The World's Most Tragic Birth Story...- History Cold Case UK - Season 2 Episode 4

At Dundee's Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, the History Cold Case team prepares for an astonishing new case. The archaeologists have asked us to come in and assist on some of the cases. It's the one that nobody else solved. It's the one that's your challenge. Can you make a difference? The investigation will be led by world-renowned forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black, while Dr Xanthe Mallett scours the UK for historical evidence, and Professor Caroline Wilkinson rebuilds the faces of the dead. I've got a team that is of world-renowned reputation. This case will take the team back nearly 2,000 years, to a time of invasion and great upheaval in Britain. Today's case, which is Roman Baldock. Oh my goodness me. There's a female found buried with three babies. This is an unprecedented archaeological find. The remains of a woman and three babies discovered in a sinister position within a single grave. She doesn't look so much disrespectful as careless to me. By forensically reconstructing the fate of this woman, can we gain crucial new information about why she died? And how will her story change our views of the past? That's very difficult because it's very easy to kill a baby and leave no marks. A time of brutal medicine. It looks pretty vicious. That is for perforating the skull. And rife superstition. You were getting ghosts. If you take the head off, you know that person's not going to cause you trouble. When survival was far from guaranteed. As a result, all of them, all four of them have died. This is the kind of story that will resonate with anybody who's a parent. That's basically infanticide. The History Cold Case team has come to Bulldock, a Hertfordshire commuter town with a hidden past. They set up their mobile forensic lab on Clothal Common, where people have lived for over 5,000 years. Iron Age remains have been uncovered around here, which suggest Bulldock may be the earliest town ever to develop in Britain. Members of the local archaeological community are laying out a selection of skeletons found here in 1989. This investigation will focus on the troubling remains from just one of the graves. A female buried with three tiny babies in what looks like suspicious circumstances. Who were they? And how did they all end up dead in the same grave? Dr Xanthe Mallett is on site first. She meets archaeologist Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, who supervised excavations of the area and called in the History Cold Case team. There's actually a late Roman cemetery under the tent. There's a temple over there, more burials over there. So we're really in a necropolis almost. The dating of the burials to the Romano-British period is so far based on artefacts found in the graves. One of the graves had this rather nice little 1st century AD jar and because it's a fairly early style, we can be certain that most of the graves were of the Roman period. So it puts it very early on. Keith takes Xanthe to the nearby housing estate where the female and babies were unearthed. Now this looks very suburban, but I guess it didn't look like this when our burials were in place. Absolutely not. When we were excavating here, this was open land. It had been farmland for centuries. This is an aerial photograph taken when it was still being farmed. The site of the burial is just there, which puts it underneath those garages opposite. Oh, we're really close. We are very close indeed. The archaeologists thought they were excavating the body of a man. Then the dig took an unusual turn. Once we'd excavated his grave, it became apparent there was another grave underneath. And beneath his head and shoulders were the head and shoulders of the woman who was lying at right angles to him. That's where things started to get really interesting because once we were uncovering her head and upper chest, that's when the first baby turned up. As the dig continued, it became clear there was a second, then a third set of infant remains in the grave with the woman. Finding three babies together in a grave this old was an unprecedented discovery. Professor Sue Black flies in from Dundee HQ to see the remains for herself. They're hoping the bones will provide answers as to whether this is a 2,000-year-old natural tragedy or, in fact, something more sinister. Sue immediately notices that the skeletons appear to be remarkably intact, which is promising. They begin their analysis on the first of the two boxes containing the remains of the woman. Gradually, they start to build her physical profile. We're talking... It's coming in at 31. So, 31. It's coming just short of five foot. So, it's coming into the sort of four foot... four foot 11 sort of range. So, very short. S1 and S2 are few. So, we're over the 20s barrier. We're probably up into the 30s barrier, you know. Teeny-weeny legs. Apart from that, no pathologies or traumas to... Very feminine pelvis, though. So, we're happy female, happy adult, young adult. A woman, only four foot 11 tall, in her mid to late 30s, with no obvious cause of death. Then there are the extraordinary remains of the first baby. Oh, my. Oh, wow. They are in severe fragments. That is a tibia. Is it? It is. I'll take your word for it. Thank you. That is a... It looks like humerus. It's very difficult to tell. These are vertebrae. Look at those. Aren't those beautiful? It's like, you know that game of jacks you used to play? That's exactly what they look like when they're like this. So cute, aren't they? Look at this. Reading bones this small and this old is incredibly difficult. And there is a