Ahhh Medieval Times. A period of dashing knights, fair maidens, and towering castles
dotting the land. And for most people, a time of short, hungry, and horribly unhygienic lives.
Turns out, the Middle Ages were less “King Arthur” and more “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”
in terms of the general suffering and filth depicted. As you can imagine, some of the jobs
required to keep society - barely - functioning at a time of primitive medicine, little technology,
and absolutely awful sanitation are so bad, we couldn’t find just one to name the worst. So come
back in time with us as we explore some of the worst jobs to have in medieval times, including….
Leech Collector! Some antiquated medical practices - and perhaps even modern health trends - involved
leeching the blood out of people to cure them. “Bleeding” patients, as the process was called,
was considered a cure from ancient Egyptian times onwards for a whole host of ailments,
including skin problems, infections, nervous system abnormalities, and even dental diseases.
Doctors used leeches frequently in their offices, but surely medical professionals at the time
weren’t hunting down leeches themselves. So who did? And how?
Enter the leech collector. Who did the job in the simplest - and worst! - way imaginable.
He would simply wade into a nearby pond or bog, raise up his clothes to expose his legs, and wait
until a horde of leeches attached themselves to his body.
He would then slowly pull them off while they were distracted by feasting on his veins,
and sell them to the local doctor or barber-surgeon. Speaking of terrible professions,
yes you heard that right, barber and surgeon. We’re not sure how cutting bangs and removing
appendixes both fell under one person’s job description, but there you have it.
As a small aside, you may be surprised to know that leeches are still occasionally used in modern
medicine today, though for different purposes. Leeches have anticoagulant properties in their
saliva that are used to prevent blood clots and ease venous congestion, or blood pooling in veins,
after specific surgeries. However, leeches today are specially bred for that purpose,
and no one has to wade into a pond barefoot to collect them.
As one of the most well-known medieval professions - hence why the last name is
so common today - tanners also had incredibly difficult jobs. They specialized in extracting
and preserving the hides of animals for use in manufacturing and other industries.
However, this process was easier said than done. We suggest you put down your
sandwich for this next part, and vegans….maybe skip it entirely.
Tanners soaked the hides of cattle and pigs in giant pits of lime.
This softened the animals’ hair and tissues, so they could then scrape them off by hand.
The final step was - surprisingly - even more revolting, as cleaned hides were re-immersed
in pits full of a mixture of water and dog feces so they could be further softened.
The pits were constantly kept fermenting, and that mixed with the dead animal smell, as well
as soaked hair and fat, made tanneries one of the most disgusting and foul-smelling places around.
Be honest, you never guessed the last name of DJ, Uncle Jesse,
and Danny came from such a gross career. Next..
A violin string maker? That sounds like such a refined,
classy skill. How could it possibly be one of the worst jobs in medieval times?
Well, because the Middle Ages will find a way to make almost
everything revolve around excrement or animal innards, so here it goes.
The 17th century saw a technological revolution in the ease of string-making for various musical
instruments. However, we’re unfortunately not there yet at this point in time.
Of the three violin strings back then, some had to be thick enough to play lower notes. Medieval
people found that twisting strands of sheep innards tightly together did the job adequately.
So the medieval men who made violin strings would first butcher a sheep
very carefully so as to not rupture the stomach or lower intestines.
Then followed hours of painstaking work to trim away everything around the innards,
including blood vessels, muscles, and fat. A blood-spattered violin string maker hammering away
at a sheep’s stomach is already giving you a less glamorous image than you initially had, right?
In the final step, string makers soaked the sheep guts in a solution of wood ash.
They had to constantly stay on top of the solution, monitoring the guts for hours,
to make sure they didn’t rot and the ash cleaned them out properly.
As tedious as watching paint dry, but also a million times worse in every conceivable way.
Who knew making beautiful classical instruments
could be one of the most simultaneously disgusting and boring jobs on this list?
Speaking of classy sounding but horrible-in-reality professions...
Groom of the Stool! Yes, this fancy-sounding job was considered so prestigious
that only high-level aristocrats were even looked at for the task!
And it involved...wiping the king’s bottom and checking his feces. Seriously. Even in a castle,
there was no way to get away from the shit that stained most of the professions in this video.
See, the King of England was considered divine, almost on the level of a god within the kingdom.
The idea that he also had human needs such as going to the bathroom was accepted,
but many believed that he couldn’t be allowed to do something as indecent as
wiping after relieving himself.
So a trusted aristocrat was given the assignment
of not only cleaning the king after a visit to the, ahem, royal throne,
which was in fact a toilet chair that the Groom of the Stool also fetched; he was also
responsible for collecting and examining the excrement to assess the king’s health.
Worst of all, if the king became constipated or had other bowel problems - which,
judging from the hygienic conditions most food was made in back then,
was probably pretty often - the Groom of the Stool was responsible for administering an enema.
We’ll take a moment here to remind you that this was a supposedly revered position for aristocrats,
though let’s be real, also somewhat humiliating.
Historical records point to Henry VIII as the possible originator of this position,
because of course he was, since most insane things in the English empire started with him.
Let’s take a break from jobs involving excrement to hear more about jobs
involving plague-carrying animals instead. Rat catchers, also known as “chasseur de rats”,
were necessary positions in any big medieval city, as well as in large castles.
Cities without proper sanitation systems - so pretty much all of them in the Middle
Ages - easily became overrun with rats, which brought diseases and germs with them.
Not to mention, at a time when access to meals was pretty much a toss up on any given day,
a rat infestation that consumed or tainted the food supply could easily cause a family to starve.
