The Gruesome Surgeries Performed By Medieval Barbers | Worst Jobs | Absolute History

our country's history happened not just because of the greatest figures of the period but because of a lot of ordinary people getting their hands dirty doing a lot of very disgusting jobs this time the poor souls had to dish out medieval medical cures the human hamsters who made cathedrals possible now live in a week who supported an entire economy these are just some and the worst jobs of the Middle Ages [Music] the middle-ages is what we call the 500 year period that ended just before 1500 it was the time when the great cathedrals and castles of England were built at 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 saintly monastic champions barring again [Music] we do tend to have a rather romantic attitude toward 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 would Knights really like wouldn't they do who looked after them well that brings me to my first worst job list you can start off being a knight you started off on the very lowest rung of the ladder being an arming Squire the arming squad was actually a combination of a ballet and of washerwoman hierarchy I've come to arendelle Castle in West Sussex believe I'm worse than that to be honest this as you sees every day work for yourself it's pretty grimy it's wet it's slimy I've been in it for 48 hours have another toilet break so things are pretty hot and sweaty and smelly in here as well Gavin your is arming Squire when he comes back after eight hours on the field what's the worst part of the job for you basically taking him out of the armor he might have fallen into blood he's gonna fall into where horses have been cut down so how do we get it off well let's start with the helm just to give him a little bit of a nail so what would you be doing while he was bashing away at the enemy for eight hours well if you hadn't called nipping at his side on the field of battle as well I would be at the back of the lines maybe with another piece of armor see something was broken if he got cold I could be there just to run in and help him out would you be trained much oh very much I mean I started off as a page then I become a squire and at some point maybe my late teens early twenties at that point if I was brave nothing if I had wanted enough then I would be knighted so Gavin have you got the chance to and that might Paul a proper for pledge noise that's right yes I've been in his service for many years so I be trained up in the ways of the night the ways of chivalry used to carve my meat as well yeah but you have to cut my meat just to learn how to carve it in a proper fashionable manner basically you're like a Formula One pit team pretty much so a good team would be like a Formula One team you could get in and out of it relatively quickly the problem of course is what you're going to do want to do out of it and some poor person has to clean all the things and that's likely to be my Squire or any other attendants that I've got within the camp there are 24 pieces of armour in a full suit weighing up to 27 kilograms supported by 11 sweaty padded jacket if you'd been scared during the course of the battle I wouldn't want to have been down here most of it is running down literally my legs yes all right [Music] the dirty armor the arming Squire would have used vinegar and sand like this stuff here but occasionally they used to include a bit of urine into the mix pretty effective although it's horrible stuff it would remove your fingerprints pretty quickly this is just the tedium at the camp what the actual Battle of being like [Music] before you got to clean out the armor you had to get to the battlefield and that could be a nightmare take the most famous conflicts of the Middle Ages back to the bashing core our squad would have marched 260 miles through France in 17 days living outdoors in almost continuous heavy rain foods and clean drinking water was scarce dysentery kills far more soldiers on the way to ashing poor than died on the battlefield the English were hopelessly out for the French cavalry in their heavy armor they became sitting duck the English armies mightiest weapon along 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 Mohsen Johns Ambulance running around with stretchers so the archers used to wander among the carnage when they found someone who was seriously injured they put them out of their misery 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 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 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 the windows into the streets in the towns and 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 of brass that means lots more worst jobs medical theories were sophisticated but as we now know hopelessly misguided success rates would terribly love even before the plague so any career in medieval medicine was bound to be frustrating oh and message 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 sucked the blood out of you they'd suck the badness house as well in fact they were so popular that it brings me on to my next disgusting job leech collector 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 Latian wants to what sort of people would have been leech gatherers professionals they were also being people like batches who would have thought like just stuck to them as they were collecting all these reeds and satyrs I'm able to pass them on to dealers I've made a lot of money out of these reeds if you're a I can still have a nice bit up in muddy for me here they chest on your feet apparently if we jiggle around a lot then the leeches will think that we're cows or sheep or something this come down to the water's edge to have a drink and they'll come out from the bottom attacks themselves old furs mind you that would have had wages in the Middle Ages they