hello there just before we kick things off for today's video i do want to give a quick plug to a
brand new channel from me called into the shadows if that name doesn't give it away the channel is
very much focused on the darker side of things early episodes are covered things like how we
fight the world's deadliest diseases how the congo suffered the worst of colonialism and how the
nazis escaped europe to south america so if you'd like to explore the darker side of history and
science please check out into the shadows there is a link below as of 2021 american workers are
proving by the millions per month to be unwilling to work their jobs with low wages limited benefits
uncertainty over hours and other such drawbacks yet for all that lack of recognition has been
the most consistently cited cause for ending employment all sorts of jobs that were dubbed
essential in 2020 are included in the staffing crisis so imagine how impossible it would be to
get people to take on jobs where the wages weren't just low but the only benefit a person was likely
to get was trauma let's lay some ground rules for the entries today so that all the entries
are not just slavery it has to be something where there is a hierarchy an employer and a wage
so with that in mind let's look back through history to see how much worse the past really was
10. battlefield scavenger in the wake of a battle that might leave hundreds or even thousands of
people dead on a battlefield either a health and sanitation crisis or a rich opportunity would be
left behind depending on how you looked at it while soldiers tended to get first dibs as far
as rifling through the fallen's effects whence with little concern with which side the deceased
fought on before long there would be those who collected what they could find from the dead
including as mentioned in another top tens list teeth as harrowing as the thought could be for the
dead dying or their families back home there were a multitude of dangers for the scavengers gangs of
criminals were inevitability in addition to that a number of predators particularly wolves were
sure to descend on any such environment gunpowder introduced the tremendous danger
of unexploded shells that could go off at any moment which is such a lingering problem
that shells from world war one are still undergoing delayed detonations today that's
not even getting into the masses of flies and other forms of pestilence brought by corpses for
months afterwards in 1812 the french general philippe sega wrote at the battle of bordino the
most significant battle during napoleon's invasion of russia that two months later the field was
still littered with thousands of corpses that were half devoured as disrespectful as it may seem to
the dead and dying to pick at their corpses it was utterly necessary for something to be done about
all those dead and in fact there was considerable official sanction for the process at the battle
of waterloo in 1822 a british newspaper reported that bones of the dead from the battle had been
retrieved and brought to the isle to be processed as fertilizer the hall estimated to have reached
a million bushels 9. salt miner as we've covered before on this channel you never know what you're
going to find in a mine for many though what you're most likely to find is fear and pain
roughly 10 of coal miners will suffer from black lung disease after 25 years underground
accidents have been so disastrous that in a single disaster in leoning china on april 26 1942
1549 miners died from suffocation it is awful as all that is salt mining adds tremendous hardships
onto the mining ordeal just breathing the air of salt mines introduces such severe dehydration in
miners that it takes even more years off their lives than coal mining indeed the local reported
that a 2016 study of 2 000 ancient roman skeletons found that salt mining was the largest reason that
the average roman worker died at 30 and that many of them were suffering from arthritis
at the end of their lives soul mining is also work that is especially susceptible to bursts
of carbon dioxide or methane gas number eight gallium working a gigantic or might seem like
the sort of back-breaking toil that you could only get people to take under the threat of death or
torture the truth was that ancient romans greeks and medieval naval commanders would only turn to
slaves out of desperation it makes sense even the lowliest galley rower to a large extent holds the
fate of an expensive ship and its crew in their hands you wouldn't want a slave in that position
any more than you'd want a slave helping to drive a tank or pilot a drone even when they were used
in such a way it was usually a matter of course that victory would mean they would be officially
freed yet even free galley rowers were indeed signing up for horrendous job roughly a third of
people who did the task were there as punishment and they died within three years bewilderingly
despite them taking on a deadly literally back-breaking job many contracted galley rowers
did not include in their agreement that they'd be provided with food or lodgings while on land
surely most captains knew it would be bad business to let their ship's engine die of anemia during a
voyage but that doesn't seem like something where you could rely on the goodwill of your employer
7. world war ii submariner surprisingly for tens of thousands of naval employees the march
of technology did nothing for their health and well-being for all the reputation of being the
silent hunters of the deep during the early days of the second world war by the end of the war
the submarines were more of a danger to the kriegs marine than they were to the allies the 40 000 men
who sailed beneath the waves for the reich more than 63 percent were killed and 12
were captured from perspective that's a higher casualty rate than japanese kamikaze pilots who
famously set out intending to crash for comparison the deadliest service to fight hidden as an
american was the merchant marines who suffered a roughly 4 mortality rate the main reason it was so
costly to be a submariner then was that technology caught up with the submarine over the course of
the war especially when it came to using radar and escort ships on the way to their death they had to
deal with uniquely cramped quarters pervasive diesel stench and their food was especially
prone to becoming mouldy forcing them to rely on cans 6. leech collector some professions sound
like a joke on some level being professionally bitten by leeches is so unrelatable to a modern
person that it has something of that flavour to it and yet when using leeches for bloodletting
became a bad in the 18th and 19th centuries many people decided that it was for them some
collectors had the luxury of pushing a beast of burden to serve as bait into bog waters that were
ideal hunting grounds for the pseudo-medicinal animals but since that was too risky or costly
for many they had to make do with their own legs the profession was particularly popular during uk
summers where the soggy environs were ideal for it an account by george walker from 1814 states
the profession was most commonly performed by scottish women overhunting of the leeches
eventually led to their extinction in many areas and it forced many apparently very stoic workers
to change professions 5. lead workers in 1921 thomas mitchell discovered that introducing
tetraethyl lead into gasoline made engines run quieter and he managed to sell an industry on
putting a chemical that had been known to be a neurotoxin for millennia in as a fuel additive
in 1986 thousands of workers were exposed to horrific amounts of lead an estimated 5 000 a
year would die of heart complications brought on by lead poisoning midgley himself would be nearly
debilitated by his own invention when he held a press conference in 1924 to mislead the press
with honesty or even basic morality clearly not a top priority for those with an interest in keeping
lead in consumer goods workers were subjected to abuses that were difficult to imagine for example
in 1975 a lead smelting plant in kellogg idaho was firing employees having too high of a lead level
in their blood and it brought local 7854 united steelworkers to file a grievance that became a
statewide debate health implications aside imagine the stress generated by knowing that you could
lose a vitally important job working with poison because it had just poisoned you too much 4.
