- Our country's history happened not just because of the
greatest figures of the period, but because of ordinary people
getting their hands dirty doing a lot of very disgusting jobs. This time, the poor souls who had to dish out
medieval medical cures, the human hamsters who
made cathedrals possible, and how walking in wee
supported an entire economy. These are just some of the
worst jobs of the Middle Ages. (dramatic music) The Middle Ages is what we
call the 500-year period that ended just before 1500. It was when the great
cathedrals and castles of England were built, the time of the crusades,
of bishops and barons, when Magna Carta was signed, and when Robin Hood and his
Merry Men terrorized Sherwood. The country prospered
under the wool trade, then suffered the ravages
of the Black Death. But above all, it was the Age of Chivalry. Think saintly nobles, jousting champions and pure maidens. Think battles and bravery. Think deeds of derring-do. Think again. Whoops! We do tend to have a
rather romantic attitude towards the Age of Chivalry,
with knights in shining armor fighting for fair damsels in a misty haze. But, actually, that's got far more to do with the sentimental nature of the Victorians than with reality. So, what were knights really like? What did they do? Who looked after them? Well, that brings me
to my first worst job, because you didn't start
off being a knight, you started off on the very
lowest rung of the ladder, being an arming squire. (men groaning)
(bright music) The arming squire was
actually a combination of a valet and a washerwoman. To plumb the depths of
the knightly hierarchy, I've come to Arundel
Castle in West Sussex. Oh, look at the state of you! Your supposed to be a
knight in shining armor. He looks as though he's been
hit by a load of cowpats. Could you really have look like
that at the end of a battle? - Probably even worse
than that, to be honest. This, as you see, is
everyday work for myself. It's pretty grimy, it's wet, it's slimy. I've been in it for probably eight hours. I haven't had a toilet break. So things are pretty hot and sweaty and smelly in here as well. - Gavin, your his arming squire. When he comes back after
eight hours on the field, what's the worst part of the job for you? - Well, actually taking
him out of the armor. He might have fallen into blood, he's gonna fall into where
horses have been cut down. - [Tony] So how do we get it off? - Well, we start with the helm, just to give him a little
bit of air in there. - [Tony] So what would you be doing while he was bashing away at
the enemy for eight hours? - Well, if he hadn't called me to be at his side on the
field battle as well, I'd be at the back of the lines, maybe with another piece of armor, if something was broken, if he got caught, I could be there to run
in and help him out. - Would you have been trained
much before you could do this? - Oh, very much. I mean, I started off as a page, then I'll become a
squire and at some point, maybe in my late teens, early 20s, at that point, if I was brave enough and if I had warranted enough,
then I would be knighted. - So Gavin, have you got the
chance to end up like Paul, a proper full-fledged knight? - That's right, yeah. As I have been in his
service for many years, so I'll be trained up in
the ways of the knight, the ways of chivalry. - He needs to carve my meat as well. - Yeah.
- Beg your pardon? - Have to carve my meat. He
has to learn how to carve that in a proper fashionable manner. - Basically, you're like a
Formula 1 pit team, aren't you. - [Gavin] Pretty much so. - A good team would be
like a Formula 1 team. You could get in and out
of it relatively quickly. The problem of course is, what're you gonna do once you're out of it and some poor person has
to clean your things? And that's likely to be my squire or another attendant that
I've got within the camp. - There are 24 pieces
of armor in a full suit, weighing up to 27 kilograms,
supported by a leather harness and worn over a hot and
sweaty, padded jacket. Oh dear, oh dear! If you'd been scared during
the course of the battle, I wouldn't want to have been down here. And of course, most of it is
running down literally my legs. Yes! All right. That's a step too far for me. (dramatic music) In order to clean up the dirty armor, the arming squire would
have used vinegar and sand like this stuff here. Occasionally, they used
to include a bit of urine into the mix to give added zest. As you can see, it's pretty effective
although it's horrible stuff. It would remove your
fingerprints pretty quickly. But this is just the tedium of the camp. What would the actual
battle have been like? (dramatic music) Before you got to clean out the armor, you had get to the battlefield, and that could be a nightmare. Take the most famous
conflict of the Middle Ages, the Battle of Agincourt. Our squire would have marched 260 miles through France in 17 days, living outdoors in almost
continuous heavy rain. Food and clean drinking water was scarce. Dysentery killed far more
