How Filthy Were Medieval People?

If there's one sure way to irritate an historian of the Medieval period, it's to ask why the people of the Middle Ages didn't wash. In this episode, we did just that with Dr Eleanor Janega. Kate and Eleanor get into whether there really was poo everywhere, how the Victorians ruined the Medieval reputation, and what they were actually up to at the public baths. Eleanor co-hosts our sister podcast Gone Medieval and is the author of 'The Once And Future Sex'. This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters! It's me, Kate Lister. You are back, listening to Betwixter Sheets once again. Hello, welcome back, make some room at the back. And I have to tell you all, once again, whether you're new or not, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of subjects and you should be an adult too. Oh my god, do we feel safer? I feel safer. Right, let's crack on.

• 1:03Kate Lister?

  Ah, the fresh scent of medieval streets. Wood smoke, tanneries, stagnant water, animal entrails, rotting food scraps, poo, chicken poo, human poo, there's just so much poo. That's what we think of when we think of the medieval period, isn't it? Oh, be honest, it is. We think of them all just walking around, covered in mud, living in a ditch with poo on their head. But is that true? Of course, that's not true. That's absolutely untrue. But how often did they wash? What did they wash with? How did they treat their skin and their hair and their teeth? These are important questions, because if anyone has a reputation for smelling bad, it's the medieval people, and that's not fair.

• 1:48Kate Lister?

  We've been doing them dirty for far too long.

• 2:13Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. The widespread misconception that medieval people were really dirty is a proper bugbear for some historians, and one such historian is the marvellous Eleanor Janiger, who is joining us today to get to the bottom of just how dirty people were in the Middle Ages. Were they really covered in fleas? Did they really throw their waste out of windows onto unsuspecting passersby? Well, I'm ready to find out if you are.

• 2:50Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's everyone's favourite. It's Eleanor Janiger. How are you doing, babes?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm better now that you're here. I missed you.

• 3:01Kate Lister?

  Oh, thank you so much. I missed you too. And we're doing your favourite topic today. How mucky were the medieval people? Because we all know that they were absolutely filthy, an absolute dirt fest. They just lived in mud, they had shit on their heads and they just, it was just gross the whole time.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Like, girl, I swear to you, the way that people will just say this to you, like with a straight face, as though that's a thing that people would do, like it's such a strange thing, where it's like, but you're people, yeah?

• 3:31Kate Lister?

  You're people, right?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you would accept that, like you would, you would live that way and feel comfortable. And they'll always be like, oh, no, but like, I'm a different people, like I...

• 3:41Kate Lister?

  See, that's interesting because I think that like, we can accept that most of history is not as clean as we are today in the fact that we've got like antibacterial stuff and we're sanitising the shower, everything, everything would have just been a bit muckier. But there's something about the medieval period where everyone's imagination just goes absolutely insane and we genuinely think that they would have just been walking around looking like a fucking warlock.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really interesting and it does tend to come down, I think, just from a place of ignorance because most people don't know anything about the medieval period, right? And it's not their fault. We are not taught medieval history in schools, like at all. And I have heard people teaching schools of young children that the medieval period is particularly gross. And, you know, yeah, I was once filming in St. Bart's Church and there was like a group that was doing a thing about medieval London there and they were, you know, repeating the thing about how like, oh, the streets are full of human feces and there's dead dogs everywhere.

• 4:40Kate Lister?

  Did you like charge over to that school trip and start shouting at people?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I managed not to.

• 4:44Kate Lister?

  Well done, Eleanor. I'm proud of you.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  But I was like, but I was like glaring at the lady like, I see you.

• 4:49Kate Lister?

  [laughing]

• 4:51Speaker 01

  And it is this particularly interesting thing. It's received wisdom and indeed it is pejorative, alert, common sense, right? You know, the common sense now, people tend to think that means, well, everybody knows it, but actually, common sense is meant to mean people all think that it's obviously true, but it's not.

• 5:07Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Right? And it's, that is just not how things work. And indeed, it's never how things work. And you would probably find medieval London less offensive from a pollution and smelling standpoint than Victorian London. Victorian London is the one. You don't, you don't want to go there.

• 5:25Kate Lister?

  And this myth is still with us. I don't know if you caught on, we need to be very careful. Don't get on a side quest about this one because it could be easily done. But did you catch any of that recent drama series about William the Conqueror and Harold Godwinson? Like Harold Godwinson was filthy. He looked like he'd just come back from playing rugby and he was being crowned king in one scene. Like, he wasn't like a little bit musky, you know, like he wasn't like missing a face scrub and some antibal, like his fingernails were a bit mucky. He was like, he looked like visibly, if somebody walked in, you'd be like, what the fuck have you been doing? So the myth is still with us.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that there is a thing because of that myth, people confuse it with realism.

