Strange and Wonderful Objects Found in the Thames - Mudlarking at the London Museum Docklands

Oh, another cabinet to open. Let's see. Wow! I'm just tickled. I love this exhibition. Please come and see it. I'm Jessica, the museum guide, and today I'm at Secrets of the Thames, the London Museum Docklands exhibition, all about mudlarking, exploring the hidden treasures that wash up in the banks of the Thames. So twice a day, London's River Thames rises and falls with its tide. If you've walked along the Thames, surely you've seen the fact that it has almost beaches. Lying amongst the mud and stones are the fragments of thousands of years of history in this metropolis. Mudlarks are named after a type of bird that goes picking around in the muck and the sand, looking for tasty things to eat. The mudlarks are kind of similar. They're picking around in the foreshore muck, looking for treasures, things that fascinate them and fascinate us. Today's video is full of surprises from the depths of the Thames, things that wash up on the foreshore. We have weapons, viking swords, clothing, religious tokens, evidence from crimes, and naughty objects galore, plus a whole heap of Roman objects. I haven't shown you everything here. I've held back some of the real bangers, so make sure you make it to the exhibition if you can. It's running until March 1st. If you're new to my channel, welcome! I really hope that you enjoy this video and that you decide to like, comment, and subscribe. If you're a regular viewer, why not head over to my Patreon channel? There you'll get an extra full-length video tour every month, they're a little more off the cuff, and an invitation to my annual in-person tours. Let's start our tour today with this beautiful painting called Searching by Moonlight. Here we can see two young mudlarks searching the moonlit foreshore by the York Watergate. By the way, the York Watergate is still there today, but it's a lot further from the Thames. The gate hasn't been moved, the Thames has. It used to be twice as wide as it is today, but owing to a fateful summer called the Great Stink, when the Thames backed up with sewage in 1858, it was artificially narrowed so that it would flow quicker and that sewers could be built on the north bank of the river. This is a beautiful painting by Henry Pether, created around 1850, and that would have been just before the Thames was narrowed. Here we can see a replica of the magnificent head from Hadrian's statue, created originally on 1152138CE. The original of this guy is in the British Museum, I see him all the time, but this is here just to show you that the head emerged from the mud. This wasn't discovered by traditional mudlarks, this was discovered by large-scale works to construct river walls and bridges, and while they were dredging the Thames, it led to remarkable discoveries like these. Now today mudlarking is a hobby, but historically for the poor who undertook this out of necessity, it was a way to find lumps of coal, bits of metal to sell to melt down, and other things that they could sell just for a little bit of money to sustain themselves. Some books and illustrations from the 19th century. Here, 1851, early accounts of mudlarks describe them mostly as children aged 8 to 15, sometimes older women and also sometimes men who were down on their luck. Here from 1805, you can see a description of Peggy Jones, the mudlark. She was described by R.S. Kirby in his book The Wonderful and Eccentric Museum of Remarkable Characters. She was said to be around 40, with red hair, dressed in short ragged petticoats and barefoot, wearing her strong apron like a bag around her to collect what she could find in the river. She used her feet to feel for lumps of coal and she was frequently seen drunk. When she was arrested, a police report described her as being quote very aged and a quote mass of mud and filth. She appeared in court for these crimes more than 50 times. She disappeared without a trace in February 1805. This little mudlark here was chronicled by a man called Henry Mayhew in 1851. He was a social campaigner and reformer and he wrote three books on London's poor. Specifically here, he chronicles the young mudlarks. This little boy used his hat to carry what he found. You can see some of those mudlarks here in this painting by an unknown artist. This is called the Adelphi Wharf and it was painted around 1805 to 1815. Here's what Adelphi Wharf looks like today by the way. This watercolor shows mudlarks picking up the coal around the barges near the strand. People who worked on those coal barges sometimes took pity on these mudlarks and they would kick little bits of coal over the edge so people could have a little bit of extra money. So here are some of the things that the early mudlarks would be looking for and I'm sure mudlarks today as well. Scraps, any scraps they could sell. You can see here rope, pieces of copper, iron nails. There were some reports that some of the mudlarks were earning a huge amount of money, the equivalent in today's currency of about 200,000 pounds a year. That