second tiny skeleton. What's this? Seven, six, eight, three. Oh, there's a lot less of this. Have a look, Sue. And then the third, recovered from the same grave. Oh, now this one's much better preservation. Look at that. Relatively good condition. That's pretty good, actually. I have to say, the recovery is just fantastic. Although Sue is a world authority on juvenile anthropology, she has never faced a challenge like this before. You can't tell if they're boys and girls? No. Because they're not born pink and blue, which, if they were, would be nice. Forensically, the things that we look for are any injuries of any trauma, anything that may have shown that, you know, the child has been dispatched, as it were. But again, it's very difficult because it's very easy to kill a baby and leave no marks. Yeah. It's quite an interesting one, isn't it? Who was this woman? Are these her babies? And if so, why would a mother and all three babies end up dead and buried together? The team will need to gather every bit of forensic evidence they can muster to prove exactly what happened here. Scientific testing gets immediately underway in the mobile lab. A sample taken from the thigh bone of the woman will be used for carbon dating to confirm whether these bones are indeed from the early Roman era. The same sample will also provide a chemical profile that can reveal where the woman was from, as well as crucial information about her diet. And adult and baby bones are also sent for DNA testing. The only way we're ever going to really know whether these individuals are related is if we can extract any DNA. They're in a good condition, but they're not in a perfect condition. So I think we have to be realistic that it's possible we might not get DNA samples from them. But if we do, confirming that the DNA of all three babies matches would be fantastic. Matching it to what we think is a female skeleton would be even better. Alongside rebuilding the woman's face, this battery of tests will help create a profile of her in life that will be crucial in cracking this mysterious case. There are so many questions to be answered in this case. Who was she? Why was she buried in that way? In the meantime, Xanthi's task is to initiate the historic investigation. If our woman lived and died in Baldock nearly 2,000 years ago, what kind of town could it have been? She meets up with Dr Jeremy Taylor, an expert on Romano-British history. So we're looking at kind of first century Baldock. What would it have been like? Bit of a wild west town. Oh, really? Certainly that particular point. Yeah, probably were. Because until it settled down, local government was organised in towns like this. You know, these places, the rules are changing very, very rapidly. And civil government is only becoming re-established in the aftermath of the conquest. So thinking about it, you know, as if we can see your own Baldock in front of us, what kind of people are using it in first century? They're a magnet for people from all walks of life who are coming as traders, artisans, craftsmen, following in the wake of the Roman army and Roman administration, hoping to make a living. So she could have been from anywhere doing anything in essence then? Pretty much, yeah. It's not what Xanthi wanted to hear. Although our woman could have been a local Celt, she could also have been a Roman from literally anywhere across the empire. The isotope results will hopefully help to pin this down. None of Baldock's Roman buildings remain. But below the surface of this football pitch are the foundations of what was once a huge temple in the centre of town. Oh, excellent. Look at that. You know, on excavations of temple sites, we find chickens being sacrificed, but also sheep, sometimes pig. Oh yeah, certainly animals, you know, can be. Sheep and goats certainly are sacrificed. This is a centre of religious life here. People come from the local area, but also people who are travelling on the Roman road between the major cities are also going to be stopping here. There's a good chance then that the woman that we're looking at would have actually visited this site. And it's very likely that she would have come here at some point. That's exciting. Baldock in the first century was clearly a volatile place, rife with religious superstition and clashing cultures. Could the new Roman cult religions that increasingly dominated this area after the conquest in 43 AD have played a role in how our woman and the infants lived and died? First, the team needs to find out whether she even lived during this period. Back at Dundee HQ, Xanthi joins Sue and Professor Caroline Wilkinson to hear the results of the carbon dating tests, which are now back. We're looking at the carbon dating. Previously, the only thing that was dating it was the grave goods, so we had context. So it didn't do carbon reporting before? No. The carbon dating covers the span from 6 AD to as late as 215 AD. So that's right bang in the middle of when the Romans were kind of officially in Britain and coming to you. So there's a lot of moving about at this time. So she could have come from anywhere. She'd come with Romans, literally anywhere. We don't have the isotopes yet? Not yet, no. So that's going to be quite interesting. And we don't have the DNA yet either. So that's the first actual kind of hard scientific evidence we've had come back in. And it agrees with exactly what we've been expecting anyway. We like it when things agree. Not everybody does, but we like it when it agrees. Yeah. Makes me feel comfortable. Yes. These results place our woman and the babies firmly within a time frame when Bulldock was under heavy Roman influence. By 215 