The Bodies in the Well History Cold Case

At the University of Dundee's Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification,

the History Cold Case team is embarking on a major new investigation.

Ladies, today's case.

Medieval Norwich.

We've got disarticulated remains of at least 17 people.

Using a mobile forensic lab, the team has come to Norwich,

where recent archaeological investigations have unearthed a major and chilling new find...

the remains of 17 people at the bottom of a medieval well.

Disarticulated, which means we're not looking at single burials, so presumably it's a mass grave.

The bodies include men, women and young children.

The local community needs answers.

Who were these people? And how did their remains end up down a well?

The possibilities are horrific.

There's some debate as to whether the children were dead when they went down the well.

The investigation will be led by world-renowned forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black.

Dr Xanthe Mallett will gather historical evidence.

While Professor Caroline Wilkinson will rebuild the faces of the dead.

And the team is also joined by DNA expert Dr Ian Barnes.

I've got a team that is of world-renowned reputation,

so that if we can't crack it, then, you know, who else can?

By forensically retracing events, analysing the scene of death

and reconstructing the identities of two of the skeletons,

can we discover what happened to these people?

This is really unusual situation for us, I think this is really unique.

and ultimately might this case reveal the unthinkable -

that they were killed?

You simply can't breathe because your chest is compressed.

We go back to a shocking period of widespread religious persecution

and genocide...

They haven't applied normal Christian tradition, they've completely ignored it.

..as the trail reveals new proof about one of the most shameful episodes in British history.

The team has been called to the Cathedral City of Norwich.

While much of the city's heritage remains intact,

the medieval site where the skeletons were discovered in 2004

now lies underneath the Chapelfield Shopping Centre.

Inside a mobile forensic unit, local archaeologists lay out the bones.

The jumbled remains point to at least 17 individuals.

It's thought there are six adults, both male and female.

But, more shockingly, 11 children, aged from just two years old.

This is one of the most troubling archaeological hauls the team has been presented with.

Who were these people, what killed them and why did their bodies end up at the bottom of a well?

Finding out will require the full arsenal of forensic skills.

Professor Caroline Wilkinson and Dr Xanthe Mallett will initiate the investigation,

before reporting back to Professor Sue Black at Dundee HQ.

This time round we go out into the community, so we go down to the site where the bones were found.

We talk to the people who were involved and we look at those bones on that site.

We then go and do our analysis and we come back

and we present to the community what it is that we've found.

Connecting the skeletons to the context of where they were found

is a crucial first step in what promises to be a challenging case.

The original excavation was led by archaeologist Giles Emery.

He arrives at the mobile lab to bring Xanthe up to speed

with the possible theories about this bizarre discovery.

When we first found them we suspected it could be a plague burial,

because that's the kind of thing, you know, a mass burial in an unexpected place.

To test the idea that these were plague victims they did carbon dating.

We've had two carbon dates done.

Probably talking 12th to 13th century.

But the dates didn't add up

as the 12th or 13th century is too early for plague.

Plus there's the strange position in which the bodies were found -

several metres down in what seems to be an old well.

Giles is hoping the team can come up with some new leads to explain this unique find.

He takes Xanthe to the exact spot where the bodies were discovered.

The shoppers have no idea about the history that lay buried here.

So if we stop about here...

We're in quite a busy shopping arcade but to our left here...

This actual shop?

Yeah, this is the site. 17 people in the bottom of a well.

That sounds unusual to me but...

Yeah, it's a mass burial but it's in a well shaft which, yeah, I've not been able to find any parallels.

-Anywhere?

-In the UK.

-Really!

-No.

Pictures taken at the time of excavation seem to indicate

that the bodies were thrown down together, head first.

-Oh, wow.

-You can see all these skeleton remains.

-Yep.

There's a leg there that is articulated and that's the wrong way round. It's heading up.

Can you imagine you drop someone by their ankles down a well?

They're going to end up in this kind of slumped position.

But there are still so many unanswered questions.

What I really want to know is, is it a family group?

If it's too early for a plague burial, was it some other endemic disease?

-Could be something as simple as flu.

-Could even be a famine.

The other problem I have is what are they doing down a well.

-Yeah, that's a bit of a query.

-They're in the parish

of St Stephen, literally 100 metres away there's a cemetery.

They didn't make it that far, they were actually placed in a well here.

Why? Why were they treated like that?

The mystery has become something of an obsession for Giles.

Yeah, it's one of those things I think about literally every other week it crosses my mind.

-Why?

-Well, it's such a...

Whenever you do a burial it's a very intimate experience.

But to do that many and then to find out there were so many children

-it makes you think.

-It's touched you?

-It has, yeah.

Xanthe and Caroline must start the difficult job of making sense of the bones.

Which they learn also include the puzzling remains of dead cats.

How they fit with this, I've no idea.

Pretty sharp though.

-This is a bit of a strange mixture, isn't it?

