham expected to find a traditional medieval graveyard.
11:02But instead he was shocked to uncover large pits containing the bodies of over a hundred men.
11:08We've got some pictures of the graves themselves in here.
11:13Let's see on this one where you've got...
11:16And they're all lined up? They're lined up within the graves.
11:19Where were the mass graves within here?
11:22They were predominantly within the church itself, respecting the main wall lines.
11:28So the walls must have still been standing, at least partially, when the graves were cut into.
11:34The mass graves were dug inside the church,
11:37and Graham believes this must have happened some time after record show it fell into ruin.
11:43And Graham also believes the graves must date from before the 1700s.
11:48By the 18th century in York as well, you've got better cartographic sources,
11:52and the maps show this area as open agricultural land with no other buildings on it.
11:58So you haven't got anywhere you'd be wanting to put a major 18th-century burial ground.
12:04Carbon dating will confirm whether Graham's theory is correct.
12:09But if the mass graves do date from around the 1600s, what does Graham think could be the cause?
12:15Looking at the actual way in which they've been buried, what are your theories on this?
12:20When we started finding mass graves, you do start obviously trying to work out why.
12:25It's clearly a major, fairly cataclysmic event
12:29that has created all these people dying at the same time.
12:33And in the mid-17th century, you have the English Civil War.
12:36Graham's theory is that these bodies could have been victims of the English Civil War.
12:42With no women and children amongst the group, could they in fact have been soldiers?
12:48Dating back to one of Britain's most brutal and savage periods of conflict.
12:55Back at Dundee HQ, Xanthi and Sue get Professor Caroline Wilkinson up to speed
13:01using computer graphics of the burial site and the two most curious bodies.
13:07Now, what you can see here is the church.
13:11The church was in ruins.
13:13Now, what you can see here is the church.
13:17Now, what you can see here is the church.
13:21The church was in ruins when they were buried.
13:24The church was in ruins, I understand.
13:26But they've observed the lines of the ruins, I understand.
13:32And these are our two individuals.
13:34But not treated any differently, they're buried in exactly the same way.
13:37Yep, exactly the same way, because there's such a lot of them.
13:40113.
13:42You can say the number really quickly, but then when you actually see it,
13:46it looks like an awful lot of people.
13:48And somebody's taken care, putting them all in like that.
13:51We'll be getting carbon dates, but we don't have those yet,
13:54so obviously they're going to help us pinpoint it.
13:56But really we're looking at the Civil War simply because of where they are
13:59and also the number of people in that type of demographic population.
14:03So we'll know more, but this is quite helpful contextually.
14:06The team agrees that the obvious starting place for the larger investigation
14:11is to gather more details on the Civil War
14:14and how it might have affected the city of York.
14:17I'm absolutely happy that, you know,
14:19we can explain it in terms of a potential military,
14:22because that fits that you've got a lot of men of fighting sort of age together.
14:27And how is it the man with severely fused knee and elbow
14:31came to be buried amongst what could be a group of soldiers?
14:35We thought a lot more to find out about this guy,
14:37I suppose, what he would have been doing in this population for a start.
14:40Yeah.
14:42Because he is, I mean, he's disabled.
14:44Yeah, absolutely, there's no getting away from the fact
14:46that he's got a physical disability.
14:48What does a disabled man do in military services?
14:51And like the others, he was strong sites of muscle attachment,
14:54so he was active.
14:56Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a big story.
15:00Even thinking about the occupations that he might have been involved in,
15:03it was really quite exciting,
15:05because why on earth is he buried with all these men who I suspect,
15:09you know, are relatively healthy, if you can be when you're dead,
15:13but, you know, relatively healthy,
15:15young men of fighting age, perhaps in a military background,
15:19what's he doing there?
15:26Professor Caroline Wilkinson is going to reconstruct
15:29the faces of the two men with the puzzlingly fused bones.
15:35She starts with the man in his early 40s with just the fused hand.
15:43OK, that might be a nasal bone.
15:48Excellent.
15:50So we've got quite a prominent nose,
15:54but it doesn't look underdeveloped.
15:57At this early stage, this man's face seems unaffected by his bone condition,
16:02though Caroline spots something that will affect his appearance.
16:06He's lost one of his front teeth at the top,
16:12and that's before he died, so it's well healed.
16:16This appears consistent with him being a soldier.
16:19Losing your front incisors is something that's common with people who fight.
16:25The teeth next to it look pretty healthy.
16:29They're not showing signs of decay,
16:31so, you know, maybe being knocked out would be the most likely option.
16:36But what of the more severely affected man with fused elbow and knee?
16:42Looks significantly younger.
16:44That's frontal bone.
16:46Very pronounced frontal bossing.
16:50So, in other words, this brow ridge, very male characteristic.
16:54Big nasal bones there, similar to the last man.
17:00And with this skull, there are possible signs of abnormal bone development.
17:05Goes there.
17:08So, yeah, the height of the orbit looks very small.
