Medieval Murder Maps

Medieval Murder Maps is a project of the Violence Research Center at the University of Cambridge. Using data from the coroners of the cities of London, Oxford and York they have created maps showing the locations of murders in the 14th Century.

Sadly the image above (from York) does not indicate death by pancake. That is merely the murderers name, though it makes for a great headline. The red icons indicate female victims or perpetrators while blue are men. here is a legend to translate the murder weapon,

and incident type.

London, unlike the other cities has a full menu of incident types.

A click on an incident gives you more information.

Unlike today, murders correlate more with areas of affluence and college students are frequently listed. In London there is a large cluster or murders on the western end of Cheapside (or Westcheap), an area of upscale clothing stores now.

The background maps are from the Historic Towns Trust who create modern digital historic maps that represent the towns as they appeared at the time. For London, you can also switch backgrounds to see a map from Braun and Hogenburg, circa 1560.

Credit to a recent Washington Post article for bringing this site to my attention. Explore on your own here.