A museum has claimed black women were more likely to die of the plague in medieval London because of ‘premodern structural racism’.
The new study, which fails to put an estimate on how many black people were living in the capital during the period, examined the remains of just 145 individuals – from the time of a plague which killed nearly half of London’s 70,000-strong population.
What is now often referred to as the Black Death killed millions of people across Europe and Asia between 1348 and 1350.
The first recorded African resident in the capital was a man called Cornelius, who was in London in 1593. However, one of the researchers involved in the study claimed that the medieval capital of England was ‘a black London’.
The remains that were studied by researchers from the Museum of London and academics in the US came from three London cemeteries, but only 49 of the sample actually died from the plague.
The research found there were significantly higher proportions of people of colour and those of Black African descent in plague burials compared to non-plague burials.
Nine plague victims appeared to be of African heritage, while 40 seemed to have white European or Asian ancestry. Among the remains in non-plague burials, the figures were eight and 88 respectively.
Hellbound and Down 