17:14That is quite a short distance as well between the nose and the mouth.
17:21It's going to be really interesting to put this all together
17:24to see what happens to the rest of the face.
17:27Caroline scans in the fractured pieces of both skulls using a 3D laser scanner.
17:33Final rebuilding will happen using computer software.
17:39Then the full effects of any disorder on their faces will start to emerge.
17:52But how did these two men and 111 others end up in mass graves in York?
17:58And how involved was the city in the civil war?
18:04The First English Civil War was fought from 1642 to 1646
18:09when supporters of Parliament rebelled against the tyrannical rule of King Charles I.
18:16At the outset, England was divided,
18:19with parliamentarian forces controlling the south
18:22and the north under royalist control.
18:25York was seen as the key to controlling the entire north of England.
18:30And historical records recount that in the spring of 1644,
18:35parliamentary forces pushed north and laid siege to the city.
18:41So, what impact did this have on York and its population?
18:46High up on the city's walls, Xanthi meets civil war historian Martin Bennett.
18:51Who was fighting?
18:53Well, inside the city you've got the Royalist Army of the Earl of Newcastle,
18:57about 4,000 of his soldiers inside the city.
19:00So this side, where we are? Yeah.
19:02OK. He's outside? Outside are three parliamentarian armies.
19:06When all three armies are gathered around, there are about 30,000 at the most.
19:11But surely it would be easy then to take the city with 30,000 men?
19:15There are two ways of taking a city.
19:17One is by storm and the other is to starve it out.
19:19Both of them carry their risks
19:21and parliamentarians initially attempt to starve the garrison out.
19:26But that wasn't going to be easy.
19:28It seems that the Royalist soldiers had swept up all crops
19:31from the surrounding areas and were well prepared.
19:35The people inside, in York, it's not as bad as it could be.
19:39They don't get to the stage of eating dogs and cats and rats
19:42because there's plenty of food, plenty of water,
19:45plenty of breweries in town making beer,
19:48which is, of course, safer to drink than water,
19:50and, effectively, they have enough to survive the 11 weeks of this siege.
19:5530,000 parliamentarian soldiers spent three months
19:59camped outside the city walls.
20:03It seems that this was the critical moment
20:05for York's involvement in the civil war.
20:09Were our 113 part of this besieging force?
20:15Amazingly, the siege is particularly well documented.
20:18At nearby King's Manor, Martin talks Xanthi through who took part.
20:24Inside, you've got the Earl of Newcastle's troops.
20:28With the Royalists retreating inside the walls,
20:31parliamentarian forces gathered around the city.
20:34What happens first is that the Scots arrive in this area,
20:38so in the ooze it flows into the city and the ooze it flows out.
20:41So all of this sector here is occupied by Scots forces
20:44and Fairfax's forces occupy this side from the ooze here,
20:49right round to the river Foss.
20:51What then happens is, towards the end of May,
20:54is the Earl of Manchester's army arrives
20:57and occupies the northern territory.
20:59So they kind of spread out now.
21:01Now the city is completely ringed.
21:03And as soon as that is achieved,
21:05then they begin to move inwards on the walls.
21:07So the suburbs begin to fall into the hands of parliament.
21:11And Martin has a theory about which of these armies
21:14our men could have come from.
21:16Fairfax's forces begin to take over the suburbs outside Wormcade.
21:21Aha, so does that mean that our mass grave is over here?
21:24It's in this area here.
21:26Right, OK, that is close, isn't it? Not far from the city walls.
21:29Martin believes our men could have been soldiers
21:32from one very particular part of the parliamentarian army,
21:366,000 men, under the command of Lord Fairfax.
21:41It's remarkable progress so early in the case.
21:44But it will take the results from the isotope testing
21:47to tell the team exactly where our soldiers came from.
21:52But what of the injuries to the bones Sue and Xanthi saw in the forensic tent?
21:57Are these consistent with soldiers fighting in the Civil War?
22:02Xanthi goes to Heslington Hall,
22:04where Lord Fairfax set up his camp during the siege.
22:08She meets Graham Webb and Richard Hawes from the Sealed Knot
22:12to learn about the weaponry, roles and injuries
22:15typical of 17th-century warfare.
22:18So here we have a muzzle-loading musket, OK?
22:22Mainly used for firing a lead ball.
22:25It was inaccurate, so you're unlikely to actually hit anybody with it
22:30although that's no comfort to anybody that's standing in front of it.
22:34Although there are no signs of musket ball damage on our men's bones,
22:38Richard thinks the musket could still be responsible.
22:42Occasionally somebody would get hit and you'd get horrific smash injuries
22:46and your friends would perhaps be falling down next to you.
22:49Eventually the morale of the group that you were firing at
22:53would perhaps break and they would run,
22:56and at which point you turn it round the other way and you go chasing after them.
23:01And this is the real damage that is done with the butt end of the musket.
23:05But how would this have actually worked in practice?
