Modern students might get a bad rap for alcohol abuse and outbursts of violence, but a research project reveals that University of Oxford scholars in the Middle Ages behaved much worse.
The Medieval Murder Maps – a digital resource that plots crime scenes based on translated investigations from 700-year-old coroners’ inquests – has added the city of Oxford to its street plan of medieval murders, which also includes York and London.
The project, by the University of Cambridge’s Violence Research Centre, found that Oxford’s student population was by far the most lethally violent of all social or professional groups in any of the three cities.
Researchers estimate the per capita homicide rate in Oxford to have been about five times higher than late medieval London or York, and about 50 times higher than current rates in 21st-century English cities.
