The hazards of Medieval life

The Enbalmer · 18-01-2019 8:10pm

Castlekeeper wrote: »

Muckka wrote: »

Great information in this thread.
I always thought the river's would be bursting with fish, but obviously the pollution would have been quite harmful to the equatic life.

Bird's must have been less plentiful too, because I'm sure a few crows in the pot would have been tempting, or pigeons.

Maybe not in large cities like London but in most cases rivers were fecund. E.g. A common clause in servants conotions when working in the big house was that salmon could be served only x amount of tines pee week, it was so plentiful that it was seen as a poor mans dinner.

Rivers containing game fish were most likely controlled by the landowners,much like today but large catches were possible by fishing along coasts either with baited lines,nets or pots.
Salmon would've been common and are not difficult to catch when they're inshore.
Eels were also caught in large numbers and often kept in ponds to fatten up

Wibbs · 18-01-2019 8:34pm

archer22 wrote: »

I remember reading somewhere that in medieval times people did not bathe during the winter months, that job was left until summer.

So I guess like Crocodile Dundee they had a bath once a year...whether they needed it or not

Actually that's a little bit of a myth. One encouraged by later writers and media like films, which tend to show the the usual "medieval" shorthand as a bunch of peasants covered in poo all wearing brown rags for clothes. Ditto for the so called "Dark Ages". People were and are still sniffy about the period between the fall of Rome and the coming of the Renaissance(of the classical world, or their interpretation of it).

Medieval people probably weren't particularly smelly at all. For a couple of reasons. 1) they considered staying clean was a religious duty. Cleanliness next to godliness as it were. 2) the theory of disease and its spread was associated with miasmas, that is bad smells, so they avoided bad smells as much as possible. 3) throughout Europe there were public baths and if you had a few quid private bathing was also a thing, or just jumping into rivers(more a summer activity to be fair

) 4) Soap making was quite the industry. IIRC the idea of soap came from the Middle East either brought back by pilgrims or crusaders or through the usual trade. Their soap was made from animal fats and ash and various perfumes. 5) in towns there were laws and fines for places like tanneries and butcher shops who didn't clean up their messes and the same for not clearing out latrines.

People may have been a bit more whiffy in the period between the fall of Rome(the Romans used olive oil and scraped it off and they loved their perfumes) and the introduction of soap. Hard to tell. Also hard to tell what they might have considered offensive body odour. Their diets for the most part were good and they washed their clothes regularly and most of the time went "commando" so no build up there, so... Today we tend to cover ourselves in perfumes and various scents. They might well have found us overpoweringly scented. They would have found our world very loud and fast moving, and yeah probably quite "smelly" too.

I'd reckon later periods like the 17th century places and people could have been smellier and certainly after the industrial revolution.

Ipso · 18-01-2019 8:35pm

The Enbalmer wrote: »

Rivers containing game fish were most likely controlled by the landowners,much like today but large catches were possible by fishing along coasts either with baited lines,nets or pots.
Salmon would've been common and are not difficult to catch when they're inshore.
Eels were also caught in large numbers and often kept in ponds to fatten up

Having spent many a fruitless day with a rod in my hand, I say good day to you!

Wibbs · 18-01-2019 8:37pm

Ipso wrote: »

Having spent many a fruitless day with a rod in my hand, I say good day to you!

Ditto. though a much easier proposition with a net mind you.

RMAOK · 18-01-2019 8:38pm

You'd have believed that the earth was flat - although I think there must be some medieval people still around as there's a cohort of people who still think the world is flat :rolleyes:

Ipso · 18-01-2019 8:40pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Ditto. though a much easier proposition with a net mind you.

Yes, but there were still fruitless days with a net (although that was down to dwindling stocks).

The Enbalmer · 18-01-2019 10:09pm

Ipso wrote: »

The Enbalmer wrote: »

Rivers containing game fish were most likely controlled by the landowners,much like today but large catches were possible by fishing along coasts either with baited lines,nets or pots.
Salmon would've been common and are not difficult to catch when they're inshore.
Eels were also caught in large numbers and often kept in ponds to fatten up

Having spent many a fruitless day with a rod in my hand, I say good day to you!

A net or a trident or a stroke-haul! Angling was for the idle!