23:09Richard thinks a musket used this way round
23:12could be responsible for leg breaks, dislocated elbows
23:16and broken clavicle bones in the shoulder.
23:20These are exactly the kind of injuries
23:23Zanthi and Sue saw on the remains in the tent.
23:28But what of the large muscle attachments also found on the bones?
23:32Could this be explained by another weapon
23:35commonly used by soldiers of the time?
23:38The pike.
23:40The biggest and heaviest men carried these, right?
23:44Now, when you charge your pike,
23:46if you drop that pike straight down with your arm levelled behind,
23:50you can then charge your pike at the enemy.
23:53Don't worry, I'm right under it.
23:55Do you feel the weight of that?
23:56Keep that under your cheek and if you haunch back a bit
23:59and put your elbow on your hip there,
24:01you should be able to take the weight there.
24:02Do you feel that?
24:03Yes, I can feel that.
24:04You're straining there, aren't you?
24:06It's quite an awkward thing to hold.
24:08So what you have to do now is you just lunge forward
24:10straight into the faces of the enemy there.
24:13And again, I go...
24:15I would have gone straight for the eye.
24:17It takes a lot of strength to wield this,
24:19as well as balance and technique.
24:21So you'd expect quite well-built guys?
24:23Absolutely.
24:24The people that used them were particularly selected
24:26for their strength and height and stature.
24:28So the pikemen are really the brawn of the outfit?
24:30Absolutely, yes.
24:33All the historical evidence appears to indicate
24:36our men were soldiers from the Civil War.
24:39But will the carbon dating results confirm this?
24:431480 to 1687.
24:46Hold on, 1480...
24:48So that's fine?
24:49Yes.
24:50These dates cover a broad period,
24:53with the Civil War lying at the latter end.
24:56But the team know they can eliminate the earlier dates
24:59because of the archaeological evidence on the ground.
25:02The church, if you remember, was finished usage in 1580.
25:06That's why it was ruined when it looks like these men have gone in.
25:09So we're now 1580 to 1687.
25:11Mm-hm.
25:12And in the middle of that, right slap-bang almost in the middle of that,
25:16is the siege date.
25:17Yes.
25:18With the siege being the only time in this period
25:21when so many men were gathered together in York,
25:24dating the burial to the English Civil War now seems certain.
25:30What's important is that it supports what everything is telling us.
25:35So I think those large numbers, the regimentation of the burials,
25:38the fact that they're in the church, they're close to the city walls,
25:41everything is saying it's got to be the siege.
25:43Yeah.
25:44It's got to be.
25:47Are 113 men likely never lived long enough to see victory
25:51when the Royalists gave up and left York in July 1644?
25:56And whether they were definitely parliamentarian soldiers
25:59under Lord Fairfax's command
26:02will only be confirmed when the isotope results come in.
26:08The team also still don't know what the cause of death of the men was.
26:14Although the skeletons showed no fatal wounds,
26:17many did have healed injury and there were signs of infection.
26:22Could infections like these have killed all 113 of the men?
26:27To help understand what the cause of death might have been,
26:30Xanthi meets up with historian Rory McCready
26:33in a typical Civil War surgery.
26:38She starts by showing Rory some of the injuries from our men's bones.
26:44Here we've got a sharp force trauma to the elbow,
26:46so outside of the elbow, pretty deep, actually.
26:49Yeah.
26:50What would have caused this?
26:51Well, that was probably made by a surgeon,
26:53What would have caused this?
26:55Well, that was probably made by a sword, quite a deep cut.
26:58Probably in that sort of direction.
27:01So some sort of defensive injury?
27:03Yes.
27:04It seems the surgeons did have some understanding of infection
27:07and how to manage it.
27:09What we would do then is we would get something like oats...
27:16..and I'm going to get honey.
27:18I'm going to mix the two together to make it into a paste
27:22and then this will be put into the wound
27:24and then we'd sew the wound up with that inside the wound.
27:27Why did they leave that in?
27:29Because it helps to heal.
27:30The honey would be used as an antiseptic.
27:33We didn't understand that, but we knew that it worked.
27:36In fact, today, in some hospitals, when antibiotics don't work,
27:39they're using honey again to fight infections.
27:43But as these treatments were nowhere near as effective as modern solutions,
27:47if the infection continued to spread,
27:50the surgeons had one last resort.
27:53Amputation.
27:55If I take your arm off of the elbow,
27:57you have about a 50-50 chance of surviving the operation.
28:00If I take it off at the shoulder, the chances are you will die.
28:05Amputation was actually a highly sophisticated procedure
28:09surgeons were well versed in.
28:11What we do first of all is we get a dismembering knife like this one here.
28:15The cutting edge is on the inside.
28:17It's a pretty serious knife. It is.
28:19An assistant would hold your arm extremely tight,
28:22act like a tourniquet.
28:24The surgeon would then plunge the knife into the limb
28:28until he hits bone.
28:30And then in a very fast motion, go round in a circular motion
28:34till we come back where we started.
