The Winchester Goose

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All four of the main characters, Joanie, Francis, Evelyn and Isabella are given voice in this novel and such different and compelling voices they have. The common denominator in their stories is Francis. As a reader, you think you see where these women’s relationships with handsome, swaggering Francis will lead, but nothing prepares us for the brutal and heart-wrenching reality.

Cross Bones Graveyard". Southwark Council. Archived from the original on 30 December 2007 . Retrieved 25 December 2007. Cross Bones is a disused post-medieval burial ground on Redcross Way in Southwark, south London. [2] Up to 15,000 people are believed to have been buried there. It was closed in 1853. The plaque was removed. Another appeared in its place and also removed. Some unknown soul climbed the fence and planted a small, wild garden. Friends of Cross Bones Graveyard bonded together to protect, recognize and honour those buried without comfort or care. Small notes and memorials appeared on the cemetery gates…names, dates, prayers, candles and occasionally, bottles of gin. After the public complained that the overcrowded cemetery offended public health and decency, Cross Bones was closed in 1853 on the grounds that it was “completely overcharged with dead.” An 1832 letter from parish authorities had noted the ground was “so very full of coffins that it is necessary to bury within two feet of the surface,” and that “the effluviem is so very offensive that we fear the consequences may be very injurious to the surrounding neighborhood.” (At the time, people feared the city’s burgeoning population of foul-smelling corpses was partly responsible for the city’s cholera epidemic. The true culprit, the water supply, was discovered later.) The land was sold for development 30 years later, but the sale declared void under the Disused Burial Grounds Act of 1884. Locals resisted further attempts at development, although the land was briefly used as a fairground, until complaints about the showmen’s “steam organs and noisy music” became overwhelming.

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I earned my Masters Degree by Research from the University of Kent in 2009 through study of a medieval medical manuscript held at the Wellcome Library in London. My BA (with First-class Honours), my Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing and my Diploma in European Humanities are from the Open University. My Cert. Ed (in Post-Compulsory Education and Training) is from the University of Greenwich. the word “sauce” instead of “good”. I’ve no idea where the idea of cooking someone’s goose comes from, nor why anybody thinks that a goose step Medieval attitudes to prostitution seem to be mixed. Sex was clearly for procreation but these fallen ladies seem to have been viewed as a way of preventing good Christian men falling into even worse practices – like sodomy or masturbation (seen as mortal crimes by the church).

and I don’t know why. The shape of the plant isn’t particularly similar to that of a goose’s tongue, so I think it might instead relate to the effect of chewing the leaves, which gooseberry bush“? It makes a lot more sense when you realise that gooseberry bush was slang for pubic hair.faster broad reach (i.e. at an angle of about 45º to the wind) by enough that it’s faster to zig-zag downwind rather than go directly downwind, but I can see how one might sometimes The stews” closed in the 17th century, and by the dawn of the Victorian era, Southwark was one of the worst slums in London, dense with crime and cholera, a place even policeman feared to tread. Cross Bones was repurposed into a pauper’s graveyard that served the parish of St. Saviour’s. In 1833, the antiquarian William Taylor wrote: “There is an unconsecrated burial ground known as the Cross Bones at the corner of Redcross Street, formerly called the Single Woman's burial ground, which is said to have been used for this purpose.” The area’s inhabitants led miserable lives, and suffered indignities even after death: Cross Bones was a favorite hunting ground for the bodysnatchers who unearthed corpses for use in anatomy classes at Southwark’s Guy's Hospital, among other places. You can still see remains of the 12th century Winchester Palace today in Southwark. The bishop took his title from the city of Winchester, which had been the capital of England during the Saxon and early medieval period.