Bibliography - Chichester: St James and St Mary Magdalene Hospital
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Hospitals: St James & St Mary Magdalen, Chichester, by William Page, F.S.A., published 1907 in The Victoria History of the County of Sussex (vol. 2: Ecclesiastical, Maritime, Social and Economic History, Population 1801-1901, Industries, Agriculture, Forestry, Architecture, Schools and Sport, pp.99-100, London: Victoria County History, ISBN-10: 0712905863 & ISBN-13: 9780712905862) accessible at: W.S.R.O. [Lib 2399][Lib 9097] & The Keep [LIB/500090][LIB/504899] & R.I.B.A. Library & West Sussex Libraries & East Sussex Libraries   View Online

Further Notes on St James's Hospital, Chichester, by Alison McCann, published 1987 in Sussex Archæological Collections (vol. 125, historical note, pp.252-254) accessible at: W.S.R.O. [Lib 9994] & The Keep [LIB/500304] & S.A.S. library

The leper hospital of St James and St Mary Magdalene, Chichester, by John Magilton and Frances Lee, published 1 October 1989 in Burial Archaeology: Current research, methods and developments (edited by John Bintliff, Frances Lee and Charlotte A. Roberts, pp.249-265, British Archaeological Reports, ISBN-10: 0860546713 & ISBN-13: 9780860546719)

Lepers Outside the Gate: Excavations at the Cemetery of the Hospital of St James and St Mary Magdalene, Chichester, 1986-93, by John Magilton, Frances Lee and Anthea Boyston, published 31 December 2008 (294 pp., Council for British Archaeology, ISBN-10: 1902771745 & ISBN-13: 9781902771748) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries

Founded as a leper hospital for men in the 12th century, this institution admitted women and children towards the end of the Middle Ages and survived the Reformation by becoming an almshouse for the sick poor. The report includes a discussion of leprosy and contemporary attitudes to it, medieval hsopitals and cemeteries and the provision of charitable care. The cemetery provided the largest sample of skeletons from an English medieval leper hospital to date, and one of the most significant assemblages of leper graves in Europe.

I found myself much better able to appreciate the detail in the report after reading the excellent account of the site by Magilton and Lee in a recent issue of "British Archaeology," and the inclusion of such an overview would have been very welcome. The main weakness in the report is the almost inevitable one of a lack of integration. This shows in a lot of ways, from the lack of an overall index to the tendency of the osteoarchaeologists to deal only with their particular aspect of the bones. All too often I got the impression that only the editors had read all the chapters, and their firm grasp of the overall picture comes through both in the detailed description of the cemetery by Magilton, where plots of the graves are used to effectively summarise the data and also in the final discussion by Magilton and Lee.
Undoubtedly the Chichester site is an important one and the bioarchaeological data from it will continue to be analysed. In particular, because there is continuity here from a leper hospital to post-medieval almshouse it will continue to figure in the debate about the end of the leprosy epidemic in post-medieval Europe.