Medieval Shepherd Did What? | Worst Jobs | Absolute History

Britain hasn't just been made by generals and politicians and courtiers but by a whole host of ordinary people young and old dedicated to doing the real spadework this time risking your neck to maintain the heart of room life shifting home to produce enduring images of countryside and saving songs in the village baton great welcome to the worst rural jobs [Music] [Music] Britten's and urban nation 90% of the population lives in towns we think of the countryside as a place of tranquility but nostalgic scene of villages and fields somewhere to escape relax for most of our history living in the country has met the toughest of lives Kosovo [Music] take the ultimate pass see in medieval times sheep outnumbered the population ten to one they were a vital source of meat and clothing the wool trade supported the economy it all relied on shepherds who is common then as check out girls are today the shepherds 24/7 job was toughest in the Middle Ages they had to follow their flocks lugging heavy hurdles and tools for miles to pen sheep the needed treatment lonely out in weathers roughing it even dagi the equivalent to wiping a sheep's bottom supposed to be doing this place the camera with David but I've got the Sheep here who's trying to back all the time I need firmly its bottom have wandered into shop what are we doing we're gonna tag them what does that mean that means taking the wet dirty faces off the back yeah I've got my knees and the reason we do it is that if we leave it flies lay their eggs particularly the green bottle which was small in the big blue box yeah and the eggs will hatch out into hundreds of maggots which will eat into the skin and it can happen very very quickly within a matter of a day all right let's do this pretty fearsome so what do I do with these like if you move you're gonna get this up your bottom you know that right oh yeah we just just cut the wool now I'm not gonna cut me into anything no mistake so worried about one is a bit it is yep right thing as human toilet paper weren't bad enough [Music] Lambs another job Shepherd's had to do was to castrate male lambs the Shepherd used to cut the end of the scrotum off with a sharp knife yeah squeeze the testicles out and throw them out with his mouth holding them with his teeth it was the best way to do it because to try and do it your fingers they'd slip out yeah and also your things would be dirty yeah but the mouth is the cleanest part and also has some antiseptic effect from this LIBOR he had draw them out and then they would often put a mixture of tansy and better smeared on the wound to stop the flies get into it one of the few times Shepherds got human company was when the sheep came to be washed in the nearest stream why do we have to watch the wall why don't we just sell it dirty clean waters work for about thirty percent more than a keyboard all that the downside is dirty wolf weighs more how many days a week where the ship is working oh seven days a week no and that bothered them so when they were buried they always asked for a lock of wool to be put in their coffin thank you Hayek is cold now what are we gonna do with these is sheep then we're gonna wash the Sheep they'll be letting hands yeah oh you've gone below your waders I'm here never even got to heaven unless you got a bit of wool to wave at the pearly gates but at least he was never mistaken for the death being taken for Lucifer was just one downside in another worst job from the wool trade sheep were marked with iron ore and I sold by the reddleman the unluckiest sales rep ever I am a riddle man sell read and look read and am read the centuries the riddle man wandered from village to village selling his wares and his face and his body and his clothes were permanently stained red and every time he turned up at a different village the children would run away because they thought he was the devil how do we know because Thomas Hardy recorded his humiliating fate in his novel return of the native like his bath he was completely read he was not temporarily overlaid with the color songs was nothing today thatched cottages a part of Heritage Britain the very symbol of life but when they were built these were poor workers hovels thatched with the cheapest materials read or sedge harvesting all that fatch was tough regardless in the Cambridge offends getting a roof was positively dangerous the friends full of this stuff it's a kind of a read and it's called sage it's very difficult to get through and people have been harvesting it for centuries in order to use it for thatch and animal fodder and even for stuffing their mattresses with although honestly I wouldn't like to just sleep in this stuff because if you catch it the wrong way it's a razor-sharp it's only a reed cap why is it so sharp well it's actually a sage Tony then they're not just leaves they're actually a sausage and if you take a look along the edges of the Blazer you can see the serrated edge running all the way down the length of the blade there oh yeah yeah if you go like this there's no problem at all yes come out the other way extraordinaire you get snagged so how do they manage the harvester well up until the 1950s we used to use hand tools like sides and sickles here and would move along the road cutting the material and tying him up into bunches so we used to have bindings running up the entire length of our hands and around our arms I then use a leather or string to bind them on to their arms and that offered some protection against some of these barbed edges that we've got on here right bound up and okay here we are yeah so hold your on out there it would have been all the way down to the arm their material they use it would have been the thicker the better really it may be quite uncomfortable they offered that bit more protection do we know anything about the injuries that people actually sustained from harvesting the sedge only really what we know over the injuries that we sustained while we're doing it today which are