Dan Snow's History Hit - Toilets, Underpants & Pillows: Everyday Things with Greg Jenner

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

Why do grandmas wear bloomers? How did romans clean themselves after using the toilet? Pillows were originally made of stone?! These are all questions Orla, Wolf and Zia Snow have for author and public historian Greg Jenner. In this episode Dan and his children quiz Greg about the incredible history of the everyday things we use and take for granted.Greg's new children's book is called 'You Are History' and is bursting with hundreds of astonishing stories and illustrations.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and mixed by Joseph Knight.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi buddy, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Special episode here. I've got a few helpers on hand. I've got... Zia. Age? Eleven. Who else have I got?

Woof! Age? Eight! And? All at age seven. And we're all a bit sad because as we're recording this, England have just been knocked out of the World Cup. How are we feeling, folks?

Very disappointed. But luckily next year it's the... It's the women's so we're gonna win that all right folks on this special day we are interviewing greg jenner the public historian the best-selling author the podcast legend the man behind much the fun and cleverness of the smash hit horrible histories tv show greg's been on this podcast many times before you'll know who he is he's written a brilliant book called You Are History. It's for kids. So I thought I'd get my kids along to ask some probing questions.

I'm going to keep them all in the same place for 20 minutes. That will be fantastic. Right, kids, are you ready? We're going to interview Greg. Who's ready? Me. Me. There's only been a little bit of physical violence involved.

Welcome to the podcast, everyone. Enjoy. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again.

And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Hi, Greg Jetta. Thank you very much for coming on the tower. Hi, Craig Jena. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Hello. Thank you for having me on the podcast. I thought for this episode

I might bring some firepower along with me, some support. So I've got the Snow Kids. I've got Zia, Wolf and Orla. Say hello, everyone. Hello. Hello.

Good morning. They're looking forward to this a lot more than they were at the podcast about the Battle of Hastings. Remember that one, Orla? No, it was boy and I wanted to play with my friends.

Yes, I remember I had to force you to do that episode, listen to that wonderful story. Anyway, Greg. It's not wonderful. And we love listening to your history podcasts in the car. And so, you know, we're all primed and ready to go. Okay, team, did we like Greg Jenner's book? Yeah. Phew. Oh, that's lucky. That could have been awful, couldn't it? It could have been very awkward if you didn't like it.

Greg, you have decided to write a book about the history of things, about everyday items. That sounds like a great idea, but it must have been brutal. The entire history of a pillow is exhausting, right? Yeah. It's one of those things where you think, I'll write a children's book, that'll be easy. And then actually, it took me three years. So it was a lot of work. It's 50 objects that a kid might use every day. And I use some of this stuff every day as well. Pillows and breakfast cereal and underpants and TVs and phones and all the stuff we use. But yes, it was lots of work. And also working with a brilliant illustrator, Jenny Taylor, to make it fun and colourful.

Jenny had to do over 500 illustrations. It might be 600 actually, I haven't counted. But she had to do loads and loads and loads of illustrations. All of them had to be historically accurate and colourful and funny. So it's been a long time to write this book. Well, we appreciate the hard work, buddy. It's looking good.

So guys, you each had a thing that we wanted to know more about. Let's all shout them out. First of all, Ola, what was yours? Toilet. Toilet. Yeah, Wolfie? Underpants. And mine was pillows.

Wow. Good selection of stuff. These are my favourite things, really. Shall we start with yours, Ola? Do you want to start youngest first? Shall we start with toilets? Yeah. Okay, good.

What questions have we got about toilets? When was the first toilet? Well, hang on. Presumably, most people in human history have just gone to the toilet in a bush. Yeah, absolutely. So one of my favourite jokes, and this is a real joke from 500 years ago, from the time of Henry VIII, and this was written in a joke book called Les Demands Joyeux, which means the joyful riddles or joyful questions. And the joke is, what's the cleanest leaf in the forest? Holly, because no one wants to wipe their bum on it.

Because Holly is all prickly and you don't want to wipe your bum. But that tells us that people were wiping their bums with leaves in the forest. Can you imagine wiping your bum with Holly? Yeah, not fun. Not fun at all. Who invented the toilet? Well, that's a great question. Toilets are obviously super important in the history of the world. Yeah, not fun. Not fun at all. Who invented the toilets? Well, that's a great question. Toilets are obviously super important in the history of the world. There are lots and lots and lots of toilets around the world from different eras.

