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This thesis explores the relationship between prostitute, law, and community in late-medieval London. However much society maligned and marginalised her, the prostitute (and her occupation) was in constant demand and thus became a recurring theme in London’s law books throughout the later medieval period. I argue that this juxtaposition of reviled yet necessary woman in society was a reflection of community concerns: while the promiscuity and financial aspects of prostitution were tolerable, the prostitute’s connections with London’s malefactors were not. / Turning to a variety of legal sources from London’s later-medieval period, particularly London’s civic ordinances, we find that while the prostitute was a constant fixture in these records, laws by and large regulated her movements, and at times even protected the prostitute from both the public and her employers. More commonly, ordinances sought to segregate the prostitute from the wider community because the presence of prostitution was linked to theft, violence, and general disorder. Similarly, records from the Commissary courts – a community court that functioned as a tool for social control – reveal that the community was far more concerned with the containment of offenders whose behaviour might lead to the broader spread of social decay: namely, the pimps and bawds who routinely recruited women into prostitution. / I demonstrate that despite her acknowledged venality, the community tolerated the prostitute as a necessary evil, and possibly even forgave those prostitutes who acted out of desperation. Of greater concern were those individuals who associated with the prostitute: pimps and bawds who encouraged lechery and profited from the sins of others, suspicious persons who drank and committed acts of violence and walked the streets after curfew.

This thesis explores the relationship between prostitute, law, and community in late-medieval London. However much society maligned and marginalised her, the prostitute (and her occupation) was in constant demand and thus became a recurring theme in London’s law books throughout the later medieval period. I argue that this juxtaposition of reviled yet necessary woman in society was a reflection of community concerns: while the promiscuity and financial aspects of prostitution were tolerable, the prostitute’s connections with London’s malefactors were not. / Turning to a variety of legal sources from London’s later-medieval period, particularly London’s civic ordinances, we find that while the prostitute was a constant fixture in these records, laws by and large regulated her movements, and at times even protected the prostitute from both the public and her employers. More commonly, ordinances sought to segregate the prostitute from the wider community because the presence of prostitution was linked to theft, violence, and general disorder. Similarly, records from the Commissary courts – a community court that functioned as a tool for social control – reveal that the community was far more concerned with the containment of offenders whose behaviour might lead to the broader spread of social decay: namely, the pimps and bawds who routinely recruited women into prostitution. / I demonstrate that despite her acknowledged venality, the community tolerated the prostitute as a necessary evil, and possibly even forgave those prostitutes who acted out of desperation. Of greater concern were those individuals who associated with the prostitute: pimps and bawds who encouraged lechery and profited from the sins of others, suspicious persons who drank and committed acts of violence and walked the streets after curfew.

In the history of crime and punishment the prisons of medieval London have generally been overlooked. This may have been because none of the prison records have survived for this period, yet there is enough information in civic and royal documents, and through archaeological evidence, to allow a reassessment of London's prisons in the later middle ages. This thesis begins with an analysis of the purpose of imprisonment, which was not merely custodial and was undoubtedly punitive in the medieval period. Having established that incarceration was employed for a variety of purposes the physicality of prison buildings and the conditions in which prisoners were kept are considered. This research suggests that the periodic complaints that London's medieval prisons, particularly Newgate, were ‘foul' with ‘noxious air' were the result of external, rather than internal, factors. Using both civic and royal sources the management of prisons and the abuses inflicted by some keepers have been analysed. This has revealed that there were very few differences in the way civic and royal prisons were administered; however, there were distinct advantages to being either the keeper or a prisoner of the Fleet prison. Because incarceration was not the only penalty available in the enforcement of law and order, this thesis also considers the offences that constituted a misdemeanour and the various punishments employed by the authorities. Incarceration did not necessarily entail enforced inactivity and the ways a prisoner might occupy his time, including writing, working or even planning an escape, are discussed. Lastly, an investigation is made into the causes and numbers of prison deaths in the medieval period.

Yes / Objectives: We compared δ15N and δ13C values from bone and dentine collagen profiles of individuals interred in famine‐related and attritional burials to evaluate whether individuals in medieval London who experienced nutritional stress exhibit enriched nitrogen in bone and tooth tissue. Dentine profiles were evaluated to identify patterns that may be indicative of famine during childhood and were compared with the age of enamel hypoplasia (EH) formation to assess whether isotopic patterns of undernutrition coincide with the timing of physiological stress. Materials and Methods: δ15N and δ13C isotope ratios of bone collagen were obtained from individuals (n = 128) interred in attritional and famine burials from a medieval London cemetery (c. 1120–1539). Temporal sequences of δ15N and δ13C isotope profiles for incrementally forming dentine collagen were obtained from a subset of these individuals (n = 21). Results: Results indicate that individuals from attritional graves exhibit significantly higher δ15N values but no significant differences were found between burial types for the sexes. Analyses of dentine profiles reveal that a lower proportion of famine burials exhibit stable dentine profiles and that several exhibit a pattern of opposing covariance between δ15N and δ13C. EH were also observed to have formed during or after the opposing covariance pattern for some individuals. Conclusions: The results of this study may reflect differences in diet between burial types rather than nutritional stress. Though nutritional stress could not be definitively identified using bone and dentine collagen, the results from dentine analysis support previous observations of biochemical patterns associated with nutritional stress during childhood. / Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences. Grant Numbers: BCS‐1261682, BCS‐1540208. Office of the Vice President for Research, University of South Carolina. Grant Number: SPARC Fellowship Grant

Difficult human childbirth is often explained to be the outcome of long term evolutionary hanges in the genus Homo resulting in an‘obstetrical dilemma,’defined as the compromise between the need for a large pelvis in birthing large brained babies and a narrow pelvis for the mechanics of bipedal locomotion (Washburn, 1960). The ‘obstetrical dilemma’ is argued to result in the risk of cephalopelvic disproportion and injury (Washburn, 1960). Current research challenges the premise of the obstetrical dilemma by considering the effects ecological factors have on the growth of the bony human pelvis (Wells et al., 2012; Wells, 2015, Stone, 2016; Wells, 2017). This thesis tests Wells et al.’s (2012) assertion that environmental factors, such as agricultural diets, compromise pelvic size and morphology and potentially affect human childbirth. The skeletal samples examined in this study are from medieval English populations with long established agricultural diets. Bony pelvic metrics analyzed are from the St. Mary Spital assemblage, and demographic and pathological data from St. Mary Spital were compared to the East Smithfield Black Death cemetery assemblage. The results show that there is some evidence for a relationship between chronic stress and compromised pelvic shape and size in both men and women, however the evidence is not conclusive that younger women with compromised pelvic dimensions were at an increased risk of obstructed labour and maternal mortality during childbirth. This suggests that childbirth was not likely a significantly elevated cause of death among younger women in medieval London as a result of cephalopelvic disproportion. The concept of a single obstetrical dilemma is flawed, as multiple obstetrical dilemmas other than cephalopelvic disproportion through pelvic capacity constrains are present, including ecological and nutritional stressors, childbirth practices and technologies, sanitation ractices, and social and gender inequality / Graduate