-It is.

They start with the remains of the children.

There are at least 11 individuals, aged from about 15 down to two years old.

And we've got a mandible.

Oh, OK, look, we've got some cribra orbitalia which is these little holes

which is a sign of anaemia.

Immediately they spot marks which could be evidence of poor nutrition.

But on this initial visual examination Xanthe and Caroline find no clear patterns.

It will require a full battery of the latest scientific tests to help establish how these people died.

The team continues to work into the night.

Two of the skeletons are singled out as good candidates for facial reconstruction.

Caroline first scans the fractured skull of one of the children.

He or she was five to seven years old.

I think that we've got enough fragments...

If they're all from the same individual we've got enough fragments to do a reconstruction.

We'll have to do a little bit of estimation around the mid-face.

If they're not all from the same individual then that will be much more problematic.

She also wants to work on the skull belonging to one of the adult males.

This skull's got interesting features around

the nasal branches because they're very large and prominent, suggesting a very large and prominent nose.

We've got this level of asymmetry around the eyes, one's much higher and further back than the other.

And then we've got strong what are called supermastoid crests, which are lines above the ear

which suggest that this person had large ears that stuck out from the side of the head.

So he's got good characteristic detail, in terms of his facial appearance.

I'm looking forward to this, actually, because it's not often

you get such characteristic detail that you notice straight away.

So he should be an interesting face.

To begin the laboratory testing, she removes one of his teeth.

We're going to take this molar and send it for stable isotope analysis, and that should tell us what he ate,

what his diet was like, therefore where he came from,

and hopefully give us a broader picture of this individual.

The bones will also be tested for DNA and trace chemicals,

which could tell us more about who these people were.

It's around this barrage of scientific tests that the team will build their investigation.

But will they be able to bring identities back to the two skeletons they selected - the man and child?

Back in Dundee, Xanthe brings Professor Black up to speed.

I've got a CGI actually for you, which is fantastic actually.

So this is obviously rows of houses, right in the centre, kind of

where you'd have your bins out, you know, in the back garden as it were.

So the well is right in the middle of this community.

Oh, I don't like going down. Urgh!

I know, it makes you want to lean over the edge.

So this is obviously showing the shaft of the well, and this is representative of the...

-That's looks horrific.

-I know.

Yeah. You can see the soil compacting all of them down into one group. That's the great...

A thin layer of soil on top of the bodies means they were deposited at the same time.

The obvious first question is, was this foul play?

They could have actually been murdered and put down the well.

-Are we talking about that type of event?

-Disposal.

-Exactly.

-Well, only if we see signs of perimortem trauma that would indicate a violent death.

The apparent lack of damage caused around the time of death means they dismiss the idea of murder...

for now, at least.

So is this perhaps a place where the sick or deprived ended up when they died?

So this is a time of kind of hardship in England. You did get famine and things.

-There's some signs of anaemia, signs in the...

-OK.

Or are we talking about some type of disease that's hit the population?

The fact that we've got so many children could be dysentery, something like that.

-Obviously if a lot of individuals die at the same time...

-Containment.

Yep. You need to remove them from the population quickly

-and get rid of them.

-Yeah, you don't really want them hanging around, do you?

-No.

-The team agrees that poverty and disease are the obvious places to start to look for a cause of death.

The remains may yet yield some other crucial information.

Geneticist Dr Ian Barnes takes samples from the long leg bones of eight of the skeletons,

including the adult male and the 5-7-year-old child.

Ian is helping us out enormously, in terms of the DNA,

and Ian has a worldwide reputation in terms of his science.

And I don't think I've met anybody who knows more about the subject

than he does, but has the ability to convey it in a manner that is really

quite straightforward, which is what most of us need when it comes to genetics.

If the people in the well turn out to be related,

then this could dramatically change the complexion of the case.

But it will be several weeks before the DNA results are back.

Meanwhile, to start the historical investigation, Xanthe needs

to understand what Norwich was like in the 1100 and 1200s.

At that time, Norwich was England's second largest city,

its expansion built on its position as a major centre of manufacture and trade.

The population had ballooned to over 12,000.

But who was living in the immediate area around the well?

Xanthe hopes the Norwich records office will yield some clues.

She meets archivist Susan Maddock, who produces a surprising and rare document from the time.

-So this looks exciting.

-Yes. This is one of the city court rolls.

It covers 1287 to 1298.

-Is this original?

-This is original.

Then I will not touch that!

I'll let you unroll it.

-It's probably as valuable as it looks.

-Yes, it certainly is.

-I mean, obviously it's unique and irreplaceable.

-OK.

I didn't say that to frighten you!

What's this made from?

It's made from parchment, which is sheep skin.

So it's scraped and cleaned and makes a very durable writing surface.

So this was the main medium used for records in this country, really,

until paper became popular in the 14-15th centuries.

-VOICE-OVER:

-It's a record of property ownership in 13th century Norwich.