• 6:05Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  So, you know, if there are people.

• 6:08Kate Lister?

  It's gritty. It's gritty.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  It's gritty. It's gritty. It's the same thing that you see, you know, whenever there's a drama and the minute they go to. To the Middle East or they go to Mexico or something. They put like a brown filter on the lens. And that's how you know you're in Mexico.

• 6:18Kate Lister?

  That's how we think of the medieval person, through a brown lens. Everything was brown.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  And it's just a ridiculous thing because if people now wouldn't do it, people then wouldn't do it. And again, as you say, I'm not saying that it is a level of cleanliness that I would like today. And indeed, like, it's not until the 20th century onwards in Europe that we attained the levels of cleanliness that we have now. You know, it took us until after World War II to put fluoride in our toothpaste. And up until that point, all toothpaste did was make your breath smell good. You know, it didn't, it didn't prevent you from having cavities. You know, it was not common in the Victorian period to have your own bathroom where you could go take a bath or a shower. You know, you were sharing it with a lot of people.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  That's why London is full of public baths that we use as swimming pools now, but they were, they were bathhouses. So it wasn't common to get to shower or bathe every day. And you know, like, I'm a spoiled person in the 21st century and my ideal number of showers per day is two.

• 7:20Kate Lister?

  Two, you're a two-shower person.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  If I've got enough time, babe. Like, I gotta get, you gotta get your sleep smell off.

• 7:26Kate Lister?

  So you shower in the morning and then at night as well?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Ideally at night, ideally at night. You know, well, there's plenty of days when I have to choose one or the other, but if I've got time.

• 7:35Kate Lister?

  See, I'm a morning shower person, but if I've done anything that involves even mild perspiration throughout the day, then that will be another shower.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So it's just like, I'm trying to, like, I'm cozy maxing. I'm bed-pilled and I'm getting in there as clean as possible. So, you know.

• 7:54Kate Lister?

  It wouldn't have been that clean, but everyday bathing, would that have been accessible to a medieval person?

• 8:00Speaker 01

  So, full-body immersion bath, you're gonna need some money for that.

• 8:05Kate Lister?

  With bubbles and...

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and all of that, right? So, for rich people, yeah. For the bloody king of England, yeah.

• 8:12Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  100%, you will have like a dedicated space where you bathe. It might not necessarily be a bathroom. It might just be that you've got like a really nice tub they bring in and put in front of the fire in your bedroom. And if you have money, this is one of the first things that you do. You have a scullery maids who will come fill a tub full of hot water and you'll go scrub, scrub, scrub. I'm next to the fire in this.

• 8:34Kate Lister?

  As well, isn't it? It's a flex. It's like, look, and it still is today, looking clean and impeccably groomed. Is you saying, fucking check me out. So it's, of course rich people would have done this.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  And now if you're rich in a city, if you're rich in a city, you will probably have money to bathe every day if you want. Now, either in your own house or you'll go down to the bath house.

• 8:56Kate Lister?

  The bath house.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  And this is one of the things that I find really interesting because everyone goes, oh, well, Romans are not gross and mucky because, you know, they go to the bath house. So did medieval people?

• 9:06Kate Lister?

  And, and, and something that I learnt when I was in Pompeii is their baths were not that fucking clean. They didn't have plumbing. It was the same water being reused.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Same water. Yeah, yeah.

• 9:14Kate Lister?

  All day long.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  And like the medieval one, you're kind of like moving it in and out of there because it's more likely that you kind of have smaller tubs for maybe like a two people or so and you, you move that water through.

• 9:28Kate Lister?

  Oh, I see. So it's like individual tubs that people are sitting in. See, that is cleaner. That's cleaner than the Romans. You heard it here.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that is super, super common and medieval people love that. They love that. There will be whole areas of town, you know, here in London, the stews in Southwark. Now, are some of those brothels? Yes.

• 9:47Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  But some of them are also just bath houses and it leads to this really kind of ambivalent space about bathing. And also this is something that people get confused by when they aren't medieval historians. Sometimes when they're presented by particular complaints about bathing in the medieval period. Because it is something that will get leveled as an accusation against people that they bathe too much. And then people will go, oh yeah, see, because medieval people are gross. They don't want you to bathe. But it's a comment on, are you in the bath houses? Not a comment on are you bathing too much? The idea here is if you're in the bathhouses, that could be a brothel. And also, it is a place where people will just like go to get some action.

• 10:27Kate Lister?

  Still is. Like, I mean, it's mostly confined to gay culture today in Europe, but like their gay bathhouses are still very much with us.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. And for example, now swingers clubs oftentimes will have like swimming pools and things like that. And it is kind of a place that you go-

• 10:41Kate Lister?