lumberjack even today the logging industry is the deadliest field in the united states of america
from logs sliding out of restraints to falling limbs to generally being out in the elements
during dangerous weather it's a career which kills 86 out of every 100 000 people on the job
that puts it at 33 times the average and according to the bureau of labor statistics it's more than
five times deadlier than being a police officer so how much worse was it in times past when people
had to rely on wagons instead of trucks and there were no rapid emergency medical services while
hard numbers are not available we can extrapolate from mining figures that it was killing thousands
of americans per year a particularly illustrative fact that shows just how lack safety standards
were in days past is that in 1917 not a single lumberyard in the state of minnesota had a first
aid facility on site 3. body collectors at least battlefield scavengers were overwhelmingly dealing
with corpses that were a result of combat when the black death came to europe in the 1340s teams were
needed to dispose of corpses that were potentially swelling with death for anyone that came near them
while the plague doctor has become a familiar figure in popular culture due to the novelty of
the beaked mask that was actually a practical reaction taken from a faulty conclusion the
beak was for storing flowers and other items that provided a pleasant fragrance it was believed that
avoiding the stink of death was a preventative measure with cities such as florence and italy
losing as much as half their population to the plague collecting the bodies became a very well
compensated profession indeed but how much comfort could that be to people who were collecting
corpses of people who had died from plague rather than being venerated for being people that took
on the most dangerous and necessary professions of their day reports circulated that cast them
in much more ghastly light it was said the body collecting attracted such a rough and reckless
crowd that it drew many criminals number two gong firmers gong firma sounds like a colorful
bit of outdated slang that could make a comeback at any time it's a british corruption of gong
farmer which means someone who collects dung we've talked about how horrible this job would be before
but it turns out that it was in fact decently well paid and that actually made it worse for many for
example gong farmers were prone to being attacked by gangsters as it was known that they were
well paid and they often had to go to the most crime-ridden parts of the city at night lest their
carts discussed all the daytime city denizens it certainly didn't help that these workers tended
to be immigrants the large buildings where cesspits were allowed to collect particularly
large deposits workers were sometimes lowered into one of them which could very likely mean one of
the worst deaths possible in 1326 one man known as richard the raker died such a death in london 1.
chimney sweeps how ironic is it that many people's most vivid impression of this profession is their
extremely romanticized portrayal in the 1964 hit mary poppins the truth was that practically from
the beginning of the popularization of chimneys in europe during the 15th century it was an extremely
dangerous job that was inflicted on the most vulnerable while in the days before child labor
laws many very young people were put in harm's way for money chimney sweeps were an especially bad
way since those often pressed into it were only four years old the reason for this was that only
such small children could reach into the angled spaces where soot accumulated in chimneys from
those days unable to see barely able to breathe and in precarious situations anyway debilitating
injuries were practically expected if that wasn't morbid enough they often had to work
naked according to a swedish study reported by the chicago tribune being a chimney sweep took
an average of 11 to 12 years off someone's life expectancy ironically the reason chimneys were
built so dangerously narrow was a safety measure introduced to prevent another fire like the
one that consumed much of london in 1666. it was george brewster who put an end to forcing toddlers
into chemical residue not that he benefited from it in 1788 he got stuck in a chimney at fullborn
hospital in cambridge uk and suffocated before he could be rescued the event caused such a public
outcry that same year that laws were written raising the minimum employment age it was raised
to eight years old it wouldn't be until 1840 that it was raised into the teen years for able-bodied
adults the health hazard of sweeping chimneys were so great that they were in a sense revolutionary
the suit caused a very pronounced form of scrotal cancer that became known as chimney sweeps cancer
in 1775 it was the first cancer to be linked to a specific occupational hazard showing just how
prevalent it must have been so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did
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