does seem quite unlikely but you know if you were fast and lucky there was some money to be made. However in 1796 Patrick Colquhoun, founder of the Thames River Police, said that he was encountering another kind of income stream for the so-called mudlarks. Some of them worked with criminal networks to receive stolen goods from the ships that were pulling into the docks. Now this display case features objects called the Shadwell Shams. I absolutely love this and you can see a newspaper report chronicling what Billy and Charlie were up to. Billy Smith and Charlie Eaton were two enterprising mudlarks. They claimed that they were down on the river tirelessly searching for objects every day but what they were actually doing was creating carved molds and casting lead objects to resemble pilgrim souvenirs that they claimed they dug out of the riverbanks. They used acid and even Thames mud to age them so that they could be sold to dealers and people who love antiques. They made all kinds of wondrous objects. These are quite fantastical. I mean look at this this medallion has the date 1390 but in England at this time in 1390 the Roman numerals were used on objects so Billy and Charlie were actually illiterate and the inscription on the edge doesn't make any sense. After their scam came to light these objects known as the Shadwell Shams became known as Billy and Charlie's. This is a photograph by an artist called Anna Borzello and you can see a mudlark here in 2023 searching along the edge of the riverbank. Now why at night? This almost looks like a painting. Why at night though? Well the best tides are often at night bringing in the most interesting objects and the mudlarker here Christina Nicolaou says that this is a to be alone with the foreshore in the evening. Wow these are some really amazing objects a lot of them anglo-saxon and or viking. For instance here is a viking battle axe and here object labeled number two is a knife known as a sea axe. Both the vikings and the saxons used sea axes. This iron blade is decorated with inlaid silver that spells out the name Osmond. Here at the bottom this saxon pin this has runes engraved around the edges and just above a silver pendant Thor's hammer a mini version the god of war and fertility. This may have been lost by a viking as they entered London. Just on my way to the exhibition now and I usually spend my free time driving around or taking the train going to different museums wandering around the galleries but I also love turning my free time into spending money. Why not? We can all use some. That's why I like free cash. Free cash is a free mobile app that allows you to earn cash by playing mobile games and completing surveys. It's super easy with a lot of different games to play and surveys to complete. With just a little bit of time and effort you can earn instant payouts from paypal and amazon gift cards. I wanted to make sure they were legit and they have a 4.8 star rating on Trustpilot and loads of glowing reviews on reddit. You'll join a large community of people just looking to earn a little on the side. Kind of like a little mudlark bird if you think about it. Sign up to free cash via my link and you'll enjoy an extra five dollars on your first offer. Check out this fragment here of a viking drinking horn and this little dragon's head. That would have been on the end of a different drinking horn. Down below I mean just look at these that have been discovered. Silver coins, precious gemstones. This coin by the way is from Iran. It's a drachm from Ram Hormuz in southwestern Iran from about 600 CE. Even 200 years after it was minted it was still in circulation valued for the weight of its silver. I really like that the has been kind of mocked up to look like the foreshore of the river. You can see all of the rocks and sand. Cool, good curation. Of course many ships were made in London. There's a replica here of the HMS Acasta, a 40-gun frigate which was built in Randall's yard in Rotherhithe but London was also known as a place for breaking ships. So you can see pieces of ship breaking, timbers, iron nails and copper rivets. This white piece here, this is actually a piece of whale bone found close to Greenland dock in Rotherhithe. This was the center of London's whaling industry. Oh wow, look at this! Each half of this sundial was found separately by different mudlarks searching eight years apart in the same place. It was made from elephant ivory, maybe from Germany, and it would have been carried by the captain of a ship told time by measuring the sun's position. By the way, not just anybody can mudlark. You actually need to take a short training course and get a license that you pay for annually. Now this isn't a way to be overly bureaucratic or be kind of nanny state about the river. It's because of discoveries like this one. If there was no mudlarking training and no registry for what you find when mudlarking, we never would have been able to put these two pieces back together because the two separate mudlarks wouldn't have known what each other had found unless they