Capt'n Midnight · 18-01-2019 10:25pm

The Enbalmer wrote: »

A net or a trident or a stroke-haul! Angling was for the idle!

Wut ?

ticking or chucking a stone

or for the well connected weirs and baskets or stone walls in tidal areas

soon after america was discovered cod fishing expeditions went over , so plentiful you could scoop them up in a bucket and 5 feet long

wakka12 · 18-01-2019 11:05pm

Why does this even need to be stated? I dont think youll meet anybody who believes life was better in medieval times

corner of hells · 18-01-2019 11:14pm

wakka12 wrote: »

Why does this even need to be stated? I dont think youll meet anybody who believes life was better in medieval times

Especially when you think of them dinosaurs roaming around.

18-01-2019 11:21pm

Not that anybody would like to generalise about a thousand-year period covering thousands of kilometres and enormous socio-economic and cultural variation but the middle ages were grand in large parts. Much, much quieter than the modern world and all the noise we accept since the rise of the motor vehicle. Just imagine how quiet the world was before its invention.

Also, there were far fewer deaths from warfare then than today for many obvious reasons. The first of these being low populations. This had enormous consequences for the rights and quality of life of tenants and indeed everybody. Because populations were low, an invading lord did not, contrary to common misconception, want to kill as many people as possible. Instead, he sought their submission to his overlordship and to profit/expand his power from using them. This was particularly true in Gaelic Ireland, and also the reason cattle were so prized in the Gaelic world - cattle were in shorter supply than land so this greater scarcity made them more valuable and thus cattle rather than land were the target of raids. So, it wasn't "always about land" in Irish history. Accordingly, the number of cattle you had rather than the extent of your landholdings played a greater role in determining your social status.

In essence, though, the idea of the middle ages being 'barbarous' is misleading wherever low populations existed. The "savage tribes" then, as today, were considerably less capable of inflicting death than the "civilising" forces coming towards them. It was only from the 1550s in Ireland anyway where a cultural change in warfare as one of extermination of an 'inferior' people, who were now expendable because they were going to be replaced by new settlers, replaced the traditional medieval concept of warfare where submission was usually the aim. This rising death toll was helped by an improvement in military technology in the early modern period.

It's no coincidence that in western Europe particularly after the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, the rights of all workers improved hugely. On the eve of it, many parts of Europe were actually overpopulated so the Black Death had an obvious positive consequence for survivors. Why? Demand and supply; with about one-third of Europeans killed by it, workers were able to demand more rights in exchange for their work.

Also, Gregorian Chant is still absolutely stunning. And matins in the morning, vespers in the evening, having a mill in each village...

JustAThought · 18-01-2019 11:29pm

Man traps were a real thing - for poachers.

Droit something - the lords pleasure - he could have any virgin up to and including on her wedding day because it was his previlege as Lord to taste everything on his lands if he wanted

Donkey Poo fires. Imagine cooking over that.

Almost nobody could read in the peasant classes so men were employed as Herolds and Town Criers to run about reading propoganda from the local townhall/King - not too different to how media works today

Blood letting, leech curing, and teeth pulling were all done without pain relief at the local barber shop - I guess their version of the HSE

Cripples and freaks could be shunned with impunity but if lucky could sell their freakieness to the local lord or king and have a happy secure job complete with banquets and luxuries like beds

You could be eaten alive by rats as you slept, and head lice were an incurable lifelong plague.

Babies could be dragged from their cots and eaten by wild boars or packs of wild dogs or wolves.

Absolute power of the Church.

The risk of invasion and slavery if captured.
Etc

scamalert · 18-01-2019 11:40pm

reading all this sounds perfect time to send vegans back into :pac:

The Enbalmer · 18-01-2019 11:43pm

scamalert wrote: »

reading all this sounds perfect time to send vegans back into :pac:

And hipsters.

Ronan|Raven · 18-01-2019 11:43pm

Ending up in a trebuchet..

Fr Tod Umptious · 18-01-2019 11:51pm

Great thread OP.

I wonder in 600 years wondering about the 2000s.

Wonder how we survived with ensuite bathrooms and 100mb internet, whatever 100mb will translate to in 2618.