wouldn't know they would have had Scottish women in the northern England Lake District and Yorkshire they would have gone to some of these good leach areas and they would have gone in barefoot into these marshy areas looking for leeches leeches they're worms with character they really are work yeah they are they're the peak of worm evolution they cost fertilize each other and lay spongy cocoons in the root balls of vegetation along the shoreline yeah and little leeches will emerge after several weeks and as they get more more blood meals over a season they won't get bigger and bigger but also move on to bigger prey items do use leeches in medicine today well let's say if you chop your finger off you take your finger to the hospital and have it sewn back on yeah but then what you would have is a leech popped on the end of your finger which then would have drawn the blood up to the tip of your finger oh my gosh yes he the hunter has struck have leached I have caught the leech I said copping out really anti in the Middle Ages there would have been all these Glasgow girls and a bear legging with these leeches hanging off their legs I've got waders on I will not be overshadowed come on is it gonna hurt no I won't leave a permanent y-shaped scar on your leg how big oh he's the only the size of the meth oh for God's sake do the deed it just bit me yeah definitely just bite bit me oh my God he's swelling up how much bigger than this will delete gets it sucked my blood but depends on looks how they feed but they can increase their size by about five or six times we could be here for some time and these guys in the middle of the arch these guys in the Middle Ages it's really stinging there when they add an illness they could have twenty or thirty 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 take it off me you'll really see the blood now Carly if I hurried in there anticoagulant in the saliva of the leech will open up wound and keep it flowing of blood I'm really 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 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 bit death's door so I've pulled together my last few pence in order to invest in this man the barber surgeon Chris how old am I actually well to look at your urine sample you are pineal I thought if he wouldn't have come to me this is the first three of the more this is the first way of the morning when the colors aren't strongest so the surgeon would be able to tell exactly what was wrong with you from that the body supposedly contained four humors blood phlegm and yellow and black vials ill-health was caused by their imbalance to diagnose a patient you compared their urine with charts by sight smell and taste it and testicles check but I would say that you're normally a choleric person but the moment it's got a bit darker see you've got an excess of melancholy in your body so you've been a bit down lately you've been depressed yeah just a nice be affecting your health booster city I'm winning often enough oh well some fairly fierce looking instruments well this is a toolkit of a professional man a bomber surgeon who's made a lot of money from his profession 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 yeah with a straight knife but start off like that nicely and around there and around the underneath it like this so instead we'll have a nice curved knife like this yeah which will fit around like that and in one great swoop they can take probably three-quarters of a muscle off your arm and the back of the blade is sharp as well so the back stroke you can just take that bit off just imagine having to remove somebody's live it wasn't something people came to you for very often they had been really extremists before they did go to the extent of employing you to do something like that 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 housing yeah cutting hair and shaving people well these things are pretty much like in the barber shop when I was a kid but of course they functions haven't change this is a horn comb but it's still a comb and this is a razor it's a bit more fancier than the modern ones but it's still just a blade 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 when in the medieval times they believed that when you swallow medicine it'll go into the stomach and we've broken down by the heat of the liver yeah because the stomach was like a small oven which will break down things through heat yeah 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 klister I may be evil enema tube it's very cold what we can warm it we've got a smear it with spirit well with lard yeah so slide Dean smoothly because it must travel in at least six inches to get beyond the fingers six inches is that yeah goodness me make your eyes water one man would other medicine is poured down in there yeah run it down with it stick just make sure it all comes out lolz at the end you see you learn something watching this program don't you and it's not just medicine if you were ill they might feed you by that method well not the ass absolutely it didn't work but I thought they believed it would look at the barber surgeon and laughing like 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 some of the ingredients she used in her medicines I think you'll understand why I've designated it a worse job a wise woman was viewed with a mixture of fear and respect she was a nag liard 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 taking an eel yep it's alive mentioned just just about there just just just behind the fins at the front that's it oh yes he will struggle I'm not surprised yes that's it yeah got it yes done it wonderful so what do we want now it's this bit here yeah okay and the idea is that to use it as a wart cure yeah you have to then rub it on the walls yeah oops on the affected area yeah Leslie yeah and then obviously