Imagine There's No Heaven---

During my three weeks off over Yule (unfortunately spent mostly being sick and dealing with family crises) I spent some time indulging a new addiction, the BBC television series History Cold Case. (I watch it on YouTube through the "Timeline" channel.) It's a simple concept, assemble professional forensic anthropologists and use the latest scientific technology to learn all they can about the bodies (skeletons) that archaeologists have found while excavating British historical sites.

There are several things about the show that attracted me. First of all, everyone in the show is a real person. Mostly women, mostly middle-aged or older, no one wears make up, and, none of them would be confused with being a fashion model. But they are all sharp as tacks. Moreover, there's none of the fake conflict or tension, or, repetition that a lot of "documentary-style" directors feel the need to insert into other shows. The science and the subject themselves are more than enough to provide a gripping program.

What really got me thinking was the episode titled Crossbones Girl. 

It involved a random skeleton removed from an early Victorian graveyard that had been dug up to put in the foundations of a transformer station for the London transit system.

As the experts started their "deep dig" into her case they kept finding out more and more awful things about the world that this woman lived in. At first they thought she was a young woman in her early 20s who had a severe case of syphilis. Then they looked a little closer, and found out that she had rickets too. Then they did a CAT scan of the bones and decided that she was actually a bit younger---between 15 and 19. They checked her teeth for growth deformities and decided that she didn't contract syphilis from her mother---so she was probably a prostitute. And since she had a very well-developed case of the disease already, it probably meant that she had contracted it when very young---perhaps as a preteen.

When they brought in a historian she explained that unless a poor woman was able to connect with a man who would support them, there simply was no "decent" work available that would pay her enough to live. She showed them a then current book from a work house (the Victorian equivalent of welfare) that gave brief descriptions of the people who had arrived there. Most of the women were prostitutes who had fallen on hard times in one way or another. One had been a young girl lured to the city with a promise of work only to end up in a brothel. One had had employment as a servant to a wealthy woman who abandoned her when she decided to go to Europe for a while. Another had had "an argument" (one can only guess what that means) with her father that led to her leaving home---and eventually becoming a prostitute. 

Prostitution was so common and women were so desperate that many would simply trade sex for a decent meal.

I couldn't help thinking about the contrast between the strong, intelligent, professional women gathered around that table and the women of Victorian London who literally had no other option than prostitution. What a horrible waste of lives. Not only horrible to the individual, but also to the society. My doctor, my dentist, my accountant, my banker, etc, are all women. Deny them an opportunity to participate in society and all of us will miss their intelligence, skill and creativity.

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But the horror that was this young woman's life didn't get left there. At this point the show goes on to discuss what Victorian Britain knew about syphilis and how they treated it. The only treatment that they thought had any success was by using a very poisonous compound containing mercury. As it gets explained, it was very well understood that this treatment had awful side effects. Indeed, as described the experts say that it sounds like the worst type of chemo-therapy that is used today on cancer patients. Oddly enough, it is still an open question about whether or not the mercury treatment actually helped patients. There is some evidence that it poisoned the syphilis germ along with the patient. But since modern antibiotics can usually cure the disease. It would be profoundly unethical to do any experiments with mercury to test it's efficacy.

Mercury treatment was very expensive, so the cold case experts just assumed that there is no way that this young woman would have been able to access it. But just to be sure they tested her bones for mercury. Low-and-behold, they tested high. It appears that she had had some treatment by the latest and most expensive that the medical system could offer. Historical research turned up evidence that there were charity hospitals that specifically offered mercury treatment to poor prostitutes. They were chronically under-funded, but they existed and this woman seems to have been helped by them. 

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They bring in an archivist who spends weeks going through the old records that exist in the city archives. Through a process of deduction, he suggests an actual name for the woman:  Elizabeth Mitchell. She was recorded in the burial records, and also in the records of a charity hospital where she was in a syphilis ward when she died of pneumonia (a common secondary illness for someone already ill from another disease.) 

So for all the horror of this young woman's life, she did receive some of the best treatment her society had to offer. She did have a name. And at least some people cared enough to let her die in a bed with a doctor's care. Moreover, she was also put in a casket and buried. Her name was recorded and we remember her life to this day. 

One of the things that I like about the show is the fact that there are no actors, the people we see are real experts. Some of them have seen horrific things (think digging up mass graves in the Balkans to document war crimes.) Others are academics who've probably spent most of their lives in the Ivory Tower as students and teachers. When they had to reassess the age of the woman---and therefore the age that she was infected---the scientist who studies isotopes in the bones audibly gasped. It's a very British show, so not a lot of emotion gets expressed. But what does seems to me to be very real.

At the end there is a sidebar about the Crossbones cemetery. It wasn't completely obliterated when the power station was built. That only covered a corner. Most of it still exists in a back corner of London. But a funny and very nice thing has happened in the past few decades. It has become something of a shrine for people concerned about the plight of the poor. The last image we have is of an annual ceremony where people get together to light candles and remember the people buried there---the abused prostitutes and paupers. One of the Cold Case people joins in and lights a candle for Elizabeth Mitchell and all the others. It's touching and it's real.

The front gate shrine at crossbones cemetery, London.
Public Domain photo by Matt Brown, c/o Wiki Commons

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Consider the above something of an introduction to the point I really want to make in this post.

I'm not a Christian. I don't believe that there is a great Father in the sky who is going to right all wrongs and pay off all debts to the poor and down trodden. If I'm anything, I'm a Daoist. And one of the key texts in that tradition has a very blunt and apropos statement about the plight of the poor and oppressed.

Heaven and earth are not humane,
They treat the ten thousand beings as straw dogs (From Dao De Jing, chapt 5)

"Straw dogs" were ritual offerings that people burned at altars in place of something valuable. They are symbols in this poem of valueless objects that get used and discarded like Kleenexes. The authors (the "Old Ones" of Daoism) are saying that the universe is totally and utterly indifferent to the suffering of any particular individual. 
   
A lot of people will probably find this a bit of a "bummer". But I don't. And the reason why was crystallized for me by this show. We don't need to posit a God in the sky who commands us to do right by each other. And we also don't need "pie in the sky" to encourage us to do the right thing. We can do the right thing just because it is the right thing. We can struggle together to do things like set up charity hospitals where doctors do their best to help poor prostitutes like Elizabeth Mitchell. We can battle with the authorities like the suffragettes to get women the vote and eventually the right to be equal participants in society. We can form unions to get better wages. Form political organizations to fight for government programs to help the poor and oppressed. (We can even put out "indie media" that tries to explain the deeper issues that just get glossed over by corporate news. Support me on Patreon or use the tip jar.) 

Most of my life has been a steady progress of the world getting to be a better and better place. When I was young "Jim Crow" still ruled the Southern USA, women were forbidden admittance to various schools (my sister became a RN because she was barred from a horticultural college because of her gender), the police still raided gay bars, constables still gave talks at schools aimed at scaring the bejesus out of parents about cannabis, I could go on and on. But humanity really has struggled long and hard to become better. It still has a long way to go, but it has made real progress.

Sometimes it's hard to remember this. Especially when we find ourselves with coarse blowhards in positions of authority. But there has always been a certain "ebb and flow" as each step forward into a more just and equitable world mobilizes the scared, the stupid, and, the greedy to fight back against perceived attacks on their world. This is a time when a desperate rear-guard action is being fought by reactionary dorks. But their days are numbered and progress will continue. You don't have to believe in the supernatural---just the common decency of the women of the History Cold Case program and the folks who light candles at Crossbones Cemetery.