soldiers on the way to Agincourt than died on the battlefield. (horses neighing) The English were hopelessly outnumbered, but the heavy rains created a quagmire for the French cavalry
in their heavy armor. They became sitting ducks for the English army's
mightiest weapon, the longbow. In the end, it was the
archers that did it. They won the battle. Their arrows might not have been able to pierce a suit of armor, but they could kill the horses. And they did, they decimated them. Now, you might think that being an archer was one of the better medieval jobs. But in many ways it wasn't. If you got captured, you
had your fingers sliced off. And at the end of the battle, it really did become one of
the worst jobs in history. There were no doctors on the battlefield, no St John Ambulance running
around with stretchers So the archers used to
wander among the carnage and when they found someone
who was seriously injured, they put them out of their misery. (eerie music) So being a knight wasn't
all it was cracked up to be. You could die on the battlefield and even if you were
only severely injured, you'd probably get
finished off by a friend. But if you stayed at home,
you were just as likely to die from getting a common cold, particularly, given the kind
of cures that were on offer. In the year 1348, the Black Death swept
into England from Europe. It decimated the population and killed around about two million men, women and children in a couple of years. Understandably, people began to get more and more frightened of falling ill. (dramatic music) Of course, we know that they
were fighting a losing battle against overcrowding and poor sanitation. Remember, in those days,
household waste and excrement were just chucked out of
the windows into the streets in the towns and in the cities. But most people had no idea that that was the cause of their problems, and instead, in their
panic, they began to rely on a whole host of bizarre remedies, and for us, that means
lots more worst jobs. Medical theories were sophisticated but as we now know, hopelessly misguided. Success rates were terribly
low, even before the plague. So any career in medieval medicine was bound to be frustrating. Oh, and messy, very messy. How about a few of
these if you don't fancy walking around with a bottle of aspirin? Leeches. In the medieval period, these were a staple medical treatment. The idea was that as they
suck the blood out of you, they'd suck the badness out as well. In fact, they were so popular, that it brings me on to my next disgusting
job, leech collector. (dramatic music) By the 20th century, leeches
were almost declared extinct. So I'm heading for one
of the few spots left for a leech safari,
Romney Marshes in Kent, with ranger Owen Leyshon. Cor! It doesn't half smell! I'm practically up to the
top of my waders in one step. What sort of people would've
been leech-gatherers? - [Owen] They would
have been professionals, but they would also have
been people like thatchers, who would've had leeches stuck to them as they were collecting
all these reeds and sedges and they would've passed
them on to dealers. - Could have made a lot of
money out of these reeds if you're a thatcher, couldn't you. Still have a nice bit of pin money from the leeches on your feet. Apparently, if we jiggle around a lot, then the leeches will think
we're cows or sheep or something that has come down to the
water today to have a drink, and they'll come from the bottom and attach themselves onto us. Mind you, they wouldn't have waders in the Middle Ages, would they? - No, they wouldn't, no. They would've had Scottish
women in the Northern England, Lake District and Yorkshire, they would've gone to good leech areas and they would've gone in barefoot into these marshy areas
looking for leeches. - [Tony] What are leeches? - [Owen] They're worms with character. - [Tony] They really are worms? - [Owen] Yeah, they are, they're
the peak of worm evolution. They cross-fertilize each other and lay spongy cocoons in the root balls of the
vegetation along the shoreline. And little leeches will
emerge after several weeks. And as they get more and more
blood meals over a season, they will get bigger and bigger but also move on to bigger prey items. - Do we use leeches in medicine today? - Well, let's say if you
chopped your finger off, you take your finger to the hospital, and have it sewn back on. But then what you would
have is a leech popped on the end of your finger, when then would have drawn the blood up to the tip of your finger. - [Tony] Is that one?
- [Owen] Oh, my gosh! Yes! - (laughs) The hunter has
struck! I have leeched! I have caught the leech! Actually, I'm copping
out, really, aren't I? In the Middle Ages there would've been all these
Glasgow girls, barelegged with leeches these hanging off their legs, and I've got waders on. I will not be overshadowed, come on. Is it gonna hurt? - No, it won't. It'll leave a permanent,
Y-shape scar on your leg. - How big? - Only the size of the mouth.