28:36Like opening a can.
28:37Tis.
28:38He or she would then yank the skin and muscle up the bone
28:42to expose the bone.
28:44Yeah.
28:45The bone saw would then be used
28:47and as high as possible I would saw through the bones.
28:52Hopefully I'm unconscious.
28:54Might not necessarily be.
28:56Okay.
28:57When you've sawn through the limb,
28:59we then cauterise the wound.
29:01This would then go on the end of the stump.
29:04Yeah.
29:05What happens then, if they've done it right,
29:09the skin and muscle should be longer than the bone.
29:12This should come down over the end
29:14and now I've got squidgy bits to play with.
29:16Yeah.
29:17This will be pinned through the wound
29:20and then put another pin the other way.
29:22Why?
29:23That way you can control the tightness.
29:25You'd put a figure of eight loop of thread
29:27over the two ends of the pin.
29:29Right.
29:30I'll come along the next day and what I'll do is
29:32I'll make that figure of eight tighter and tighter and tighter
29:35to draw the skin and muscle over the end of the stump.
29:38That's very clever.
29:39Very clever.
29:40They may not have had today's medical expertise and equipment
29:43but Civil War surgeons were certainly competent enough
29:46to stop all our 113 men dying in one go.
29:51Simple infection can't be our cause of death.
30:04Back in Dundee, Sue is taking a closer look
30:07at the two skeletons with the extraordinary fused bones.
30:11This individual was exceptional
30:13because this is the one where we had the most outrageous fusion
30:18that occurred at the elbow.
30:20So the hand permanently fixed in that position
30:23and then as if that wasn't enough, quite frankly,
30:26the absolute and utter piece de resistance.
30:30Look at that.
30:31It's just the most outrageous specimen I think I've ever seen.
30:35So that we've got the long shaft of the femur, the thigh bone,
30:39we've got the tibia, the shin bone, at right angles.
30:43And where there should be a knee, there isn't a knee.
30:46It's fixed bone.
30:49Sue's research has led her to believe
30:51that this could be a condition with the rarest classification possible,
30:55occurring in a maximum one person in every 200,000
31:00and best illustrated by the other man's fused hand.
31:04They call it carpal coalition syndrome
31:06because that's the most common bits that fuse together,
31:09all of these little bones.
31:11When bone forms, before it becomes bone,
31:14it's a big mass of cartilage.
31:16And if you think of it like cheddar cheese,
31:18that big lump of cheese was never cut.
31:21And so we think that this is about a malformation of the joints.
31:26This is a rare genetic condition.
31:30To find one of those is rare.
31:33To find two individuals that may be displaying the same thing
31:38can't be a coincidence.
31:40It absolutely can't be a coincidence.
31:42Sue has discovered that the man with the dramatically fused knee and elbow
31:47also has fused bones in his wrist.
31:50It's significant new evidence to link the conditions of the two men.
31:55He has a carpal coalition too, but it's only two of the bones.
31:59And the bones that it is
32:01are the bones that are sitting down at the base of the thumb.
32:04So this one that's called the trapezium and the trapezoid.
32:07These two little bones have fused together.
32:11Carpal coalition syndrome is a genetic condition
32:15that's passed from parent to child.
32:18It's inherited.
32:20If it's in your family, it stays in your family.
32:24And what's the likelihood of that occurring randomly
32:28alongside somebody else with that?
32:30Yeah, I don't like coincidences.
32:33I don't believe in the tooth fairy and I don't believe in coincidence.
32:37But Sue has to be sure.
32:44So the bones are put through a CT scanner,
32:48which looks inside the bones to give detailed images
32:51viewable from any angle.
32:54Will the results confirm or disprove Sue's diagnosis?
33:02Along with her colleague, Dr Ruz Aizmah, she scours the images.
33:09These are the whole tray laid out as a ventral scanner.
33:12Look at this. Isn't that amazing? Look at that knee.
33:15And look at that elbow.
33:17This is the knee.
33:20Go back, go back, go back.
33:23Look. Isn't that interesting?
33:26When you've got the two pillars of the joint, they're continuous.
33:30All the other bits of the bone are formed.
33:32All the normal growing bits are there.
33:34What isn't there is the joint.
33:36There's no joint space.
33:38Now, that isn't trauma.
33:41That isn't disease.
33:43That's embryological.
33:47That's our multiple synostosis syndrome.
33:51That's the most amazing image.
33:54Sue's instincts are confirmed.
33:57The only question now is, OK, we know they've got that syndrome,
34:02we've diagnosed the syndrome, are they related?
34:07DNA samples have been taken from the bones of the two men
34:10under sterile conditions.
34:13These results could confirm any familial link between the two soldiers,
34:17but the results are still some days away.
34:27What is already clear is that the man with the fused arm and leg
34:31would have had to live with his disability from birth.
34:37But how would he have coped with such severe disability
34:40350 years ago?
34:42And what function could he have served in a civil war army?
