#mudlarker

[marryat92]

In fact, I was here, there, and every where except at home—always active, always employed, and, I may add, almost always wet. My mother used to scold whenever I came in; but that I did not mind: her greatest punishment was refusing me a clean shirt on a Sunday; at last I picked up halfpence enough to pay, not only for my food, such as it was, but for my own washing, and every day I became more independent and more happy.

— Frederick Marryat, Poor Jack

Illustration by Fred Pegram, 1897.

[archaeologicalnews]

5,600-Year-Old Human Skull Bone Fished Out of the Thames by Lucky 'Mudlarker'

Humans have lived alongside England's River Thames for thousands of years, and they've left some interesting things behind in its muddy waters: wooden clubs for bashing in heads, a toilet that fits three butts at once and sometimes, even bits of human skulls.

Tomorrow (Feb. 20), the Museum of London will put one such skull fragment on display. According to a statement from the museum, the fractured frontal skull bone belonged to an adult man who lived sometime around 3600 B.C., making this Neolithic skull chunk one of the oldest human specimens ever pulled out of the Thames.

According to the museum, the specimen was initially discovered near the southern shores of the Thames by a "mudlarker" — a person who digs through the river mud in search of valuables. (Mudlarkers have made scavenging the Thames their business for hundreds of years; in fact, the 500-year-old skeleton of a dead mudlarker wearing thigh-high leather boots was recently exhumed from the river.) Read more.

[dalgaragh]

i pulled this big!!! skull fragment off the thames southbank. am still cleaning it up of mud and so on. browned by its time in the river, i think its horse or cow?

[marryat92]

Indeed I was now what is termed a regular Mud-larker, picking up halfpence by running into the water, offering my ragged arm to people getting out of the wherries, always saluting them with, “You havn't got never a halfpenny for poor Jack, your honour?" and sometimes I did get a halfpenny, sometimes a shove, according to the temper of those whom I addressed.

— Frederick Marryat, Poor Jack

[allmetalmodemike]

Steve Tomlinson - Mud Larker