AD, the Romans had brought their entire culture to Britain, legal and political systems, architecture, a vast network of military highways, as well as their social attitudes and superstitions. When the woman's grave was first excavated in 1989, it was singled out as different from the other burials on the same site. But was this only because of the presence of the babies? I've actually got a visual that I can show you from the information we've received from the archaeologist, which will really help actually from these lovely CGI moments. So this is looking at the graveyard. Under these roads? Yes. And where's the rest of the cemetery? The rest of the cemetery is actually part way, kind of down here across the road on the other side. What we're looking at there is the male that's overlaying. And then we'll go down a layer. So you can see the baby over the shoulder, the second infant and the third. It does make you think about things in a slightly different angle. With mum being laid on her side, is that telling us something about how she's viewed? I don't know. If you look at the male, I think what's interesting is he's on his back in what you'd kind of expect, you know, lying. Well, she is placed differently. I don't know how important actual physical position was at that time, whether that in fact means quite a lot that she's placed like that. There is something odd about the position of the woman's skeleton that's making the team uncomfortable. Xanthi returns to Bulldog to discuss the burial site in more detail with archaeologist Keith. So we're going to have a look at some of the images now, aren't we, from the actual grave? Yes. I'm quite looking forward to seeing these. I think they're going to be quite intriguing. So there she is, laid out in the grave. This looks unusual to me, by the fact that I would expect her to be lying on her back. It is relatively unusual, both in terms of where it is in the cemetery and in terms of the way that the body was laid out in the grave. OK, where it was in the cemetery, why was that unusual? We're on the edge, almost on her own. Not quite, but it's very much a peripheral position within the cemetery. She's also been laid on her right side. There aren't any in precisely this position. This is a one-off. Is there a kind of a descriptor for this? Because of her unusual position, we would tend, as archaeologists, to describe this as a deviant burial. Not meaning that there's anything deviant about her as a person, but that, as a burial, it falls outside the statistical norms. So, literally, unusual? Unusual, and socially, perhaps, a bit unacceptable. Why was she not given a normal burial? Was she herself judged to be deviant? And if so, why? I don't know if you can make out up there. Oh, yes. That's the baby by the right shoulder. I can just see it in there. In a deeply superstitious society, could it have been that she was somehow deemed responsible for the death of the babies, which might explain why they were all buried together? That's sad, isn't it? It's very, very sad. A key part of the woman's physical profile will be provided by Caroline's facial reconstruction. Strong brow for a woman. And the good news is we've got some nasal bones, which means that we can predict how much her nose projects. There we go, so that fits there between the orbits. Caroline always begins with a close examination of the skull parts, especially complex in this case, given how old and fragmentary the bones are. It's quite useful to be able to slot some of the pieces together before we scan them. When you do it by hand, you can feel how they slot together as well as see. The mandible is quite square, square chin, square jaw, so quite a masculine looking woman, not typically female. She captures the fractured pieces using a 3D laser scanner as the skull will be reassembled in the computer. It will take several weeks to bring the face of this woman back into view, but will it turn out to be the face of a social outcast? The suggestion is that this woman is dealt with almost as if she's a deviant in some way. Is that supporting the suggestion that perhaps they're outsiders? The whole thing just smacks of a bit of disrespect, and I don't, I guess in today's society, I don't quite understand why that should be. To find out more about whether our woman was considered different, Xanthi travels to London to meet Alison Taylor, an authority on deviant burial in Roman Britain. Hi. Can you tell me a little bit about deviant burials and what that means in, I'm presuming she's Roman? Roman period anyway. Right, yeah. Looking at what we call the deviant burial, might have been someone that they were a bit worried about. Worried about? Somebody who they may think the spirit would have walked and caused damage, somebody who was a bit outside the normal for some reason. So somebody whose ghost you might fear for some reason, maybe just because that person was very unfortunate. And Alison knows of some bizarre attempts to stop people coming back from the dead. This one looks a bit odd. Yeah, this one has her legs resting on a horse's head. I wondered what that was. There you go. And then her legs are actually placed on top. On top. But Alison believes deviant burials from Romano-British times took two main forms. The first, decapitation. Quite a number of people did lose their head. It seems to have been done usually straight after death, there were cut marks on the neck. And we do know from later accounts of this sort of burial, is that if somebody was giving trouble, you were getting ghosts. If you take the head off, you know that person's not going to cause you trouble. And the second main type was known as a prone