If the situation spiraled out of control in a household - again,
we would consider a sighting of literally any rat in our house “out
of control” - a rat catcher was called in to help clear the place of vermin.
They used many methods to do so. One involved rubbing oils on their hands and clothes,
such as aniseed and thyme which attracted rats, and then...just
kinda hanging around till the rats came over. Disregarding all sense of hygiene or gag reflexes,
he would then catch the rats swarming around him with his bare hands.
“Why not use a trap?”, any sane person might be asking right now. Well, some did,
but many did not want to kill the rats they caught, because they apparently sold them.
That’s right, someone out there was paying to buy rats. For what purpose, historical
records absolutely refuse to show, but plenty of people were apparently willing to purchase them.
Other methods of attracting rats included letting trained cats loose in the house,
reciting spells, and sometimes hanging 2 or 3 dead rats on a stick and walking around the
town while yelling “death to rats!”. The latter might have just been to advertise their services.
The efficacy of these methods varied...quite widely. But you might now just be realizing,
you’ve already heard the tale of the most famous rat catcher of all - the Pied Piper!
That’s right, the famous children’s fairytale which ends with a mass abduction and/or
drowning, depending on the verison, is centered around a rat catcher!
There simply...have to be better stories out there for our kids.
You’d be hard pressed to find any fairy tales about this next job though...
The gong farmer! What is that? Great question; with a predictably nauseating explanation.
Gong farmers, also known as nightmen, had one of the least sought after jobs in castles of yore.
And yes, we’re including the people who had to wipe the king’s behind.
Because gong farmers were responsible for collecting everything that came out of it.
See, back then, instead of septic systems or anything else that makes our homes breathable,
castles had cesspits on their lower level which contained all the excrement...hmmm....unloaded
from within the castle walls.
Gong farmers had to go in and dig up weeks or even months’ worth of human waste
in order to empty the pits. To give an idea of how massive an amount they were dealing with,
they were usually paid by the ton.
Not to mention that since they were digging into giant soggy pits in tight quarters, occasionally
some gong farmers would be found suffocated in the stool, surely one of the worst ways to ever die.
As you can imagine, the people who did this job were considered outcasts,
both because of their daily tasks and, we can only imagine,
the ensuing smell that no amount of medieval Axe body spray could disguise.
Why were they called gong farmers? “Gong” came from the old English word meaning “going”. As in,
the farmers were cleaning up years and years of the pile up from people in the castle, “going” to
the bathroom. Also, “gong farmers” sounds better than “the men who clean up poop”. Moving on...
Bone grubber definitely has to be near the top of the list for “worst jobs to have in
medieval times”. The profession is...exactly what it sounds like.
People would go scavenging through junkyards, butcher shops, and other places we surely don’t
want to know about, in an effort to find and collect bones. They would then sell these
bones for a good profit, since scavenging for them cost nothing except dignity.
What in the world would someone want with bones? At the time, it turns out,
quite a lot! They were used for toothbrush handles, teething rings, and other personal items
around the house. Otherwise, they were boiled down for soapmaking or ground into fertilizer.
Don’t worry, there’s only one more terrible job left to describe. Can you guess what it is?
….the barber-surgeon! That’s right, we finally got back around to it.
Let’s take a step back and ask: why were barbers doubling as surgeons in the first place?
Turns out, they weren’t just doing surgical work...barbers also worked as dentists,
applied leeches to patients, dissected corpses, and basically did a lot of the
grunt work physician-monks wouldn’t do, frequently under their direction.
See, in 1163, Pope Alexander III barred clergymen, who usually also worked as physicians,
from shedding blood, finding it incompatible with their holy position.
Since blood-letting via leeches was still one of the most popular medical treatments of the time,
someone had to take over, and barbers stepped up to the plate.
Barber-surgeons were looked down on at the time compared to the - usually - university-educated
physicians. Physicians and surgeons would get all the credit and prestige,
while barber-surgeons had to do the actual work of tending to patients
in very primitive medical times, without much respect from the public.
What did this include? Pulling teeth out of screaming patients’ mouths and
also whitening teeth with...nitric acid, which had the unintended but completely predictable
effect of destroying them entirely in the long run. Dissecting dead bodies under step
by step instructions from physicians who quite simply didn’t want to do that work themselves.
Lastly, barber-surgeons had to find a way to advertise their barbaric - no pun
intended - but necessary, services. They first tried putting bowls of blood they had “relieved”
patients of in their store window, which would eventually congeal and stink up the place. This
was considered such a disgusting practice, even by the standards of medieval Europe,
that the citizens of London pushed to pass a law in 1307 banning the practice.
That’s right, barber-surgeons started acting too gross for medieval London,
a city full of rat catchers and bone grubbers.
The city of London advised barbers to get rid of their leftover blood by throwing it in the
Thames instead, because the concept of water contamination apparently hadn’t been invented yet.
So what could barber-surgeons do now to advertise their work?
Well, they were quite adept at removing kidney stones. They traveled around with
a special lithotomy table, gathering those who were suffering from kidney
stones to have them surgically removed in public with an audience watching.
They had to make sure their work was beyond reproach, as if the procedure went wrong,
the barber-surgeons were fined heavily for their mistakes. Something which we’re sure
came as little consolation to any patient they had accidentally butchered by that time.
Now that you know all about the worst jobs to have in medieval times,
which one had you never heard of before? And on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are
you to be living in the 21st century? Let us know in the comments below! In the meantime,
check out some cool historical facts in this video, or click this other video right here!