Spooky Museum of Docklands
So Hallowe’en is over for another year, and London householders can once more go to answer the front door without first arming themselves with a bucketful of sweets. But behind all the fun, masks and elaborately carved pumpkin heads there is a darker truth … for countless generations of our forebears, the world of the supernatural, of ghosts, ghouls and curses was a very real one. A selection of exhibits, on show for the first time at the Docklands Museum, evoke a time when the supernatural lived alongside the everyday.
‘Ritual and Superstition’ opened at the Museum, appropriately enough, on 31 October. Hedley Swain, head of Early London History, says: “London has always been a city of many beliefs, both orthodox and less conventional. These artefacts wonderfully illustrate how when you scratch the surface of Halloween and trick-or-treat there are superstitions that go back many hundreds of years.
And some are anything but light hearted. A Roman ‘curse tablet’ is one of the exhibits. In the days when the Romans ruled London, people would scratch curses in Latin on lead tablets and offer them to the gods at temple. This one is an attempt to get back at a thief who has stolen some clothing and reads: “I give [the Goddess] Diana my headgear and scarf less one third. If anyone has done this, I give him, and through me let him be unable to live.” The Roman tablet was found in the fill of a drain dating from AD 160-250, and was found within the arena at the London amphitheatre during excavations in 1993 (Museum of London archaeologists having unearthed the capital’s only Roman amphitheatre in Guildhall Yard in 1988). It is the first tablet found in Britain to refer to the Goddess Diana, and was, significantly, found near Goldsmiths’ Hall, itself the site of an altar to Diana uncovered in 1830.
Also on display for the first time is a 17th century Bellarmine jar. This ‘witch bottle’ is typical of the wine jugs commonly reused to ward off evil spirits. The Bellarmine or Bartmann jar, belonged to one Pieter Van Anken, and was found in Platform Wharf in Rotherhithe in 1986. The anchor motif is a pun on the owner’s name. A witch bottle would be filled with various objects and buried in the hope of warding off the evil and the curses of witches. Sealed inside were bent pins and nails, human hair, nail clippings and even urine. Bottles were then thrown in the river or buried. They were believed to cause the witch terrible pain until she lifted her spell.
The other side to what may seem to us harmless superstition is that the fear of witches was very real during the late Middle Ages. So real in fact that 200,000 people in Europe (largely women) were burnt at the stake between 1500 and 1700. Between 1542 and 1684, 1000 unlucky souls were executed as witches in England.
And if this all seems very medieval, consider another witch bottle on display at the Museum. The modern day example, found on the river foreshore in 1988 carries its contents within a plastic pill bottle. Inside are coins (a halfpenny and a dime), teeth, a metal fragment wrapped in a piece of paper, a small piece of carrier bag, and a phial of liquid … probably oil of clove.
Roy Stephenson, manager of the Museum’s Archaeological Archive, who oversaw the opening of the modern-day witch bottle, said: “Ritual and superstition
has been with Londoners since before Roman times and is still a major pre-occupation of modern Londoners, and we can only guess at the reasons for people’s curious rituals in the past.”
Museum in Docklands
West India Quay
London E14 4AL
Tube: West India Quay
Admission to the Museum £5 adult, concs £3 (over 60s, unwaged), with free re-entry for a year.
Kids go free.
About the Museum
The Museum in Docklands is housed in a converted Georgian warehouse on West India Quay, next to Canary Wharf. Its displays explore London’s connections with the rest of the world through the 2000-year history of the river, port and its people. Across four floors of interactive displays the Museum’s unique collection takes you on a journey through stories of the Thames and surrounding areas from Roman settlement to 21st century urban regeneration.
A changing programme of activities caters for visitors of all ages and includes gallery tours, storytelling, drama, talks by history experts, films and guided walks through Docklands. Currently running (until May 2007) is ‘Journey to the New World: London 1606 to Virginia 1607’, an exhibition which marks the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in America at Jamestown, Virginia. The Museum opened in 2003 and is a short walk along West India Quay from the Docklands Light Railway station or Canary Wharf Jubilee Line tube station. For more information go to www.museumindocklands.org.uk or call 0870 444 3857.