Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - How Filthy Were Medieval People?

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are back listening to Petwitster 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

arranged other subjects and you should be an adult too. Oh my God, do we feel safer? I feel safer. Right. Let's crack on. Ah, the fresh scent of medieval streets. Wood smoke, tanneries, stagnant water, animal entrails, rotting food scraps. Pooh, 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. We've been doing them dirty for far too long. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixta Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister.

The widespread misconception that medieval people were really dirty is a proper bug bear for some historians. And one such historian is the marvellous Eleanor Janager, 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 waist out of windows onto unsuspecting passers-by? Well, I'm ready to find out if you are. And welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's everyone's favourite.

It's Eleanor Yarniger. How you doing, babe? Oh, I'm better now that you're here. I missed you. thank you so much. I missed you too. And we're doing your favorite 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 it was just grossed the whole time. Like, girl, I swear to you, the way that people will just say this to you,

like with a straight face, that's a thing that people would do. Like, it's such a strange thing. where it's like, but you're a people, yeah. You're a people, right? Yeah. And you would accept that. Like, 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...

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 sanitizing the shower. 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 look like a fucking warlock. 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, like, I. 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. Did you like charge over to that school trip and start shouting at people?

I managed not to. Well done, Ellen. But I was like, but I was like glaring at the lady like, I see you. And it is this particularly interesting thing. It's received wisdom. And indeed, it is pejorative, alert, common sense. Right? You know, 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. Yeah. 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 want to go there. And this myth is still withers. I don't know if you caught. we need to be very careful

that you 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 Conquer 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 anti-back 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. Yeah. And I think that there is a thing because of that myth, people confuse it with realism. Yeah. So, you know, if there are, people, it's gritty. It's gritty. It's gritty. It's the same thing that you see, you know, whenever there's a drama, the minute they go 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. That's how we think of the medieval period. Through a brown lens. Everything with brown. And it's just a ridiculous thing, because if people now wouldn't do it, people, 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 2 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 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. 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 too. To your two shower person. If I've got enough time, baby. Like I got to get you got to get your sleep. smell off. So you shower in the morning and then at night as well. 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. 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. Yeah, exactly. So it's just like, I'm trying to, like, I'm cozy maxing. I'm bed-pilled. Yeah. And I'm getting in there as clean as possible. So, you know, that's what's that. They wouldn't have been that close. But everyday bathing, would that have been accessible to a medieval person? So full body immersion bath, you're going to need some money for that. Yeah, and all of that, right? So for rich people, yeah, for the bloody king of England, yeah. Okay.

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. 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. It's a flex 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 which people would have done this. 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 bathhouse. The bathhouse. 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 bathhouse. So did medieval people. And something that I learned when I was in Pompeii is their baths were not that fucking clean. It didn't have plumbing.

It was the same water being reused all day long. 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. or so and you move that water through. Oh, I see. So it's like individual tubs that people are sitting in. That is cleaner. That's cleaner than the Romans. You heard it here.

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 Southark. Now, are some of those brothels? Yes. But some of them are also just bathhouses.

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 bathhouses? 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

we'll just like go to get some action. Still is. Like it's mostly confined to gay culture today in Europe. But like their gay bathhouses are still very much with us. Exactly. And for example, now as swingers clubs, oftentimes we'll have like swimming pools and things like that. And it is kind of a place that you go.

I hope that they clean that out regularly. Let's hope that the water is clean and fresh in there. I am begging. But 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 curate. curtains around your private bathtub, which do a couple of things that helps keep the heat in.

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 assingations. 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. 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. I see. 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. And now I'm surrounded by these perverts. I mean, there's bathhouses and bathhouses.

It's probably a little bit easier. Like 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. 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 people just knew where to go. Yeah. And it is kind of one of those things where you just sort of know. And, you know, 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. Yeah, late at night on a Friday. Whether that place is for you can happen. Listen, I have a lot of needs, pay. That must happen all the time. People getting that one messed up. Yeah, right? And so that is a really similar sort of vibe is the way to think about it.

So if you got a lot of money, you can go to the bathhouse as much as you want. especially in urban context. In a rural context, they often have like a village bathhouse too. It's especially common. You know, it's 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. 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. Oh, listen, all you got to do is go to Hungary or go to Japan. I know you would. And, you know, it is there. It's all happening.

Like I'm like, girlies, let's go. We're going to have a sauna. It's going to be great. But like, you can 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. Okay.

You know, Saturday, that's a big day for it because you want to look nice on Sunday. Yeah. So like Saturday is the big day. But people kind of will go whatever. It's just sort of like one of those things where like when can you afford it. How much would it cost? 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. Okay. You know, but it is something where you're going, you know. And kind of like kids go free. Right.