met up at the pub. But I digress. This is a controlled hobby for exactly this reason. So cool. Look at these tiny toys, miniature copies of ships right here, number five, and anchors. The curation says imagine the disappointment of children playing near the river, accidentally dropping their beloved toy into the water. Oh gosh, it'd be gutting. Boat swains whistle right here. This example decorated with a really cool lion and just above some dividers to measure the distance that your ship is traveling on charts and maps. If you're interested in learning more about how ships used to tell time, please watch my video on the Royal Observatory's 350th anniversary. An 1836 illustration of the River Thames and all of its incredibly busy traffic here in the part of the Thames called the London Pool or the Pool of London. This is the deepest point of the river. You can see the Tower of London right here and so Tower Bridge would later be built right here and there's London Bridge there. This was created by Robert Havel Jr. in 1836. Of course we can't talk about the Thames and mudlarking without discussing some of the more disturbing aspects of our history that are uncovered. This display case talks about London's global exploitation and the evidence of slave training and colonization that's present on the shores of our river. You can see here the face of an African man. This is a tobacco pipe, a bowl, submerged in the mud alongside a single cowrie shell. There's a close-up photo of it there. The description on the case says that this shows the unequal relationship between the British and the West Africans. Cowrie shells were used as a currency in West Africa and they were traded by Europeans in exchange for African goods, services, and people. African people were often depicted as art on objects like this tobacco pipe which reinforced dehumanizing perceptions of Africans as objects to be traded. In the late 18th century and early 19th century, growing voices for the abolition of slavery began to emerge in Britain and of course in other places around the empire and in America as well. Here we can see this pipe. It shows an enslaved African man. It copies a medallion with the inscription, Am I not a man and brother? This was produced by Josiah Wedgwood for the Society of the Abolition of Slavery in 1787. I didn't actually know that Wedgwood was involved in the abolition movement. That gives me a whole new view on him. Wow, look at this piece of art by Kabir Hussain created for the mudlarking exhibition. This is called Velocipede and he imagines that the year is 3025. He creates imagined future fossils. So this bicycle is kind of wrapped in limestone and chalk. Now we're going even further back in time. This cabinet is filled with objects dating as early as 10,000 BCE. For instance, these hazelnuts here. These were collected by hunter and gathering people who were following and hunting animals as they migrated. They also made axes like these out of flint, using them to fell trees and cut wood in order to make their boats and shelters. Now 7500 BCE, so 2,500 years after that, this tool here was used to shape wood or to dig into the ground. The hole would have been where the handle was stuck inside and it's engraved with decorative chevrons. So this is thought to be an early form of art. Some people think the chevron shape actually represents the tides flowing on the river. Some more flint axes and tools discovered by mudlarks. This sword here, this is from 800 BCE and this was a practice of depositing special items in the river that continued throughout prehistory. Not everything that ended up in the Thames in ancient times landed there by accident. We talked about little children dropping their toys but in many cases of ancient spirituality that we don't know entirely about, we believe that they actually placed objects of significance into the river intentionally as an offering. Oh I absolutely love this case. We can see traces of past Londoners through bits and pieces of their clothing, adornments, shoes, jewellery, etc. Wow, I just love this. When you look at these pieces it really feels like we're stepping back through time and connecting with our London ancestors. This is amazing. Number 10, tiny pewter toys. Elaborately dressed pins and thimbles and braces for clothing. Up here these are wooden rods or broken clay stems that were used as wig curlers. This is one of my favourite pieces that I've seen so far. Number nine is an elaborate purse frame that would have had fabric or leather sewn into the hoop. And number 15 is a brass and bone headdress made by skilled wire workers in London and the Netherlands. Now of course royalty wore these made out of gold and silver. You can see this up in the top but people without such means could make them out of bone and brass. Look at the shoes. I can't believe that the leather lasts so long. This one here may be kicked off by a Victorian baby but these other two beside them, these date back to the 1400s or the 1500s. Now this is a gentleman's shoe from the 1600s. It's heeled and decorated