W. R. Macdonell 
87 
that no proper archaeological investigation was made at the time of their discovery. 
The remains were f'onnd in excavating for a street latrine, since constructed, at the 
West End of Liverpool Street, and were already collected into heaps before any 
complete investigation could be made of them in situ*. The bones were found 
uncoffined and apparently lying in great disorder. In the Report of the Medical 
Office of Health (City of London, No. Gl, 1903) it is suggested that the very large 
number of skeletons which were found when the Broad Street Station of the 
North London Railway was built may have been C(jllected and reburied at the 
place where the excavations for the underground latrine were made in 1903. This 
solution of the problem does not seem to me probable, for the following reasons : 
That even if Liverpool Street were broadened at the building of the station, the 
bones were discovered in the middle, or south of the middle, of the existing street ; 
it is extremely improbable that exhumed bones would have been reinterred under 
an existing thoroughfare, or that the permission to place them under the newly 
made part of such a thoroughfare would have been given. It is far more probable 
that the roadway was carried, whenever it was broadened, aci'oss an existing 
deposit of human remains. Now we know that Bethlem Burial Ground once 
occupied the sites of Broad Street Station and of the station yard. It is so 
marked on the large scale modern ordnance map of this part of the City. It would 
therefore be reasonable to suppose that the original burial ground extended to the 
centre of the present Livei-pool Street, and that on widening that street a portion 
of the old burial ground was covered by the roadway. Stow remarks, concerning 
Bethlem Burial Groundi": 
" In the yere 1569. Sir Thomas Roe Merchant Taylor Mayor, caused to bee inclosed with a 
" wall of bricke, about one acre of ground, being part of the said Hospitall of Bethelem, to wit, on 
" the west, on the bancke of deepe ditch, so called, parting the said hospitall of Bethlem from the 
" More field : this he did for burial, in ease of such parishes in London as wanted ground, 
convenient within their parishes. The Ladie his wife was there buried (by whose i^ersuasion 
" he inclosed it) but himself borne in London, was buried in the parish church of Hackney." 
Now it might be thought that the exact position and dimensions of a burial 
ground of this importance could hardly fail to be known, but unfortunately no 
plans or title-deeds seem to exist in the City Archives, and we are thrown back 
upon the evidence of the maps of the City and its environs at different dates. 
Unfortunately, most of these maps are very diagrammatic in character, few are drawn 
even approximately to scalej, and even such an important map as Ogilby's of 1677 
is quite unreliable for this district, as far as giving the accurate dimensions of 
streets and intervening plots is concerned. The first map which seems at all 
accurately drawn to scale with correct angles and capable by proper reduction of 
being fitted fairly closely to the modern ordnance map is Rocque's of 1746. 
* A brief Act of Parliampnt ought to be passed compelling all building operators to at once summon 
a local officer, and a competent archaeologist, before proceeding further, when antiquities of any kind are 
reached in excavating. 
t A Svrvajj of London, Octavo Edition, 1.599, pp. 127-8. 
t If different pairs of definite base points be taken and two maps reduced to a common scale, 
the fit, or want of fit, is often wholly different. 