- Oh. - [Owen] Here we go. - [Tony] Oh, no. It doesn't like me! Oh, for God's sake, do the deed! It has just bit me. - [Owen] Yeah? - Definitely just bit me. Oh my God, he's swelling up. How much bigger than
this will the leech get as it sucks my blood? - Well, it depends very
much how they feed, but they can increase their
size by about five or six times. (laughs) We could be here for some time. - And these guys in the Middle, ouch! These guys in the Middle Ages,
it's really stinging now. When they had an illness, they could have 20 or 30 of
these things all around them? - That's right, I mean. And can you imagine the mess after they've all been taken off you? They would have been bleeding profusely. - [Tony] Shall we take it off now? You can really see the
blood now, can't you? - The hirudin, the anticoagulant
in the saliva of the leech, will keep open up that wound
and keep it flowing of blood. - I'm glad you shared that with me. Actually, leeches were only
one way of making you bleed. In the Middle Ages, there
were loads of others, which brings me to my next
worst job, the barber-surgeon. (dramatic music) Being a barber was a very
gruesome way to earn a living. In the Middle Ages, barbers were qualified to use a range of razors,
knives and scalpels. Haircuts went hand in hand with
amputation and bloodletting. I'm really, really ill. I think I may possibly
even be at death's door. So I've pulled together my last few pence in order to invest in this
man, the barber-surgeon. Chris, how ill am I, actually? - Well, to look at your urine
sample, you are pretty ill otherwise you wouldn't have come to me. - [Tony] This is the
first wee of the morning. - This is the first wee of the morning when colors are strongest. So the surgeon would be able to tell exactly what was
wrong with you from that. - [Tony] The body supposedly
contained four humors, blood, phlegm and yellow and black biles. Ill-health was caused by their imbalance. To diagnose a patient,
you compared their urine with charts, by sight, smell and- - Tasty, taste it.
- Oh, God! You don't need to taste
any more. You really don't. - I would say that you're
normally a choleric person. But the wee, it's got darker, so you've got an excess of
melancholy in your body. So you've been a bit down
lately, you've been depressed. - [Tony] Yeah, just a little bit - [Chris] And that's been
affecting your health. - Bristol City aren't
winning often enough! - Oh, well! I can't cure that. (both laughing) There's nobody down there, I don't think. - [Tony] These are some fairly
fierce-looking instruments. - [Chris] Well, this is a tool
kit of a professional man, a barber-surgeon who's made a lot of money from his profession. - [Tony] Presumably, these knives are for chopping off people's bits and pieces? - Oh yes, this is my amputation set. If you're trying to take off someone's arm with a straight knife,
just start off like that, and around there, and around there. Then we've got to lift it
up and get underneath it. - [Tony] It's fiddly.
- It's fiddly, yeah, so, yeah. So instead we'll have a nice
curved knife, like this. - [Tony] Yeah. - [Chris] Which will fit around like that, and in one great swoop, it could take probably 3/4
of the muscle off your arm. And the back of the
blade is sharp as well. So with a backstroke, you
just take that bit off. - [Tony] Just imagine having
to remove somebody's limb when they didn't have the
benefit of modern anesthetics. - It wasn't something people
came to you for very often. They had been to real extremes before they'd go the extent of employing you to do something like that. - [Tony] So does that mean
there wasn't much money in it? - There was a great deal of
money when it was available. But it wasn't available very often. So I had to make a living.
- [Tony] Cutting hair. - [Chris] Cutting hair and shaving people. - [Tony] Well these things
are pretty much like in the barber's shop when I was a kid. - Well, of course, their
functions haven't changed. This is a horn comb,
but it's still a comb. And this is a razor. It's a bit more fancy
than the modern ones, but it's still just a blade. - [Tony] Can you stop a minute? I want to talk about something
else I've just noticed. Is this what I think it might be? - It is. In the medieval times, they believed that when
you swallow medicine, it'll go into the stomach
and be broken down by the heat of the liver because the stomach was like a small oven, which will break down things through heat. So you have to put it in by another route. - Not this route. - Not that route. - It's a route down here, isn't it? - Absolutely. This is a
clyster, a medieval enema tube. - It's very cold, apart
from anything else. - Well, we can warm it. We've got to smear it,
smear it well with lard, so it slides in smoothly because it must travel
in at least six inches to get beyond the sphincter muscles. - Six inches is, what, that? - Yeah. - Goodness me! Make your eyes water, wouldn't it. - It would. And then the medicine
is poured down in there. - Yeah. - [Chris] And ram it down with your stick just to make sure it all
comes out at the other end. - You see, you learn something watching this program, don't you. - It's not just medicine. If you were ill, they might feed you by that method. - What, up the arse?
- Absolutely! - Really?
- It didn't work. But that's what, but
they believed it would. - Would give the barber-surgeon
a laugh, wouldn't it? - [Chris] Specially with
people he didn't like. (dramatic music) - But if you couldn't
afford a colonic irrigation from a barber-surgeon, then for your day-to-day ailments you'd probably visit the wise woman. And when you see the ingredients
she used in her medicines, I think you'll understand why I have designated it a worst job. A wise woman was viewed with
a mixture of fear and respect. She was an agony aunt, midwife and district nurse, all combined. The church usually turned a blind eye but there was always the risk of being tried for witchcraft. Remedies ranged from the common
sense to the nonsensical. For instance, to cure
warts, just take one eel. Oh, it's wiggly. - Yep, it's alive. - You haven't mentioned that to me. Right, where do I cut him? - Just, just about there. Just behind the fins at the front. That's it. (Tony groans)
Yes, it wills struggle. - I'm not surprised.
