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Everyone remembers at least one job in their life they absolutely hated, for most people
that's one of the many terrible jobs they get immediately after leaving home and striking
it out on their own for the first time.
But throughout history some people have not only worked, but made careers out of occupations
that are disgusting, disturbing, or outright dangerous and painful.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Infographics Show- today we're taking a look
at the worst jobs that have ever existed.
12.
Leech collector.
During the 18thand 19thcentury a craze for leeches hit Europe.
Fueled by the practice of bloodletting, or the draining of blood from the human body
for supposed health benefits, leeches were in demand by doctors across the continent
to treat their ailing patients.
Thought to help remove bad 'humours' from the body, dozens of leeches were attached
to a patient who was then sucked on by the hungry little parasites.
But someone had to provide all those slimy little blood suckers, and for a long time
that was the work of poor peasant women.
Wading into swampy water and baring their legs, the leeches would latch on to their
bodies and then later be collected by the dozens.
Not a physically tough job, 'leeching' was still extremely dangerous as the leeches could
drain a fair amount of blood and possibly pass on dangerous infections.
Surprisingly leeches are being used once again in modern medicine to help patients heal from
certain surgeries, but they are valued today for their ability to let blood flow freely
rather than to suck it up.
Oh, and they are also grown in laboratories and don't require anyone to wade into disgusting
water naked from the waist down.
11.
Whipping Boy
Medieval Europeans believed that royals were appointed by God himself, so therefore if
a young royal prince began to act up, who could possibly punish him but his father,
the King- no doubt busily managing the kingdom- or God himself- no doubt busily managing creation?
Enter the practice of the whipping boy.
In lieu of striking his holyness' royal bottom, a child was reared up alongside young princes
who was then punished in their stead.
It was hoped that the pain was vicariously felt and the lesson learnt, but judging from
the behavior of some of history's monarchs, we're pretty sure a great deal of princes
cared not a whit what their poor whipping boys suffered.
Still, some were handsomely compensated for their childhood pains, such as William Murray,
whipping boy to Charles I, who was made into an Earl for his diligent sufferings.
Regardless, taking the heat for some spoiled noble child has to no doubt have been one
of the worst jobs in history.
10.
Fuller
Wool is a waterproof material that mankind has been spinning into a variety of clothing
items for millenia, yet the process of weaving it results in a material that is coarse with
a wide mesh and is easily frayed.
This is due to the natural oil and grease on a sheep's skin, which has to be removed
to make the cloth soft and fluffy.
This was the job of a Fuller- a job so terrible that in ancient Roman times it was relegated
to slaves.
In order to degrease wool, it would be draped in a large empty tub which was then filled
with urine- an alkaline solution that degrades fats and oils.
Filling the tub with several gallons of urine from who knows how many people, the Fuller
then had to climb in and stomp on it with their bare feet.
Oh, and the second worst part of this job?
Having to go out and physically collect the urine from public toilets and private homes.
9.
Groom of the Stool
As we've seen previously, Europe held monarchs in pretty high esteem, though given the long,
long history of crazy kings and pointless wars, it's a little hard to imagine why.
Well, given their status as wielders of divine right granted unto them by God himself, Kings
were of course far too important to wipe their own behinds.
This was instead the job of the Groom of the Stool- an assistant to the king responsible
for fetching the king's toilet chair, wiping his rear clean, and collecting the stool for
examination and monitoring of the monarch's health.
Believe it or not, this was considered a position of privilege amongst European nobility, so
next time someone calls you a kiss-ass just remind them you're only one spot away from
the revered position of being a wipe-ass instead.
8.
Rat Catcher
Prior to the creation of modern rat traps, rats would often be dealt with in a much more
questionable way.
Responding to rat infestations, rat catchers would rub oils of aniseed and thyme into their
hands and clothing to attract the hungry rodents, and then try to catch them with his bare hands.
As harbingers of all manners of disease, this made rat catching an extremely dangerous occupation,
but live rats could be sold for a tidy profit to less-than-reputable food vendors and as
meal for some livestock.
7.
Match Girl
Before the advent of the lighter, mankind relied exclusively on matches to light candles,
cigars and heating fires.
While the process of actually making a match wasn't particularly difficult or disgusting,
it was the result of years spent dipping pieces of wood into a highly toxic phosphorus solution
that made this a horrible job to work at.
Inhalation of the phosphorus used in the match head caused an ailment known as “phossy
jaw”, a horrific affliction of the lower jaw which eroded the gums and caused them
to give off a foul-smelling discharge.
After years the jaws would begin to give off an eerie glow, and the only known treatment
was complete removal of part of the jawbone.
Next time someone argues with you about government over-regulations, have them google a picture
of phossy jaw.