34:46Xanthe heads to Kent University to meet Julie Anderson,
34:50specialist in the history of disability.
34:54Julie has brought along a range of wooden replica crutches and supports
34:58the disabled soldier could have used.
35:01They look pretty simple.
35:03Just whatever's going to help somebody get around.
35:05Yes, crutch design remains very important.
35:08Yes, crutch design remains very simple until the 20th century.
35:12They were generally pieces of wood, carved,
35:15with some padding put on the support area under the arm.
35:19So how mobile would the man have been?
35:22To find out, Julie's assistant, Jack, is given replica crutches
35:26and a knee support the man would likely have used.
35:29Now, let's see if you can not fall over, I guess.
35:34We'll go for it.
35:36Now, imagine if you were like this all the time,
35:38you'd obviously get a bit more efficient,
35:40but he's moving all right, isn't he?
35:43We're not looking at somebody who would have just, you know,
35:45had to sit down and not do anything.
35:47He's still got use of this hand, even though...
35:49So, literally, it's here that's fused,
35:51so you could still use all the movement at the shoulder,
35:53and you've still got a viable wrist joint.
35:55He wouldn't have fought, but Julie is sure
35:58there were plenty of other jobs he could have done.
36:01His job would have perhaps been an ancillary worker, perhaps a cook,
36:04or maybe even, as he was a big man, guarding the ordnance,
36:08where all the munitions and the muskets and things like that were kept.
36:11Despite a permanently fused elbow and knee,
36:14he could have functioned quite well.
36:16You're standing at a bench. Right.
36:18Balancing now. What do you think?
36:20Have you managed to be a cook or a guard or something?
36:22I'd imagine the balance might have been an issue,
36:24but you get used to it, so... Yeah.
36:26..with the right arm, you can obviously do a lot of things, so...
36:29I'd imagine so. Yeah.
36:31I mean, it's great to see it first-hand, how this could have looked,
36:33because when you just see the remains,
36:35you think this guy would have been pretty much stuck doing nothing.
36:37Exactly.
36:38And Julie has rare illustrations
36:40of how people affected by disability may have lived around that time.
36:45I've got some images here... Oh, look at that.
36:47..of a range of disabled people from the period.
36:50Some of them have got musical instruments and things.
36:53Well, they would have been working people.
36:55You have to remember that there was no institutionalisation,
36:58really, before the 19th century,
37:00so people had to just go out and make their own living,
37:03which a lot of people did, as best they could.
37:05Some of these are in pairs.
37:06This person looks blind and they're being led by somebody else.
37:09Yes, that was common too.
37:10They would get together in bands... Yeah.
37:13..and look after each other.
37:15It's the same for our man in the military.
37:17He would have been part of a group and they would have looked after him.
37:21They wouldn't have seen him as unusual?
37:23No, not at all.
37:24In fact, the word normal doesn't really come into common usage
37:28in the English language until the early part of the 19th century.
37:32Was there just no purpose for it?
37:34No, it wasn't necessary. People were just who they were.
37:37But despite this apparent tolerance, relatives often suffered.
37:41Extreme religious beliefs saw disability as a sign
37:44that the person's family had committed a sin.
37:47They would be ostracised, they would be shunned by their communities,
37:52and it was difficult. Some families had to move away.
37:55But often, when the disabled person grew up, they would leave home.
37:59And the military could prove useful in these circumstances.
38:03Would disabled people actually have gone into the military
38:06to relieve their families of that burden?
38:08Absolutely.
38:09And because unemployment was a problem amongst disabled people,
38:13often the military provided a haven for them
38:16in order for them to be paid at a job.
38:20So it's not a surprise to have found the disabled in the army,
38:24even holding down a key job.
38:26Nor is it a surprise to find two disabled men grouped together for support.
38:37Back in Dundee, Caroline and her colleague Chris Wrynn
38:40are close to reconstructing what our two men may have looked like.
38:46The older man is missing his front tooth from the blow to the face he took,
38:50likely in battle.
38:53But the more severely disabled man's face has been more complicated.
38:58It's been a really challenging process for me with this one.
39:02This was very definitely asymmetry that was extreme.
39:05It's just been really interesting to try and show the face of someone
39:09with a congenital condition.
39:11And we're seeing some dysmorphia, some changes to the facial structure
39:15that may be connected to this condition.
39:18What I've done is to take in a nose from a database
39:22and then try and distort that to fit with the bones.
39:26You can see that we've got quite a bent shape to the lateral nasal bones,
39:32the bones on the side of the nose, which is suggesting this shape here.
39:36And one of the things that I've noted a lot in the literature for this condition,
39:41we may have to consider giving him cross eyes
39:44because that seems to be a likely option.
39:48But were these two men really related, as their shared rare condition suggests?
40:00To find out, the team gather to hear the results of the DNA analysis,
40:05with Sue especially on tenterhooks.
40:10A bit frustratingly, they came back as having...
40:12Honestly, I don't even like that now. You've already gone too far.