- Yes. That's it. Got it? - Yes, done.
- Wonderful. - Now, which bit do we want? - Right. Now, it's this bit here. - Yeah.
- Okay? And the idea is that to
use it as a wart cure, you have to then rub it on the wart - Yeah.
- Oops! On the affected area, Thusly, and then, obviously, once you've done that,
you then take this out and you bury it, and as this rots away, your wart will disappear, sir. - Does it work? - Apparently so, apparently so. - [Tony] Why have we got a load
of worms and bits of string? - Well, apparently, this is
quackery medicine at its best. If you go to a a physician
who isn't properly trained, then what would happen is,
if you had a sore throat, they would suggest, depending on the severity
of the sore throat, whether or not you would have
one, two, 10 or even 20 worms on a cord tied around your
neck, alive, as these are, and then the idea was that when these died and stopped wriggling, your sore throat would be cured. - So I just put them on like this? - Yep, that's right. And they're supposed to
go to next to your skin. So they go inside your shirt. (laughs) - [Tony] Well, you hold that.
- [Jane] Okay. - Here we go. - They're rather cold
and clammy, I'm afraid. Are we in? - [Tony] No, got it in my mouth! - [Jane] Sorry. Well, that's always one of the dangers. - Yep.
- Okay? And then we basically just tie it off. And then obviously- - Wonderful, have you noticed that the head of this
eel is still wriggling? - Yes.
- As we speak. - [Jane] Yes, they are
notoriously difficult to dispatch. - Does that mean that my
wart's getting small again? - Ah, no, it's when it has to rot away. So it's gonna take some time, I'm afraid. - I think my sore throat's better. - Right. We shall take this off then, sir. - [Tony] Wise women tended
to be paid by barter. So they'd have traded their
cures in return for a service like having a roof fixed
or a supply of food. This was medicine for the poor. But natural herbs and ingredients often had genuine healing properties. What other cures have you got? - Well, we have nettles. Nettles are particularly
good for arthritic-y joints. And the idea is that you
actually whack the joint with the nettles. And, obviously, the
stinging of the nettles stimulates blood flow. But the problem is that you also have the sting of the nettle. Now, to counteract the
sting of the nettle, what you do it you bruise nettle
tips, and I have some here, and you basically just keep
squishing them like that. Because you've bruised them, it's quite safe to pick them up. Then you rub that on
the back of the joint. It takes away the pain from the sting. - That really works?
- It does work. - Come on then, give us a sting. - Oh! Right, okay. Okay?
- Yeah. Oh, blimey! Day sting, not night sting. - (laughs) Okay. Now, is that stinging? - Yes! It's stinging. - Right. Okay, okay, right. Have to rub it quite vigorously. - That really hurt!
- Yeah. I'm sorry, I do apologize. Okay?
- All around there, yeah. - So you won't be troubled with arthritic-y joints this weekend. - You might, if this doesn't work. (both laughing) - How's that feeling? - My hand still stings like hell! - [Jane] Oh right. Well, in that case, I think
a pick-me-up is called for. - I'll have a pick-me-up. - Okay, well I have some by the fire, which is bubbling away quite
nicely, and it's worm stew. - It is worm stew!