with hearts and crescent moons. Remember men used to wear high heels. And number 19 here, this shows little miniature pair from a badge show the 14th century trend for extremely long pointed toes. These are like kind of like the shoes that we see in the Arnolfini portrait aren't they? And wow look at this winding figure of a leather belt highly highly decorated with studs. This display case shows us offerings made to the river like we were just talking about throughout history. Roman gods and goddesses or fragments of them. They've been found in major rivers across Europe but here in the Thames we find things like this regularly. This statue here represents mercury and the beautiful stone head here in the back. This may represent Aphrodite. This little mirror here, this is a rare find in Britain usually found in the Danube in Eastern Europe and often used as an offering to river gods. This leather scrap right in the center, this is likely a leather book cover from a prayer book and of course loads of shrine souvenirs. My man Thomas Beckett right there. To learn more about why you'd find a lot of pilgrims badges for Beckett you can watch my video about Macabre Canterbury. People were making pilgrimages to Beckett's shrine from all over Europe. This piece of work is by called Finders Keepers and it's by artist Billy Bond, created this year. Shows the mudlarks Alessio Cecconi, Mark Iglesias, Vasco and Caroline Nunnally. Their heads are swapped for significant objects that they have found. That's cool. This sculpture, wow. This is called Ancient Ruins by Amy Lee Bird. She created this in 2020. It's made from animal bones, waste from London's butchery, slaughterhouses and tanneries. Until the late 19th century tons and tons of bones, teeth and hooves were dumped into the river. There's also an island in Kent called Dead Man's Island that is filled with human bones that wash up and it's not uncommon to find human bones on the Thames foreshore as well. Look at this here. I almost thought this was a Hindu sculpture at first but it's actually an eel spear. Eels have been a delicacy and they're heavily associated with East London. In the 1300s we had a tiny ice age and the colder climate led to London's eel numbers plummeting. Now King Richard II really liked eels so he made sure he increased eel imports from the Netherlands. They were kept fresh by keeping them alive in the ship and then they'd be speared with forks like this near Billingsgate fish market. These little plates and dishes for number two, three and four. Those are little children's toys. Of course knives and spoons, the remnants of drinking glasses from the 1500s, wine glasses. I can't believe that a big glass vessel like this was found intact. Well actually I can believe it. Glass can be quite strong when it's filled with silt and dirt. These interactive screens can tell us more about the ship's timbers and things here in the foreshore display. Of course I can't make a video without there being some history of medicine. This display case is all about medicinal finds in the Thames. Look at these teeth. These are false teeth made in the 1700s. Then they're made from real human teeth, probably collected from the dead, maybe by body snatchers or maybe sold by family after the person died. A goldsmith or watchmaker would have set them to ivory plates and then they'd be held together in gold pins. They were made bespoke for a wealthy client. Look at this prosthetic glass eye from the 1920s and look here at the eye being discovered in the foreshore. And this bit of bone spectacle in the case just above it. This dates from a pair of eyeglasses from the 1400s. In the center there's a little piece that's rotating here. It's an extremely elaborate rosary bead used for prayer and meditation. On one side it shows a woman's face and the other side it's a skull. We come across them regularly on my channel. Of course this is a memento mori, a constant reminder that life and death are intertwined. And of course this is in the medicine display case because without modern medicine, vaccines, hygiene, germ theory and all of it, praying on the rosary was a common way to try to keep sickness at bay. Here up in the top corner beautifully crafted syringes as well. Now we talked about in my video about the science museum's medical collection, we talked about enemas and tobacco smoke enemas. Medical journals say they could use broken pipe stems for an emergency as a catheter for releasing urine or even as a breathing tube as well as for giving enemas. And the tokens below it from the 1600s shows a patient bent over and being given an enema. I'm not sure why that would have to be on a token. Theatre Jessica here. I did a bit of research on these enema tokens and it turns out that you can actually find them all over Europe. And no one really knows what they're for, but one guess is they're a very bizarre lover's gift. So mudlarks often find a little piece of history called Dove's type in the Thames. The Dove's Press was founded in Hammersmith in 1900 by Thomas James Cobden Sanderson and Emery