Susan is looking for a street name she can trace to near the well.

Now I'll just gently unroll it.

Now, what we're looking for... Ah, yes.

In the margin here, we can see this little,

little marginal note that looks like NEDA.

-So this is Latin?

-This is Latin,

yes, and that's pointing out this word here, Nedham - N-E-D-H-A-M.

And I see, looking at a modern reconstruction map of Norwich,

which shows the medieval street names,

and on this map it's shown as Vicus -

which is the Latin for street - de Nedham.

So we can see that matches with the Nedham in our deed here.

So this street was originally called Vicus de Nedham?

Yes, or Nedham or "Need-ham" Street.

Right. So the block that I'm interested in on here is represented by this area here, is that right?

It is, yes. Yes.

The document also reveals the occupations of property owners.

I can't help noticing that in these...

in this map, there are a lot of butchers turning up.

Butcher, butcher, merchant.

Is there any evidence of tanning or skinning, those kind of industries?

Because there were cat bones down the well, kind of mixed in with the human bones.

I'm wondering whether we might actually

find something on here that would help explain that a little bit.

Well, let's give it a try.

I notice there's a skinner down here, and this is only a short distance away from your area.

-Oh. It's only, like, four doors down.

-Yes. 1295,

you've got John de Saham...

-That would work.

-...the skinner.

-Wow!

And if we actually look at the other side, moving along what's now St Steven's Street,

-to this diagram here, there are quite a number of tanners in this area towards horse market.

-Yeah.

So again, the right time period.

-Yes.

-So, yeah, these people could have actually been living

in or very near to people who ended up down the well.

So we're really looking at working class people, aren't we,

-which fits with everything else I think I've found out.

-Yes.

So were our people local skinners or tanners?

And if so, could their profession offer clues as to a cause of death?

Xanthe hits the streets of Norwich's old town with local historian Brian Ayres.

-It's lovely.

-It's very picturesque now, but it would have been

distinctly less picturesque in the 12th and 13th centuries.

I mean, we're on a street which is next to the river.

This is a river which a whole range of industries are using, for dye works, for tanners, for skinners.

-So the dirtier trades.

-The dirtier trades.

All this effluent material is flowing down behind the buildings, which would have been stood here.

This could explain the puzzling cat bones in the well, which may be

a by-product of the manufacture of catskin gloves, highly prized across medieval Europe.

This was just one aspect of a widespread skinning and tanning industry, and it was dirty work.

Medieval tanners often used human urine and faeces, collected door to door, to soften the leather.

-Your life expectancy is probably going to be less in Norwich than it is out in the countryside.

-Really?

Because of the noxious fumes and the poor living conditions.

But it would be a shorter life, but probably an economically better one.

-Potentially a better one.

-That's an interesting one.

And so one does get people arriving here for that very reason.

It's clear that poor hygiene and harsh working conditions

would have made local people vulnerable to serious infection.

Back in Dundee, Caroline is ready to start the facial reconstructions.

We've got the skull of the male adult from the Norwich well.

You can see the bits that are pale are the pieces of bone that we have,

and the green areas are the areas that I've had to estimate.

We just had this one piece of missing mandible.

So all round I'm quite interested by this skull.

It's got lots of nice characteristic detail.

The shattered skull of the child requires much more work, however.

We've got to put together these fragments before we can do any reconstruction.

What we can do on the computers, we can take one of the pieces.

Here we've got part of the forehead, and we can move it so that it's touching the other piece...

and realign it.

We can put it roughly in the right position and then we can tweak it.

So this is our skull when it's been...

totally reassembled.

And that's... Those are the areas that have been estimated,

in green.

Reconstructions of children have their own unique challenges.

It's very difficult to tell whether...

the individual is male or female, when the child is this young.

So girls and boys between the ages of five and seven are indistinguishable facially.

We tend to judge the sex of a child in relation to their hairstyle, their clothes that they're wearing,

how they're being treated by others around them.

We're actually very bad at estimating whether a child is male

or female from just the face, especially at this age.

Soon actual faces will start to emerge,

as Caroline adds the muscles, skin and features to each reconstruction.

With squalid living conditions around the well area, and apparent signs of malnutrition on the bones

but no obvious trauma, is disease now the most

likely culprit in the story of what happened to these people?

And if so, what killed them?

The 1100 and 1200s marked a time of huge population growth for Norwich,

and the sick were catered for in new charitable medical centres.

-It is, it's amazing.

-Founded in 1249.

The Great Hospital of Norwich was one of first of its kind in Britain.

Xanthe meets Professor Carole Rawcliffe here, a specialist in medieval health.

I actually have a photograph of one of the specimens I've been looking at,

and she's interesting because obviously we've got some of those markers.

You've got the cribra orbitalia.

That's a sign of iron deficiency,

and what's fascinating is that other excavations in Norwich

have revealed a very high incidence of this, up to 70% in some cases among women and children.

