5 Crimes I Plotted on the Medieval Murder Map
It's a fascinating tool, but is it true crime?
I’m not sure at what point in time and space an interactive murder map crosses from exploitative and ghastly to captivating and sort of amusing, but the medieval period has evidently crossed that line. The NY Times alerted me and other weirdos to the publication a few months ago of a tool that allows “researchers” (sure, that’s me, why not) to explore “the back stories of more than 300 murders in the English cities of London, York and Oxford.”1 Obviously I clicked over with all attendant speed and spent time that I definitely shouldn’t have been using for grading, cleaning, or working on my book diving into the resource. What follows are some highlights from my excellent digital adventure.
1. Two Johns don’t like a wright (York, n.d.)
So I had some anxiety about approaching these crimes with any sort of light touch, as I’m deeply attuned to and persuaded by critiques of efforts to make true crime texts entertaining. But then I saw the ways some of these murders were described by the historians themselves, and felt some leeway. In this case, two servants named John (who were employed by yet a third John) teamed up to murder a shipwright named Thomas (would his fate have been different if his name were also John? Unclear). In a move prescient of the classic ode to debt bondage “Sixteen Tons,” if the right baslard from John de Baildon don’t get you, then the left sword from John de Mashum will.
2. Saddletree-maker dies three weeks after his finger is cut off (London, 1337)
This is either a case of terrible luck or an excellent example of a medieval long game. Nicholas Ruffyn was found dead three weeks after an attack by Guyot Rumbys that left him, much like Frodo Baggins, nine-fingered. Unlike Frodo, Nicholas was not able to recover, and all kidding aside, it must have been truly horrible to die from whatever infection set in after the injury. Guyot was long gone by the time anyone even knew a crime was committed.
3. Man stabbed after altercation over a tunic (London, 1300)
As a lover of tunics myself, I had to learn more. It’s quite the tale. A man named Robert had his tunic stolen from him by William, who then sold it to John. Robert confronted William (what he was wearing in lieu of the missing tunic is lost to history), and William, “terrified,” took him to John’s house. John stabbed Robert to death. John left town and William the Unlucky was arrested, bearing the tunic. William’s fate is unrecorded, but John was eventually acquitted (?!). And what happened to the tunic?
4. David is disturbed in his prayers and slays a fellow (Oxford, 1297)
Something tells me David hasn’t read all the way to the end of the Holy Book of his choice. I’m pretty sure even if you’re quite disturbed by someone pushing you “with his shoulder over and over again,” God is not going to sign off on the death penalty. It took David’s victim, John Laurence, 15 days to die, during which he was also sentenced to prison (talk about adding insult to injury) for being annoying, presumably. A “concord” deal went down so David was released, upon which time he promptly peaced out of Oxford to pray another day as a free man.
5. John junior urinates in butchers' market and kills a servant (Oxford, 1297)
Here, it’s the “bury the lede” nature of the descriptor that caught my eye. “Junior” implies to me someone who is coasting on his medieval daddy’s medieval clout, and thinks the butchers’ market might as well be his own personal urinal. We all know a John junior, don’t we? Well, William de Neushom didn’t appreciate the unsanitary entitlement and bopped JJ on the head with his sword. After raising much “hue and cry,” John Jr. went and got his daddy,2 and killed de Neushom in the guesthouse where he was staying. The blurb implies he was going to go for a self-defense defense, but does not reveal the outcome. His dad probably hired a great lawyer.
The map is truly fascinating and a great example of what historical multimedia scholarship can provide. But is it true crime? I think so! The way each death is visibly situated in time and space makes an argument about how, when, and why crimes erupted in the community. The placement of most of the murders near roads and bodies of water indicate the locations where people in growing cities interacted most frequently for good or for ill. And though I stuck to crimes that were interesting in their oddities, the deaths of women in their homes or places of work are sobering in their familiarity. It also, as the Times piece points out, is a valuable pushback against the misconception that the medieval period was somehow more prudish or pious than more “modern” times.3 The “Discover More” tab provides ample context of extra-judicial factors like immigration, religion, and commerce that impacted all aspects of medieval life, including violence. And keeping the language of the original coroner and inquest records is a stroke of genius. Seeing the original language used to describe each crime is truly reading a first draft of true crime and history.
The search tools allow you to filter by gender, type of weapon, and type of incident, allowing for deeper insight into living conditions at the time: the number of people who died in Newgate prison of various causes, for example, rivals the number of murders overall. I think it is this sociohistorical value, and its commitment to accessibility, that elevates the maps above any “gamification of true crime” ickiness that might linger as you realize that clicking around on the tiny icons of weapons feels a bit playful.4 I’ll leave you with one last descriptor that I won’t expound upon further except to say: it’s not what you think.
Man battered by Pancake (York 1351)
Told you.
This anonymous letter in response to an episode of the podcast Savage Love is always worth a reread so you can bring the facts when someone uses the adjective “medieval” to mean “conservative” or “fundamentalist.”