once you've done that you then take this out and you bury it and then as this rots away your wart will disappear so does it work apparently so apparently so why have we got a load of worms it's a stream well apparently this is quackery medicine at its best if you go to 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 to ten or even twenty worms on a cord tied around your neck alive as these are and then the idea was that when these died and stop wriggling your sore throat would be cured so I just put them on like this yeah that's right and they're supposed to go to you up next to your skin so they go inside your shirt okay here we go there are the cold and clammy I'm afraid oh yeah well that's always one of the dangers okay and then we basically just tie it off and then obviously when have you noticed that the head of this eel is still wriggling yes yes they are notoriously difficult to dispatch does that mean what my my waters getting smaller yeah no it's it's when it has to rot away so it's gonna take some time I'm afraid I think my sore throats better right we shall take this off then sir wise women tend 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 medicines for the poor but natural herbs and ingredients often had genuine healing properties what other cures well we have nettles nettles are particularly good for our through arthritic joints and the idea is 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 is you bruise nettle tips and I have some here and you basically just keep squishing them like that and because you've bruised them it's quite safe to pick them up and then you rub that on the back of the joint it takes away the pain from the sting that really works it does work okay okay [Laughter] okay now is that stinging yes it's right okay okay right if you rub it quite vigorously yeah I'm sorry I do apologize okay so you won't be trouble with arthritic e joints this weekend you might if this doesn't work how's that feeling my hand still stings like hell oh right well in that case I think a pick-me-up is called for oh okay and well I have some by the fire which is bubbling away quite nicely and it's worms - it is worm stewed worms - how do you make it will basically take your flesh we're a mess which we have in the pot that I've already started to cook some of them down we've mixed in bred a selection of herbs some water and some butter we know now that the worms would have provided the benefits of protein - another wise sparse diet but whining up weird ingredients could easily be construed as witchcraft and if she was accused there could be a high price to play 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're innocent I think your soups bubbling it's not burning is it no no no no no no that's it's fine actually 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 that little lumps in it that's the worms it's supposed to look like that it's quite hot as well go on you'll feel a wonderful after it I wish I was dead it tastes like phlegm there's slightly flavored with chicken doesn't it yes it does taste a bit like chicken and snort back off you 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 strain facts of a lot more people doing a lot more worst jobs [Music] when richard the lionheart set off for the crusades in 1189 he thought the 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 men of faith fortunately for us we can get a bit of an idea of what working on a medieval cathedral would have been like because the tower of st. Edmund's buri is still under construction today here in 21st century very synonymous with plenty of mechanized out 700 years ago everything was done by thousands building a cathedral bringing a new compliment today the jobs high and low but even prestigious workers like stonemasons hanging tough before they even started building they had the hellish tasks of querying and cutting and carting the raw stones at the building site [Music] Andriy Verona is the most sought after stone mason in the country and the master mason embarrassed Netherlands [Music] Peter to look for just the right piece of limestone for the Centennial Murray tower if people used a stone round here for building for a long time boom record is being used from this area extensively since the 15th century certainly to build man houses cathedrals mainly ecclesiastical buildings in north of here south of here and he's angry how would they abduct a piece out oh well you can guess that these guys wedged and leave at it and drove pins in and they would have just got it into the natural strata of the stone underneath it and raised it's just small amounts [Music] nowadays transporting big pieces of stone is pretty easy but in the Middle Ages it was a real problem basically had two alternatives you can 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 of the English cathedrals came from Normandy you can imagine how much the costs really escalated a team of people whose entire day was spent cleaving the stone all right Andre you've got modern technology but how would the lads have cut up these clocks in the Middle Ages well it's called delving and using plug and feathers looking furthers are these feathers and a plug that's tapered it applies pressure and it splits gonna show me how to delve in medieval times these holes will laborious ly drill with a hammer and spike that one's tight enough tolling you can hear the different noise kinda yeah completely different so if you would like to just have a go yeah a couple of taps on each one yeah Oh missed it keep going one more big one look at that oh my god is opening up that's extraordinary that quake it's just you just film the whole stone move yeah I did a hardly hit that at all the simple thing it's not a thing it's a pressure and it's relatively simple and easy oh 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 