- Worm stew. - How do you make it? - Well, basically, take your fresh worms, which we have in the pot. Now, I've already started
to cook some of them down. We've mixed in bread,
a selection of herbs, some water and some butter. - [Tony] We know now that
the worms would've provided the benefits of protein to
an otherwise sparse diet. But boiling up weird ingredients could be easily be
construed as witchcraft, and if she was accused, there
could be a high price to pay. - You would be arrested, you
would have trials by ordeal. You would possibly have an
open grate with an iron bar in and be made to pick it
up and walk across a room and set it down without dropping it. And then your hands would
be tied with bandages. And they would be
checked after three days, and if they were festering, and showing no signs of healing, then you were convicted as guilty. Because God would intervene
if you were innocent. - [Tony] I think your soup's bubbling. It's not burning, is it? - No, no, no, no. It's fine. I should think it's probably ready by now. It looks a bit black, but that's
how it's supposed to look. There you go, have a try of that. - Oh, I saw little lumps in it! - [Jane] That's the worms. It's supposed to look like that. - [Tony] It's quite hot as well. - [Jane] Go on, you'll
feel wonderful after it. (Tony slurping) - I wish I was dead! It tastes like phlegm that's slightly flavored
with chicken, doesn't it. - Yes, it does taste a
bit like chicken and snot. (both laughing) Would you like me to
take that back off you? (both laughing) - The wise woman and other
miserable medical careers have been swept away by modern science. We've still got medieval
architecture, though. But that was only built
on the strained backs of a lot more people doing
a lot more worst jobs. When Richard The Lionheart set
off for the crusades in 1189, he thought that by fighting
a holy war for Christianity, he'd be saving his soul. In the Middle Ages, money could buy you the love of God and a place in heaven. Crusading was one way to get
these spiritual brownie points. Another way was by building
something big and bold for the church, like a cathedral. There are 24 medieval
cathedrals in Britain. They took generations to construct. Building sites became
home to whole communities of craftsmen and laborers, who
devoted their working lives to these monuments of medieval faith. Fortunately for us, we
can get a bit of an idea of what working on a medieval
cathedral would've been like because the tower of St Edmundsbury is still under construction today. (engine revving)
(dramatic music) Here in 21st century Bury St Edmunds, there's plenty of mechanized help. 700 years ago, everything
was done by hand, or rather, by thousands of hands. Building a cathedral in a city was like bringing a new
car plant to an area today. It provided hundreds
of jobs, high and low. But even prestigious workers
like stone masons had it tough. Before they even started building, they had the hellish tasks
of quarrying and cutting and carting the raw stone
to the building site. (engines roaring) Andre Vrona is the most
sought-after stone mason in the country, and the master
mason at Bury St Edmunds. He's brought me to Ketton
Quarry, near Peterborough, to look for just the
right piece of limestone for the St Edmundsbury tower. Have people used the stone around here for building for a long time? - Oh, it's been recorded as
being used from this area extensively since the
15th century, certainly, to build manor houses, cathedrals, mainly ecclesiastical
buildings in the north of here, south of here and East Anglia. - [Tony] How would they
have dug a piece out? - (sighs) Well, you can
guess that these guys wedged and levered it and drove pins in. And they would've got
into the natural strata of the stone underneath it, and raised it, just a small amount. (engine roaring) - Nowadays, transporting big pieces of stone is pretty easy, but in the Middle Ages,
it was a real problem. Basically, you had two alternatives. You could either use water,
if there was a river nearby, or else you could use a cart, which was incredibly
slow and very expensive. In fact, the cost of
transporting the stone could be four times as much as the value of the stone in the quarry. And when you think that
a lot of the stones in the English cathedrals
came from Normandy, you can imagine how much
the costs really escalated. (drill whirring) So to save money on transport,
there was a team of people whose entire day was
spent cleaving the stone. Andre, you've got modern technology but how would the lads
have cut up these blocks in the Middle Ages? - Well, it's called delving
and using plug and feathers. - What's plug and feathers? - Are these. Feathers and a plug that's tapered. It applies pressure and it splits. - Go on then, show me how to delve. (sledgehammer thudding) In medieval times, these
holes were laboriously drilled with a hammer and spike. - That one's tight enough, Tony. - You can hear the
different noise, can't you. - Yeah, completely different.
So if you'd like to have a go? - Yeah. - A couple of taps on each one. - Yeah. Oh missed it! - [Andre] Keep going,
one more big one. There. - Oh look at that, look at that! Oh my God, it's opening up! That's extraordinary. That
was like a little earthquake! You just felt the whole stone move! See, I hardly hit that at all. - It's a simple thing. It's not a strength
thing, it's the pressure. It's relatively simple and easy. - [Tony] Have a look, look at this! Look, it's gone right down to the bottom! That's amazing! It's so simple, isn't it? - It is, yeah. It's basically the form of splitting stone to get these dimensional
shapes up the quarry to save them carting waste
from the quarry to the site. And this is how they did it. - A medieval cathedral building site would've been a fantastic place. No one would ever have
seen anything of this size and grandeur before, and it
would've been absolutely teeming with workmen, setters, hewers, layers, wallers and of
course, the stone masons. Higher wages, better paid, but it would've still been a
job with plenty of dangers. The master mason at Canterbury Cathedral was a Frenchman called William. And he was working on
the scaffolding one day at this kind of height, when suddenly the whole
scaffolding collapsed and he went plummeting down. Masonry and timber and
scaffolding fell on top of him. And he was so badly damaged, he couldn't do his job any more. They had to send him home,
and an Englishman took over. Andre, it's amazing when
you look down there. Look down, right down
here. That is so vertical. Andre, do you think that the
masons in the medieval period would've been able to make
pillars this straight? - Oh, there's no doubt that
in some cases they would, but largely ecclesiastical
medieval buildings didn't achieve that. - [Tony] Why not? - Because over such a long
period that they were built, there would be varying
skill levels to the masons. - [Tony] And different people. You've built this whole thing. - [Andre] In two or three
years. They were 80 to 90 years. - [Tony] Yeah, the
problems might get lost. That's something a bit dodgy.