  Hope that they clean that out regularly. Let's hope that the water is clean and fresh in there.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  I'm, I am begging.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  It is one of these things where it's a place that you go, it's warm, you're taking all your clothes off. There are often kind of curtains around your private bathtub, which do a couple of things that helps keep the heat in. That's, that's one thing that's nice. And also, if you don't want any hanky panky, then no one's going to see you naked if you don't want to. But a lot of people want you to. So it is a place where you can hook up. It's a place for assignations. If you live with your parents still, as a lot of unmarried folks do, it's a place where you can go shag your boyfriend.

• 11:22Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Or it is a place where you can just like meet people in a sexy way. So that is one thing that's happening. And so when you see condemnations about people who bathe too often, it's actually a condemnation about, yeah, being a hot little slut.

• 11:37Kate Lister?

  I see. It must have been, it must have been awful if like you just wanted a bath. Like if you just wanted, just like, I just want to be clean. That's it. And now I'm surrounded by these perverts.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  I mean, there's bathhouses and bathhouses. It's probably a little bit easier. Like, so you say you're a resident of Paris and that's all you want to do is just go to the no hanky panky bathhouse. You're going to know which one that is.

• 11:59Kate Lister?

  I do remember now reading a notice somewhere, it was in France, the medieval bathhouse had to put up notices going, we're not that kind of bathhouse. I'm paraphrasing, but they had to repeatedly put signage up to go, no, we're not that. So, yeah, maybe, maybe people just knew where to go.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and it is kind of one of those things where you just sort of know. And, you know, we, we have a really similar situation now. For example, with massage parlors, where it's not always abundantly clear if you were someone who just wants a massage.

• 12:29Kate Lister?

  Yeah. Late at night on a Friday.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Whether that place is for you.

• 12:34Kate Lister?

  Can happen.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Listen, I have a lot of needs, Kate. So.

• 12:39Kate Lister?

  That must happen all the time, people getting that one messed up.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. And so that is a really similar, a similar sort of vibe is the way to think about it. So if you've got a lot of money, you can go to the bathhouse as much as you want, especially in urban context. In rural context, they often have like a village bathhouse too. It's especially common, you know, it's a really big kind of in Eastern European cultures. For example, they really like they'll have the village bathhouse and that's similarly like you can go get your flirt on.

• 13:08Kate Lister?

  Oh, it's interesting. I wonder if we could bring that back, just like local bathing with your mates. I don't know, maybe we're past all of that now. Maybe we could never bring that back.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Oh, listen, all you gotta do is go to Hungary or go to Japan.

• 13:21Kate Lister?

  I know you would.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  And you know, it is there. It's all happening. Like I'm like a girlies, let's go. We're gonna have a sauna. It's gonna be great. But like, you could afford that all the time if you're wealthy in the city. If you're less wealthy in these contexts, so I mean, like the village bathhouse is, you know, a little bit more inexpensive. But you'll probably go once a week and give yourself a good scrub down.

• 13:42Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  You know, Saturday, that's a big, that's a big day for it because you want to look nice on Sunday.

• 13:48Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  So like Saturday is the big day, but people kind of will go whenever. So it's just sort of like one of those things where like, when can you afford it?

• 13:55Kate Lister?

  How much would it cost?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  It really kind of depends on where you're going. So obviously it's more expensive in Paris because everything's expensive in Paris. But we do know, for example, in Budapest, prices are pretty reasonable. And, you know, it's going to be kind of like the equivalent of like maybe like an hour's worth of work for the average laborer. So that's not so bad. It's not terrible.

• 14:16Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  You know, but it is something that where you're going, you know, and kind of like kids go free.

• 14:21Kate Lister?

  Right, yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  You can bring your kids in with you.

• 14:23Kate Lister?

  Not the weird ones though. They wouldn't be going in there.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are like, you cannot bring those guys in.

• 14:26Kate Lister?

  You cannot bring them in there.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  I guess that's a good test, like bring a kid with and see if they're like, no.

• 14:32Kate Lister?

  Something, because what I'm imagining here is like a Roman bathhouse or like a modern day sauna, but it doesn't sound like it would be like that. This is more like a room with loads of baths in it that people are sat in with a curtain.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, like a lot of them are private. A lot of them are private. And so, you know, even in Paris, there's like a guild, there's a bathhouse guild where you, you, you need to be a part of it. And it's really interesting because this is like a big industry for women. Women run bathhouses a lot of the time.

• 15:00Kate Lister?

  Interesting.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  But then of course, there's like a glass ceiling in the Parisian bathhouse guild where you can join as a woman, but you can never run it.

• 15:07Kate Lister?

  Thanks for that. That's great. Cheers, patriarchy.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  So we tend to have a lot of those and that, you know, that's just something that an enterprising person can do. There are places that have municipal baths. So it is oftentimes like a project of kind of like urban revivification or something that a lot of times queens will do as a form of charity. So again, in like in Budapest, the municipal baths are set up by a queen who comes over from Constantinople, where the municipal baths are a big thing. And she's like, well, here's what I'm gonna do.

• 15:43Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  We're setting up, we're setting up some.

• 15:45Kate Lister?

  That makes it sound quite respectable then. Like if the queen set it up, the queen wouldn't be set, well, maybe some would, but I can't imagine she's setting up a brothel. Just there you go. Have at it.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, the municipal ones are just not, it's not that kind of party at the municipal ones. Those are the ones where you're kind of gonna go down with your family.

• 16:01Kate Lister?

  You're actually going to wash.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the cost is usually incredibly defrayed. So, and that is where you're gonna get like the big, here's a huge, like a pool, here are these things. They're big on steam rooms. They really like that. So yeah, they will often kind of like make a steamy room. That's something that they do. And, you know, so there is this, this civic thing. If you are in a village, you know, because like everyone's gonna have to get together if you have a bath house and kind of like do that, which which people will do. But you also still might scrub at least once a week in a tub in your own home.

• 16:33Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  The reason you only do it once a week is it's an absolute bollock. Water is heavy.

• 16:39Kate Lister?

  Yes, yeah.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  And that's the thing everyone forgets, right? You know, so now.

• 16:43Kate Lister?

  It's difficult.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just like turn on a pipe. A plumber has figured this out for me. And my bath fills with hot water and it's brill, you know, but if you want a bath in the medieval period, you need to go get the water.

• 16:56Kate Lister?

  Heat the water.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  You then need to heat up the water and then you gotta put the water into the tub and then you gotta get it into the tub. That is a lot of moving water around, so you're only kind of gonna do it as much.

• 17:08Kate Lister?

  That's true. A couple of years ago, my hot water went off and I love a bath and I thought, oh, I'll I'll heat the water up on the stove and fill the bathtub up. No, I gave up like before it was even halfway through. It was such a massive pain in the ass and the water didn't stay very hot in the tub either because by the time I'm like filling it up, the water that's in there, it was just a disaster.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's the thing to keep in mind is that is you're doing this in a wooden tub. So oftentimes people have their tub in front of the fire because it's not that warm. And so, yeah, it it's just like a whole thing, right? So that that is part of the reason why they're only going to have a limited number of baths. But I hasten to stress here that that's true until everyone.

• 17:51Kate Lister?

  Until very recently, my grandma used to tell stories about, you know, the aluminium bathtub that came out on a Sunday evening that the kids were washed in.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. It is as common in the modern period as it is in the medieval period. There isn't a huge difference here at all whatsoever. And then what you do instead for the rest of the week is to just kind of do a daily wash. And for this, this is a lot easier.

• 18:18Kate Lister?

  That's what they call it.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. So, you know, you just heat up enough water. You stand in a wooden tub and you just.

• 18:25Kate Lister?

  Do the smelly bits.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Kind of give it a what? You you get yourself wet, you soap everything down and then you pour. It's it's like a shower. It's like a poor man's shower, right? And that is incredibly common and what people are doing. All the time.

• 18:37Kate Lister?

  Hmm.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  And it's very much something that is considered necessary to participate in society. Like, they really, they really do enjoy being clean. And one of the reasons that you could kind of tell that they enjoy being clean is you sometimes, if you are gunning for sainthood, give it up.

• 19:01Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Because it's a form of asceticism.

• 19:05Kate Lister?

  Or being dirty.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 19:07Kate Lister?

  Ah.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  So like, if you want to be, so if you want to be a saint, and granted, this is only open to rich people. Like, if poor people want to do this, everyone's just going to be like, ew, a starving, dirty, poor person, right? But if you want to be a saint, and you're some rich guy, one of the things that you do is you like go vegan.

• 19:24Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  And you wear rough clothing, so hair shirts, which are shirts that like intentionally rub on your body, so that you are constantly like scourging yourself. You give up sex, obviously. You give up wanking, obviously.

• 19:37Kate Lister?

  Obviously.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  And some people take it to this other extreme where they also don't bathe.

• 19:42Kate Lister?

  Wow. Okay.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  And now, we know that that is considered uncomfortable because that's why they're doing it.

• 19:51Kate Lister?

  Yeah, yeah, which.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  That's the point.

• 19:53Kate Lister?

  I see, yeah.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Is that it sucks.

• 19:55Kate Lister?

  Which establishes the fact that they really do want to do it. They've given up something important.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. So if you're like Saint Simeon, the stylite, for example, the dude who like goes and hangs out on top of the pillar, like, obviously, you're not getting a bath in.

