London Bridge is Falling Down

 LAKE HAVASU CITY -London Bridge is a bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. When it was built in the 1830s, it spanned the River Thames in London, England. In 1968, the bridge was purchased from the City of London by Robert P. McCulloch. The London Bridge is rumored to be haunted. For years, visitors have claimed sightings of a British police bobby patrolling the bridge and a woman in black roaming the night. Multiple sets of human remains were found under the second London Bridge (1871-1967) while it was being dismantled in the 1960s. These included the remains of children. has led to the suggestion that the lyrics of the folk song "London Bridge Is Falling Down" Child sacrifice/immurement - Alice Bertha Gomme (later Lady Gomme) put forward the hypothesis that the song refers to the burying, perhaps alive, of children in the foundations of the bridge..... This theory was repeated by Iona and Peter Opie. London Bridge is falling down, According to The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, similar rhymes have been discovered across Europe in places such as Germany’s “Die Magdeburger Brück,” Denmark’s “Knippelsbro Går Op og Ned,” and France’s “pont chus.” Immurement as a practice:

Immurement was a form of punishment or sacrifice where a person was walled up in a room with no exit, and left to die from starvation or dehydration. It was believed that immuring someone could bring stability to structures like bridges. Immurement (from Latin "immurus", meaning " wall in" or "enwall"), immuration or live entombment is a historical form of imprisonment, generally until death, in which someone is/was placed in an enclosed space with the opening walled off. Immurement has been used as a punishment and as a form of human sacrifice. As a punishment, live entombment was largely used on members of clergy (monks, nuns and ancient Rome's Vestal Virgins for example) and others whose blood was not allowed to be spilled according to custom and or law. Also in Mongolia, women who were accused of adultery were often immured in crates which had a holes for the head and one arm to poke through. The latest documented case of immurement as a form of execution occurred in 1906 in Morocco. The one walled up in this case was a Serial killer named Mohammed Mesfewi who was originally sentenced to crucifixion before foreign dignitaries talked the Moroccan government out of crucifying Mohammed. As a form of human sacrifice, live entombment was intended to ensure that buildings and bridges remained standing. It was thought that immuring living people in this manner would bring good luck to the structure. The song ''London Bridge is Falling Down'' may be about such sacrificial entombment. Usually the entombed victim would be left to dehydrate and starve to death, but sometimes they were fed regularly. In the latter case, immurement was more life imprisonment than a form of execution. There have been historical and fictional accounts of people being walled in alive. One story of fictional immuration is in the story The Cask of Armontillado by Edgar Allen Poe.


Falling down, falling down.


London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.

Off to prison you must go,
You must go, you must go;
Off to prison you must go,
My fair lady.