Why People Are Digging Through the Mud in the Thames | WSJ

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- No way, is it what I'm thinking it is? Please, I'm begging ya! No, yeah! - I think I've just found a Roman coin. - Oh, my God, it bloody is. - Absolutely spectacular. I'm speechless. Mudlarks like myself,

we go down to the river at low tide, and we're looking for pieces of London's lost history. - I don't come down to the foreshore looking for something specific. That's the thrill of the hunt. You just never know

what you're going to find. - The things that are found in the Thames could be of any time period. This Bronze Age sword has been lying in the river, preserved for 3,000 years. - I see medieval pins here,

probably Victorian. That's probably what? 17th, 18th century? - A samian ware dish from Roman times. Somebody was smoking that back in the 17th century. We're looking for little fragments that people have dropped over the centuries that we can

use to build up a picture of what London used to be like. This is quite a nice spot, because you can see all the history popping out. Here we go. This is the big moment. Hold your breath, everybody.

Oh, yes! - My name is Jason Sandy, and I've been a mudlark now for 14 years. Mudlarking is searching the exposed riverbed at low tide. You can see behind me, the green slime on the wall. So typically, this

would be underwater, and only at a few times per day is the exposed foreshore available for us to search. And at low tide, the River Thames, the foreshore here, becomes the largest and longest archeological site in all of

Britain. - The mudlarks have a huge amount of skill in how to look, how to find, how to spot things. Everything that they find, which may be of historical interest or significance is brought to the Finds Liaison Officer

based here at the museum. It all gets recorded onto a national database, which is then available for researchers to take a look at it. Where the river is different to other archeological sites is that the river preserves stuff

that would normally rot. - On the foreshore, I see a large shoe sole, leather shoe sole. Let's see if we can pull it out slowly, yeah. Based on the style, I would say this is probably 18th century. A

leather typically doesn't survive because it's an organic material, but because the mud is anaerobic, meaning no oxygen, it can survive in these conditions. - This is one of my favorite objects, because it is a Roman shoe. This has

survived in that beautiful Thames mud that has preserved the leather for 2,000 years. - You normally don't need to dig or metal detect just because the Thames Clippers are constantly eroding the foreshore, so they do all of the

work for us, and we just have to kind of spot things on the top. So just spotted quite a few pins down in this area. So in this small area, you can see about six different types of pin,

possibly from medieval, post-medieval period. - So medieval and post-medieval pins are really commonly found. They were used to secure your dress, all the many layers of cloth that made up your dress, which speaks to how these are really

little everyday objects that would have been worn by so many people. - The foreshore is just littered with people's lives from the past, the everyday person. I know history isn't all about kings and queens. When you're down on

the foreshore, you're just in your own little world, and you're so focused that it's almost like a meditation, really. And I definitely think that sometimes, things find me, rather than me particularly finding them, because I think some things

just really want to have their story told. Might have a bottle here. It's always very exciting when you see one poking out of the mud, and you don't know if it's in one piece. It's been cushioned in this

mud for well over a century. So is it going to be, ooh, is it going to be in one piece? Here we go, this is the big moment, the bottle extraction moment. Hold your breath if you've got, oh

yes, it's in one piece! That's gorgeous. That's perfect! Sadly, there's no maker, but it's still a beautiful example of a 19th century stoneware bottle that would have probably held ginger beer. The finds that I'm really looking for are

finds with a name on it that could be a pipestem with a maker's mark, that could be a tavern mug with the name of a tavern keeper. And I share these stories on my YouTube channel, and I find

that so many people are inspired by that. Thank you for coming along on that mudlarking outing. - A lot of people are watching videos and living vicariously, discovering these ancient artifacts. And because of that, there's been a huge

surge of people applying for permits from the Port of London Authority. And because it has become so popular, the number of people on the waiting list has grown to over 10,000 people. - We have absolutely seen a huge

soaring interest in mudlarking and going down to the river. And this is one of the reasons why the permits are in place, because the river is a busy working river. It was, and always has been a cold and

dangerous environment, and you very much risk your life going down there and that is true of the early mudlarks. The first recorded mudlarks that we've got comes from the 1700s. Often they were women and children, very much the

lower classes, the people who are absolutely desperate just to find anything that could be sold for a few pennies, that would be enough to buy some food. - They were literally mudlarking to survive. So not like us here

today. We're not allowed to sell anything. So therefore there's no monetary gain from mudlarking. It's just the pure thrill of coming down and discovering history for yourself. - Where we are now is in my home studio, and this

is where I display all my mudlarking finds. 95% of the things that you see on these shelves have been found whilst mudlarking. And I just love the chaos of it all. One of my favorite finds, because it is

the essence of mudlarking for me, it's a tiny little tag with the name of a man, F. Jewelry, and his address, 72 Woolage Road. And because of that information, I was able to find out that he fought in

World War I. He was quite badly injured. He was hit by a grenade. He came home, he did survive World War I, and then I found out he was buried just around the corner from me, so I went

to find his grave and now on Armistice Day, that kind of thing, I go down and put some flowers on his grave. In loving memory, Frederick, the beloved husband of Millie Jewelry. You know, a simple piece of metal,

it doesn't even have to be something that's beautiful or valuable. For me, it really is the story behind that object. You can hold something that looks pretty boring in your hand and it opens up the life of a

whole person. I mean, every day something new might wash out with the tide and you just might be the person that's there to find it.