burial. There's a very long tradition of that being seen as very disapproving. Get that in lots of different cultures, lots of different periods of history. Right through the Middle Ages, that can be done to certain people. It seems that what they really don't want is this person getting out of the grave to go and cause trouble haunting. So if you're buried face down, if you do come back to life and you want to get out, all you will do is go deeper down. This would seem to match our woman. What does Alison make of her burial position? She's obviously highly unusual. But I would say this would not classify as a deviant burial. Really? In any of the normal classifications. But she's kind of leaning forward, but you don't think that's a deviant action? Well, it's not face down. She's buried on her side and her legs are slightly bent. I think she is simply buried in what was almost a comfortable sleeping position. Surprisingly, Alison actually thinks this is the normal burial of a heavily pregnant woman. She's just laid in the ground in the most comfortable position. I think you couldn't have buried her face down. If she was heavily pregnant, it doesn't bear thinking about. It was probably the most practical, easy and traditional way of treating her. Alison believes our woman was probably not an outcast. She was buried on her side with all the respect afforded a pregnant woman. But this is the first historical evidence that a pregnancy may have been involved. And none of the babies appeared to be inside the woman. So was she pregnant or not? In Dundee, Sue looks for clarification from the bones. One of the questions often asked is, are there indicators on a skeleton of a woman who's been pregnant? Is there anything left behind? Because most of the changes are soft tissue changes. We used to say that if you can see that groove there in one area of the pelvis, so this is at the back of the pelvis, we used to say that's an indication the person's been pregnant. We've completely thrown that out the window. But it would make an awfully nice story if we could say, just because that's there, we know she was pregnant and that's not the case. So it would be awfully nice if we had something on here that said, oh, yes, there's a clear indication this was going to be her 24th pregnancy. There's nothing. The mother gives no clue. But what of the babies themselves? Maximum length. But of course, when you have multiple pregnancies, often the babies are a little bit smaller. It's two, 40 weeks, it's a newborn baby. These three babies are aged around the time they would have been born, making it highly likely this is a mother and her three babies. Astonishingly, as they're also all of a similar size, it's probable they were from the same pregnancy, making them triplets. Only the DNA results will be able to prove this beyond doubt. But it brings the bones alive for Sue. Those are three full-term babies. These have gone to their full duration, maybe not quite 40 weeks, but close. And if you imagine the connotations that has for her, being a little woman, not of a very young age, carrying three full-term babies, the implications for her and for the people around her, that's a huge story. It's a crucial turn in the investigation. This could be the oldest archaeological evidence of triplets ever discovered. To find out more, the team must now shift its focus and view this as a multiple pregnancy. Only one in 80 pregnancies is with twins, and only one in 8,000 is with triplets. In ancient Rome, successful multiple births surviving to adulthood were generally seen as a good omen and became part of mythology, like the twins Romulus and Remus who founded Rome. And there was even a heroic set of legendary triplets, the Herati, known as the champions of Rome. But what were the chances of our mother giving birth successfully to triplets in Roman Britain nearly 2,000 years ago? How were women treated in difficult childbirths in that time? How did they deal with that? What was the mechanism? What was the medical background available to help her? Was there anything, or was she just on her own? Xanthi travels to the British Museum in London to meet curator Ralph Jackson, a leading expert in ancient Roman medicine. What kind of level of understanding did they have of the anatomy? Well, quite good in the kind of harder parts, but not too good in deep inside, in the profound and softer parts. So more superficial anatomy. Exactly so, bones and superficial anatomy, simply because there was no deception of human cadavers. This was not routinely done. So internal anatomy was patchily understood. Ralph has a wide array of surgical tools used during Roman times. But it seems like quite a range here. This is what I would expect almost to see in like a field kit now, an emergency field kit, just having a quick look. I think this is one of the amazing things, when you look back and you look forward again, you find that the instrumentation hasn't changed hugely. In the kind of basic kit, you have knives, surgical blades, scalpels, with a huge range of different types of blade. There were a range of probes and then sharp hooks used for retracting the edges of wounds and incisions, precision-made tools, beautifully finished. Some instruments would even combine the practical with the divine. Over here, a folding handle for a drill includes the sort of mortal side, if you like. It's a precision tool. But at the end, there is a bit of decoration. It's a snake head. And why would you find a snake head on the end of a drill? It's because the snake was the creature of Asclepius. Asclepius was the great overarching healing god. And if you put his creature on the end of your tool, both