- That's right, exactly. Yeah, whereas you can be
forgiven years ago for an inch, pull it back on line, but
we're not allowed a quarter. - You're saying medieval masons
might've done a botch job. - Yeah, often they did, often they did. (upbeat music) - The St Edmundsbury project is using a medieval mortar made from lime. When it's mixed, it's harmless enough, but in the Middle Ages, making
lime was a high risk process for the lime burner,
and believe it or not, the mortal danger came from chalk. Michael, why do you need
chalk to make cathedrals? - I need chalk so that I've got
something to make lime from. By heating the chalk up, if I can heat the chalk up to red heat and hold it at red heat for a while, it'll change to quite
a different chemical, though it'll look much the same. - What does the lime do? - Lime, I think, holds
the whole thing together. It binds together the grains of sand to make a mortar and the
mortar holds the stones apart in a gentle cushioning sort of way. I'm gonna put a few pieces of
chalk into the bottom of this. - [Tony] The first stage
was making quick lime, a highly caustic alkali. This is a small scale
version of the process that medieval lime burners
used in their giant kilns. It was potentially deadly. - Keeping the lime kiln happy means watching it day and
night for perhaps 48 hours. If the burning isn't completely effective, they can create carbon monoxide. - What does that do to you? - It's horrible. It paralyzes you first and then kills you. It poisons your blood, stops
your blood taking in oxygen. During the process of the burn, it's not unknown for
people to fall in the kiln and not be able to get out
again, so they roast as well. - [Tony] Driving off
the oxygen in the kilns was dangerous enough, that
was only half the job. The resulting quick
lime was added to water to make slaked lime
used for making mortar. And it was a very risky business. - [Michael] I can try to show you that on a slightly bigger scale. I've brought on some lumps of quick lime. Very dangerous stuff. Why I'm wearing gloves, 'cause it'll eat through
my hands in no time at all. I'm gonna try a Roman technique to imitate the sort of lime
that we're using on the site. - [Tony] What? Like this?
- In this powder form. - [Tony] This powdered stuff. - [Michael] This powdered form of lime is much, much safer than quick lime. - And this is the powder that
you make the mortar with? But how do you get that into powder? - By adding water. That does not sound likely,
but that's the case. It's hugely dangerous. - [Tony] Why is it dangerous?
What does it do, this stuff? - It could spit like nobody's business. - So how did that affect the lime burners? - It was nasty. The caustic action of this
on their skin was dreadful. When it got in to their
eyes and their mouths, they were in real trouble. - Whoa! (laughs) Wow, it really goes, doesn't it! - I'm gonna put that in
that to make it bit safer. - Yeah. - But can you see how that
lump has crumbled already? - [Tony] Yes. That was like fireworks! - Quick lime is very thirsty material. If any of that got on your
skin, it could be very painful. - And they'd be handling
this stuff every day, and the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, and the quarrying, and the
long nights, and the dust. - They didn't live too
long. It was over quickly. (gentle music) (birds squawking) - Some cathedrals towered
up to 14 stories high. Without the benefit of the modern hoist just lifting the huge
blocks of stone to the top would've presented massive
problems for the masons. As a result, they had to develop state-of-the-art lifting machinery. Imagine what it would have been
like walking mile after mile after mile after mile after mile and getting absolutely nowhere. Well that's what it would've been like for the poor workers trapped inside that. Which brings me to my next
worst job, the treadmill worker. I've traveled all the
way to Normandy in France to see this replica,
which has been designed using medieval illustrations as a guide. It was the treadmill
that provided the power for the medieval crane, so if you're the one doing the treading, it was a pretty menial task, but it was crucially important. The medieval crane builders
had two alternatives. They could either build the small wheel, which was pulled around from the outside, or else they could make
a much bigger wheel, which was powered by two people inside. The bigger wheels could
lift the larger loads. But this was new technology, the cranes were really experimental, and there was always the danger
that they might collapse. So working inside that wheel
could be really dangerous. (dramatic music) The treadmill workers were
the unwitting guinea pigs at the center of a technological marvel. The cranes were built by trial and error, often breaking and killing people, then being modified and rebuilt. But they must've been pretty effective, or the buildings wouldn't
have been possible at all. Medieval illustrations seem to suggest that the crane was actually lifted onto the top of the cathedral
as it was being built. So, the craftsmen must
have had some sort of way of lifting the crane up in pieces, maybe using smaller cranes
or possibly a windlass. Here at Hambye, you can see that the walls are absolutely peppered
with these little holes which would've been for scaffolding. So, as the walls got higher,
so the scaff went higher, and the crane went up and up and up, until it was right on the very
top of the cathedral itself. This was technology that had been around since the Greeks and the Romans. But it had been completely lost in Western Europe until the Normans and the French went over to Constantinople and brought it back. In fact, it was these machines alone that enabled the great medieval
cathedrals to be built, because they were the only way
that people of that time had of lifting massive blocks
of stone the size of a car. And in fact, it's this
car that we're gonna lift. Michel, Frank! Allez! How does this work? - This crane works very easily. You know, the rope is
driving by the big wheels, but the rope is attached
to the axle of the wheels. - [Tony] The way the crane
works is pretty simple. The rope is attached to the axle in the middle of the treadmill, and in order to lift
the car just one meter, the axle has to turn at
least two or three times. Because the diameter of the
treadmill is so much greater, the amount of effort you have to put in to get the car to budge is spread out over a longer distance. It's like using a low gear
to peddle a bike uphill. These guys are almost
ready. Shall we get in? - [Roland] Yes. - [Tony] Are you ready, guys? (Roland shouting in foreign language) - [Tony] They're getting
in while it goes up. Will it be able to take
that weight as well? - [Roland] Yeah, oh, easily. This crane can take twice weight than we have actually, you know? - [Tony] It can take two tons? - [Roland] Oh, yeah. - Which way, this way?