• 20:07Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Because you're on top of a pillar. You've just got to wait for a terrain, or whatever, you know, that's what's going down. And the discomfort is the point. So it's seen as uncomfortable. It's also seen as something that is going to keep people at arm's length. You know, they're not going to be winning friends and influencing people in those situations.

• 20:27Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  And so that is incredibly helpful. So it's also meaning that there's no way that I can go back on my vows. I'm not going to be out partying. I'm definitely not going to be hooking up with anyone.

• 20:38Kate Lister?

  No one wants to be around me.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:43Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Eleanor after this short break.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  What started the civil war? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America?

• 21:08Speaker 02

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• 21:54Kate Lister?

  The other way I think that you can tell it's really important to them is that when you read descriptions at the time of when somebody's complimenting somebody, they almost always talk about their breath. It's almost teeth is usually in there. That might be a later thing, but normally teeth turn up a lot.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:10Kate Lister?

  They have nice teeth. Teeth and sweet breath and that they smell nice. That is repeated again and again and again.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, we absolutely see. There is a guide for poets that is written in the 12th century called the Ars Versus Victoria, rolls off the top. Basically, it is a guide that tells poets, here's how you write poetry of all sorts. And within it, they talk about how you say a chick is hot, obviously. Like, how do you write a beautiful woman? And having white teeth and honeyed breath is absolutely necessary. And it is like teeth like snow or like ivory.

• 22:46Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Breath like honey.

• 22:47Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  And they do brush their teeth. So they have toothbrushes or they will use kind of like things like licorice root. Kind of like give it a go. And they usually have better teeth than their modern counterparts. So again, if You're comparing dental conditions between people in the medieval period with, for example, people in, say, I don't know, the 18th century. When sugar is much more easy to get hold of, you will find better dental conditions among medieval folks. Because you can get sugar, you can, but it's massively, massively expensive. And you can get honey, for sure. But the things that ruin your tooth enamel are wildly, wildly expensive.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  And so they're just completely out of reach. You know, nobody, nobody is chowing down on chocolate bars, right? Like, no one is able to get hold of these things because they just do not exist yet. So you're going to have better dental hygiene just by default than is like your average Georgian, for example. A group of people that no one ever insults the cleanliness of.

• 23:55Kate Lister?

  No, no, and they would have been absolutely stinkier. I think Georgian scholars can come at us for that one. You do, if I remember the Canterbury Tales correctly, in the Miller's Tale, there's this kind of fawning fuck called Absalon. And we're told quite specifically that he keeps his breath fresh by chewing herbs. And he does that to try and get close to women.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, that's the thing is like, if the breath be stinking, the ladies don't want it, right? And so, yeah, you absolutely will chew on herbs. A lot of people wear perfume, they'll make their own perfume.

• 24:26Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  And, you know, a lot of people also make their own perfumed soap. We find lots and lots of recipes for perfumed soap for, you know, those babes who are balling on a budget, right? If you're making your own soap at home, they're like, oh, you could add herbs to this. You could add lavender, you could add rose, if you've got it. You know, it's just sort of like, what do you have around the shop? Obviously, there is also professionally made soap, especially in places like France. So Marseille, they were already making soap in the medieval period. That's how long they've been making industrial quantities of soap. So fancy people, like the nobility, or indeed, if you are, I don't know, say, a clothmaker and brood.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  You might have professionally made soap. But most people are making their own and we have all of the stacks of recipes for what it is that people are doing. And again, that remains common into the modern periods. You know, if you go to the countryside of England in the 18th century, people are still making their own soap. They're not buying it. You know, so it's not something that that changes really at all.

• 25:37Kate Lister?

  What about clothing then? Because that's one of the other ideas about that. It's kind of difficult for us to comprehend today because fast fashion is such a thing. And if people go to their wardrobes, like everyone has so many garments of clothing, like some people ludicrous amounts. But to a medieval person looking at our wardrobe, they would be stunned by how much stuff we've actually got. We live in this real throwaway, fast fashion era. But you don't have to go back that far again for people to be talking about Sunday best clothes.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  And yet people do have Sunday best clothes. So they will have things that they specifically wear to church or things that they wear on holidays. You know, things that you wear to the local fair, you know, you're going to have like something nicer.

• 26:20Kate Lister?

  Nice stuff.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  To put on. But you know, day to day, like, yeah, for sure. Like you maybe will have your main stuff that you wear. And so that is going to be sort of underwear that you wear, which is usually linen. And so that is going to be, you're going to have a slip. You might have a kind of like bloomer situation that is going on. And then over that, you're then going to wear woolen clothing. So that is going to. All breathable. And this is the thing, there's no such thing as unnatural fibers in the medieval period, right? And so things stay a little bit cleaner and also they smell a little bit less because you know polyester.

