From Atlas Obscura, January 25:
It all started as a Cambridge criminologist’s macabre hobby.
On Friday, May 3, 1337, Chaplain John Ford was strolling down the bustling market street of London Cheapside during golden hour—when three men assaulted him. As one man stabbed Ford in the throat with an 11-inch-long dagger, the other two slashed his stomach open. Ford was left to die in a puddle of blood under the arches of what once was Greyfriars Church as the assailants escaped. Among the crowds, a hatter, a rosary-maker, and a third man called for help.
When local officials filed a report detailing the murder, a mysterious “longstanding dispute” was mentioned alongside one name: the rich and famous Ela FitzPayne.
But what could the churchman possibly have done for the noblewoman to order the man’s murder in broad daylight on a crowded London street?
These are the kinds of questions that Manuel Eisner, the deputy director of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, asks himself daily. In 2018, Eisner founded the Medieval Murder Maps—an interactive medieval murder map plotting the sudden deaths of thousands across the medieval towns of London, York, and Oxford. For Eisner, cracking 700-year-old cold cases, like the murder of John Ford, can provide an invaluable snapshot into medieval life, helping us understand the origins of the modern criminal justice system, what life was like for the past’s everyday people, and how crime patterns have, or haven’t, changed.
“I call it a distant mirror,” says Eisner. “You don’t just read it as violence. You have these little stories that are taking you on a time travel [adventure].”
Eisner, whose work has primarily focused on the when and where of contemporary crimes, started looking into mapping medieval crimes in 2012. For fun, he and his wife would stand at the kitchen table, and while she read out stories of 14th-century murders, he planted pins into an antique map of London of where they would have taken place....
....MUCH MORE
Interestingly (or not, your call), "London Murder Map" was one of our most popular posts in the month of August 2020. I initially thought it was because we had even more medievalists in our readership than I would have guessed, but then realized it was probably just being cooped up with the same people in month six of 'two weeks to flatten the curve.' Less The Canterbury Tales, more L.A. noir:
“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”― Raymond Chandler, Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories
