Murder map of medieval London (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Murder map of medieval London (2019)

arstechnica.com

56 pointsTomte12 comments

> As for weapons, knives and swords of varying types were the ones most frequently used, accounting for 68 percent of all the murders. The greatest risk of violent death in London was on weekends

Not much has changed, then.

Ha, yeah - though except for "the medieval London murder rate would be 15 to 20 times higher".

It’s pretty hard to overstate how relatively safe modern life is, even modern cities that are considered unsafe.

Heck, in Ancient Rome being out after night fall was considered a death sentence. Aside from the high murder rate, that’s when all the supply carts arrived. Being on foot surrounded by carts before the invention of consistent urban lighting was a very dicey proposition.

Well, Johannesburg could probably play the medieval murder league on the expected level.

I stand corrected, medieval London was safer than Johannesburg. Current london has 18.4 murders per million residents, which gives us a range of 276 to 368 murders per million for medieval London (15-20x). Last year Johannesburg had 68.3 murders per 100,000, or 683 per million. So current Johannesburg is roughly twice as dangerous per capita than medieval London.

Also from the article, modern medicine:

"We have firearms, but we also have emergency services," he said. "It's easier to kill, but easier to save lives."

This is true, and both make a difference.

But worth knowing that the murder rate dropped, over centuries, to be extremely low around 1900 say. At this point medicine wasn't very useful at saving lives, and while guns (even machine-guns) existed, they weren't in the hands of every street-corner criminal.

So there was enormous real progress over the time-span separating us from the medievals. Trying to figure out the impact of modern medicine etc. is more relevant for trying to understand e.g. the rise & fall of crime since 1960.

Direct link to the project: https://www.vrc.crim.cam.ac.uk/vrcresearch/london-medieval-m...

I'm actually more fascinated by the map than the murders. It's cool to see St Giles-in-the-Fields church actually in the middle of fields. And Spitalfields was The Spital Fields, again, actual fields. You can also see Bedlam, the asylum, near Bishopsgate.

Super weird.

Literally just took my dog for a walk to the park behind St Giles in the Fields church, pull out my phone, and see this comment.

Bizarre.

Now what would be even weirder is if I see a murder near St Giles on the news tonight...

And here's the present times maps: https://www.police.uk/pu/your-area/city-of-london-police/com...

Alas, the city has grown and you have to browse it by borough. Also, murder is mixed in with other violent crimes.

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