40:15They don't have the same mother.
40:17But we've got DNA out of them.
40:18Yes. DNA was viable. It does not appear to be contaminated.
40:23OK. But?
40:26Apparently, though, looking for the male lineage on the Y chromosome,
40:29you've got to go right down to the nuclear level
40:32and the DNA is not viable at that level.
40:36Don't look at me like that.
40:38Well, that's just rubbish, quite frankly.
40:41So we can't say that they're not brothers, fraternal brothers,
40:46but we can say that we can't tell and they're not maternally related.
40:53Frustratingly for Sue, the DNA shows the two men aren't related by mother
40:58and it isn't good enough quality to prove whether they were related by father or not.
41:04But Sue's not going to give up on her theory easily.
41:08So it is possible that they could still be related.
41:12Yeah.
41:13But we just can't show it.
41:14I think the chances of having this condition in individuals who are not related
41:20and are in pretty much almost the same grave at the same time
41:25would be stretching it a bit far.
41:30They could still be cousins or half-brothers.
41:33But where were they from?
41:35The isotope results are also in.
41:38Will these help to determine whether the men were part of Lord Fairfax's Parliamentary Army?
41:44The two do have the same isotopic signature.
41:47Good.
41:48And I've got some interesting data for the diet,
41:52which is quite specifically interesting to these guys.
41:55They had a 20% to 25% fish intake in their diet, which is really high.
42:01Normally we'd be looking at 0% to 5%.
42:04In York, you can have, unless it's fresh water,
42:08but these have got a really high fish, both of the brothers.
42:12So it has to be coastal.
42:15This is a fascinating discovery for the team.
42:18The isotopes say both our men had high marine diets.
42:22But how does this fit with the theory that they were part of Fairfax's army in York?
42:28Civil War expert Andrew Hopper thinks he has the answer
42:32and has invited Xanthi to the Yorkshire port of Hull to explain.
42:37Hull was the most important northern port town held by Parliament during the Civil Wars.
42:43Prior to the siege of York, it was also the base of the Parliamentarian commander in Yorkshire, Lord Fairfax.
42:49Quite a large proportion of Lord Fairfax's Parliamentarian Army from Yorkshire
42:54came from Hull and in the parishes around it.
42:57There was a large merchant fleet based here
43:00and many of the seamen volunteered to fight for Parliament.
43:04So you're saying that these guys I've been looking at, that I presumed are soldiers,
43:08would actually have originally been sailors?
43:10It's very likely that they had been, yes.
43:13But why would sailors be useful to Lord Fairfax in the siege of York?
43:19Hull's sailors would have all been experienced cannoneers, experienced artillerymen.
43:24They would have served on merchant vessels that had been armed
43:27and they'd also been probably quite hardy folk, having sailed across the North Sea.
43:33They would have been prized commodities in a siege situation.
43:38So our men's experience with cannon on board ship could have made them highly useful in a siege war.
43:47Lord Fairfax invested the city from the south east between the rivers Foss and Ouse
43:52and set up his gun batteries on Lamell Hill
43:55and from there they would pour down fire where the Royalist defences were.
43:59Well that's really interesting because the mass graves and specifically these two brothers in arms,
44:03they were buried very near there.
44:05So they were probably actually part of this actual military operation, weren't they?
44:09Yes, I should think it's very likely.
44:12Do we have any documentary evidence available from the time?
44:16Well, the garrison accounts of Hull in 1642 and 1643 survive.
44:22And they're very detailed and they give us the names of three of the gunners.
44:27Really?
44:28Three of the cannoneers in Hull.
44:30Oh, is this actually from the original document, a copy of it?
44:33Yes, we have here Thomas Coatsworth and the cannoneers at the blockhouse,
44:38James Hunter and the cannoneers in the town
44:41and another gentleman here, Cowling the gunner, mentioned in the accounts.
44:46It's a bit of a reach, but theoretically one of these men could be one of the men I've been looking at.
44:53Well, if they weren't one of the men you were looking at,
44:56it's very likely they would have been very well known or personally known to them.
45:00That's pretty close, isn't it?
45:03But why would a group of sailors give up their livelihoods
45:06and sign up to fight in Fairfax's land army?
45:11Was there a greater motivation behind their actions?
45:18Xanthi meets Civil War specialist Diane Perkis at Holy Trinity in York,
45:23a simple church she believes the parliamentarian soldiers would have approved of.
45:28They felt this was what God wanted, absolute plainness and spareness.
45:33Anything else was an insult to Him.
45:36This plainness permeated people's whole lives.
45:40You'd live the right way, you'd be chaste, you'd be abstinent, you'd read the Bible every day.
45:46Many ordinary Englishmen joined the parliamentarian cause
45:50because they hated the elaborate, ritualistic church King Charles I stood for,
45:55as well as his belief he was appointed by God to rule by divine right.
46:01He tried to impose on the Church of England
46:05a much more posh, hierarchical, glittering, bishop-driven kind of model
46:13of what the Church of England ought to be, and these people didn't want a bar of it.