Walker. Here they are here in this photograph. They created the Dove's type described as the most beautiful typeface that had ever been made and they used it to print their personal masterpiece, the Dove's Bible. However, the two ended up with a 10-year dispute and their partnership ended in a really bitter way. It was finally agreed that Cobden Sanderson could have sole use of the type until his death and then it would pass to Walker. However, when his health began to fail in 1916, he decided to quote, bequeath the type to the Thames rather than let Walker have it. Petty, my gosh, but that's why they find this typeset in the river so commonly. A thousand kilos, a ton of this was dumped before his death. Here's a little animation just showing it. Just wanted to pop back in to show you just how easy it is to use FreeCache. You just click on this QR code to get started. If you're on Android, you can use the FreeCache app, but if you're using an iOS device, just head over to the browser. Then once you select which games and apps you want to use, apps and websites will pop up automatically. Then just choose which offer interests you the most. I chose Solitaire because I'm a 90s girl at heart and I used to play this on my PC all the time. It's actually really fun and you can see after just a few games, I'm already earning money. Earning a bit of cash while I wait here in the car for my husband. Nice one. Here's one for all the true crime lovers. This case is all about crimes concealed by the river. Now we already mentioned Patrick Colquhoun a little bit earlier. He founded the Thames River Police in 1798 because he said there were all different types of thieves who were attacking the Thames. River pirates, night plunderers, game watermen, scuttle hunters, and mudlarks. Of course, like any other body of water, the Thames has long been used to hide and disguise crimes. So some things have been discovered by mudlarks. Here, literally, the old ball and chain. This dates from the 17th century and they were also known as leg irons, used in England in the early modern period for people who were convicted of certain criminal offenses. Leg irons were often used on people that were shipped to the colonies in Australia and America for engendered servitude as well. Wow, and just check out that 16th century dagger. That is serious. Thefts and violent crimes were widespread and so people carried daggers as part of their everyday dress to protect themselves and they became part of the fashion as well. Here's a part of a sawed-off shotgun from the 1920s. Wow. All of these medals here, these were stolen from tennis champion Peter Fleming. He thought his medals had been lost forever and he won these between 1978 and 2002 for playing doubles in the Wimbledon Championships, often partnered with John McEnroe. Thanks to the mudlarks, he was able to recover his medals. Look at these tiny little dice here. Medieval Londoners loved to play dice games to try and win fortune and cheating was rife. These 24 little bone dice have been x-rayed and you can see on the x-rays here that they are, quote, loaded dice weighted with mercury so they land in predictable ways. And of course, something very common to be found in the river, any river really, pottery. Beautiful delftware and a teacup there from China. Here, number seven, these are actually quite rare. These come from the Hermitage Pothouse which was located in Wapping and the mudlarks have really helped historians understand more about that warehouse. Love and Romance, a display case filled with rings dating from 1300 all the way up to 1750. This one here, number one, it's a gold ring set with a pink spinel and it says, Pour amour, say done, for love I am given. Number two, on the other side, a gold ring decorated with Christian figures, John the Baptist, the Virgin and Child and Saint Catherine, and it reads, Mon coeur avait, have my heart. They say here that the river has produced some truly surprising finds. A lot of objects decorated with penises. Now, this body part has meant different things to different people throughout time. It's not always a sexual reference, sometimes it has to do with virility, power, or even worshipping certain gods. Shiva comes to mind. Get ready. Number one comes from China and dates to within the last 200 years. It has the head of a water buffalo carved on top of its testicles and in China, the buffalo is symbolically associated with fertility, as you can imagine. Down here at the bottom, you can see a 2,000 year old ring, this very tiny ring. The Romans used phallic symbols to protect against bad luck, and this little penis ring belonged to a child at a time when infant mortality was really high. You can also see other protective phallic symbols just above it. Number three is a mount made of a deer antler, and that would have been on a Roman soldier's belt, and the bronze pendant has three different protective symbols right beside each other. A crescent moon, a hand, and a phallus. I love this one. Remember, we saw that swords and daggers were common parts of everyday