We know that people probably just went in bushes for most of human history, which goes back a long, long way into the Stone Age. But we know in the Bronze Age that you get quite fancy toilets. So we're talking four and a half thousand years ago in ancient Egypt and in ancient South Asia, the civilization or the society that we call sometimes the Indus, they had brilliant toilets that you would build up from brick and then you'd have little boards that you'd sit on and it'd be a drop hole and then it would flush down into either sewers or into a kind of collecting pot. You could go and then wash it away. And they had toilet seats. So four and a half thousand years ago, they had stone toilet seats that you could sit on just like our toilet seats. So that's a pretty old toilet, isn't it? Did they have toilet paper? Well, paper isn't as

old as you might think. So people didn't use paper in Europe until a few hundred years ago. And they probably used rags and maybe bits of old cloth. They used scrapey stones. They could use shells. In Japan, they used called chugi sticks, which are like little bits of, you know, when you get an ice lolly, it's a bit like that. They'd use that to get the ice lolly stick. They'd scrape the bottom. People have used water, they've used little watering cans, all sorts of things, but paper wasn't really used until medieval China. And then toilet paper as we know it in Europe and North America wasn't invented until the 19th century, until Victorian times by a man called Joseph Gaiety. And it still had splinters in the 1930s.

Splinters? Splinters. There's a famous advert from the Northern Tissue Company that says our toilet paper is now splinter free. And they were very proud of this because it meant that there were no more splinters. But that was less than 100 years ago. Presumably, Greg, you need toilets in situations

where lots of humans are living beside each other. Otherwise, everyone's poo and wee goes into the drinking supply and it makes people very sick. Is that why all these civilizations develop toilets? Well, absolutely. One of the big problems when you build a town or a city is where does all the poo go? Because poo is smelly and it's dirty and it can give you diseases. And so, yes, the ancient cities, they had to build up big piles of poo called middens that would be just outside the main walls. And then gradually the big cities started to build sewers. I mean,

the Romans had sewers under their cities called the Cloaca Maxima under Rome. It was so big you could row a boat through it, although you wouldn't want to, it wouldn't be much of a cruise. Yeah, through history, people had to find ways to get rid of all the poo, but sometimes they didn't do a very good job and sometimes the poo would come into their water supply and they would get very unwell. So yeah, it's a big, big history, the history of toilets. And the kids are too embarrassed, but tell me the urban myth, Greg,

you're always good at coming on this podcast, dispatching the myths. Did Thomas Crapper invent the toilet? No, I'm afraid not. He was a well-known toilet engineer, but he did not invent the toilet. There are obviously numerous inventors, if you want, but we can go back to Thomas Harrington, the inventor of the kind of flush toilet in Tudor times. He was the godson to Queen Elizabeth I.

Didn't really take off. And then in the 18th century, you get several French and British engineers and architects who are doing sort of clever stuff. And they invent things like the S bend and little mechanisms that make your toilet smell less bad. And those are the important things. And Crapper comes along later on and he puts his name on stuff and people then go, oh, I'm going to the Crapper

because they can see his name embossed on the toilet seat. So we should say we're going to the Harrington from now on. We're going to the Harrington. Yes, exactly. Do you remember when your auntie, a rat came up to the toilet while she was sitting on it? Oh yeah. What?

Yeah. A rat crawled up through the pipe. And then bit her bottom. No, she didn't bite her bottom. Well, that happened to the Romans, actually. We know that in ancient Roman times, the big public toilets were called foriche. Sometimes you could get nearly as many as 80 people

sat side by side. There'd be no cubicles, so no privacy. You'd be sat next to a stranger and you'd have to wipe your bottom with a sponge on a stick that you would hand to the stranger and say, your turn, even though it had your poo on it. And we know that sometimes rats would climb up out of the toilet and nibble people. And we know sometimes there would be explosions because all the gas from people's bottoms would sometimes catch fire and blow up. And so there would be rats and smells the gas from people's bottoms would sometimes catch fire and blow up. And so there would be rats and smells

and strangers handing you pooey sponges on sticks and explosions. All quite dangerous. Would you like to have a poo like that? No. No? All right, brilliant. Has that answered all your questions about toilets?