And what may not be known is that during the Middle Ages and later,

-malaria is endemic in parts of England.

-Really?

And that also will increase levels of anaemia.

Carole thinks it's entirely possible the people in the well died of a then incurable disease,

such as malaria, which was rife in the overcrowded city of the 12th and 13th centuries.

It's rather like the developing world today.

Here in the city you were encountering diseases

and deficiencies, which we no longer have to experience.

It's likely there could have been an epidemic of influenza, perhaps dysentery, perhaps typhus.

It's very hard to tell, but obviously something which is killing people in quite large numbers.

Charitable hospitals had close links to the church,

and the sick believed going to hospital could erase their burden of sin.

Even the poor could expect to receive medical care.

The theory that our people fell victim to disease certainly fits the facts so far.

But if 17 people died at the same time, where would they have been buried?

Would their bodies have been disposed of in a well?

To find out how people were buried during the epidemics which hit Britain in the Middle Ages,

Xanthe heads to Bishopsgate in London, once the site of a vast medieval cemetery.

No other burials in wells have ever been found in the UK,

but under the pavement here is an extraordinary site

called the Charnel House, where hundreds of bodies have been excavated from deep shafts.

The way people were laid to rest here might offer vital clues.

-Hello, Chris?

-Hi.

-The man behind the wall.

Welcome to the Charnel House.

Fantastic! Oh, shall we get out of the rain?

Come in this way.

Chris Thomas, from the Museum of London, excavated this site,

which was used for a huge number of mass burials.

This Charnel House sits in the middle of a cemetery that we excavated

-about 10,500 skeletons from.

-Wow!

And it was in use from around about 1150-1540, and it's a cemetery that's associated with a medieval hospital.

Most of the people are buried in individual graves, but we had

thousands of people buried in mass burial pits,

and a whole series of shafts, with people buried on top of each other.

And what you find, generally speaking, even in Black Death burial grounds, any sort

of emergency burial ground, people are usually buried in a Christian manner.

So you can see from some of the burials that we had,

-even in our mass burial pits...

-Oh, I see.

..the skeletons are still being laid out on their back, with their head at the west end, the feet at the east.

-OK. So even in mass burials, the placement of the body is still really important.

-It is.

So the myth that people are thrown off the back of carts into pits in the Black Death simply isn't true.

So if I just show you some of the pictures from MY site, you may get a better idea. Now, this is...

this is the well shaft, and you can see they're all completely intermixed.

This just looks like, almost like rubbish thrown away, all mixed up, no care.

Yeah. I think the difference is absolutely fundamental.

Whoever's dealt with this, they haven't

applied normal Christian tradition. They've completely ignored it.

What Xanthe learns from the Charnel House makes the well burial even more confusing.

Even during the worst outbreaks of disease, people were not just thrown into the nearest hole.

The church taught that to be buried in a non-Christian way would lead to purgatory and hell.

Medieval Norwich was a devout Christian city, with over 40 parish churches.

So why weren't our 17 people buried with the usual care?

Could it be because they weren't Christians?

This is not a Christian burial, so do we have people who are not of the Christian faith?

Is that why they're there, or is it that they're some form

of an outcast, was it that people were afraid of them?

I don't know, but they were not dealt with with respect.

The stable isotope data are back, and the results are intriguing.

What they reveal is that the people found down the well had lived in the local area for many years.

They were not just visiting.

The trail suddenly now points towards non-Christian locals.

And there's only one significant community from the time that matches that profile.

Since 1135, Norwich was home to a thriving Jewish community,

living just a few hundred yards from the well site.

Xanthe meets up with Sophie Cabot, a specialist in Norwich's Jewish history,

to find out more about this community.

The Jewry in Norwich in the Middle Ages was in this position, between the market and the castle.

The castle's just up there, obviously the market's behind us,

and the properties owned by Jews were concentrated

in the area from White Lion Street here,

up to Little Orford Street at the end of this block.

-Is the proximity of the Jewry to the castle important?

-It is, yeah.

I mean, Norwich is a royal castle.

-They were in England at the invitation of the Crown.

-I see.

And the Crown had direct legal control over them and their business.

The Jews of Norwich had a very specific role.

And why were they actually invited here by the king?

They were invited to lend money.

And that was their primary function?

Yeah. Yeah. At the time, the Christian interpretation

of the Bible didn't allow Christians to lend money at interest.

It was a sin called "usury".

Certainly that's something that's not forbidden in Jewish law,

so cash finance for big projects of any sort came from Jewish financers.

-Almost like banks.

-Yeah, like banks basically.

Does that mean they were all wealthy then?

Some of them were extremely wealthy.

There's one or two families who are incredibly rich and who are lending money

-on a national scale or even international scale.

-Really?

Xanthe and Sophie visit the house of Isaac Jurnet, which still stands in Central Norwich.

