Friary Skeletons

In July 1930 Harrison & Lewin (timber merchants) of Boston were excavating for the erection of new sheds on pasture land adjoining the Workhouse on Skirbeck Road when a human skeleton was discovered four feet six inches below the surface. The site of this discovery was the old St. Augustinian Friary.
Skeletons were fairly common discoveries in Boston and, during the previous twenty or thirty years to 1930 had been dug up in all parts of the town. Fydell Crescent, part of which was the site of the old Carmelite Friary, proved to be abundant with human remains. Skeletons were found in Fydell Crescent in 1926 at a depth of four feet and twenty years before that a large skull was discovered and claimed to be that of George Ripley, a noted member of the Carmelite Friars at Boston, and an alchemist, who at one time was hailed as the discoverer of the Philosopher’s Stone. He died in 1400, and was duly buried in the Friary. The Augustinian Friars site in Boston (where the 1930 skeleton was found) was founded by the Tilney family about the time of the building of St. Botolph’s Church and was purchased at the Dissolution by the Mayor and Burgesses.
As late as the 1850’s the land between the Workhouse and St. John’s cemetery (now the playground opposite the college car park) was still known as the Augustine Friar’s Pasture.

Human remains

In April 1900 human remains were found in a sack in Boston and were about to be sent away for disposal before they were discovered.
The scene of their discovery was the Railway Goods Yard where they had been sent to be forwarded on in the ordinary course of business by a rag and bone man. A railway employee, who knew something about the human skeleton, noticed a bone protruding from the sack and realised it was the forearm and hand of a girl!! He told James Carr, a carter who was unloading in the yard and Carr took possession of the bone and hurried up to the Police Station

The Railway Goods Yard at Boston.

The police were soon upon the scene, with them came the Medical Officer and the Sanitary Inspector and others officially concerned (as at this time it looked very serious) but after a while it was proved there had not been any murder or tragedy.
Enquiries showed they were broken up skeletons from the sale of the late Dr. Snaith in Pump Square and their recovery at least rescued them from a fate that would seem incredible to us today.
There were several skulls - the number was variously given as three and five - and the bones of an adult’s and a young female’s skeletons. They were all contained in the sack, and their destination, along with a truck load of animal bones, was a factory at Newark that crushed bones and turned them into manure!!
It seems the skulls and skeletons were “cleared out” at Dr. Snaith’s sale as a job lot, they were taken to a rag and bone yard by a man named Blades and received in the normal way without too much attention being paid to them. Their man was loading iron when the bones were brought in and were passed as ordinary commercial animal bones.
The human fragments were eventually decently interred under the directions of the Medical Officer.