the operator and the patient would feel reassured. So it's a real combination? It is a real combination of divine and mortal healing. This toolkit, is this a medic's toolkit or is this a midwife's toolkit? And was there any difference? I suppose there was a difference. It is a medical kit. It's a basic kit of surgical tools used for all of the routine surgery. The midwives certainly could have had instrumentation, because although midwives, by definition, tended to look after women expecting babies, they also were expected to have knowledge of other aspects of medicine. And that included surgery. Our pregnant woman in Roman Bulldock could have had surprisingly advanced medical care available to her. We had people who came to Britain with written texts that talked about medicine. And some of those will have been connected to childbirth. So we can't deny the possibility of knowledge of classical medicine, the texts, the techniques in Roman Britain, and not just in Roman Britain, but in Roman Bulldock. Yet something went terribly wrong. All three babies, along with their mother, were in the grave together. Why? In Dundee, Caroline has now reassembled the skull of our four-foot-eleven woman. So you can see here, she's got quite a prominent lump above her eyes, quite a strong brow for a woman. We've also got quite prominent bone surfaces here. It suggests she didn't have small, delicate ears. She may have had quite large, prominent ears. I think she might have an interesting face, but I wouldn't go as far as to say she's going to be unattractive. I think that might be a bit harsh. With the skull reassembled, only the green areas are missing, which can be estimated by mirroring the opposite side. So what effect would pregnancy have on the woman's face? Well, often when women are pregnant, they become fuller of face, and usually later in the pregnancy it's more noticeable. But that's based on contemporary pregnant faces, and obviously we're well-fed and pampered in relation to people from this period of time. So I don't know how much of an effect her pregnancy would have had on her face. If the isotope results come back that she was well-nourished, then it raises the question of why a healthy, pregnant woman would end up dead, along with all three babies. The team now hunts for clues in the babies' burial positions. When excavated, one baby was found underneath the woman, one between her legs, and one near her shoulder. It doesn't look so much disrespectful as careless to me. I just don't like that. I don't like a baby up on her shoulder. Because you wouldn't bury somebody with a baby there. No. You just wouldn't. I think that's an afterthought. It's just an odd placement. One of the babies was found at her shoulder, and I don't quite understand why you would do that. You would think if you were burying a mother with her baby, it might be across her chest, it might be in her arms. There's almost an element of discarding. Is there a cause of death that could explain why all three babies ended up dead and appear to be almost discarded? Xanthi goes to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London to meet Dr Helen King, an expert in Roman birthing and childcare. Helen offers a shocking possibility for what may have happened to the babies. In Roman terms, there was a ceremony after birth where the father of the child had to pick the child up from the ground. If he did that, it indicated the child was worth the rearing, is how they put it. So the father decided how the baby was treated? Absolutely. And whether it's exposed or not. This kind of idea of exposing a child, what's that? Well, exposure means that you leave the child to die after it's been born. And I think, although it sounds pretty weird to us, I think in Greek and Roman terms, that's just really a very late abortion. That's basically infanticide, if you just abandon a child. In our terms, yes, it is. As far as they're concerned, at least you found out what you've got. You found out the gender of the child, whether it's healthy. Oh, so physical disability. That's right. But also, interestingly, how the pregnancy went. And if the pregnancy was a healthy one, then that's more likely that the child's worth rearing. It's possible one or even more of the babies could have been the victims of infanticide, their bodies just dumped in the grave. But Helen knows of certain Roman birthing techniques that could also have been responsible for the baby's deaths. Do you know what that is? Well, my imagination is telling me nothing good. It looks pretty vicious. It's vicious. That is for perforating the skull. To kill the baby. It would kill the baby, certainly, but it would also release the material inside the skull. And what you're trying to do is reduce the contents of the skull. So you'd kind of pierce the skull through the little soft part, kind of mash the brain around. That's the sort of thing. To break it down so the baby would pass out more easily. So with a head presentation where the head's got stuck, it's just a very large head. This is what you would do. That's what you'd use, absolutely. So there's no chance of a baby surviving with that one? No, but there is a chance the mother would survive. Whereas if you left the baby there... The mother's going to die. Certainty, yes, exactly. And then there are these. You know what that is? I do. This would go in through the same soft area on top of the head and basically hook the baby out, wouldn't it? That's pretty well it. Or you could also do it through the eye cavity. So any orifice. Yes, anything you can grab, really, to pull. That's pretty nasty, isn't it? I mean... Well, it is. But if the alternative is the