Despite having financed the cathedral, like many Jews

across Christian Europe, the Jurnets may have been subject to persecution.

-This is him here, shown at the top.

-With a crown?

Wearing a crown, yes, showing how important he is, and also with three profiles, three faces.

-What does that mean?

It seems to mean that he's into everything, that he's sort of got fingers in lots of pies.

-Oh, I see.

-And this is a caricature.

This was drawn by a Christian, by a scribe in the Exchequer.

They, as you can see, have rather caricatured faces, big noses.

This is a hat that indicates he is Jewish.

They're not kind drawings.

No. And they're shown with this little devil, who is tweaking them on the nose.

Would you say that it's anti-Semitic, because it's certainly not complimentary?

There's resentment of the fact that Jews are making money.

Some Jews, like Isaac, are making a huge amount of money, and they're doing it in a way that

doesn't involve physical labour, or things that are necessarily recognised as work, you know.

It's a bit like people feel about bankers now.

But Sophie thinks it's unlikely the skeletons in the well came from the Jewish community.

On the site of the old synagogue, Sophie explains how they would

have taken as much care over burial as Norwich's Christians.

-You would want it to be quick, so you would be ideally buried within 24 hours of death.

-Really?

You would want it to be very simple, so you would be washed and wrapped in a shroud.

It's quite a simple ceremony, but it's got to be done right, and in a dignified way.

You've pre-empted my other question.

So you don't think that the Jewish community would have put other Jewish individuals in the well?

No, I don't. I think it's pretty much impossible.

I think if there were any Jews in the community to see that

the dead got a proper burial, that's what they would do.

If the bodies in the well were indeed Jewish, this would point to foul play.

It would suggest that their burial was deliberately careless or rushed.

We know that across Britain and Europe at this time,

Jewish people were increasingly victims of vicious hate attacks.

Could this be what happened to our 17 people in Norwich?

The DNA analysis is now complete.

Aware that the case now risks grinding to a halt, the team hopes the results will provide a new lead.

So how many did we take DNA samples from, out of the, what was it? 17?

I think we sampled eight.

-Eight individual...

-From children through to adults.

-Yes. We tried to get a range.

Well, the DNA report will perhaps not only tell us about family,

but if there is any other connection, genetic

type connection, you know, in a tight knit group, then Ian might be able to tell us something about that as well.

-Yep.

-So, fingers crossed for DNA.

-Yeah.

-Our money's on DNA.

They call Dr Ian Barnes.

There we are.

-OK.

-Hello.

-We've got you now. Hi.

We are looking today at medieval Norwich.

We're hoping against all hope that you'll have something interesting to tell us.

No pressure!

OK. So, some pretty interesting news for this cold case.

Oh good!

OK.

So we actually got eight samples.

Of the eight, one of them looks like there might be

some contamination, or maybe it's heavily damaged in some way.

-OK.

-So we'll disregard that one.

The remaining seven.

One of them has a very generic standard European DNA type.

One of them has a DNA type which is relatively,

relatively uncommon

-across Europe, though it's still just a generic European kind of sequence.

-OK.

The other five, however, had the same mitochondrial DNA sequence.

So it looks like the five that have the same sequence, you could maybe

-assume or infer that they are directly maternally related.

-Right.

Remarkably, five of the people down the well were related to each other.

But that's not all the DNA results reveal.

Now, the more unusual thing is that

their sequences belong to a group which is relatively unusual in Europe.

It occurs at about something like 6%,

but it's at very high frequency, more like over 30%, in Ashkenazi Jewish populations.

Wow! That's interesting.

That's just amazing. So that's for how many individuals?

-Five.

-So that's five that we're happy with.

It's an unexpected breakthrough in the case.

The science has shown that at least five of the people down the well

were from the Jewish community, and likely family members.

This is a really unusual situation for us.

I think this is a really unique set of data that we've been able to get for these individuals.

I'm not aware that this has been done before,

that we've been actually able

to pin them down to this level of specificity, about the ethnic group that they seem to come from.

That's a good result. That's phenomenal.

Thank you so much indeed. Bye.

Bye-bye.

-I think what Ian has told us is truly amazing.

-Hmm, it is.

In that we, we clearly have family members.

We've got a recognised group.

And this is really pointing to something, the most tragic of all

-of those options as well, with 11 children.

-11 children.

-Six adults.

-Of a common maternal DNA.

-Closely linked.

The story now looks set to take a much darker turn.

There is a real temptation, I think, to go down the route of saying, because we've recognised the group,

because we know they're a family, we're looking at something

that's possibly more macabre, that we're looking at persecution.

What we haven't yet got is the cause of death, or causes of death.

I think we probably should look...

go back to some of the bones and just have a look,

because I am concerned that we haven't got any form of a trauma.

I mean, dropping down the well would cause trauma, and the prospect

that, you know, maybe someone's gone down that well alive...

-Especially kids.