• 27:02Kate Lister?

  Yeah, once it starts stinking, it stinks, doesn't it? And you can never quite get it out, the smell of it.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  This is a thing that I always kind of joke about with my friends where it's like, if you go back in time to the medieval period, the major thing they're going to be like is like, what are you wearing in terms of cloth?

• 27:15Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  They're going to be like, I don't understand what this is.

• 27:18Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Because they understand wool and they understand linen and derivations thereof, they understand silk.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  But they're not wearing poly blends, babe.

• 27:28Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Like, that's, that's not gonna make a whole lot of sense.

• 27:31Kate Lister?

  How do you keep your clothes clean? I mean, if you've got it, because I sort of imagine that they would be largely, especially the poorer people, wearing kind of the same thing day in, day out, because clothing is also expensive. Most people would be buying secondhand rather than something that was made for them. How'd you keep it clean if you've only got one or two shirts?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you oftentimes are going to be more likely to be changing your inner clothes than your outer clothes. So that's the major thing. So you'll maybe only have a couple of woolen things that you wear on the outside, but you're going to have more linen.

• 27:58Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  But still, the linen gets washed regularly. There's usually like a wash day that will happen. Depending on the season, it happens in different ways. So you might have a wash day in the winter, maybe once a week, because you have fewer things to do. You know, if you're a peasant, like, you don't need to plow in the middle of January, nor can you, right? And also, it's going to be more difficult to wash clothing outside, which is where it usually gets washed. So you will either go down to a river or a stream or wherever. A lot of villages and cities also have just dedicated washhouses, places where this is where you take the laundry. And they will be by a water source and you take everything down there.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  But what you do first is you soak all of the clothes in a combination of usually eggshells and lye.

• 28:47Kate Lister?

  Eggshells and lye?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and water, yeah.

• 28:49Kate Lister?

  Eggshells?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know why the eggshells, but I'm just for sure.

• 28:53Kate Lister?

  Okay, fair enough. All right.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Don't know why. I should probably figure that out, but listen, I'm too cute to have to know why.

• 29:01Kate Lister?

  That just might be one of those random things that somebody did once, so now we're gonna do it forevermore.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so now we're doing it forever.

• 29:07Kate Lister?

  This is just what we do now. Eggshells?

• 29:09Speaker 01

  And so then you're probably gonna lug that, you'll, you'll then drain it off and then you're gonna lug that down to the washhouse, right? And now, usually the women, because let's be so real, it's women who are doing this. Usually the women all kind of get together on the same day to help each other with the laundry. Because this is incredibly heavy work, you know, wet clothes.

• 29:30Kate Lister?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  You know, and it's like, and I'm not talking wet clothes that have just come out of the Spin cycle, yeah, right? It's like, these are sawed in. And so you've got to take them down there. And then, you know, in the summer or whatever, you then wash it up. You use, they have like laundry soaps. And then you rinse it in the river and then you usually lay it out to dry. And then you kind of take it back home. And this will be like your bed sheets, all of your, whatever it is that you have. In the winter, when it's going to be too cold to be in the wash house or something, you're going to do it a little bit more piecemeal in your own house. And you'll probably use kind of like the same tubs that you use in order to bathe. So that might be a chore that you even do every day where you're like, yeah, just throw it in.

• 30:12Kate Lister?

  Yeah, I'm okay.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Like, let's get through it really quickly, like in the winter when you have fewer things to do. So depending on the season, you approach laundry differently. And of course, if you're wealthy, you have someone who does that for you.

• 30:27Kate Lister?

  Of course you do.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  You know, like you have a washerwoman. And we have like named records of washerwomen. So for example, at the Tower of London, we know the names of like the King's household washerwomen. Yeah, yeah. And actually treated pretty well, like given retirement sums.

• 30:43Kate Lister?

  Really?

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's nice.

• 30:46Kate Lister?

  All right.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:47Kate Lister?

  Eleanor, what about periods? This is something that I get asked a lot. The students always wanted to know this one. Like you're a 14th century girl. You've, you've got one outfit for, for the week, maybe another one for Sunday best and some linen. Every month, what's, what's going on here?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Rags.

• 31:05Kate Lister?

  Rags, there we go.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So basically, you know, like your linen eventually is going to wear out, especially from, you know, being washed in lye.

• 31:15Kate Lister?

  And eggshells.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  And eggshells and then like scrunched across a board, you know, like that'll wear down. And so you put that to one side and you make pads

• 31:25Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  out of the rags. And then you fasten them around your waist with a belt, which again, those period belts were common

• 31:32Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  up into the 20th century. So that's what you do. So it's just basically a constant reusing of things. So, you know, much in the way where, you know, like now when you do dishes, like, you know, eventually if like a sponge or something gets a little bit more maggy, it kind of like gets downgraded from like counter sponge to like whatever. It's kind of the same thing with cloths. So you'll just always kind of have a little stack to the side that you use for that.