- OK, to lift, we go this way. - [Tony] All right. - [Roland] We don't have to rush. Working slowly, we'll do the job anyway. (upbeat music) It's going now, look.
It's really going up now. Who were the people who would've
been doing this treading? - Most of the time they used blind people. - Blind people?
- Yes. - [Tony] Why was that? - To secure the whole process because if you turn inside too much, you will feel some kind of
attraction for the emptiness. - You mean if you're blind
you don't look down 300 foot and see the terrible fall that awaited. - Right. - That's very sympathetic
of them, isn't it? - [Roland] Yeah, it was one way too they can serve the community. - [Tony] Do you think- - [Roland] They was working for God, you know, building cathedrals. - [Tony] Do you think
they worked bare foot? - [Roland] Oh yes! Because they didn't
have shoes at the time. - [Tony] It's going up now. Look at that. See. You can feel the tug. You can feel there's more
weight on it now, isn't there? - Yeah.
- But it's not too difficult. Shall we stop now? Shall we turn around
and put them down again? - [Roland] No. Cut the rope, faster. (both laughing) - [Tony] Oh, this is no problem. - [Roland] Yeah, slowly. Uh, we stop! Small problem here. The weight is a problem- - Everything seems so safe and easy - Because the wheel is
make more than three times the machine the the
wheel and axle over here. - Until this apparently solid machine suddenly began to come apart at the axle. So the axle comes out
and the wheel drops out. - Yes, and we can't go
down to the 30 meter down. - I've suddenly I got an inkling of what being a treadmill
worker must've been like. Imagine being 200 foot
up in the air and blind, and suddenly realizing things
are starting to fall apart. (Roland speaking in foreign language) - This all may seem pretty safe like a couple of hamsters
going around in a wheel. But when you're in here, it
doesn't feel like that at all. You have no control over this thing. You can't just stop it and brake it. You can't just put your
hand out to stop it either, because you're frightened that as it whips past one of these things, it's gonna slice your fingers off. And when you try to bring it to a halt, the damn thing just keeps
moving and moving and moving. And it's wet and it's slippy. So when it's just going along fine, well, that's like you're on holiday, but as soon as there's a problem. Is it okay now? - Yeah. Now it's pretty safe. We can finish the jobs.
- Okay, let's get down. - [Roland] Have no problems.
We're going down that way. - [Tony] I'm keeping
my hands in my pocket. - [Roland] After you, gentleman. - I feel really nervous now. - [Roland] Really? - I can hear the creaking on my left ear! - [Roland] Oh, no! Come on. Okay, it's the safest
machine we have ever made, but we made only one. - Thank you for that! (both laughing) (upbeat music) Finding out about some of
these jobs has been bad enough, but which job's on the very lowest rung? Could I actually do it? Well, the Middle Ages
certainly had its fair share of dangerous and disgusting work. Being an arming squire could be menial, dirty, unhygienic and
you could get killed! But it was a job that could
lead to fame and fortune. Having been bitten, I can
tell you that leech-collecting sounds worse than it is. And practicing medieval
medicine, although messy, was at least better than being a patient. Building cathedrals had its hazards, though your handiwork
would outlive your lifetime by up to a hundred decades. But for me the very worst
job is one which comes from the main industry of the
Middle Ages, the wool trade. If your name's Fuller it's highly likely that at sometime in the
dim and distant past one of your ancestors was
involved in the job of fulling. And if manual labor's something
you do with your hands, then fulling is pedal labor 'cause you did it with your feet. And pee is the operative word. Because in order to make
wool soft and malleable it had to be trodden
for at least two hours underfoot in stale urine. (gentle music) In the Middle Ages, wool became the country's biggest export. By 1300, there were 15 million sheep, almost three times the human population. So fullers would've been
thick on the ground, too, a vital link between weavers,
dyers and cloth merchants. You could earn up to three times as much as a field laborer. But the work was so unpleasant that this must've been little comfort. When raw wool's spun and woven into a lose weave fabric, it's left dirty. The grease is needed to
ease the weaving process. It's after that the fuller has to turn this rough cloth into
something more usable. Well, this is fine. Why
don't they just put this on? - Well, if you, you need to finish it. This is, when you cut this, it will fray. - Yeah.