-..is horrendous.

Sue's previous experience leads her to believe this could now be a case of mass murder.

We're possibly talking about persecution, we're possibly talking about ethnic cleansing.

And this all brings to mind very much the scenario that we dealt with during the Balkans war crimes.

In terms of the brutality of the ethnic cleansing, it was felt that, you know,

women and children, quite frankly, weren't worth wasting the bullet on.

So that women were quite often bayoneted, for example.

Pregnant women were bayoneted, because that way you got rid of a woman, because that wasn't important,

and you got rid of the next generation, because you really didn't want them to survive.

So I know what sort of patterns I'm looking for if it was the same sort of situation.

Were these individuals thrown down the well alive?

Were these individuals killed before they went down the well?

With this new question in mind, Sue goes back to the bones again,

to examine the legs and spinal columns in minute detail,

and on one of the adults makes a crucial new discovery...

If you open up and look at the surface of the

12th thoracic, you can see that we've got what looks like a burst fracture,

and it's coming over onto the surface here at the side, and coming over onto the front there.

That kind of thing happens when you get force, either coming

down onto legs, or of course coming down onto head.

So that what you're getting is a twisting, because that's what

happens, you get a twisting, and the edge of one vertebra causes the fracture on the body.

So the column is twisting, and as you impact, then what you get is the burst fractures.

And there is similar damage to three of the adult leg bones.

When we look particularly at these three bones, what we've got are

radiating fracture lines passing up there,

and we've got little stepped areas of cortex with a little fracture coming.

Those again look like they're going to be perimortem.

All of these indicating that what we have is individuals

where we have trauma to the extended leg.

So whether it's going down, it must be landing on feet, because you're getting...

or landing on knees of course it could be.

But it's certainly trauma of force of impact.

If you were falling into water, then I wouldn't expect to find this, this fracturing. I simply wouldn't.

Because once you hit the water surface, then you've got almost like a cushioning, if you like.

These are fractures that I suspect are about landing on a hard surface.

Sue believes this new evidence shows the well was actually dry, and the adult victims were either killed

just before, or died very shortly after being thrown down the well.

If they're down at the bottom of the well, and these are the adults,

then the children, where we're seeing no trauma, may well have been thrown in on top of them.

So we're not going to see perimortem fracturing as such with them,

because they're landing on a cushion of these adults.

It's an alarming possible sequence of events.

So, what would a modern homicide detective make of the circumstances of this case?

Xanthe meets up with forensic pathologist Stuart Hamilton in Norwich Castle,

which still has an intact well shaft.

That's a long way, isn't it?

That's a deep well, yes.

Somebody falling in there, or being pushed, whatever, are they going to survive that?

They're not going to survive that fall.

If the simple impact at the bottom doesn't kill them outright, then the deceleration is going to tear

arteries, it's going to damage organs.

You're going to bleed to death fairly rapidly.

Even if you don't die straight away, you're not going to be alive for long.

What would you say if this were a forensic case presented to you, 17 people in a well,

-what would be your reading of it?

-One person in a well like that, to me is something that's worrying.

Two people is very worrying. 17 people is... It's a mass grave.

Would I put a slightly different slant on this in your opinion, if I were to tell you that

all of the individuals were from a minority group?

I think it's almost just common sense, really.

This is saying that it is a particular group which seems to have been targeted.

In this sort of case, it's the accumulation

of the evidence, it's not just one piece or the other piece.

It's, as it all builds up, more and more and more,

you simply can't ignore all of these things coming together.

And he feels the lack of fatal trauma on all of the bones does not rule out murder.

It's not uncommon that you can get homicides where there really would be nothing left on the bones.

Relatively recently, I've dealt with a case where there was a homicidal knife assault with neck wounds.

Arteries were damaged, but no, no bone injuries at all.

Stuart explains another cause of death that leaves no marks, but may

fit with so many people being thrown down a narrow well.

The average adult human weights 70 kilograms,

and that amount of pressure pressing down on you, with multiple people, it's gonna compress your chest.

There is a well-recognised phenomenon that's called crush asphyxia, where you simply can't breathe

because your chest is compressed, and that could be by a wall that's fallen on you,

but it could by a pile of human beings.

And some of the disasters with the football stadia, people crushed against fences.

You simply can't move your chest because it's crushed so tightly.

It doesn't really bear thinking about in some ways.

What's your gut instinct as to what happened?

I, for these people's sake, what I hope happened was that they had their throats cut,

that they were strangled, that they died a quick death and their bodies were disposed of.

I fear that they were simply thrown down the well and left to die.

It seems horrific,

but if we're looking at 17 people who knew each other,

perhaps even mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, then what events could have led to this?

When Jewish people first moved to Britain following the Norman Conquest of 1066,

many settling in the key cities of London, Norwich and York, they enjoyed the protection of the Crown.

But just a few generations later, the story was very different.

