Milk teeth of Irish famine's youngest victims reveal secrets of malnutrition

Analysis of baby skeletons could help predict medical problems among contemporary children, says archaeologist

Tiny teeth of babies who died in the Irish famine in the 1840s, or soon afterwards when their parents moved to London in search of work, reveal they were the starving children of malnourished mothers - but the analysis may also help predict medical problems among contemporary children.

The remains, from a graveyard in Lukin Street, which in the 19th century was a slum area of Whitechapel in east London, and from the site of a workhouse in County Kilkenny in Ireland, showed the dead babies had higher nitrogen levels than found in the bones of children who survived infancy.

The point about these babies is that they died. Something else is obviously going on here