Near the top of Charing Cross road is a phone box set in from the kerb which pinches the streams of theatre goers and tourists down to a trickle as they pass the large anonymous restaurant window.

Walking past it today the pace was even slower as people tried to avoid the young girl, her legs wrapped in a black plastic bag, the coffee cup kicked over with the few coins she’d collected spread on the floor. Exhausted and asleep she had become a sideshow as well dressed visitors squeezed to one side to avoid her.

By the time I was a few paces away a large police van appeared and several officers stepped out to deal with the situation. Clearly not a side of London that should be tolerated she was spirited away to leave the streets free of her presence.

How we deal with the margins of society tells us a lot about the times we live in. Earlier I was in Southwark, an area of London still very much haunted by the ghosts of the past. Normally I walk there along the Thames but today I had started inland and walked down Union Street navigating with a mixture of my old battered A to Z, the spire of Southwark Cathedral and guess work. Sometimes the latter is the best way, you stray down unfamiliar roads and see things hidden from general view.

Redcross Way is one of these roads. On one side the old buildings of Southwark; warehouses and factories, a pub on the corner. On the other side of the road it seems at first sight that the buildings are removed. An open space with large gates to which are tied pieces of cloth and flowers. Here, tucked away from general view, so close to the trendy parts of new London is Crossbones Graveyard the final, anonymous resting place of London’s unwanted. No one really knows how many prostitutes, unwanted children, the destitute and the mad lay here. It’s only a few steps away from Borough Market and the Tate Modern but other than the things tied to the gates there is no formal remembrance of all the people who were disposed of here.

I don’t know where that girl was taken to. Perhaps I should have gone back to ask. I’d like to think that we don’t have the huge cracks in society which existed when Crossbones was in use but it does make you wonder …