woman's going to die, then this could be a lifesaver. This baby here, this is actually where the head's been left behind. Oh, nice. And you're grabbing into the mouth and then exerting traction from there. Wait, it's gone wrong at this stage. It's gone terribly wrong. You've got pregnantation and they're literally just extracting what's left of the baby. Yes, exactly. It's a great image, though. But we do know that the Romans had access to texts which talked about using hooks to extract babies that are in a difficult position. So if she does come from a Roman background or has access to Roman help, she could possibly have had that sort of instrumental interference in her delivery. Are there any signs of intervention in our case that would indicate midwives had to deal with a difficult birth? In Dundee, the bones of the three babies and the woman are put through a CT scanner. This will look outside and inside the bones to reveal damage that can't be detected just with physical examination. Sue then analyses the results with her colleague, Ruz. First, they look at the female's scans. The pelvis is like a basin. And it's a basin that's wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. We haven't got intact is the bottom end. I don't think there's enough. So she's not going to tell us. The female's bones are strong and healthy but show no signs of intervention. What of the babies? But you see the trouble is there's no skull there. There's really nothing. It's tantalising, isn't it? There's nothing that suggests really there's anything going on there. We can't tell from this that she's had any obstetric assistance of any kind. Again, there are no marks on the bones to indicate use of Roman instruments or medical assistance. There's no evidence on the remains of the babies of trauma of any kind that might be associated with somebody trying to assist the birthing process. So mum's not helping us with the birthing process. The babies aren't helping us with the birthing process. It's a frustrating situation. But can the woman's remains help to shed light on this in another way? Chemical traces in her bones could reveal whether she was Roman or Celtic, which may in turn suggest what type of midwifery she would have had access to. The results of the stable isotope analysis are now back. We don't know the genetic relationship yet. We're kind of obviously postulating the babies are hers. But I do have the isotopic results. So it's going to tell us about their diet, their provenance. So this is really all hinging on, are they Roman or are they local or what? Because that's going to have a massive impact on the whole case. Her diet is standard terrestrial, very low marine, which is exactly what you'd expect for around that area. So it's unexciting, but it does pin it down. A mixed diet, presumably, a bit of marine, a bit of fish, a bit of grain. Yeah, but mostly like the grain element, very minimal kind of marine. In terms of where she came from, geographical banding is looking at southern England and through to the central western area. Again, it corresponds with Bulldock. So in terms of diet and provenancing, basically, she's local. If our woman was from a local tribe without access to Roman medicine, it was far more likely she would have had to try and give birth without intervention. Is natural childbirth to triplets now the most likely cause of death for this woman? To find out just how dangerous it is to try and give birth to triplets naturally, Xanthi goes to Queen Charlotte's Maternity Hospital in London, which deals with more multiple births than anywhere else in the country. She meets chief obstetrician Dr. Sailesh Kumar. Hi, Charlotte. This is Xanthi. Hello. Lovely to meet you. I think we're here today because you're having a scan because you've got three, aren't you? Yeah, that's right. We're going just to check the growth of the babies. Dr. Kumar is performing a health check on Mother Charlotte, heavily pregnant with her own triplets. How far along are you? 25 weeks and a few days. Triplets grow at the same rate as a single baby, putting much more pressure on the womb. Do they kind of fight for space? I know they kick each other. So this little one weighs about 753 grams and all the measurements are equivalent to about 25 and a half weeks, so pretty much spot on. One of Charlotte's babies is in breech position, meaning feet or bottom down. A much more difficult position to give birth to a baby. How normal is this in triplet childbirth? Is that what you'd expect with triplets? Yes, yeah. It would be unusual for all three babies to be head down because there's a limited amount of space within the uterus. So frequently you get one baby head down, the other baby lying across, perhaps the third baby in a breech position. So carrying triplets, you'd never give birth naturally? Well, you never say never, but it would be highly unusual these days to deliver vaginally. Too dangerous? Yes, yeah. Charlotte's triplets are progressing nicely, but there will be major medical intervention, including a cesarean section to help her give birth. All three babies seem to be doing well, Charlotte, and I'll just let you listen to the baby's heart rate. But what of our mother and her three full-term babies 2,000 years ago in Romano, Britain? In Dundee, Sue has gone back to the bones for one final examination. One of the babies becoming stuck in the birth canal, known as breech position, is the biggest threat to life in triple births. Yet according to their positions in the grave, none of our babies were found in the birth canal. So the overlays that Zant showed us in the briefing that came from the archaeologist are here, and if we just have