6.
Bone Grubber
It turns out that despite its explosion in popularity, recycling has been around for
millenia.
In Victorian cities, professional bone grubbers would scavenge rotting bones from butchers,
garbage piles, and stockyards and sell them to manufacturers.
The scavenged bones would be made into toothbrush handles, children's teething rings, and various
other personal items, and what wasn't sold was ground down into fertilizer or boiled
up for soapmaking.
With the popularity of corpse robbing in Victorian England, we can't help but wonder how many
family relatives ended up household goods.
In a way we suppose it's true that our loved ones are with us long after they're gone-
specially if one of their femurs makes up the toothbrush you use every night!
5.
Mudlark
Scavenging was a huge economy in Victorian England, with nearly everything imaginable
being recycled and renewed into something else- modern hippies would surely have been
impressed.
But at the bottom of the scavenger hierarchy was the Mudlark who cruised trash dumps and
river banks looking for absolutely anything overlooked by other scavengers.
The poorest of the poor, these destitute souls wandered freezing water full of human excrement,
rotting fish, and the not-so-occasional human body to find bits of metal, bone or cloth
to sell.
4.
Tanner
Without a doubt one of the most disgusting and dangerous jobs of all time, tanners were
regardless one of the most important occupations in the history of mankind.
Tasked with the essential work of preserving animal hides for their use in clothing and
goods, tanners employed a disgusting and potentially dangerous process to prepare hides.
First the hides were soaked in giant pits of lime to soften hair and excess tissues.
The hair and excess fat would then be scraped off by hand, but accidental exposure to lime
was not only dangerous to breathe in but resulted in nasty chemical burns on exposed flesh.
A cleaned hide was then re-immersed into a pit of water and feces to further clean and
soften it- typically this would be animal feces from livestock or dogs, but could just
as well have been from public toilets.
These massive pits of watery poo would ferment, and Victorian era tanneries were beyond a
shadow of a doubt the most disgusting places one could ever work in.
3.
Gong Farmer
Most farmers grow crops or livestock, but in Medieval Europe the Gong Farmer harvested
the end result of a proper farmer's hard work: poop, lots and lots of it.
As cities exploded in size and with even rudimentary sewage systems still centuries away, cities
across Europe needed a solution to the mounting poop crisis.
With people simply tossing their waste onto the street or into holes behind their houses,
the greatest cities of Europe smelled just awful, and were a daily nightmare of disease
and infection.
That's when some enterprising lad must have gotten a very bright idea.
Tasked with collecting all the waste produced by the city's residents, Gong Farmers had
to dig human waste out of pits and collect it from privies to be recycled as fertilizer
or used as building materials.
Despite being in incredibly high demand, Gong Farmers were not surprisingly looked down
on by the rest of society and often forced to live away from the general population in
their own small communities.
Liable to succumb to various diseases and ostracized for doing a critical job in Medieval
Europe, Gong Farmers were truly the unsung, smelly heroes of human civilization.
2.
River Pig
Lumberjacks provide us with the wood we need to build everything from homes to furniture,
but before the creation of the internal combustion engine, most of that wood was delivered to
lumber mills via rivers.
Dumped into a river, floating logs would cruise along with the current in the hundreds, but
given their numbers logjams (is that were the word possibly comes from?) were inevitable.
These were the responsibility of the River Pig, a hapless worker who would ride the logs
down the river and jump between them while trying to free them from jams with a long
steel pike.
An absolutely dangerous job that required incredible dexterity and balance, river pigs
were routinely killed as they fell off logs and crushed between them in the river's current,
an occurrence so frequent that work was hardly ever stopped on their account.
1.
Sin Eater
Devoutly religious Medieval Europe had some funny ideas about spirituality and who was
too holy or not to wipe their own rear ends.
It's no surprise then that Medieval Europeans would be the ones to invent one of the most
peculiar jobs on this list.
The Sin-Eater was an individual called upon during times of death.
After a loved one died it was tradition to place a loaf of bread or other food items
along with a cup of beer on the corpse's chest, with the belief that any lingering sin would
be absorbed by the food.
The Sin-Eater would then come along and eat the spiritually tainted food, taking the sin
into themselves and leaving the deceased person's spirit to to enter the after life free of
any foodborne sins.
Paid a small stipend for their services, Sin-Eaters literally got a free lunch out of the deal,
but because it was widely believed that the practice corrupted their own souls, were often
extreme social outcasts that nobody wanted to be around.
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We've all worked our fair share of terrible jobs, but whatever your worst job ever has
been we're willing to be it beats the pants off wiping a noble's behind for a living.
What was the worst job you ever worked?
Let us know in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video: 10 Surprisingly High Paying Jobs.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.