All Hallows 'een

Next time you pass through London Bridge station or shop for goodies at Borough Market, spare a thought for the 15,000 paupers and prostitutes buried in Crossbones Graveyard. In existence by the 16th century, Crossbones was finally closed in 1853. The site, on Redcross Way, a narrow lane parallel to Borough High Street, still exists and its gates are marked with an ever changing array of flowers and memorials.  

Most of those buried there were "single women", a polite way of saying prostitute. A royal order of 1161 allowed prostitutes to be licensed, and throughout the middle ages, the bishop of Winchester held these rights in Southwark. The women, known as Winchester geese, congregated in the narrow alleys around Bankside and Southwark priory, alter Southwark cathedral. 

The London historian John Stow noted in his 1598 Survey of London that, "I have heard of ancient men, of good credit, report that these single women were forbidden the rites of the church, so long as they continued that sinful life, and were excluded from Christian burial, if they were not reconciled before their death. And therefore there was a plot of ground called the Single Woman's churchyard, appointed for them far from the parish church."

Paupers and others too poor, or too socially unacceptable, for church burial, also ended up in this small patch of unconsecrated ground. Some of them had an additional afterlife, too, being dug up and used as anatomy specimens at nearby Guy's Hospital in the Old Operating Theatre.