In England, protection wavered after Richard the Lionheart's coronation

in 1190, and right across Europe anti-Semitic propaganda was growing.

Jews were accused of spreading plague, poisoning the water

in wells, and even of using the blood of Christians in their rituals.

But were our people somehow caught up in this?

Xanthe travels to Bevis Marks in London, the oldest

surviving synagogue in the country, to see Jewish historian Miri Rubin.

You're aware by now that the DNA has come back

and it's indicating that we're looking at a Jewish population.

What does that mean to you?

The first reaction is just shock.

It's just, you know, the mind boggles, you know.

At least 17 people - so many children, so many really young children amongst them.

Well, it's just a horrific thought that,

you know, with all the research, these sort of events can just go unnoticed.

There are new types of dangers that develop in the late 12th, 13th centuries. New nasty narratives.

You might even say that as Europe becomes more Christian, there is a real deepening of the...

of the sort of the sense of Jewish evil.

So that it is, I'm afraid, a picture of worsening, and ultimately the age of expulsions, where England leads

-in 1290, where the Jews are expelled, "back to where they came from," to Northern France.

-Yeah.

So was that the kind of pinnacle of the unrest, the expulsion?

You might say so. The king brought them in and the king kicked them out, sort of thing.

But Miri doesn't think they could have been part of the recorded acts of violence against Jews,

nor the organised expulsion of Jews from England and Wales of 1290.

I see no reason that the bodies will not have been relinquished to the Jewish community to bury properly.

Nor indeed would I think that children would have been involved

so conspicuously, nor bodies that seem unbroken, undisturbed, unmutilated,

like the ones that we've found.

That's the problem.

She believes this points to another less well known incident in the 1230s.

Another flashpoint that occurred to me is the 1230s.

The 1230s that saw a number of occasions of violence

in the streets of Norwich against Jews, and indeed,

and very important for this case, a burning of some Jewish houses by Norwich people.

That would then suggest that maybe they died in their sleep

from the inhalation of smoke, and thus they suffocated, because that would explain both the existence

of the children, and the fact that their bodies are not mutilated in

a way that you'd expect if it was just sort of real violence in the street and they were just felled.

What's clear is that during this time

the Jews of Norwich could not rely on any protection from the Crown.

It's evident that royal officials, the sheriff and his bailiffs,

simply lost control of the city, and indeed became the subject...

The bailiffs were actually beaten up by Norwich people.

So that suggests to me a situation where this system of control and scrutiny and

protection that was painstakingly laid down over the decades had actually been disrupted in those

years, and actually royal officials could not contain what was unfolding.

How many Jewish people were actually in Norwich at this time?

Maybe 150 to 200 or so.

17 people then is actually quite a large proportion of this.

You know, you think of 17, you know, within a community, it's not that many, but this is massive.

Really, really big, and the fact these are families and children, this is a very, very big deal.

This puts a totally new complexion onto the facial reconstructions, now nearing completion.

So this is our Jewish group from the well in Norwich,

and we've got adult male and young unidentified child, in terms of sex.

We don't know if it's a boy or a girl, 5-7 years old.

First, there is the adult male, in his 40s.

So the first thing that we'll look at in terms of characteristics

are his ears, because we know that he's got adherent ears.

In others words he hasn't got any lobes,

the ears just hit straight on to the side of the head.

And the bones around the mastoid process suggest that

he had quite prominent ears, both upper and lower prominence.

Then there is the 5-7-year-old child, who could be related to the man.

And we've added the muscle structure over and above the skull,

and now we can look at some of the feature detail.

Much more difficult with children,

because we don't have the strong features that we can take with

adults, so most children tend to have similar small upturned noses, and the

adult nose shape won't develop until after the age of eight, is when it starts to develop.

And Caroline has discovered evidence which backs up the idea that they are family members.

Now, interestingly, with this particular individual,

he or she also had adherent ears, which means the child didn't have lobes, which is similar to the adult.

The adult is showing that feature too.

We know it's an hereditary feature, so if you have adherent ears,

then one of your parents will have adherent ears as well.

So the fact that they both have adherent ears, I think, is significant.

The final task will be to apply likely skin, hair and eye colour.

Did our man and child die from smoke inhalation when their houses were set fire to?

Did they die once in the well from crush asphyxia?

Or is there still another scenario which could explain the lack of fatal trauma on the bones?

Xanthe has come to Clifford's Tower in York to take part in an annual service

commemorating a very different sequence of events which led to the tragic loss of many Jewish lives.

In March 1190, about 150 Jews, men, women and children, sought protection

in the royal castle here, now known as Clifford Tower, where they could usually rely on royal protection.

The Sheriff of Yorkshire decided to order the ejection of the Jews from the castle, and the families inside,

deciding that the end had come, followed the tradition of heroic martyrdom, that they

should take their own lives rather than die at the hands of the mob.

The father of each household killed his own family and was then killed by the rabbi.