46:17But they also thought that was actually icon worship,
46:20something that pretended to represent God,
46:23but actually broke the second commandment where God says,
46:26thou shalt not make unto thyself a graven image.
46:29How do we go from religious fervour to war?
46:32Well, some of these guys actually thought that they were fighting in the last battle
46:37between Christ and the forces of Antichrist.
46:40Some of the more radical ones believed that if they acted rightly,
46:44it would actually inspire Christ to come down from heaven and rule the world.
46:49And save the world.
46:50And save the world.
46:51And create an ideal world.
46:52Well, that's worth dying for, then. It's a massive cause.
46:55Yeah, exactly.
46:57And Diane has written evidence of the soldiers' religious fervour.
47:02This is actually a letter that was sent to London.
47:05This man plainly thought he was God's soldier.
47:08It's actually headed,
47:09A Relation of the Great Victory Obtained by God's Assistance by the Parliament's Forces.
47:14And the letter itself says,
47:17So each and every man thought he was God's soldier?
47:20Yeah, and they thought the army was the church of God.
47:23So now the opposing royalists in the field are God's enemies.
47:27They're radicalised. That's how we see it today.
47:30That's right, yeah.
47:31So the experience of serving in this army,
47:34the experience of serving in this army,
47:36the experience of serving in this army,
47:38the experience of serving in this army,
47:40the experience of serving in this army,
47:42the experience of serving in this army,
47:44the experience of serving in this army,
47:46and thinking these kinds of religious thoughts has radicalised this man.
47:51Was it this same religious conviction that drove our men to the siege of York
47:55and their eventual demise?
47:58The team believe they now know where the men were from.
48:01They know who they were fighting for
48:03and what their motivation was.
48:06But they still don't know how they died.
48:10There is evidence of having fracture occur to bone,
48:15but it's very well healed.
48:17There's an evidence of infection to bone,
48:20but again, it's very well healed.
48:23All of this is consistent with them being a fighting force,
48:27but it's not consistent with what caused their death.
48:30And if you can rule out the infection side and the trauma side,
48:35the only thing that's really left as a feasible cause of death
48:39is going to be disease.
48:41It has to be disease as the most likely cause of death for so many individuals.
48:51How would doctors have dealt with disease back in the 17th century?
48:57Xanthi goes to the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford
49:01to meet medical historian Dr Erica Charters.
49:06Intriguing little box.
49:08Do we need the gloves?
49:09So we need the gloves on to touch some of this.
49:12Erica has a remarkable device
49:14used to treat disease and fever until the late 19th century,
49:18and similar to those doctors would have used during the English Civil War.
49:23This is actually to let blood.
49:26Right.
49:27Now, this is where the exciting bit happens.
49:31This would go right up against your skin.
49:33Yeah.
49:34Before you know it, it would cut into your skin.
49:36It would make very small incisions,
49:38and this would allow you to let some blood out.
49:41And, of course, bloodletting was...
49:43Well, it's been very popular for a long time,
49:45so definitely in the 17th century they would have been doing this.
49:48So you just press the button there.
49:50Hold it.
49:51Oh.
49:52It's quite powerful, isn't it?
49:54It is quite powerful.
49:55And you can see...
49:56Oh, yeah.
49:57...where it's cut into the paper.
49:58Yeah.
49:59So was there an idea that there were poisons in the blood
50:01that you actually wanted to release by bloodletting?
50:03Very much so.
50:04And what we do see, especially for fevers,
50:06remembering if you think of how someone looks who has a fever,
50:10they're flushed, they're very warm,
50:12their pulse is beating very quickly,
50:14so it almost looks like they have an excess of blood.
50:16So it's not surprising that some people felt that
50:19letting out some of that excess of blood would return you to health.
50:23Does it actually have any benefits?
50:27Not that we know of, no.
50:30With little more than bloodletting as a treatment,
50:33and with thousands of men camped closely together during the siege,
50:37Erica believes she knows what could have killed the 113 men.
50:42Something like typhus fever,
50:44the incubation is probably around three weeks,
50:46and very commonly what we see in diaries of sieges
50:50is that after about three weeks during a siege,
50:52we see outbreaks of disease.
50:54How does it spread?
50:55Well, it's very contagious.
50:57It's interesting because it's spread through body lice,
51:00and they actually live in the seams of your clothing.
51:03So it's a particular kind of insect which is a vector for the pathogen.
51:07And what's interesting about it is
51:09the lice only like living at the temperature of your body,
51:12so they will only stay in your clothes when you're wearing your clothes,
51:15which is why we often see it in sieges.
51:17It's very common in wintertime when people keep their clothes on.
51:20So it could possibly have been there even during the summer in York.
51:24What are the symptoms?
51:26It's a general fever, a kind of weakening,
51:29very often a very intense headache.
51:31Sometimes you see a rash.
51:32How many people died of typhus?
