A Cambridge digital project mapping mediaeval murder cases in London has added Oxford and York to its catalogue and deemed Oxford “the murder capital of late mediaeval England” for its unusually high rates of violence.
The study, led by Manuel Eisner and Stephanie Brown, both criminologists at the University of Cambridge, estimates the homicide rate in late mediaeval Oxford to have been 60-75 per 100,000 – 4-5 times higher than in mediaeval London or York, and some 50 times higher than current rates.
Oxford’s student population was largely responsible for the violence. At the time the city of 7,000 was home to 1,500 students, nearly all men between 14-21. Together, they were “by far the most lethally violent social or professional group” in any of the project’s three cities, making up nearly three-quarters of the city’s perpetrators and victims of murder.
The project attributes the student culture of violence to young male tendency towards risk-taking mixed with newfound freedom and easy access to weaponry. It suggests that small skirmishes often escalated in part due to a “mediaeval sense of street justice” and sense of responsibility to protect “male honour” and maintain public order.
Coroners’ rolls, and jury documents detailing sudden deaths reveal the motivation behind many of the incidents of violence. While in London and York, the sources of conflict were often commercial in nature, such as between artisans in the same profession, Oxford’s diverse student population often turned violent over personal and regional frictions.
Most of the murders in Oxford escalated from altercations between “Town and Gown”, or within the student body between northerners and southerners as well as between the English, Irish and Welsh. “They really, really hated each other,” said Eisner.
Though the project focuses on violence, Eisner wants his maps to show that mediaeval urban life was “by no means lawless.” The community often upheld their legal responsibility to loudly alert bystanders to crimes with a “hue and cry.” And criminal cases usually progressed through a jury of local men who investigated the crime and delivered indictments.
The digital project is available for viewing online.