Yeah, that was great. If you think of any more, let us know all that. You're listening to dan snow's history more coming up don't go away i'm matt lewis and i'm dr alan orionaga and in god medieval we get into the greatest mysteries the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking

Vikings, Normans, kings and popes who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Right, Wolfie, moving on to you. What's your topic of choice that you want to learn more about? Underpants. Underpants. Good one. Well, yeah, the history of underpants. Can I just more about? Underpants. Underpants. Good one.

Well, yeah, the history of underpants. Can I just interject here? We had a discussion about underpants this morning before this podcast. Wolfie did not know that there was a fashion in the 90s, which you're just about old enough to remember, Greg, where you had like quite big flappy boxer shorts that we had to sort of trowel under our jeans, which in retrospect, because I'm not, I don't know about you,

but I'm now a spandex, more Calvin Klein pant wearer kind of vibe. And the big cotton flappy boxer short, that surely deserves a chapter by itself. Yeah, you can see it in movies from the 90s, can't you? Where, yeah, guys are wearing old school boxers in the ring. They're kind of really big, big pants that come down to the knees and they're really wide and flappy, too much fabric. Wolfie, tell Greg about flappy box shorts and your grandfather. So when my dad was, well not like young, young, but like 20, he gave his dad underpants for his birthday or Christmas or whatever. And then he put them on and then he went outside with only his pants on because he didn't know what they were because my dad was just a wide front you know 1970s kind of wearer and we gave him

some boxer shorts and he just wore them out on the street thought they're a pair of shorts with nothing underneath that's a bbc scandal waiting to happen there that was a scandal i'll tell you what we sent him inside very quickly okay questions about underpants go wolfie what do you want to know about them why did granny have granny bloomers not just normal pants oh good question well bloomers are named after a woman called amelia bloomer and she wanted women to be able to wear trousers because women weren't allowed to wear trousers in victorian times people would get very grumpy if they tried and And so she wore big Turkish style trousers that later became nicknamed bloomers. And they ended up as underpants for ladies. And there were various types of underpants for ladies. There

were knickerbockers and pantaloons and chemises and all sorts of things and drawers, all of them quite good fun, all big names. But the fashion sort of hung around a little bit. So the idea was you have big baggy ones that protect your modesty, don't show off too much, but at the same time, keep your legs warm. And gentlemen in Victorian times, they could sometimes wear an all-in-one underpants suit called a union suit, which covered their legs and their tummy and their top and their arms. There was an all-in-one onesie, which meant if you needed the loo, it had a special bum flap and you could take the bum flap and you could pull it down and you could do a poo and then you could wipe your bottom and pull the bum flap back up. So I think we should bring back the bum flap. I'm a massive user of thermal layer

onesies. I'm into that. That's a great thing. So Wolfie... When were they invented? Which ones? The bum flaps or underpants? Underpants. Well, this is a good question actually, because they're probably very ancient because people have often worn them. They probably go back to the Stone Age. We know, for example, Ötzi the Iceman, who was found frozen in the ice, and he'd been murdered. He'd been shot with an arrow. He was a Stone Age guy, and he was wearing underpants. And so he was wearing them because it was cold. But we know the Romans didn't wear underpants so much. Theirs were called subligacular, but they weren't so keen on underpants. And the Vikings wore them called braes. And it depended through history what you were wearing,

what kind of fashion you were wearing, and how hot it was outside. So underpants probably have a long history. But King Tutankhamun, he was buried with 145 spare pairs of underpants, which is way too many pants, or not enough pants. If you're living forever, I guess you need lots of pants. But yeah, 145 spare pairs of pants. And they were like a big V shape. So he wore them a bit like a kind of nappy that you pull up around your waist, and then you tie them at the sides. So King Tut's pants are on display in a museum, in fact, so you can see them.

Is it true that Scottish Highlanders under their kilts did not wear underpants? This is traditionally said, isn't it? I mean, I don't want to interrogate too closely on this one, but that's what people have historically said, that they are sort of flying free downstairs. Any other questions about underpants, Wolfie? No. Okay, brilliant.