51:34Well, it depends.
51:36We know that when we look at case fatality rates,
51:38so if you catch it, what the chances are that you will die.
51:41We've seen during the First World War it reached rates such as 70%.
51:45And because it's so contagious, if you're in a small area together,
51:48there's a good chance that almost everyone will catch it.
51:50Because it was so contagious, did they die from this more so than from fighting?
51:54It would be much more likely that you might die of disease.
51:56And, of course, it's not a very glorious death.
51:58It's one thing to die on the battlefield.
52:00It's another thing to die of something like diarrhoea or a fever.
52:04It's not exactly the way that you want to go.
52:08The team finally has a plausible, if tragic, explanation
52:12for how the men in the mass graves died.
52:16A virulent outbreak of typhus fever,
52:19a disease that has afflicted besieging armies from ancient times
52:23right up to Stalingrad in the Second World War.
52:40With the final part of the puzzle in place,
52:43it's time for the story the Bones have told
52:46to be relayed back to the local community.
52:54The cold case team has returned to York.
53:00There, to hear their findings,
53:02are those who originally excavated the site
53:05and experts who have assisted the team.
53:09I'm hoping to find out more of why they died,
53:11more about why they were buried in that particular spot,
53:14and who buried them and at what period of the civil wars they were buried in.
53:18All those questions that purely the historical evidence isn't able to answer.
53:22The facial reconstructions are something I haven't been involved with before,
53:26and hopefully that will give us an insight,
53:29a closer insight into the people who we're dealing with.
53:33Ghoulishly exciting.
53:36Sue reveals the bigger story of the civil war.
53:40It's reasonable to suspect that they're going to be fighting men.
53:44She unpacks how the men would have died.
53:47What do we find in terms of a cause of death?
53:50Well, we don't find trauma.
53:52What we've been told is that, in fact, more people died as a result of disease.
53:57The more intimate story of disability.
54:00His right leg would have been fixed that way.
54:04A condition that is so rare, we don't have an incidence for the rarity of it.
54:11And how the science tied two remarkable men's lives together in death.
54:17So now what we've got are two individuals, buried in the same location,
54:22with the rarest of genetic conditions, not with the same mother,
54:27hopefully their father had a bike, but not with the same mother,
54:30with exactly the same stable isotopes in terms of where they've come from,
54:35and with exactly the same unusual marine-based diet of a very high proportion.
54:41They have got to go together.
54:46The final part of the investigation is to bring these two soldiers back to life,
54:51beginning with the man with just a fused hand.
54:59It's a strong face, it's a very strong face.
55:02It's actually quite a pleasant face.
55:05He would fit in amongst us, wouldn't he?
55:11Then there is the more severely affected man.
55:17Now I don't know whether his squint eye was inward-pointing or outward-pointing,
55:29and when we looked at the literature, inward-pointing seemed to be more common.
55:35These guys would have been used to seeing people who'd had much more major battlefield wounds,
55:40like your face cut in half by a cavalry sabre, you're losing an eye to a pike.
55:47That asymmetry is relatively slight in comparison with what they would have seen.
55:52And for Sue, it's this man's story that has been the greatest revelation.
55:58He was active, so he's not a passive person.
56:02He's been with the rest of them, treated the same way as the rest of them.
56:06Whether we now might think of him differently in terms of a disability,
56:10that disability wasn't being recognised as him being an outcast.
56:14He was treated very, very much like the others.
56:17It is an absolutely unique set of remains.
56:21It is fascinating.
56:31They give us that opportunity to bring the science in,
56:35use the historical background, and it really fleshes out those people
56:40that we're dealing with during that quite tumultuous period of English history.
56:44The science gave me everything I was hoping for.
56:46It gave you that element that the historical document can't deal with.
56:50It gave us something beyond the paper, beyond the page and beyond the text.
56:54The guy with the disabilities, I was just fascinated that such a guy could find a place in Fairfax's army.
57:01I think that tells us something so important about the way this war was developing and the way people were thinking.
57:07Because, plainly, we've got an evolving meritocracy here.
57:11Every man was supposed to be good for their job, and if they were good for their job, that was good enough.
57:16And that was what led, really, to the modern parliamentary democracy that we all enjoy.
57:23The Cold Case team has uncovered two remarkable tales.
57:26The larger story of the 113.
57:30Strong, committed men fighting for a cause,
57:34tragically cut down by disease before their victory was assured.
57:40But also the personal story of two men, likely closely related,
57:45who, despite huge disadvantages, stayed together in life and death,
57:50forever brothers in arms.
57:55The story complete, their remarkable bones are now handed back to the community.
58:00This has been such an amazing story because it brings so many different elements together.
58:05It is a huge historical story, but it's also an incredibly important story.
58:10I'm not aware in the literature of anywhere of this type of remains ever having been recorded before.
58:17I think this is a first. I may be wrong, but I think it is a first.
58:30The Cold Case
58:35The Cold Case
58:40The Cold Case