• 32:03Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Eleanor after this short break.

• 32:14Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there, and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 32:56Kate Lister?

  What about toilets? That again, because that's, the history of the toilet is often not fully appreciated for its role in maintaining civilizations. But that's a huge issue. Wherever you've got people, you've got shit and we have to deal with it somehow.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  And I want to stress right now that the way that it is dealt with is not by throwing it in the road, you absolute madmen.

• 33:19Kate Lister?

  Well, I just, I'm just sorry about that. I just felt that that was what I had to do.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  I don't know where that came from, like this idea that people are just like-

• 33:27Kate Lister?

  That's a myth. That's not true that you just flung it out and went with the guardaloo.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  No, there are laws about that. Like, there are, there are laws on the books in London where people are like, I swear to God, you know, like, because of course there are, because you can't just throw-

• 33:39Kate Lister?

  Yeah, when you actually say that out loud, yeah, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Just think about it for like two seconds. Like, you know, like here in London, one of the richest places in the entire world, like, yeah, no, it's fine, just throw it out the window. I mean, just, I'd say guardalo. Like, what are you talking about? Like, obviously, obviously you can't do that. Like, obviously, rich people are not going to accept that. Like, please calm down, right? So now, do I love the toilet situation in the medieval period? Obviously, I do not. Obviously, I'm a spoiled 21st century person and I want like a nice toilet very close to my bed. But that's not what always happens. You will, of course, see privies anytime you go to a castle or, you know, and there's like, yo, like, we've carved a hole. Yeah. There you go. Feel convenient.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  And so that is really common in like monasteries, in big places like that where you have like a lot of people, that will usually drop to what is called a cesspit outside and then that will happen. Now, in municipal buildings, you might have a certain common situation like that. We see this, for example, in the Erfurt latrine disaster. I don't know if you're aware of this. I have heard of it, but please go over it once more. In the late medieval period, everyone gets together in the Erfurt town hall and the floor collapses and everybody falls into the cesspit that is underneath the floorboards. And they all drown. Not good. Not good.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Not good. And the thing that usually would happen with those sorts of things is there's people, God bless them, some of the best people who ever lived, the night soil men. And the night soil men will, whether it is a pit where everyone in the city goes and throws their things, or if it is a pit that is built into a municipal building, they'll go muck that out a couple times a month and they will cart it all away. It is often used as fertilizer in the countryside, but as a general rule of thumb, it is taken away. It's a terrible job that kind of nobody wants, but it's remunerated pretty well. Right. Obviously. So if you're kind of like a young working class guy, being a night soil man is a great way to make some money. And they exist because people are like, we

• 35:49Speaker 01

  need to get the sewage out of here. Yeah. Right? Because there is a way of sewage management in the medieval period. Now, in a village, you often have kind of like toilet houses or something like an outhouse kind of situation where, you know, you probably need to do it yourself. Like the mucking out is probably something that you that you need to do. You know, I don't know how many times a month they'll do it. It depends on the size of the pit that they have. In the meantime, and what most people do have is chamber pots as well. So say it is January in a world without central heat and you just need to wee in the middle of the night, you are not getting up and going outside in like 3 below. That's not gonna happen.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  So you just have a dedicated pot that is under your bed, you have a quick whiz and then you deal with it in the morning.

• 36:37Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  And again, that will hold true into the Victorian period. This is a very normal thing to do. But for some reason, anytime you're talking about chamber pots, anytime you're talking about a world with no plumbing, everyone goes straight to medieval people. And like medieval people are all nasty and they're the ones who are like throwing it out the window. And it's like, what? Everyone is doing this. You know, like everybody, everybody is doing this. And indeed, we do tend to see that it gets worse over time. So as populations increase in cities, this becomes more and more of a problem. So like again, Georgian London is gonna be nastier.

• 37:15Kate Lister?

  It's gonna be worse.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Medieval London.

• 37:17Kate Lister?

  They were quite industrious, the medieval people, when it came to recycling as well, weren't they? Because like shit and piss were recycled, they were reused.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's kind of like, okay, yeah, you get that out of here. And now, sometimes in certain industries as well, people will actually like use urine. So for example, tanners. Often use urine in order to treat leather goods, which is why I also like tanneries. It's like, you know, like Leather Lane here in London, everyone always kind of talks about how Leather Lane smells.

• 37:44Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Right? Because like the tanning process is gross. But if they're talking about how Leather Lane smells, that's because it's unusual.

• 37:52Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Right? It's unusual that it smells that bad. Like people wouldn't ordinarily notice it.

