Skin and Bone
Interdisciplinary analysis of accidents, injury, and violence in industrialising London, 1760-1901
This is a data blog for the Skin and Bone project, which seeks to chart the embodied experience of work-related injury, accidents, and interpersonal violence of c.50,000 Londoners during the Industrial Revolution.
In both archaeology and history, the period 1760-1901 represents a significant transformation for the body. Injuries, accidents and interpersonal violence profoundly affected lived experiences of the body in England during this intense period of industrialisation.
Led by a historian of the period with expertise in digital humanities, and an osteoarchaeologist who has collated data on trauma and injury in eighteenth-century bodies, the project has created a new open-access dataset, which this blog will document, explore and visualise.
Recent Posts
| Date | Title |
|---|---|
| 17 Jul 2025 | Exploring the Skin and Bone convicts data |
| 26 May 2025 | Exploring the Skin and Bone osteological data |
| 16 May 2025 | Exploring the Skin and Bone hospitals data |
| 7 May 2025 | Types of injury |
| 28 Apr 2025 | Injury locations on the body |
| 21 Apr 2025 | Biographical information |
| 14 Apr 2025 | A first look at the Skin and Bone data |
| 7 Apr 2025 | An overview of the Skin and Bone data |
Credits
The project was funded by the British Academy (2022-23).
The project directors are Zoe Alker, University of Lancaster, and Madeleine Mant, University of Toronto.
Project technical development is carried out by the Digital Humanities Institute | Sheffield.
This blog has been created by Sharon Howard, using RStudio, Quarto and Github.