perform of spitting stone to get these done in sand all shapes up the quarry to save them tarting waster from the quarry to the site and this is how they did it and many evil cathedral building site would have been a fantastic place no one would ever have seen anything of this size and grandeur before and it would have been absolutely teeming with workmen setters hewers layers walls and of course the stone masons higher wages better paid but it would have 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 that's kind of height when suddenly the whole scaffolding collapsed and he went plummeting down masonry and timber scaffolding fell on top of it and he was so badly damaged he couldn't do his job anymore and they had to send him home the 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 have been able to make pillars this stripe oh there's no doubt that in some cases they would but largely ecclesiastical medieval buildings in this place you didn't achieve that why not because over such a long period that they were built that would have been very different skill levels to Mason's and different people you've really this whole thing insta-kill three years they were 80 to 90 years yeah the problems might get lost members that's why yeah whereas you can be forgiven years ago for an inch put it back on line but we're not allowed a quarter so you say medieval Masons might have done a bit of a budget job yeah often they did often person demonstrate project is using a metalloid sunlight from life when it's mixed it's harmless but in the Middle Ages making lime was a high-risk process for the lime home and believe it or not the mortal danger came from chalk Michael why do you need sure I need chalk says I got something to meet in line from by eating the chalk up like you talk after reading it hold it already for a while it'll change quite to a quite different chemical all therefore still don't like the same what is the lime the lime I think holds the whole thing together it binds to go with the grains of sand to make a mortar and the mortar holds the stones apart and it gentle cushioning sort away I'm gonna put a few pieces of chalk into the bottom of this the first stage was making quick light a highly caustic alkali this is a small-scale version of the process that medieval lime burners used in their giant pills it was potentially deadly keeping the lime kiln happy means watching it day and night for a perhaps 48 hours if the body isn't completely effective they can create carbon monoxide 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 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 I'll try and show you that on a slightly bigger scale like points and lumps a quick like very dangerous stuff why I'm wearing gloves because they threw my hands in no time at all I'm going to try a Roman technique to imitate the sort of lime that we're using on the site what Louis in this palette is as a form of line is much much safer than quick line and this is the powder that you make the mortar with now how do you get that into powder by adding water it's that's not sound likely but that's the case it's hugely dangerous why is it dangerous what does it do this could spit like nobody's business so how did that affect the line burners it was nice teeth the caustic action of this on their skin was dreadful when it got into that eyes and their mouths they were in real trouble [Applause] wow it really goes safer' yeah but can you see how that lump has crumbled already yes that was like fireworks QuickTime is very thirsty material another thing if that got on your skin it could be very painful but maybe handling this stuff every day and the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning and the quarrying and the lowlights and the dust they didn't live too long this quickly [Music] some cathedrals towered up to 14 stories high without the benefit of the modern hoist just lifting the huge blocks of stones at the top would have presented massive problems as a result they had to develop state-of-the-art lifting machinery imagine what it would be like walking mile after mile after mile after mile after mile and getting absolutely nowhere well that's what it would have 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 were 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 a small wheel which was pulled around from the outside or else that 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 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 there must have been pretty effective well the building's wouldn't have been possible at all [Music] medieval illustration seem to suggest that the crane was actually lifted onto the top of the cathedral as it was being built so the craftsman must have had some sort of way of lifting the crane up in pieces maybe using smaller cranes or possibly a windlass here a Tom B you can see that the walls are absolutely peppered with these that the holes which would have been the scaffolding so as the walls got higher so the SCAF 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 has 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 the people at that time had of lifting massive blocks of stone the size of a car and in fact is this car that we're going to lift Michele Frank Kelly how does this work a D screen works very easily you know it's on the rope is driving by the big wheels but the rope is attached to the axle of the wheels 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 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 pedal a bike uphill these guys are almost ready so we get in yes are you ready guys meet Gary what then I watch you they get again well it goes up don't be able to take that weight as well yeah Oh easily this crane can take twice weight then we have actually you know we can take two tons oh yeah easy which