Zia, she wanted to talk about World War I infantry tactics on the Western Front, but instead I'm going to talk about... Pillows. Pillows, that's more like it yes um firstly when were they first actually put into use and why because obviously if you go back to like the stone age then they would have just been sleeping on like moss or something but then i know pillows were kind of a thing for like Romans. You know, lots of stuff. Yeah, this is a great question. And the question is, what do we mean by pillow? So if you think a pillow is a soft, poofy cushion for your head,

then those are not necessarily as old as you might think. But if you think a pillow could be a neck rest or a head rest that you sleep on, they could be much, much older. So we can say that the soft, comfy, plumpy pillow, we definitely see those in Roman times. We definitely see them probably in ancient Greek times. But in the ancient Egyptian times, they slept on headrests or neckrests, which were solid.

They were carved and they were- Out of wood. Out of wood or out of jade or ivory or stone. They were really, really hard. And they were also very, very common and still common in East Africa and Central Africa, in China and Japan and Korea. To sleep on a hard headrest was very normal for many millions of people around the world throughout history. So the soft, comfy pillow isn't actually a kind of universal thing around the world. It's a sort of fashion thing. It's a tasty thing. Some people prefer a soft, foofy one. Some people wanted a hard headrest.

So yes, in Africa, in East Asia, you would definitely see a lot more people sleeping on a hard headrest that propped up their neck. So you sleep on the back of it and it helps look after your hairstyle. So if you've got a really brilliant hairstyle, if you've got beautiful braids, if you've got amazing... That sounds really comfortable. Well, it could be comfy, yeah. I guess you have to get used to it, maybe. But it would be much more common. Yeah, if you went to Japan 100 years ago, you'd see people sleeping on maybe headrests.

In fact, in China, there's a famous medieval Chinese poet who had a solid pillow that he could fill up with hot water and cold water. So on a cold winter's night, he'd fill it with warm water so it would warm up his head. But then what would the material on the outside be? It would be solid. It would be kind of made of like jade or stone or wood, often bamboo. How would you fill it then? Well, there'd be a little hole in it and then a plug, a bit like a hot water bottle, but it would be solid to rest your neck on. And yeah, you might sleep on a log. You know, archaeologists in Stone Age have found ancient prehistoric mattresses that people made out of leaves and then they burned them when they got covered in bugs and dirt and grime. They set fire to them and they made a new one. So chances are

people were sleeping on maybe pillows made of leaves or woven together. That might be possible. And this was 77,000 years ago. So it could be way back to the Stone Age. We don't know. But yeah, pillows and neck rests are pretty universal around the world, but they're quite different. Solid in many parts of the world and soft and comfy in other parts of the world. Given the lovely neck rest in Tutankhamun's tomb as well, was Tutankhamun's tomb quite a useful time capsule for this book because there's so many domestic items from the New Kingdom of Egypt? That's a good point, actually. I mean, Tutankhamun was discovered 100 years ago this month almost, wasn't it?

And there were 5,000 treasures in his tomb. Most of them incredibly beautiful bling, you know, amazing stuff that most Egyptian people did not have. But the New Kingdom is an amazing period where we see ordinary daily life. We see all sorts of things. There's lots of amazing stuff about what the pyramid builders ate and what they wore and how they were living. And we know quite a lot about ancient Egyptian ordinary life, what they're sitting on, what they're cooking, how they stay warm. It's really exciting. But the lovely thing about this book, it's called You Are History, and the idea is it's 50 things that you use every day.

Actually, every era of history, people have done the same stuff we've done. They've had to wear clothes. They've had to stay warm. They've had to have baths or stay clean. They get hungry. They get sleepy. They need a wee. They love their pets. They play with their families. They get bored. They want to be entertained. These are all universal things throughout human history. So wherever you want to look, absolutely every society has done all this stuff that we do every day. So it's really fun to be able to look at the differences. Wolfie just whispered at me. What did you say, Wolfie? It's get back to pillows. I just got told off for talking about Tutankhamen by this guy. He wants to see his interest