deep lacerations down to the bone in some cases on the legs on the arms on the face and particularly around the tops of the legs as you're tying the bundles so it can be incredibly painful and then of course you've got the problem that you using tools exactly sedge is cutting midsummer working wrapped up in full Sun caused heat stroke and it was also the dreaded fen aid you malaria from mosquitoes in the marsh workers eased the shivers with comfort which was opium villages were allotted an area of fen to cut it's a wonder anyone took up the option but the professional said cutters or does everybody do it no it was a whole family affair the adults would use the size the women would collect the sedge up and the children would tie the bundles so you're doing it on top of everything else uses on top of everything else that you had to do and they would use the material for that chewed or they would sell it on to earn some money to buy some food for themselves this is well traditionally would have been a right handy tool if you were left-handed you would have just had to have gone with it as a right-handed tool so so sweeping sweeping you're not this is it we're doing this right that's perfect perfect it was a very long laborious job search was currently well into the 20th century but it's a really ancient worst job a Saxon poem says sedge groweth in water wounded grimly drawing blood from any man that make it any bra chopped it all away especially with a special stick and they swing around you've got to get them tight because as they draw out the water evaporates if they're not tight enough it all falls out yeah there any money you got the Sun beating down on you yeah one down a thousand to go but if cutting every inch of a thatched roof by hand was bad there was worse to come relations country needed vast quantities of Britain's staple food bread so Nolan's is harvesting processing when you buy a new machine to do a job for you you think are great that's gonna make my life easier don't you well that's not always the case for everybody concerned take threshing which is separating the wheat from the chaff which is traditionally done by guys whacking at it with flails and then the farmers started buying threshing machines and sure it made their lives easier the job got done quicker and they made more profits but as far as the actual pressures were concerned half of them were immediately made redundant and the other half were faced with a whole new bunch of really bad jobs the corn was harvested in the autumn and in thousands of the winter depression so learn we've got a perfect date attack men leading missions then who have worked in freezing conditions in a machine are my breasts okay yes you're not too bad but I think you also have new york's insanely wealthy yolks these are bits of fine define that you tie around the bottom of your trouser make was to stop the rats and mice running up first they really did that wasn't just a myth no no no they really did have to do it who are the people who did this well they were mostly farm laborers but it was a very busy time so it would be a question of all hands on deck most of the threshing was done by contractors so the farmer would ring up the contractor and say can you come and Thresh my stack next week he would bring the machinery the engine drivers especially so he come with machine but the farmer himself would provide the rest of the labor so everybody would get involved the farmer himself farm workers children off school and indeed the farmer's wife they'd all be called in to help with this very busy time of year right Ron and I do it for the fool near the string yeah pick it up move it over and just flick it like that okay so then that's what beer so we can do that it's gotta be facing him he is facing the engine we flick it tonight no show me oh you'll stab his handlers right yeah so like this well that's a good one sir you'd like navigate this would be having of that one sir Thanks put it in there in the street that's right what did have in there I was you know but take a rotten shame to picture quickly everyone was paid by the chief so it's nurse T work laborers were traditionally given up to six pints of beer here we go any shapes in yeah and you know we funded a piggyback yeah the street why don't you keep onto the strings because the end of the diving is to came the string yet so you do have us when you grab us to use the strings to Troy the sacks up the crushing jaws shake the whole stable in quest at Hollinger on Monday last on alfrid last an able-bodied man threshing machine he became later in the afternoon intoxicated placed in cautiously among the wheels of the machine and receipts appear the steamers machine Malcolm shields when she was extricated she was in a state of insensibility are dead and her arm was crushed to atoms Harry kludgy 26 tapas field man was feeding the threshing machine with beans left the feeder to get a fork from eco drum he was immediately drawn in by the left leg and his lower body was torn away and smashed the pump died without speaking but incredibly risking life and limb on top of the pressure wasn't the least popular part of the process usually it was the job of the young lad the newest recruit to go into the chapel the drug and used with chicken thief Peter Blake you have to watch your head anymore that's it in your ears and your eyes tell you break down your throat Daniel let's say we call myself do it imagine doing that from don't you yeah I've imagined but after the threshing is one last like sixteen stone bags of grain up a ladder to keep it out of reach of rats and that's the way it goes hey the country's changed so that the jobs today you'll seldom see a mold catcher willow trap Rose molds under fences to show these things worth we've dumped the mad prehistoric job of harvesting stinging nettles we're just too painful a way to get a string and fibre for clothing Beckett's slapping space put themselves out of a job as soon as they drain the cambridge marshes they're gone too perhaps the strangest