way this way okay too relieved we go this way right we all have to rush you know yeah working slowly we'll do the jump anyway oh it's going now look it's really going up man who are the people who would have been doing this treading wells at a time the use of blame people blind people yes what was that to secure the whole process because if you chew on the inside too much you will feel some kind of attraction for the emptiness you mean that if you're blind you don't look down through hell I thought and see the terrible fool by the way to the community do you think that was working for God do you think they worked barefoot oh yes because they don't have shoes at the time look at that see you can feel the tug you can feel it's more weight on it now but yeah it's not two years ago we stopped now turn around and put them down again so the axle comes out yes Daddy matter down what being a treadmill worker must have been like imagine being 200 foot up in the air and blind and suddenly realizing things are starting to fall apart it doesn't feel like that at all you have no control over this thing you can't just stop it and break it and 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 just like you're on a holiday as soon as there's a problem is it okay dear here I know it's pretty safe we can finish the job okay let's we're going down that way yeah keep you more handsome after you gentlemen drinking finding out about some of these jobs has been bad enough which jobs on the very lowest did 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 and I genic 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 the tears and practising medieval medicine although messy was at least better than being a patient building cathedrals had its hazards though your handiwork but live your life time 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 some time in the dim and distant past one of your ancestors was involved in the job of fooling and if manual labor is something you do with your hands then fooling is peddle labor because you did it with your feet and P is the operative word because in order to make wool soft and malleable it had to be trodden for at least two hours and the foot in stale urine in the Middle Ages wool became the country's biggest export by 1300 there were 15 million shoe almost three times the human population so Fuller's would have been thick on the ground to a vital link between Weaver's dyers and cloth merchants you could earn up to three times as much as a field laborer so unpleasant this must have been little comfort when raw wool spun and woven into a loose weave fabric it's left dirty the grease is needed to ease the weaving process it's after that to something more usable well this is fine why don't they just put this on well if you've you need to finish it this is when you cut this it will fry yeah and it's greasy this is pretty greasy and it you can make it better it's a felting process it closes the fibrous together you can see that they are actually yes so how does this fully actually work you need water you need something to take the grease out and you walk about on it a lot don't have a go okay this is the upside I get this nice frankly amusing costume to wear and the basic job of fooling 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'm 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 litres 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 ready Ruth then let's get into it smells bad good that smells keeping that it's not wrong mate I'm really not looking forward to this very much every time you breathe in makes your eyes fall said the flies are starting to gather round yeah it's quite disgusting take up shoes off shoes off I have to tuck my skirt up I think you should love it's not going in Mac every time you get a deep breath of it you forget what you're doing and breathe in deep and whoof it hits the base of his stomach and you want a shot yeah let's go it's cold Oh 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 some basically you keep moving yeah and every now and then you have to stop and remove the cloth breathe it's pretty vile somewhat disgusting yeah the reason they used urine is that when it's 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 Blues at the time so part of the job would have involved collecting it from door to door I don't have to do this for words it really seven or eight hours 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 ball really get I don't know what you do about upset stomachs it's probably when you start to move fast you start to breathe like geez changing the color of the cloth it's certainly changing the color of the liquid you can see the grease is coming out it's gone very cloudy it's taking grease out the lines and it's going because this is our version of a washing powder the threads are actually closing up I mean that I've hardly been that that's at all and you can see it's already different because toenails very clean why do in a strange kind of perverted way I think I'm getting used to the smell any another 7 hours 59 minutes so after all these miserable hours of urine treading you don't up with this which would have been used to make something like this worn by the millions and Squires and King Henry at a zinc ore and the bishops in their cathedrals in fact without this worst job the big players in the Middle Ages would have 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 heads roll as I try out the messy job of execution Wow look at that find myself on the sharp end of pin making and experience [Music]

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 413,142

Rating: 4.772326 out of 5

Keywords: history history documentary funny history fun history school, timeline

Id: LwFGkjXK2pc

Length: 46min 41sec (2801 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 13 2019