a quick look at those. This is mum laid out in the burial outline. If you put the babies then, the position, the rough position of the babies, the first one is sitting here towards her shoulder. The second baby is sitting down in here between her thumbs, a quite unusual place to find a baby, quite difficult to explain what that's about. But critically, Sue now believes the position of the second baby, previously thought to have been born and outside the mother, is misleading. Now, if this baby is found outside mum's cavity, you have to say, well, was the baby born? And not necessarily, because if what happens, mum dies while baby is still trying to be born, then obviously that baby stays within the pelvic canal, within the birth canal. As mum decomposes inside her gut, she creates a lot of gas. And a lot of gas inside her actually causes a rise in pressure inside her abdomen. And she can expel the baby after she's dead because of the rise in gases. But because the baby's decomposing as well, it's much easier now for it to get through the birth canal as well. So that this found outside mum doesn't mean that when she died, it was outside mum. If the baby was stuck in the birth canal only to be expelled through what's called a coffin birth, this could explain how that baby and the mother died. And there's another revelation. Sue believes that baby number three was not found merely under the mother. It was still in the womb when it died. This little person here, nobody ever knew it existed because this one was still waiting to be born. This one was still in the queue. This is their secret child. She wouldn't have known it was there. We're the only ones that know that this baby existed. And the breech birth that killed the mother and two of the babies could also have indirectly led to the death of the baby that was born, found on the mother's shoulder. She'd already had one of the babies. That baby would have survived her. But of course, if there isn't anyone to feed that baby, then that could have been an extra problem. But also babies who aren't with mum are in a very, very dangerous position. Even if this baby was born alive, without its mother, perhaps the odds were against its survival, which might explain why it too ended up in the grave, along with its siblings. So all four deaths could have come from one breech birth. And Sue has an astonishing X-ray from the 1950s that graphically illustrates exactly how a breech birth could have had such fatal consequences. It's a full-term foetus. So there's the baby's head. There's the baby's vertebral column coming down there. There's its leg or one of its legs sitting up there with a foot up here. Babies don't bend well in the middle. They really don't. That width isn't going to go through there. There's no space in there. And there isn't. And that's just with one that's gone to full term. Now, you imagine you've given birth to one already, head down and off it's gone. You've still got this one in here in this kind of a position. And there's a third one in line still waiting to come out. But she's not going to do it. So that she's going to spend two, three days in labour, desperately trying to push out, getting weaker and weaker the whole time. And eventually she's going to die. And as a result, all of them, all four of them have died. It's a tragic scenario. But until the DNA shows beyond doubt that the babies actually belong to the woman, it remains unproven. But who was she? The isotope results have already shown the woman grew up in the local region. So if she was from a Celtic tribe, what were the likely circumstances of the pregnancy? Xanthi goes to the bathhouse at Segedunum near Newcastle to meet historian Lindsay Alison Jones, an expert on the lives of women in Romano, Britain. The tribe, local to Bulldock, were called the Catabalani. And there is evidence of how women from this tribe may have lived, including a surprising array of birth control options. Oh, it's vinegar. It is. And that, if you soak sheep's wool in vinegar and use it as a vaginal pressure. Would it have worked? That would have worked, yes. It wouldn't have smelt very nice. No, it wouldn't. But perhaps slightly better would be the olive oil. And this, which is alum. What's this? Oh, this is a mineral which would have been ground up and used as a paste within a pastry. If you stuck to it, if you'd made sure that you were using it properly and you always did it, then it would have worked. According to Lindsay, these techniques and the fact that our woman was in her late 30s make her pregnancy unlikely to be a mistake. Do you think the woman in Bulldock would have been married then? Oh yes, most people would have been married. Celtic law saw a marriage between a man and a woman as a partnership and that they would go through life as life partners. That's very romantic, isn't it? You can't even imagine they would have had loads of children and running around everywhere. No, what is very interesting about life in Roman Britain is that the evidence suggests that they are controlling the size of their families and most families are having just two, much, three children. Would it have been a shock, do you think, because she's that much older to be a mother? It is quite late to be having children in the Roman period and it may be that this is the result of a second marriage, because second marriages were quite common. But who might she have been married to? Surprisingly, Lindsay thinks it could have been the man buried just above her. The fact that they're actually one on top of the other at a right angle and very closely aligned, I suspect, suggests that this is her husband who knows exactly where his wife is