- And it's greasy. - [Tony] It is pretty greasy, isn't it? - [Ruth] But it's, you can make it better. It's a felting process. It
closes the fibers together. - [Tony] You can see that they are actually widely apart here. - [Ruth] You can see
daylight through that. Yes. - [Tony] Whereas here, smooth and just smells like cloth. - It's much cleaner. - So how does this fulling actually work? - You need water, you need
something to take the grease out and you walk about on it a
lot. Do you want to have a go? - Oh, I'll definitely have a
go. I'm really up for this. Okay, this is the upside. I get this nice vaguely
amusing costume to wear. And the basic job of fulling is okay. It's just a bit boring. Just marching up and down, and up and down in a vat for
seven or eight hours at a time. The downside is that I am
marching up and down in this. This is genuine human urine. This isn't a television trick or anything. It's not orange juice or dyed water. It's about 20 liters of stale urine here. If this was petrol, it would be enough to get
me from here to Newcastle. And it's been kindly donated by our production team over
the last couple of weeks. Thank you very much, guys, for your help with the experiment. You're ready, Ruth? - I think so. - [Tony] Then, let's get into it. (groans) Oh, that's heavy. - Smells bad?
(Tony groaning) - God, that smells!
- Thanks for keeping that. - It's like raw meat. (Tony retching) I'm really not looking
forward to this very much. 'Cause every time you breathe in- - Makes your eyes water. - (retching) The flies are
starting to gather around. It is quite disgusting,
isn't it? (retching) Well, I suppose we'd
better take our shoes off. - I've got my shoes off. I
have to tuck my skirt up. - I think you should, love. - It's not going in there. - Right, every time you
get a deep breath of it you forget what you're doing. You breathe in deep and woof! It hits the base of your
stomach and you wanna chuck. - [Ruth] Yeah. Let's go. It's cold! - (groans) They could've
warmed it up for us! Was there a special
technique involved in this? - Well, the important thing is to get as much movement as possible. So dancing is probably more
effective than walking. But basically you keep moving and every now and then, you
have to stop and move the cloth. - The important thing is not to breathe! - It's pretty vile. - Oh, it is, it's quite disgusting! - [Ruth] Yeah. - The reason they used urine is that when it had been left for a week or two it decomposed to produce a rich source of ammonia, which is perfect for removing the grease. They didn't have public loos at the time so part of the job would have involved collecting it from door to door. How long did they have to this for? Is it really seven or eight hours? - [Ruth] It depends very much
on the size of the cloth. But it can, yes, I mean
it can take a long time if you want a really heavy finish. The faster you move, the warmer you'd get. (both laughing) I don't know what you
do about upset stomachs. - Trouble is, when you start to move fast, you start to breathe more heavily! Do you think it's changing
the color of the cloth? - [Ruth] It's certainly changing
the color of the liquid. You can see the grease is coming
out, it's gone very cloudy. It has taken the grease out. The lines in it are going. - [Tony] It's a bizarre version of a washing powder, I've heard. - [Ruth] The threads
are actually closing up. I mean that have hardly
been at that at all, and you can see it's already different. It gets your toenails very clean! - I'm losing the will to live. (Ruth laughs) This really is the worst job. Mind you, in a strange
kind of perverted way I think I'm getting used to the smell. Only another seven hours, 59 minutes. So after all these miserable
hours of urine treading, you'd end up with this,
which would've been used to make something like this
worn by the knights and squires and King Henry at Agincourt and the bishops in their cathedrals. In fact, without this worst job the big players in the Middle Ages, would've been stark naked. Join me again next time as I
slide down the career ladder once again in order to look
at some of the worst jobs of the Tudor period. (dramatic music) Heads roll as I try out the
messy job of executioner. (grunts) Oh, look at that! Find myself on the sharp end of pinmaking, and experience equal
opportunities Tudor style! (Tony yelping) (dramatic music)
