Paper short abstract:

A workhouse cemetery, cleared by roadworkers to build a police station, contained 309 individuals who died as inmates. Isotopic studies will test immigrant status. An Oslo genealogist has traced 19th c family from the mountains, to a trial for stealing grain, to their names in the burial list.

Paper long abstract:

Norway had four large regional workhouses in the 18th and 19th centuries. Oslo’s Tukthuset (workhouse) held those sentenced by police for up to six months, no trial necessary; those sentenced for crimes ranging from “sexual deviancy” to misdemeanor theft; those out of work with nowhere to go, for whom thin porridge and a roof were better than the street. Archival documents record many Tukthuset inmates were emigrants to Oslo from other regions in Norway, or from other countries; local genealogist Jorunn Torstad has traced 19th century family members from their mountain village, to a magistrate trial for stealing a bag of grain in Oslo, to their names in the workhouse burial list. In 1989, the cemetery, containing only inmates who died and were unclaimed, was shifted with limited archaeological input to make room for a new police station; oral histories and reports from archaeologists with access to the site state the local indigent community witnessed the removal of the unmarked graves, declaring the removed dead were “people like us”. Many graves were cleared by road-workers, bones swept into bin bags. Pending stable isotope studies on bone and teeth from eight discrete individuals will compare their signatures with Oslo region faunal remains to test immigrant status. This assemblage, interred between 1760-1820, is unique: Norway does not safeguard disturbed cemetery remains that are post-1534. Approximately 309 individuals from this workhouse, from commingled remains to c. 100 fairly complete skeletons, are stored in Oslo’s Schreiner Collection.