worst job ever Cindy ting started in the superstitious middle ages but was still recorded in the Rhondda Valley in 1881 we sometimes tend to think the countryside has been full of tightness mutually supportive communities but if you've got on the wrong side of them then you could find yourself living in the loneliest place on earth and there was no one who was ostracized more than the person who did my next worst job who was the Sin Eater and his job involved eating bread of course because in the countryside they believed in a mixture of religion and old style folk magic and one of the things that they thought was if someone died without their sins being forgiven then they would go to hell so if someone passed away without our solution they would place some salt and some bread on the corpse which were supposed to absorb the sins and then the Sin Eater came along and in order to get rid of the sins completely he ate salt and the bread so now all the sins were inside him and if you did it he got paid six months and a bowl full of beer but the unfortunate thing was that now the local people shunned him because he was so riddled with sin which seems pretty unfair because without him this poor bloke would still be in purgatory of course as the countryside moved into the modern era the Sin Eater died out but the jobs worse and worse until the 18th century the only people who really knew their way around the countryside the locals with an invasion by the French accurate maps because I defense ministry ordinance started so the South of England this Ordnance Survey employed finally trained surveyors and their mattress assistance the worst job provided the legwork national institution without the job of the poll man we wouldn't have these fantastic things today Ordnance Survey maps are part of the way we appreciate the countryside part for anything else they stop us useless town is from getting lost but imagine the longest the worst day you've ever had traipsing through mud and stinging nettles and bushes and you'll just get an inkling of the horrible job of being a pole man the first row is to get a basic idea of the layout of the land from a triangulation by taking Francis Church is northeast and that building over there is north-northwest thanks very much I'll drop that down here this is one of the several sorts of instruments that people could have used to fill in the details after they fix the main triangulation points why was it such a bad job I mean all right it wasn't that much fun slipping up a hill and back again well it might be lovely weather today but it wouldn't be always like that you would be out in the rain and the fog and even the snow if you were really unlucky and if you're the surveyors assistant your surveyor is going to be sending you to all the nastiest bits really he doesn't want to go himself and I'll bet I'm carrying all your stuff of it absolutely nice heavy equipment and quite a lot of miles to travel so what did the poor man do with this pole the pole is for carrying to a far distant point where the surveyor can actually sight it and Mark the bearing down on the map so that that point can then be fixed I'd like you to take a poll and go off to roughly where that telegraph pole is over there please mapping one field could mean miles of walking back and forth through thistles mud and mire and if you've got the instructions wrong we meant double the distance I couldn't tell what you would find is shown here with your signals I was trying to say go further up the hill to the next corner but now you've come back it's go further up the hill from to the next corner from here eventually surveyors came up with a signal system that works until walkie-talkies the next thing we need to have a go at is measuring on the ground with a chain because there are some places where you couldn't actually use a sighting Pole originally people use Roman ropes with not seen that suitable intervals for measuring distances but very often it rained and the ropes got wet and the length changed what did the local people feel about all these surveyors traipsing up and down their land well very often they didn't like it very much I think was probably imagine if it was the Ordnance Survey they thought what's the government up to sending these military types around to [ __ ] across our fields are they gonna put the taxis up or if it was an ordinary landowner he was having his field surveyed they all think well he's going to put the rents up for all the tenants and make more money out of us endeavor the locals were so hostile they stoped displayers but it was the work itself that was the real downside especially that shame even in 1771 a surveyor moans they can't get an assistant to leave the chain over rough mountains for under a shilling a day [Music] okay and then drag it back along the same line one chain is a cricket pitch 22 yards 18 make one mine even if this was the wrong sign that wasn't telling houses I think this place is pretty well surveyed now what do you think the very worst part of being a surveyor was well perhaps the worst thing would be when you thought you'd got to the end and you thought you've got a final result and somebody came along and raised some doubt or other and you had to go back and check something all over again so I think really we need you to take that compass and go back up to the top of the hill and check the original readings you serious well I threw a boss I think I should be serious [Music] ah that's the poll man's job I'm resigning but although our Ordnance Survey maps rely on his work our mental picture of the countryside of the past relies on a very different last job John Constable is the quintessential painter of the countryside today pictures like this can seem charged with child box nostalgia but in his day constable was seen as daringly knew what was so revolutionary was the clouds which he painted with meteorological accuracy and the white flecks he used to render the shifting flicker of light and weather or leaves contemporaries found this unique way