Honouring London's outcast dead

Speaking to us in front of the cemetery gates, ribbon-wreathed and heavy with football scarves, laminated photographs, soft toys and dried flowers, Dave 500 says he can’t remember precisely how long he has been coming to the Crossbones Vigil. He reckons it’s “about 13 years now, maybe 14”. A short man in his early 70s, he addresses us with neither flamboyance nor nerves; if there is any hint of anxiety, it is manifested only in how firmly his baseball cap is pulled on to his head, as if, despite the still evening air, it might blow away. 

Tonight there are perhaps 25 or so of us in attendance, some of us first-timers and some having come for longer than Dave. The crowd is mixed — middle-class, middle-aged bohemians; students in sunglasses; older Southwark locals; a Big Issue seller who sits, slightly apart, on a folding stool — but all are participants in a tradition started in 2004 by writer John Constable as a way of honouring the outcasts and outsiders buried in Crossbones. 

A leafy, sedate space of mayflies and frogs, today there are no individual grave markers inside the cemetery, though there are a number of handmade shrines: to La Catrina, to sex workers, to trans people, to those who have lost children. But, although the historical record is slightly hazy, there’s evidence that it may have been the resting place of the Winchester Geese, sex workers who worked in the slums around the South Bank (so called because they came under the legal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, who afforded them some degree of protection) and who were denied a burial in consecrated ground. 

By the mid-18th century, it had become a pauper’s graveyard, a place to unceremoniously bury those who had broken their bodies in the area’s dye-houses and brick kilns, who had languished in the workhouses and begged on the filthy streets. About 15,000 of them, mostly nameless, are thought to be interred in Crossbones, buried in plain clothes, plain coffins. It was one of these people who inspired the origin of Dave’s moniker, he tells us — back in 2010, he was the 500th person to put his name to a petition demanding a proposed development of the graveyard be halted after a skeleton was found during a Museum of London dig. 

Reading from a folded sheet of paper, Dave speaks in the unembellished sentences of sure facts: “The skeleton was examined, and that led to its identification. It was a female, and using the workhouse hospital and burial records and a death certificate of 1851 she was identified as Elizabeth Mitchell, aged 19. She was a prostitute and had syphilis at some time. It was a late burial, because she was buried near the surface. The graveyard closed in 1853 because it was overcharged with dead. Some burials were 10 deep.” 

His voice is that of old south London, of smoke and industry and the hoarse shouts of market traders, consonants worn round by the Thames. Later, he will tell me that he was born just up the road in Bermondsey, as his parents were before him, as his grandfather was, as Dave’s own son, Jason, was. Some more facts, delivered in that same steady voice: “I also come here because I lost my son in 2011. He was known as ‘Brimstone’. His picture is on the gates.”

The vigil occurs on the 23rd of every month in front of the graveyard on Redcross Way, a quiet street of straight-backed townhouses and glossy hoardings tucked south of London Bridge. Even the location feels strangely forgotten, some remnant of an older, stranger bankside, despite the looming spire of the Shard and, just in view, the pinnacles of Southwark Cathedral. That may soon change, however, with the proposed development of neighbouring Landmark Court into a glossy complex of flats, offices and retail space, though paradoxically, this may be what ensures the continuation of this strange, eerie part of the city — funds to ensure the survival of the graveyard were required as part of the planning approval.

Although Constable’s presence is still integral to the vigil — his book The Southwark Mysteries, which was inspired by an LSD-laced encounter he had with the spirit of one of the Geese, is read from throughout the event, and enjoys prime position on the altar — he is no longer its leader. Tonight, that role is performed by Jen, who wears billowing black cotton and heavy silver rings and whose eyes have the quality of quartz, hard and shining and mystical. Jen has the knack of the true-born theatric, her voice carrying over the squeals of the trains on the nearby railway bridge, her hands constantly gesticulating, and when she instructs us to “take advantage of being here, and just get as close as you can to the gate. Touch it. Stick your hand through, stick your face through,” we all do. 

There are about four or five ceremonies within the vigil: the lighting of a candle, the tying of ribbons to the gates, the offering of creativity or words from the audience, a blessing from from The Southwark Mysteries, and a sprinkling and drinking of gin. While there is a house rule not to speak about politics, almost any other topic is acceptable. One woman extols the benefits of the recent “constellation workshop” she recently attended, while another speaks about her work in drug harm reduction following her god-daughter’s death. Someone reads out the work of Palestinian poet Khaled Juma about the children killed in Gaza, because, like the graveyard, it “makes explicit what people would rather not acknowledge”. Two younger women have brought bouquets of pale yellow roses and affix them, stem by stem, to the bars.

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Throughout the vigil, there is a sense that time’s grip has been loosened: summer slipping into autumn, daylight fading into evening. The past, present and future are in conversation here, the voices of the ignored and forgotten murmuring through the Southwark streets. Tonight, we speak with them. The process encompasses both the sacred and the mundane — at one point, we have to scatter as a plump-faced, abashed-looking man has to move his Tesla 4x4. But this combination all feels part of what Jen calls a “practice of being light… We come here to not be separate. We come here to slowly and happily get rid of some of our outside shell and what makes us different from everybody else. We come together in humanity, one single unified consciousness, the dead, the living and those yet to be for one moment.”

It’s this desire for communion, both spiritual and everyday, that lies at the heart of the Crossbones Vigil, the impetus for why people attend once or twice or every month. In a city that feels increasingly alienated and commercialised, it’s a space free from money, free from judgement, and, though there’s an interaction with the sacred, free from orthodox religion. It lacks the attendant hierarchies of those things, too — although Jen channels Madame Goose, she’s more of a guide than a legate. But despite how free-form it may seem, there's a consistency to it, a rhythm of ritual as constant as the seasons, as constant as death. Dave misses a month only when he isn’t feeling too well: “I have a knee problem and it might be too wet, too cold. And I'm getting older, I don't want to get chest problems.” 

When I ask him what brings him here so devoutly, he tells me he comes to make friends, something particularly precious in a world where, even for a Bermondsey boy like him, that feels harder. “When people move away, they don't tell you they're moving away. You know, they disappear, like people in my block, where I live. Guy had a dog and a partner for about a year, and all of a sudden he disappeared.” But more than that, it’s to speak, and be heard: “I like to come here and see [Jason’s] picture. It sounds silly, but I can talk to him.” 

The light is fading as Dave finishes his eulogy, one last coy blush of sun spreading across the city behind him: “He was an empath, although I didn't know this until he passed away. I had to go through his things, and I found that he saved a number of people from ending their life. He cured them. I have recently been in touch with one of those people, and she now has a partner and three children and is living a good life. She is so proud of what Jason did for her. Jason was a little miracle worker. Brimstone not forgotten. Thank you for listening.”