dress, and they became popular in fashion and design too, and in the late 1400s, bollocks daggers were very trendy with their handles in this very distinctive shape. The painting behind shows you how the daggers were worn, not on the hip, but directly in front of the body to reinforce the symbolism. You know I love a pilgrim's badge, and right in the center here, rude hidden messages, these are lead badges that were worn on hats and cloaks. If you look closely at the one in the middle, this is a purse with a phallus tucked inside. Purses were symbols of good fortune, and they could also be a metaphor for vaginas. So this was a naughty joke. The badge, shaped like a hair comb right above it, is decorated with dancing phalluses, and cockerel badges were worn by young men in London to advertise their virility, with the rooster, or the cock, a symbol of lust. Now the only question is, are they selling these in the gift shop? Because I would buy one. Wow, this entire wall here is filled with Roman objects. We've already seen a few Roman objects scattered throughout those display cases, but this is all Roman. Just look at these gods and goddesses here. Ah, the Roman god Mercury and Deinutrix. She's a British mother goddess, pre-Roman. You can see the hand of the person who discovered her in the water. That's amazing. A pipe clay head of Deinutrix. And down at the bottom here, these are beautiful statues of Venus, and a bronze figurine of Mercury. Hair pins and a brooch. Always find a lot of these in Roman settlements. And game pieces as well. Beautiful bits of glass. The Romans, of course, known for their glass. Jet and emeralds. Bits of knives here with bone and ivory handles. Soles of shoes from 2000 years ago. These leather soles from hobnailed military sandal boots that were called Caligulae. Bits of smashed pots. And wow, this huge amphora from Spain. Probably used to hold fish sauce, I imagine. No, this one's for olive oil. Of course, many of these objects come from the stretch of the river along the city of London, which was the Roman city of Londinium. Okay, if you thought that was an embarrassment of riches, there is drawer after drawer of different objects to look through as well, and even more lit up cabinets. It's unreal. Wow, I love this here. A pinner's bone and pins discovered all together, I imagine. Okay, we can slide to reveal here. Wow! Prehistoric deer antler with an antler pick beside it. That's from 6,000 years ago. Wow, look at this kind of timeline of hand axes. If you thought that the 10,000 year old hand axe we had a look at was old, check out this one here from the Paleolithic period, 400,000 to 150,000 BCE. I'm gobsmacked. More beautiful daggers. Just look at this one. Wow, a stone carved face with black paint from the 1400s. Pewter spoons, all kinds of cruets and jugs of bottles. Some pictures of some of the modern mudlarks here. This is so cool. I really want to get into this hobby. Oh, another cabinet to open. Let's see. Wow! An iron rapier, a narrow sword from 1594. I'm just tickled. I love this exhibition. Please come and see it. I don't think my camera is doing justice to how big this moon is. It's very, very big. Of course, the moon is a really important part of mudlarking because the Thames is a tidal river and the moon controls the tides. The museum has actual mudlarks on hand to chat with you. I was lucky enough to speak with Germanda Speedwell and see her amazing pipes. I'm Germanda Speedwell and I brought a selection from my Speedwell Asylum for retired pipes. So most of these are from the 1800s. I brought my most decorated pipes. Here we've got heads and hands. Some of these are known, in particular, people. So we've got Garibaldi here, Omar Pasha. We've got a clown, a skull, a tiny little African face and a whole row of different types of hands. Here we've got animals and plants. So there's a whole row of dogs, horses, a frog riding a fish, pipes, thistles, animal claws or bird claws. And here's a few examples of complete pipes. This is my longest complete pipe. And these are later ones, 1800s, all complete. Beautiful shapes there. That's my tiniest one, that's so cute. How long have you been mudlarking? About 12 years. Wow. And what made you want to get into the hobby? I was doing a project going on the foreshore and I saw one of the participants kept coming back with interesting pipe bottles. I had no idea they existed until then. So of course I had to follow him. I've just linked Jemander's YouTube channel below. Be sure to check out her Asylum for Retired Pipes. I loved this exhibition so much and I hope I get to go back and you should go too if you can. And just a reminder about free cash, head on over there and start playing and earning with my $5 sign up bonus. Well that's the end of our tour. I hope that you've enjoyed learning about the mudlarks and seeing some of their fascinating finds. I had a great time and I hope you did too. I'll see you the next time I'm at the museum. By the way if you're still here you should know that I guided this entire tour with a napping toddler.