So, you want to know who Petra Doe is? As submissions came in for The Little Book of Horrors theme (all together now) Petra Doe didn’t end up looking how we expected her to. In our minds eye, Little Book of Horrors was going to be full on vintage hammer horror, 60s beehives and a load of LBD’s, but such is the nature of Ballad, of course, you lot had other things on your mind. As we leaf through the pages of Petra, she is calm, quiet and spine tinglingly haunting. She is, essentially a collection of unnamed female corpses - Jane Doe’s if you like…

Now for a story.

In the 1500s, the Liberty of the Clink was an area of South London out side the City Walls. It was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester and was known for its brothels, theatres, bull and bear baiting - activities not permitted within the City itself. Prostitutes local to the area were known as “Winchester Geese,” because they were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester to work within the Liberty. Although a legal profession in this area, it was still sinful and in death, these “single women” couldn’t be buried within the church yard if they had not repented their sins before death. Instead they were buried in unconsecrated ground, away from the parish. The area is rumoured to have started as a plague pit, then a single woman’s grave yard, for the Winchester Geese, then an unmarked pauper grave yard. It was closed in 1853 as locals were outraged - it was full to the seams with the dead.

It is from here, these Jane Does that we drew inspiration for the name of this issue. They are not Little Book of Horrors, but it is that these women were outcast in death.

This area is now known as Borough, and while they were excavating the area to make way for the Jubilee Line they uncovered hundreds and hundreds of bodies, most of whom were women, but this was only a fraction of the 15,000 bodies that are believed to be buried down there.

We travel through this area every evening on our way back to Ballad HQ from Erd’s design HQ, and it is on the number 40 bus that we are most inspired and get most of our brain storming done - believe it, it’s true. The area of the burials is now known as Cross Bones Graveyard, and we took massive amounts of inspiration from the area; the unmarked grave yard of the outcast dead, the graphics of the buildings and pubs, and the very raw historical feel of the Liberty of the Clink. When we visited the site, words cannot describe the feel of the place. There is a tiny memorial; it’s a gate with offerings tied to it. A tiny symbol for the thousands of bodies dumped below. History, especially local and personable history is what makes us tick. We didn’t expect to be so struck by what we found here on our doorstep, but the stories and the histories we have stumbled across have inspired this entire issue.

R.I.P The Outcast Dead. Petra Doe

x