buried and wants to be with her. So it wouldn't have been an accident that somebody would have been buried above her? I don't think it was, no. It's a real surprise. Was this man her husband and the father of the children? For Sue, it's an intriguing possibility. Is he involved with her? Does he have any relationship to her at all? We don't know, but what we can do, if we're lucky, is get enough DNA out of that material that says, can we match DNA? And we're back to paternity testing again. Gosh, you know, we're in the news with paternity testing right now. So, you know, here we go, Roman paternity testing. Could he have been dad? A bone sample from the male was also sent for DNA testing. Meanwhile, Caroline is close to discovering what our woman may have looked like. You can start to see her face developing in terms of the overall position of the features and the overall shape. And because she had a normal, healthy diet, that doesn't suggest that she was emaciated. So we're keeping her at normal stature. Because of her pregnancy, she may have had a slightly fuller face, but she's already got quite a square, rounded cheek look to her anyway. I think she might have a really interesting end product face here. The case is now reaching a close, with only the key DNA results still to come. The team goes back to where the bones were found in Baldock to reveal the details of their investigation to the local community. Keen to hear their findings are those who originally excavated the site, experts who have assisted the team and members of the local community. It's going to be really interesting to find out the results of the scientific tests. It's quite exciting because we've never had anything like this done with the stuff from Baldock before. Often as an archaeologist, when you look at skeletons, you do dehumanise them. So having the facial reconstruction is really an important thing. To me, this is absolutely what the fusion of history and science and archaeology and medical history and literary studies is all about. This is where it's at. The nightmare scenario would be discovering that the mother isn't the mother of the triplets. Feel free, come and have a look. What you're looking at is special. In fact, it is unique. And we've been very privileged to be allowed to look at these remains. We think we've got some very interesting information to tell you. Sue will reveal what the science has brought to the case. But how will those who've lived with the bones for over 20 years react? The carbon-14 dating that came back for Our Lady was between 6 and 214 AD. So our individuals are unquestionably in the early Roman period. What the isotopes tell us was that in terms of their diet, these are local individuals. They are local to Baldock. But she's in her 30s. She's a late mum. She may well have been very, very heavily pregnant. She's gone to full term. She's gone the full distance. And she was only 4 foot 11. There's a lot of weight in there. But what of the DNA? Will these final scientific results prove a familial link between the woman and the babies? There's good news and there's bad with DNA. I have to admit, looking at the quality of this, we said on the day, chances of getting DNA out of this are extremely slim, which just shows how much we don't know. The DNA from baby 2 matches with the DNA from baby 3, which matches with mum. We couldn't get any DNA out of baby 1. Which is just so unfair. But what's the chance that that baby doesn't belong? It's highly unlikely. It's got to belong to her. The woman was indeed the mother of the babies. But was the man the father? So paternity testing? Couldn't get any DNA out of him. I'm so sorry. It's a remarkable story of a mother's struggle to give birth to triplets. 2,000 years ago. It's about the journey that she has gone through. In an event that most of us take for granted will result in something that is terribly happy and terribly natural and will be just fine at the end because that's what we're used to. Her story isn't quite as successful, but it is incredibly important. Finally, it falls to Caroline to reveal the mother's face. To be able to see her face is really quite amazing. She's striking. She's definitely striking. She's very capable looking. The face of a good child bearing. I like her though. There's something engaging about her. But her story's complete. And in the completion of her story, then it's the closure of the case. And I think that we've gone as far as we can. I'm thrilled. Getting those results is just amazing. It couldn't have been better. She couldn't survive that with the sorts of conditions she was living in, with the sorts of help that was available to her. And that's very striking. It sort of rounds off a story that was started 20 years ago and a mystery and an enigma. And it's given us a vast new amount of information. I think that's great. This case started with a skeleton assumed to be a social outcast. Maybe the victim of a suspicious death. But it's ended with the profile of a local, healthy and probably married woman. Strong enough to carry three babies to term, but in the end the victim of a simple human tragedy. Pregnant with triplets in a time when the odds of surviving were stacked against her. These extraordinary bones will now be handed back to the community. The only ever recorded case of Romano-British triplets is now closed. It is a sad case, but boy is she important when it comes to recording how we handled these kind of multiple births. And that story has come from the remains. So we feel very privileged to just have the temporary custodianship of them so that we can work with them from this point forward. Her story will be remembered.