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All Souls College in Oxford

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  • On a Thursday in 1298, an argument between students in a tavern on the High Street in Oxford escalates. The men beat each other with swords and axes. Later, a coroner documented that student John Burel "had a fatal wound on the crown of his head, six inches (the equivalent of 15 centimeters) long, reaching deep into the brain."

  • In 1299, an unknown scholar stabbed the prostitute Margery de Hereford to death in the parish of St. Aldate in Oxford because he did not want to pay for sexual intercourse with her. He flees.

  • On a summer night in 1324, Richard Overhe, a keeper of the "royal peace," was brutally attacked by four students at Oxford "with swords and other weapons." Later, he is found dead in his house.

The British city of Oxford was a criminal hotspot in the late Middle Ages – and this was largely due to the town's student population, experts report.

By far the most violent of all social and professional groups

The team led by Manuel Eisner, Director of the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, has compiled murder cases of the late Middle Ages in three English cities in the "Medieval Murder Maps" project and mapped 354 such events in a street atlas. The experts evaluated about 700-year-old documents from forensic scientists who worked in London, York and Oxford.

Oxford's student population proved to be by far the most violent of all social and professional groups in the three cities. Eisner and his colleagues estimate the murder rate in late medieval Oxford at around 60 to 75 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants. Measured by the size of the population, four to five times more people were murdered in the city than in late medieval London or York. Compared to data from present-day English cities, the murder rate was about 50 times higher, according to a statement.

Of the perpetrators in Oxford with a well-known background, 75 percent were described by forensic scientists as "clericus," which in the Middle Ages most likely meant a student or a member of a university. 72 percent of the murder victims in the city also belonged to this group. At the beginning of the 14th century, Oxford was one of the most important centres of learning in Europe. The city had about 7000 inhabitants, about 1500 people studied there.

Male, prone to violence

"In a medieval university town like Oxford, several factors have come together to form a deadly mixture," says Eisner. "The students at Oxford were all male and usually between fourteen and twenty-one years old, the peak of violence and risk-taking," says the expert.

In addition, the "young men" were suddenly no longer under the strict control of their family or community and found themselves in an "environment full of weapons and with easy access to beer bars and prostitutes". Many were also organized in fraternities – "an additional source of conflict within the student body."

Apparently, rivalries between students from different parts of Britain also played a role. According to the expert team, the students were often accommodated sorted by home region, and friction between Irish, Welsh and English was the order of the day. "Guns were never far away, and male honor had to be protected," says Eisner.

In the spring of 1303, for example, the student Adam de Sarum was playing with a ball in the street when he was attacked by a trio of Irish scholars. According to tradition, the attackers stabbed him in the face and neck. A month earlier, two Welsh scholars had attacked some passing students. They called for help, whereupon a student from Durham tried to intervene and was beaten to death.

"Witnesses had a legal duty to make the community aware of a crime by shouting and making noise," explains historian Stephanie Brown, who is also involved in the project and works for the University of Cambridge. "Most of the time, it was women who made noise to keep the peace and report conflicts between men." In many cases, however, those calling for help have been drawn into conflicts and sometimes become victims or perpetrators themselves.

Because vigilante justice was widespread and weapons were ubiquitous, even minor offenses quickly escalated into murder. In London, for example, there is a documented case that began with a conflict over careless urination and ended in murder. Nevertheless, people have not moved in a legal vacuum, says Eisner. "The community knew its rights and used the law when conflicts arose."

JME