Hello I'm Paul Bradshaw and I'm Lauren
Gray welcome to Viral History your
weekly fix of all things history. Coming
up on this week's show - we get exclusive
access to actual artifacts from the
Nuremberg trials and I begin my epic
hike through history along Pilgrim's Way.
First up for you archaeologists in
Cambridge have found 25 skeletons on the
site of a medieval friary in the
center of the city. The remains could be
up to 450 years old. And in Chichester
Roman houses have been discovered.
Archaeologists say they're stunned by
the degree of preservation. And a
skeleton discovered at a Roman era
burial site in Northamptonshire has
evidence of unique mutilation. The man
had been buried face down with his
tongue removed and a stone wedged into
his mouth. Now, last week you memorably
found out what kind of clothing a pilgrim
would have worn in medieval times and
this week you've gone a lot further. Yes
it's been on my to-do list for many
years now and I've finally taken the
opportunity toward the famous and
ancient trail between London and
Canterbury we present "Pilgrims Way".
like so many medieval journeys, ours
begins in the City of London. The
original stone london bridge was built
as a shrine by Henry the Second to his
murdered friend Thomas Becket and from
this point countless thousands would
journey on pilgrimage to the murder
scene at Canterbury Cathedral. Thomas
Becket the Archbishop of Canterbury had
feuded with his former friend King Henry
the Second over the power of the Church
and on the 29th of December 1170 Becket
was brutally murdered by four knights
inside Canterbury cathedral. They believed
their King Henry the Second had wanted
the turbulent Thomas dead.
The pilgrimage route heads south through Southwark
to a site famous in historical fact
and fiction. The original Tabard Inn was
destroyed in the 17th century and
pilgrims would have left this site on
horseback traveling not at a trot or a
gallop but at a "canter" derived it's said
as the most comfortable speed for
pilgrims to travel distance to
Canterbury was as at a canter I have no
such luxury I'll be covering the 70-odd
miles on foot.
Before I leave the City I take a detour
to the Museum of London and get special
access to artifacts associated with the
cult of Becket.
Jackie Kiely, Curator "The first badge that
we're looking at here is the bust of
Thomas Becket and this relates back to
one of the really important shrines at
Canterbury that pilgrims would have
visited it. It was a shrine in the shape
of the bust and it contained the crown
of the skull which had been struck off
by one of his assassins by one of the
knights that had murdered him in 1170 so
it was seen as being a really really
important part of the pilgrimage to
visit the shrine. The shrine the
reliquary itself was heavily encrusted
in gold in precious jewels and it would
have been quite a magnificent thing for
ordinary people coming to visit, they
would have been, it would have been
imbued in them a sense of awe and wonder
at this incredibly holy and special
place that they were coming to. Very
typically a pilgrim would have worn a
wide-brimmed cap or hat and these
sorts of badges would have been
attached to that. It was a way that a
pilgrim was recognizable when they were
making their way from the pilgrim site
are going to another pilgrim site, if we
think today about hill-walkers having a
lot of badges perhaps on their walking
sticks or cloth textile ones on their
rucksacks which again show all the
places they've been to it shows what
they've achieved and again this was part
of pilgrimage it was showing what where
you had been and what shrines you had
visited." Paul "And that shrine was actually
destroyed during the Reformation so this
is the only rendering of that shrine that
survived?" Jackie "These are the only depictions
really that we have still today and that
gives us a good understanding of what
the shrine actually looked like we have
descriptions, documentary references to
what they would look like and we know
that people like the King of France had
sent a ruby that was supposed to be the
size of an egg you know it was a
decorated these shrines were decorated
with magnificent jewels with gold and
so we have a kind of
herbal description of what they were
like but these little badges in these base
metals very kind of quite cheaply made
things but ironically they're the things
that show us how magnificent and how
special these places were." Paul "And these
objects were imbued with that power of
belief?" Jackie "Pilgrims who went to the pilgrim
sites very strongly believed in the
power of these objects, these objects
were bought at the pilgrim site because
they would have either held the holy
water such as the ampullae would have
done or with the badges they might have
been held up in front of or in sight of
the reliquary if you were lucky enough
you may have been able to touch the
reliquary with the relic with your and
with your badge, so when you came away
from the place of pilgrimage from the
shrine the badge itself would have been
felt to have been imbued with these very
special miraculous powers."
I head east out of Southwark
to another historical marker.
"So this is the site Thomas-a-watering
and tradition records that this was the
place where Thomas of Canterbury would
water his horses as he rode between
London and Canterbury it was here too
that Chaucer's pilgrims stopped to hear
the first of the Canterbury Tales and in
Tudor times this was the execution site
for the county of Surrey."
I cut through Greenwich and Bexleyheath
towards my first stop along the way. "So
end of day one and I've made it to
Dartford and what better place to stay in
and an 18th century coaching inn?"
Eighteenth century coaching inn eh? Yes the Royal
Victoria and bull hotel built in 1703
speaking of dates here's Marguerite
Second of February. In order to
demonstrate that Lambert Simnel was an
imposter Henry the seventh paraded the
real Earl of Warwick through the streets of London
today in 1487
Now up next on Viral
History our roving reporter Gemma
Chandler gets hands-on on with artifacts from
one of the most famous trials of the
20th century in this week's Material
Evidence
Hi I'm Jenna Chandler and today we're
here at the Galleries of Justice Museum in
Nottingham to look at some pretty
interesting artifacts so I've got Bev
who's the senior curator here at the Museum
and you're going to talk to me a little
bit about this briefcase. Bev "So this is
actually briefcase that belonged to Sir
Norman Birkett who was a well-known and
quite highly-renowned advocate during
the 1930s and was involved in a number
of high-profile trials so he actually
tried a local with local woman called Nurse
Whaddingham who in 1935 was
accused of murdering two of her elderly
patients who were in her care for financial
gain so she was arrested and she was
tried in our Criminal Courtroom here at the
Shire hall at the Museum and was
subsequently found guilty and she was
sentenced to execution. Now Norman Birkett
was a prosecutor at the time and this
happened to be the last case where a
female prisoner was actually found
guilty and sentenced to execution here
in Nottingham, she wasn't executed in the
city she was actually executed at Winson
Green prison in Birmingham as it was the
most local prison to the city at the
time that still executed and so it has a
local story attached to it but also
Norman Birkett became a judge in 1940s
and was involved in the Nuremburg war criminal
trials as well so he actually sat on
that council and prosecuted numerous
Nazi war criminals so this is quite a
significant object for the museum." Gemma "So
what makes this artifact so significant?"
Bev "It's so significant because of its local
connection to this particular site
itself, its association with a number of
notable national trials and obviously
its association with Nuremberg its role
within the Nuremberg war trials as well
so you've got the local, national and
international perspectives of this one
gentleman's role." Gemma "So how did it end up
here in the galleries?" Bev "Well like a lot of
the objects that are actually in our
collections it actually was donated to
the museum and from actually members of his family
so it actually sits in our
collection at the moment and willl actually
be going on display in February when the
museum we launched itself after it's been
through a major redevelopment project." Gemma "Well
thanks Bev for chatting me through that
and join us again next week for some
more amazing artifacts. We're reaching
our cut-off point this week we are indeed
but unlike the French Royal family we'll
be back. Oh harsh. But true, don't forget to follow
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