This beautiful skull (also a donation box) was kindly made for Crossbones Graveyard by Adrian at Can of Gas. The skull is based on that of a lady, given the name Elizabeth Mitchell after a BBC History Cold Cases investigation into a skeleton uncovered at Crossbones Graveyard during archaeological digs leading up to the Jubilee Line substation. Elizabeth Mitchell was thought to be a sex worker who lived in the area and died shortly before the Graveyard was closed in 1853. Her bones were pitted, indicating that she’d died with tertiary stage syphillis, a sexually transmitted disease common in Victorian London when, it is estimated, 1 in 5 people engaged in sex work in order to scrape a living.
The donation box has been extremely popular with visitors, collecting over £3000 in donations since it was installed in 2018, proving to be vital as part of the garden’s income generation for maintenance.