of using white paint so startling but they contemptuously refer to it as constables snow and this snow as well as things like glazed pots and even makeup required a lead white paint maker prepared to dedicate himself to hours of painstaking and highly toxic work what are we doing here this is a very very old process this is a called stack mate process ancient Romans ancient Egyptians were doing it this is corroding blue lid into white lid keep going you don't have to push away from the 17th century onwards penniless women were bought at hiring fairs to make LED white on a large scale heavy sheet LED is rolled into coils so they can be corroded using a primitive chemistry I was about to find out how primitive humming in here oh wow you just get hit by this wall of ammonia this was a horse dung this is horse dung corroding the lid in the bottom of each of these pots is vinegar that you have to use urine so what's the chemical reaction that takes place what's taking place here is that the lead is first of all being toh converted into lead acetate yeah the lead acetate in the atmosphere here from the dung which is giving off carbon dioxide is then converted to lead carbonate lead carbonate and lead hydroxide and that is white LED so what do we do now we've got to fill the whole of this space here a whole of it everywhere here with the abyss and then we shut the doors and lock it up for six months good idea now while I set these out there's a shovel yeah you'll find a heap of dung around the corner find a barrow that's a dumb please it's a worse job it Chumlee horse turned over you go the women who stacked the dog didn't have the foggiest about the chemicals they did know her toughness your person they had to build stacks up to 12 meters high then they carry trays of lead weighing 25 kilos up ladders and the de stench of ammonia from the tons of horse food it was disgusting but it worked if you've ever experienced the heat in the middle of a composting that's gross yes it's grass a processed via a horse's bottom heaving with bacteria you wouldn't like to borrow a pair of gloves now you say what happens next right well we got to do a bit family around that yeah it's the important thing is to keep these these pots of got to be clean yeah so pull one of those out yeah and then it goes in like that should be easier to try try that one there okay and pop the pot in I just checked there's nothing inside it and it is clean it's got to keep the lid clean yeah okay so that into that will go the vinegar then we'll go this the coil will sit above the vinegar like that yep and then we leave that for six months and what does it look like at the end of six months I'll show you what's a bit differently yesterday this is actually a simulation because if this were white LED this would be a toxic substance toxic for the worth it's toxic for the workers toxic for you and me and we're not why we're me these gloves I'm giving you the glove thank you but we're not if this were white lid we're not properly protected understand right so what a worker would be involved in is taking this out of here and bear in mind this is a woman and this weighs that's nine kilos one and a half stone yeah you don't have to lift this coil out and unroll it good yes do go on yep get it sort of get all the powder off normally you'd be collecting this in a trade yeah so I can see that all this dust is coming off it yes what would it breathe in what would it do to us well if you were a pregnant woman this would have an effect on the developing nervous system could possibly cause abortion could lead to learning difficulties in young children how did you know whether you'd ingested so much of this that you were putting your unborn child at risk well in the 19th century when people started to be concerned about health in fact they were concerned in the 18th century and the French Revolution they tried to do away with white Lidl together but found that they couldn't inspectors used to go around the factories and ask all the workers to stand like divers with their confronted them like that and if a person couldn't raise his hands it was called wrist drop and he couldn't raise his hands because the signal from his brain to his finger top tips was not constant so he couldn't hold his hand up it didn't always work in 1872 a teenager called Charlotte Rafferty had worked for just five months at the lead white firm of walkers Parker in Canada before she collapsed and died the powder was mixed with oil to form a paste artists then further diluted this but even with the my new quantities they used on their canvas they drank milk to try and prevent absorbing the net so we've got our lead white paint and I'm going to use this bit to paint the tiny little object because transformed our countryside the countryside has always been survival golf started with Scott setting stones down rabbit holes with sticks it was made from bull's-hide and boiled feathers by a craftsman the worst job why worst just enter his workshop well I'm gonna make golf balls we are hang on I was about to say why on earth would that be a worst job but I think I already know smells probably sick set you up for it this is horrible whatever is this feathers no I did boiling feathers it's not quite so bad so what is it we're making precisely ah we are making precisely an early form of golf ball known as a feathery hence the feathers it's not round is it no it's like a Pixies rugby ball you see that little stitch all the way along there it's very light that's of three pieces the body feather is stopping you and is the 1850s Tutankhamun eels recreated the feathery pattern from museum exhibits the letters sewn together before being turned inside out and stuffed with the stinking feathery gunk the two centuries feather EES were the only golf hundreds of craftsman apprentices did this mind-numbing job amidst the stench of great fats and feathers it is extraordinary there is virtually that much feather into this until 1850 feathery makers made a good if tedious and smelly living supply