Where do bodies wash up on the Thames?

It's the alcove situated underneath the northern side of Tower Bridge, right by the water's edge, and is essentially a mortuary. No longer a functioning one, but a remnant from Victorian times, when bodies used to wash up on this particular area of the Thames with alarming regularity.



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A bald and astounding police statistic comes back to me every time I look into its steely waters: along the 213-mile long Thames, a body is retrieved from the river on average every week. The majority (39 last year) are found in the London area.

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Never swim across the river. Don't swim more than 10 metres from the water's edge and as far inshore as possible. Try to remain in water shallow enough to stand up in so you are able to stand up and return to a place of safety should you get into difficulty.

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Over the years, reports of body parts showing up in the waters of London have included chins, pelvises, arms, and even the dead body of a sheep wrapped in a duvet. Worryingly, this is not as uncommon as you might think. It is reported that, on average, a dead human body is found once a week1 in the River Thames.

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Further wooden supports are preserved in the mud a few hundred metres upstream, and are thought to be from a bridge structure on 1,500 BCE. Various human remains have also been found in the Thames from this distant era. Most recently, a 5,000-year-old thigh bone was recovered.

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The River Thames, known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At 215 miles, it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the River Severn.



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Dating back to between 3516 and 3365 B.C.E., the femur is one of the oldest objects ever found in the Thames, wrote Time Out's Alice Saville.

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According to Ian Tokelove of the London Wildlife Trust, there are 125 types of fish in the Tidal Thames (from the estuary mouth to Teddington Lock). Ed Randall of the Thames Angler's Conservancy names bream, perch, pike, roach, rudd, dace, ruffe, barbel, native and non-native carp, chub and gudgeon among them.

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Thames Water, a private utility company in charge of London's water supply and waste water, says it removes more than 25,000 tonnes of debris from their sewage system every year.

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