Yeah. You can bring your kids. Not to the weird ones, though. They wouldn't be going in there. They are like, you cannot bring those guys. You cannot bring them in there. I guess that's a good test. Like, bring your kid with and see if they're like, no.

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. 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 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. Interesting. 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. Thanks for that. That's great. Cheers patriarchy. So we tend to have a lot of those.

And that's just something that an enterprising person can do. There are places that have municipal baths. So it is oftentimes like a press. project of kind of like urban revivocation 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 going to take. Okay. We're setting up.

We're setting up. See, that makes it sound quite respectable then. Like if the queen's saying 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. How about it? Yeah, the mediciable ones are just not, it's not that kind of party. Yeah.

The mediciable ones, those are the ones where you're kind of going to go down with your family. Are you actually going to wash? Yeah, and the cost is usually incredibly defrayed. And that is where you're going to get like the big. Okay. Here's a huge, like, a pool, here are these things. They're big on steam rooms. They really like that.

Oh, really? 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 civic thing. If you are in a village, you know, because like everyone's going to have to get together if you have a bathhouse and kind of like do that, which people will do. But you also still might scrub at least once a week in a tub in your own home. Okay. The reason you only do it once a week is it's an absolute bollick.

Water is heavy. Yes. Yeah. And that's the thing everyone forgets, right? You know, so now it's difficult. 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 you then need to heat up the water and then you got to put the water into the tub and then you got to get into the tub that is a lot of moving water around so you're only kind of get to do it as much as 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 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. Yeah. And that's the thing to keep in mind is that 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's just like a whole thing. Right. So 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.

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. 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 you just kind of do a daily wash. And for this, this is a lot easier. That's what they call. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, you just heat up enough water. You stand in a wooden tub and you just did a smelly bits. You get yourself wet.

You soap everything down and then you pour. 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. 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 can kind of tell that they enjoy being clean is you sometimes if you are gunning for sainthood, give it up.

Okay. Because it's a form of asceticism. Oh, being dirty. Mm-hmm. Ah. 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, you, 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.

Yeah. 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. And some people take it to this other excrued dream where they also don't bathe. Wow. Okay.

And now we know that that is consistent. uncomfortable because that's why they're doing it. Yeah. Yeah. That's the point. I see. Yeah. Which establishes the fact that they really do want to do it. They're giving up something important. So if you're like St. Simeon the style light, for example, the dude who like goes and hangs out on top of the pillar, like obviously you're not getting a bath in. Yeah. You're on top of the pillar. You 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. Yeah. And so that is incredibly helpful. So it's also meaning 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 because no one wants to be around me. I'll be back with Eleanor after this short break. 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 is complimenting somebody, they almost always talk about their breath. Teeth is usually in there.

That might be a later thing, but normal, like teeth turn up a lot. Oh, yeah, they have nice teeth, teeth and sweet breath and that they smell nice. That is repeated again and again and again. Yeah, we absolutely see. There is a guide for poets that is written in the 12th century called the Aras Vista Victoria. It rolls off the top. Basically, it is a guide that tells poets. So 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. Yeah. Breath like honey. Yep. 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 like massively, massively expensive. And you can get honey, for sure. But like the things that ruin your tooth enamel, are wildly, wildly expensive.

And so they're just completely out of reach. You know, 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. No, no.

And they would have been absolutely stinkier, I think. George and scholars can come out as for that one. I remember the Canterbury Tales correctly. In the Miller's tale, there's this kind of fawning fop 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. Yeah. Well, you know, that's the thing is like if the breath be stinking, the ladies don't want it.

And so, yeah, you absolutely will chew on herbs. A lot of people wear perfume. They'll make their own perfume. Yeah. 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 can 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 cloth maker in Bruges, 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 period.

If you go to the countryside of England in the 18th century, people are still making their own soap. They're not buying it. So it's not something that changes really at all. 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. And yet, so people do have Sunday best clothes. Although 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. Yeah, nice stuff to put on. But, you know, day to day. 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. Yeah, once it starts stinking, it stinks, doesn't it? And you can never quite get it out to the smell of it.

This is a thing that I always kind of joke about with my friends where it's like, if you go back in time of the medieval period, the major thing they're going to be like is like, what are you wearing in terms of cloth? Yes. They're going to be like, I don't understand what this is. Yeah. Because they understand wool and they understand linen and derivations thereof. they understand silk, but they're not wearing polyblends, babe. Yeah. Like that's not going to make a whole lot of sense.