StereoSound · 19-01-2019 1:29am

Dungeons.....Real life hell

Medieval torture.....(read up on this one)

Giant Rat infestations.....

Constant fear of Murder, Rape, Kidnap.....

Beaten on the street by the Kings gards if you could not pay your rent.....

If I were living in medieval times I would probably go join the Kings gards, at least I'll eat well and have somewhere with less sh!te to sleep. Garding a castle couldnt be half bad, but in times of war it could be brutal, no worse then the regular city dwellers I guess.

Fiftyfilthy · 19-01-2019 1:41am

DS86DS wrote: »

Very good article; 25 reasons you'll be glad you weren't alive in Medieval Times

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/list25.com/25-reasons-youll-be-glad-you-dont-live-in-medieval-times/amp/

Between high infant mortality

The constant threat of starvation from a bad harvest due to bad weather

City and town rivers that acted as open sewers for the feces and urine of thousands of people.....as well as the dumping ground for butchers and tanners..........one can only imagine the stink

Unpaved streets where a few weeks of rain would result in all of the feces, urine, animal entrails, rotting animal corpses and animal manure been flushed into the streets

No anesthetic in surgery nor qualified surgeons to do surgery on you. If you had a toothache, your local barber would pull it out of your mouth with a plyers and without anesthetic........ Surgical procedures also often resulting in death due to infection and lack of understanding about bacteria.

Constant threat of plague and other terrible diseases....... including simple things today that can be medicated resulting in death.

Very basic diet of vegetables and black bread with meat and white bread been luxuries only the nobility could afford.

And much more.

Don't think I would have fancied been around in Ye Olde Medieval Times..... though I'd imagine given that they only drank beer instead of water, it might not have been that bad after all.

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/list25.com/25-reasons-youll-be-glad-you-dont-live-in-medieval-times/amp/

Just shows how far and quick mankind has evolved

Therefore in another few hundred years people will be coming to similar conclusions about our standards of living
(If the earth or mankind is still around)

SEPT 23 1989 · 19-01-2019 2:34am

Such a negative thread what about the positives?

Cantona's Collars · 19-01-2019 2:44am

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Such a negative thread what about the positives?

No Ray D'Arcy.

archer22 · 19-01-2019 11:45am

Wibbs mentions fines for not cleaning latrines in one of his posts...an interesting note on latrines is that in the middle ages their contents became highly sought after, almost a 'gold' rush if you like.

The reason being they were the key source of Saltpeter the main ingredient of gunpowder.
The government had people employed full time to collect it...so at that time the problem was not so much the emptying of the latrines but rather how to fill them as fast as you could.

There was also a belief that the excrement and urine of drunks provided the highest quality Saltpeter..I wonder if they were correct about that

Wibbs · 19-01-2019 12:09pm

Yep. One issue Europe had with making the gunpowder stuff from China, was unlike China there were far fewer sources of saltpetre. IIRC the substance was originally called something like "Chinese dust/flour".

Urine had been a commodity for a long time, since the Romans. They installed big piss jars on street corners to collect the stuff(and then taxed it. Cos Romans). The Romans used it to wash their teeth. :eek: Apparently there are reasons why that would work too. One bit of Roman graffiti said something like "Claudia's teeth are so white, no wonder we're running out of piss".

In the Middle Ages it was used for among other things washing clothes(nope it doesn't leave them smelly), tanning hides, in the dyeing industry(as a fixative IIRC?). Urine was also used for washing wounds. Not so daft as generally speaking it's sterile and probably much more so than the well water and the ureic acid and ammonia would make bacteria unhappy. It was a good fertiliser too.

Back then they recycled everything and had a use for nearly everything. They were far more "green" in that regard.

Franz Von Peppercorn · 19-01-2019 12:46pm

Fiftyfilthy wrote: »

Just shows how far and quick mankind has evolved

Therefore in another few hundred years people will be coming to similar conclusions about our standards of living
(If the earth or mankind is still around)

Not necessarily. They’re not going to be better fed on the future (not in terms of calories anyway). Technology may be better but we aren’t going to be as primitive to them as the Middle Ages are to us.

The Middle Ages (generally post 1000) get a bad rap by the way because they are well documented - the dark ages were worse.