• 37:57Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  And it is true that cities smell more than the countryside and it's something that medieval people remark upon, where they're like, mm. That gets a bit, gets a bit whiffy in the city, but of course it does because there are just like more people around. It isn't because they are any grosser or any weirder with their sewage than modern people are. It's just that, yeah, listen, medieval London, like especially by the 14th century, it's about 80,000 people within the square mile or whatever. And so, yeah, like they're, that's gotta go somewhere. And all you've got to do is go to a really big city nowadays and be near a drain in the summer. Like, baby, when I lived in Tokyo, if you got too close to the sewage drains in July, you know, you would suddenly be like,

• 38:42Speaker 01

  hmm, oh, I am in the largest city in the world, aren't I? You know, it, it just becomes clear, right? And I don't think that any of us would accuse the 21st century Japanese of being a particularly gross bunch of people.

• 38:55Kate Lister?

  No, we would not. So as a final question then, where do you think this idea that the medieval period was particularly stinky and dirty comes from?

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Well, I think that there is just the ordinary chauvinism that we see against the medieval period. I don't know why people enjoy believing that they are somehow better than medieval period people, but they do, they really do. I mean,

• 39:18Kate Lister?

  A lot of the Victorian stuff again, because they, they went bananas for the medieval period, but it was very much about othering themselves against it.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I mean, part of this is Voltaire's fault, of course, because, you know, since Voltaire was like, oh, blah, blah, blah, that's the age of faith. I live in the age of reason. You don't need to, you just don't need to worry about what was happening in the medieval period. That thousand years?

• 39:40Kate Lister?

  Forget about it.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Forget it. You're clever. They're stupid. You know, so there is that that's going on. I think also within this, there are some kind of common misconceptions about the way that history works, right? And one of the things that people tend to think is that history is just a process of people getting better all the time and they get better at things. So if you look at the Victorian period and how there have to be these major works to get like sewage pipes in because the cholera epidemic is so bad, then you go, oh, well, if it was gross in the Victorian period, then it must've been even grosser in the medieval period. And it's like, that's not how it works because the cities are different and that's not how, how things go. Or people will oftentimes look at the fashion for not bathing.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  In the early modern period, and think medieval people did that.

• 40:32Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Um, as I'm sure you will learn, it's a gross misunderstanding as well of the fashion for not bathing.

• 40:40Kate Lister?

  Hmm.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  In the, because they're, they're still keeping clean by changing their laundry a lot. I would still rather bathe. They'll talk about that Louis XIV thing, where they'll be like, oh, he took two baths in his life, blah, blah, blah, or whatever. And, and then, and I'm like, okay, yeah, but Louis XIV lived hundreds of years after the medieval period and they weren't doing that. But again, because people think about history as this process of things getting better, it's like, oh, well, if even Louis XIV didn't bathe, then how much grosser must everyone have been in the medieval period? And that's not how things work. Things change all the time. People go and then do different things in terms of fashion. People have different ways of relating to the concept of cleanliness. These things do change.

• 41:19Kate Lister?

  Different understandings of what clean means. And, and shifting attitudes to how you get ill seem to play quite a lot into this, this factor as well. Like as you're moving into the early modern period, there's a slight belief that comes in that you can get ill just through your skin.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Mm hmm, mm hmm. Yeah. And so, and they tend to think that, oh, um, if you're really ill, then you shouldn't bathe or something, because that is going to open up your pores.

• 41:45Kate Lister?

  That's the one. Yeah. That illness can get in that way somehow.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  And medieval people don't really share that belief. It's not really something that we tend to see from them. And indeed, you will see in some medical textbooks and things like that, they're like, oh yeah, if someone is quite sick, like give them a bath and see what happens. Like, you know, heat them up. You know, because a lot of the time they're like, oh yeah, well, this will be because, you know, you're, you're too cold and wet. So we need to get you, we need to get you hot. And, you know, one of the ways that you can do that is by bathing. So it is just one of those things to keep in mind that it's not just a process of things are gross and then they get nicer. That's, that's not how things work and there's just different ways of looking at the world.

• 42:24Kate Lister?

  Eleanor, you have been fabulous to talk to. You always are. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Obviously you can come on over to Gone Medieval, where I host every Tuesday, along with my wonderful co-host, Matt Lewis, who's on a Friday. You could also check out my book, The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Rules in Society. That does a lot of bath chat.

• 42:50Kate Lister?

  It does, indeed. It does. It's fabulous. Thank you so much. Will you come back again and talk to us more about medieval stuff?

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Whenever you want, baby. I'm at your disposal.

• 42:59Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 43:03Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Eleanor for joining us. And coming up this year, we will be getting even more filthy. And don't miss an episode by following us wherever you found us today. And if you would like us to explore a subject, or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.