never met demand for their product count fingers stinky feathers fly his buzzing round how many of these he reckoned he'd make in a day at the time they record about three to five a day and how many would you need for one round of coal between seven and eight so one bloke couldn't make in a day enough balls for some other chap to actually using one round that's correct around us a little bit and put it in your hands and then just roll it on your hands to Kentucky comfortable nice and slowly but in the mid 19th century the invention of the latex gutta-percha ball destroyed the feathery market leaving hundreds of workers destitute so do these first feathers for 150 years actually work oh wow that really shifted didn't know that's excellent if it wasn't for the advances of the feathery man then blokes like Tony would still be driving stones down hills and putting them into rabbit holes but it has to be said that sticking your face into a vat full of rancid boiling feathers does make it a worse job although at least your feet are dry and firmly on the ground which is more than can be said for the very worst rural job of all I've been looking at Countryside what it is today which is the very worst ending of the state even the outcasts reddleman stable no for me the very worst is a mind-numbing ly terrifying job without which we wouldn't have one of the most important symbols of village life it's the steeple Jack the countryside revolves around the communities who've made it what it is for centuries these stone treatments of fragile they're literally tied together with iron without the steeple Jack these key features of the landscape would simply collapse Here I am as a steeple jack actually steeple Jack's were really respected because they were skilled craftsmen and they earned quite a good wage as well but frankly any job which involves climbing about 60 metres up into the air and just clinging on to a bit of stone is my idea of hell and when it got to the Victorian period it was even worse because of the smog which meant that all the iron work got corroded and everything was covered in black gunk Roger I know today I'm gonna have to put all this safety kit on but yeah what kind of gear did they have to protect themselves in Victorian times in the Victorian times they would have had absolutely nothing they just had a straight ladder up the side of the church spire and you were about to climb that and do you work when he got to the top you would have had a bosun seat which was still using today but there would have been no no safety devices on that at all photos from one steeple Jack firm showed just how perilous it was three men from this company had Falls from more than 60 feet why did they go up there to maintain the structure before we started installed in lightning conductors onto these sort of structures to protect them there was struck by lightning quite frequently with consequent damage to the masonry and there was a vein etc so what do you want us to do today we want you to go right to the very tip of the spire today to pitch the weathercock down that's not been repaired for at least 50 years so it's not just that I've gotta go up there I've got to go right up to the very top and that's it pick out the largest heaviest thing that hasn't been touched for 50 years Oh fantastic wouldn't you know it this isn't any old some Mary's Bloxom it's got the highest magnificent view looking down it is a little bit scary and this is what halfway up this is half way up yes so not a breather here and then up to the top of the spire I don't know if I can do this there we go yep you'll be fine how would they've got the fixings for the ladders they would have driven a wedge into the wall my own way yeah and just tied the ladders to that and then when they got to the top of one ladder climb up to that and then rig another ladder on top of that that's it you know tie the two let's work together not this letter was going to be an angle it's vertical it's it's not that that electrical only it's got the same angle this aspire my legs are shaking already and I've even gotten to the wrong [Music] [Music] so just keep up a regular rhythm I think I'm just worried about anything hey Raj yes what do they do if they want it away all of you ever been more kidding around in town on the nice clear sunny day yeah and you felt a lot of moisture on your forehead that's a staple Joe parish records are littered with staple Jack fatalities lightning strikes scaffolding he survived three falls from height by toppling just 15 feet yeah finally got to the top Tony I didn't think would actually be golden there's still a few little bits of gold left on it but it's pretty rough that is by our standards she's standing up very much it's wobbly with you on it I tell you grip of that you'll be fine come off here yeah just sit completely very heavy he's got a bit of suction in it because see it's quite tight on the rod that's a that's a bullet Oh Tony Ethel date from the Second World War okay Tony you ready for it yeah you came all the way up here for yeah job done no no incredible feeling of satisfaction although we've got to take this lot back down the bottom again there but if you hadn't been for the steeple jacks and the threshers and the nettle harvesters then we wouldn't have tastic countryside that we've got today and the same is true of our towns and our industry and our monarchy it was the workforce who made the history of Groton home [Music]

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 135,345

Rating: 4.8988194 out of 5

Keywords: history history documentary funny history fun history school, timeline, bbc documentary, history documentary, full documentary, full length documentaries, documentary history, absolute history, worst jobs in history, worst jobs in history tudor, worst jobs in history medieval, worst jobs in history industrial revolution, worst jobs in history victorian, worst jobs in history dark ages

Id: 60-ZFj4knD0

Length: 48min 26sec (2906 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2019