Capt'n Midnight · 19-01-2019 1:13pm

archer22 wrote: »

There was also a belief that the excrement and urine of drunks provided the highest quality Saltpeter..I wonder if they were correct about that

IIRC it was the rich and bishops and monasteries because they had a richer diet with more protein, so more nitrates.

An some poor sod had to scrape the white stuff off the walls.

Another ingredient in gunpowder was sulphur for which the main source was inside volcanoes. So lots of noxious fumes and stuff.

IIRC Napoleon's troops had to go inside Stromboli for it at one point.

Still goes on today
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-12301421

Beautiful blue flames , but deadly.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140130-kawah-ijen-blue-flame-volcanoes-sulfur-indonesia-pictures/

Muahahaha · 19-01-2019 8:52pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Beautiful blue flames , but deadly.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140130-kawah-ijen-blue-flame-volcanoes-sulfur-indonesia-pictures/

I've been inside that volcano in Indonesia in the pitch dark to see the blue lights, the stink of sulphur coming out of it is unreal. They are still mining sulphur there, it is all done by hand and lads have to carry loads of 80-90kg out of the volcano in baskets strapped to their heads.

extra gravy · 19-01-2019 8:57pm

mrcheez wrote: »

It depends on where you lived.

Ireland / UK would have been considered 3rd world, but somewhere like Florence or Al Andalus in Spain would have been nice to live in.

Over half of Florence's population died from the plague at one stage. Nowhere was safe.

Collie D · 19-01-2019 9:42pm

StereoSound wrote: »

Medieval torture.....(read up on this one)

I did. Some pretty sick minds at work there. One would imagine they could have sped up the Agricultural Revolution if they put their minds to something more useful than sadism.

Wibbs · 19-01-2019 10:10pm

Collie D wrote: »

I did. Some pretty sick minds at work there. One would imagine they could have sped up the Agricultural Revolution if they put their minds to something more useful than sadism.

To be fair to the Middle Ages C, torture was part and parcel of European culture for millennia right up to and including the 20th century. The Agricultural Revolution happened thousands of years before and on that score they massively improved the land yields in that time. EG in the middle of the "Dark Ages" in nearby Britain they near doubled the yields of Roman Britain. For a start they improved the plough so could dig more land, they massively expanded the use of water and wind in milling and engineering and even clocks. The sundial worked grand in Southern Europe, but wasn't much cop up in our neck of the woods so they came up with water clocks. Not too long after they came up with the escapement which gave us mechanical clocks. This had a major impact and lives start to become more ordered by the sound of church bells(the word clock itself comes from the Irish word for "bell").

Mini renaissances kicked off around Europe, not least here in Ireland and we exported our shizzle to the rest of Europe. As one French chronicler noted with some incredulity "Ireland is filling the world with a herd of philosophers". Charlemagne made a good fist of trying to restart a western Roman Empire and after wading in blood in the pursuit of it, then oddly enough decided to go all scholarly and collected all the books and scholars he could find. Even though he never learned to read or write(he tried but it never took).

The beginnings of modern banking and commerce kicked off in the Middle Ages too. Architecture really took off with things like the huge cathedrals sprouting up, which also gave us things like guilds and beginnings of workers rights. Slavery went the way of the dodo too, at least in the classical sense of the word. The sciences also got a boost, as did the arts and the law and at the end of the Middle Ages the printing press came along and really changed things forever.

harry Bailey esq · 19-01-2019 10:29pm

Wibbs wrote: »

"Ireland is filling the world with a herd of philosophers".

Philosopher=Professional arse scratcher. Ireland is abundant with them currently, it's a bit of stretch to believe that there was no lazy cu*ts in medieval times. There where philosophers aplenty though.

Capt'n Midnight · 20-01-2019 12:06am

Wibbs wrote: »

To be fair to the Middle Ages C, torture was part and parcel of European culture for millennia right up to and including the 20th century.

The Inquisition had rules whereas the civil authorities didn't so people would choose to go to the Inquisition if they had a choice.

Rather than torture you directly they would show you the tools and explain what each one did in excruciating detail. Then drop you back in your cell to think about it. As a result tools were rarely used.

And the best bit is it was by appointment. You'd get a months notice from the Spanish Inquisition.

The hazards of Medieval life

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