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 poor 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 do you keep it clean if you've only got one or two shirts? 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. 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. But what you do first is you soak all of the clothes in a combination of usually eggshells and lie. Egg shells and lie. Yeah, and water. Egg shells. Yeah, I don't know why the eggshells. but I'm just for sure.

Okay, fair enough. All right. I don't know why. I should probably figure that out. But listen, I'm too cute to have to know why. That just might be one of those random things that somebody did want. So now we're going to do it forever. Yeah, so now we're doing it forever.

This is just what we do now. Egg shelf. And so then you're probably going to lug that. You'll then drain it off. And then you're going to 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.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not talking wet clothes that have just come out of the spin cycle. Yeah. Right. It's like these are sodden. 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 washhouse 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. Yeah, I'm okay. 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. Of course you do. 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's washerwomen. Yeah, that's cool. And actually, treat it pretty well, like, given retirement sums. Really? Yeah. So that's nice.

That's all right. Yeah. 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 got one outfit for the week, maybe the other one for Sunday best and some linen every month. What's going on here?

Rags. Rags. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. So basically, you know, like your linen eventually is going to wear out, especially from, you know, being washed in lie. an egg shells. And then like, and egg shells and then like scrunched across a board, you know, like that'll wear it down. And so you put that to one side and you make pads out of the rags.

And then you fasten them around your waist with a belt, which again, those period belts were common 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 it's, eventually if like a sponge or something gets a little bit more mangy, 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. I'll be back with Eleanor after the short break. 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. 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. Sorry about that.

I just felt that that was what I had to do. I don't know where that came from, like this idea that people are just like... That's not true that you just flung it out and went, it was a godaloo. No, there are laws about that. Like, 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... Yeah, when you actually say that out loud, yeah, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Just think about it for like two seconds. Like, you know, 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 Gardy Lou. Yeah.

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. 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 it's 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 Airford Latrine disaster. I don't know if you're aware of this. I have heard of it. Please go over it once more. In the late medieval period, everyone gets together in the Airfort Town Hall and the floor collapses. And everybody falls into the cesspit that is underneath the floorboards. And they all drown in a bunch of it. Not good.

Not good. 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 types 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 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 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 we in the middle of the night, you are not getting up and going outside in like three below. That's not going to happen. 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. Yeah. And again, that will hold true into the Victorian buried. 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 don't like everybody, everybody is doing this.

And indeed, we do tend to see. 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 going to be nastier than medieval London. They were quite industrious than medieval people when it came to recycling as well, weren't they? Because they, shit and piss were recycled. They were reused. 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. Yeah. Often use. 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. Yeah. Right. Because like the tanning process is gross. But if they're talking about how leather lane smells, that's because it's unusual. Yeah. Right. It's unusual that it smells that bad. Like people wouldn't ordinarily notice it. Yeah. And it is true that cities smell more than the countryside. And it's something that medieval people remark upon where they're like, hmm, that gets a bit wiffy 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, that's got to 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 trains in July, you know, you would suddenly be like, hmm. Oh, I am in the largest city in the world, aren't I? You know, 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. No, we would not. So there's a final question then. Where do you think this idea that the medieval period was particularly stinky and dirty come from? 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. A lot of the Victorian stuff again, because they went bananas

for the medieval period, but it was very much about othering themselves against it. Exactly. 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 just don't need to worry about what was happening in the medieval period. That thousand years, forget about it. Forget about it. You're clever.

They're stupid. 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 have 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 things go. Or people will oftentimes look at the fashion for not bathing in the early modern period.

and think medieval people did that. Okay. As I'm sure you will learn, it's a gross misunderstanding as well of the fashion for not bathing. Because 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 then 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 Eve and Louis the 14th didn't be, 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 do different things in terms of fashion. People have different ways of relating to the concept of cleanliness. These things do change.

Different understandings of what clean means and shifting attitudes to how you get ill seem to play quite a lot into the. this factor as well. 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. Yeah. And they tend to think that, oh, if you're really ill, then you shouldn't bathe or something because that is going to open up your pores. That's the one. Yeah, that illness can get in that way somehow. 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.

He'd up. Because a lot of the time they're like, oh, yeah, well, this will be because, you know, 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 not how things work. And there's just different ways of looking at the world. 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? 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 in Future Sex, Going Medieval on Women's Rules and Society. That does a lot of bath chat. It does. It does. It's fabulous. Thank you so much.

Will you come back again and talk to us more about medieval stuff? Whenever you want, baby, I'm at your disposal. Thank you. 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 betwixt at history hit.com. This podcast was produced by Sophie G.

The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.