The suicide method, taking a knife to their throats,

may well not have left a mark on the bones

and would also fit with the idea that the people in the well are family members.

It's a tragic possibility.

It really hits home that I've seen some people who may have

lived in a very similar situation and may have died in a similar way,

and it really humanises the whole story and tells me about what Norwich may have been like.

We've seen it in York. Was it the same in Norwich?

The team has reached the end of this investigation.

The first examination of the bones took place in the depths of winter.

It's now spring, and after months of work, it's time for the story

these bones have told to be relayed back to the local community.

Sue, Caroline and Xanthe return to Norwich and the medieval Guild Hall.

Keen to hear their findings are those who originally excavated the site,

experts who have assisted the investigation and members of the local community.

I think a lot about it, actually, yeah, it almost haunts me a bit, because it was such an unusual thing

for me, and quite morbid in a way, but also, you know, I'd just like to know a bit more about them.

To actually be able to put a face to one of these characters and actually

bring the person to life, it'll be, I think, the most interesting for me.

I shall be,

yeah, interested to find out what we've been able to tell about them, because they're a bit of a mystery.

But how will the people of Norwich react to a story that brings back to life

one of the city's darkest hours?

What we have started to do, by bringing the science into this investigation, is to allow us

to look at the story from a different perspective.

Why were they in a well?

Were they alive or were they dead when they were placed in the well?

And how do they fit into the history of Norwich at the time as we know it?

Sue details some of the major twists that the investigation took, starting with the idea of disease.

So it's not leprosy, it's not TB, it's not something that leaves

a skeletal lesion, but that doesn't rule out all of the enteric diseases.

But there was the stumbling block of unchristian burial.

The most important thing is, even though they died in vast numbers,

they were still buried with the observance of Christian rites.

And then the dramatic science that pushed the trail towards murder.

So we need to talk about a real turning point, the point at which

this investigation really did take a very, very different direction.

We have to talk DNA.

So we sent some bones off to Ian to have a look at the DNA.

Out of the five of them where there was retrievable, good information,

what we have is a situation where the mitochondrial DNA, which is the

DNA that's transferred down through a maternal line,

effectively matches, so we have family members.

That was really important,

but what was even more important

was that the DNA told us that the most likely group

to which these individuals belong are in fact Jewish.

Wow.

Wow, I'm actually quite shocked about that.

Well, you weren't the only one.

If it's not a natural death,

then I have to go back to where I was in Kosovo,

and to say, "Are we looking at a non-natural death?

"Are we looking at a murder scenario?"

Everyone is shocked at the idea that the people of Norwich

once participated in the Europe-wide Jewish persecution.

Usually, this is the nice bit for everybody, where I reveal a face, but it doesn't feel that way today.

So let me first show you our male adult face.

I think he's got a great face, it's a lovely face.

Caroline's second reconstruction is even more emotive,

one of the 11 children from the well.

I think our child is just beautiful as well.

He's perfect, isn't he? He or she.

They're just perfect.

I think they're very...

Well, they're all a bit emotive now, actually.

Yeah.

We know what we might be looking at here is father and son or father and

daughter, or uncle and niece or uncle and nephew, etcetera.

But a familial bond of some sort,

and those might still be skeletons, but these are now people.

It's a shocking revelation for everyone involved.

It's very sad for Norwich. It changes the story of what we know about this community.

We don't know everything about this community, but what we thought we knew is changed by this, yeah.

No, it was a big surprise, really.

It's not what I was expecting at all. I knew that we were going to learn something,

I really didn't think it was going to go in that direction.

We had an idea that...they died horribly, but the thought that it

could be self-inflicted possibly is rather upsetting.

Erm...

From what started out as a mysterious jumble of unidentified remains,

we can now say that at least five of the people in the well were Jewish.

We know that the children could likely have been from the same extended family or community,

and tragically,

that the trail points to them having possibly been murdered or pushed into suicide.

This story throws new light on the horrific spate of persecution

that ran the medieval England, which saw Jews used for their money, forced to remain social outcasts

and ultimately left without protection from the angry mob.

The bones will be handed back, perhaps for eventual reburial.

Do you know? Today was hard.

I don't think I quite expected it to be as hard as it was,

and it's how I feel every single time

I have to talk to families today when we bring the news.

And in the forensic anthropology the news that we bring is always bad news.

It's the news that says, "I'm sorry your son's dead, your mother's dead,"

and you have to deal with the emotion.

We were bringing the information

to a community that was going to be seriously affected

and seriously challenged by what we were going to say.

But I knew that what we weren't doing was bringing closure.

We were bringing almost the opposite.

We were opening wounds that people were going to have to address.

Next time: Some of the oldest bones ever found in Britain

will make us think again about how our ancestors lived...

There'll be a great spurt of blood!

..as go back to a time of brutal rituals, when people lived in fear

of what lay beneath the surface of the earth.

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