in the pillow thing. So yeah, other pillow questions. So who first came up with the original idea, like to make some kind of headrest to sleep on that's full of feathers. Well, feathers is a good one, isn't it? Because feathers are plucked from birds, so you have to be able to catch the birds first. So that requires probably farming of birds or domestication of birds. So in the Stone Age, we have this period called the Neolithic, which means the late or new Stone Age. And that's where people are farming animals for the first time and they're domesticating them, they're making them tame,

they're making them smaller. So it's quite possible it goes as far back as that, which would be maybe 9,000 years ago. So we don't know for sure because feathers don't last very well in the ground. They rot in the ground. So archaeologists don't find them very often. But we know that people wore shoes made of like organic materials 10,000 years ago. The oldest shoes ever found are 10,500 years old. So pillows could be much older. But yeah, feathers are very common in medieval beds. When you go around Pompeii, Greg, or somewhere like that,

it all looks very stony and hard, doesn't it? Obviously, it depends on people's wealth and things. But do you think that a house would have been as sort of soft and cosy in the past as it would be now, or have we just got so much more softness around us? Such a good question, actually. I think, obviously, the preservation bias, to use a boring archaeological word, but hard stuff survives, soft stuff rots. So chances are, if you went to Pompeii just before the volcano, you may have seen a lot of drapes and cushions and cuddly stuff and nice soft things, but people may have grabbed those and stuffed them in their wagons when they

were trying to run away, when they were fleeing the volcano. They may have covered themselves up with them to try and protect themselves. For all we know, people's houses were filled with soft things and cushions and all sorts, but they didn't survive. But yeah, obviously Pompeii is an amazing place to visit and it's extraordinary to walk around it, but there's definitely stuff missing because it's not frozen in time from an ordinary day. It's frozen in time from a terrifying day. What would our society look like if there was a huge volcano? We all run around going, and grab whatever we can and bolt out the door so maybe you don't leave behind ordinary stuff maybe you're grabbing all the things that are important to you very nice is

that all your pillow questions done i think so okay fine so let's ask a general question now what we can ask let's finish up let's say maybe where did you get the inspiration to write your book of everyday like items well thank you that's a lovely question. I got the inspiration because I'm what's called a public historian and your dad is also a public historian. And we believe very much that history should be for everyone. It should be accessible.

It should be fascinating. It shouldn't be scary or boring or dull. And for me, the way to do that is to make it funny. So I worked on a TV show called Horrible Histories for 11 years and I host a comedy podcast called You're Dead to me and I like to make things fun and silly and work with comedians and funny people because that makes stuff enjoyable which some history teachers

don't always get maybe that's true some do and I've had lots of lovely emails from history teachers but I really wanted to write a book that anyone could read and it could be for absolutely anyone. And obviously it's for children, but it's about making sure that you're writing something familiar because otherwise sometimes history books are a bit scary or a bit daunting, or they're a bit irrelevant. You kind of go, what's that got to do with my life? You know, if you're sitting there thinking about what you want to do with your day and someone's trying to tell you to read about, I don't know, Weimar Germany, I'm sure your dad loves Weimar Germany, but it's important to make sure that if you're going to write a book, it's going to be interesting. And I think a book about

everything that we do, all of us, everyone around the world and in the UK today, and in all sorts of places of any age, no matter your background, no matter what faith you are, no matter what kind of stuff you enjoy, there are things in this book that hopefully you go, oh, I do that. And it means that you can therefore start your journey by making the scary, the big, the strangeness of history feel familiar. That's the idea. What was your favourite item? Well, I love Tutankhamun's underpants because I think they're hilarious. Underpants are funny, aren't they? But I think there's some really amazing stuff in here. I mean, I love Tutankhamun's underpants because I think they're hilarious. Underpants are funny, aren't they? But I think there's some really amazing stuff in here. I mean, I really like the story of the paperclip.

And it's not a funny story. It's actually a very sad, moving story. But in the Second World War, the country of Norway was invaded by the Nazis, who were a horrible regime sent by Hitler. The Nazis sort of rounded people up and forced them to do horrible things. And they took Jewish people and disabled people and people of different political views. And they rounded them up and they put them into horrible concentration camps and murdered them. It was absolutely awful.

But some Norwegian students very bravely decided to resist and stand up against the Nazis. And to symbolize that they were resisting, they wore a paperclip on their chest as a little emblem. Because a paperclip holds things together and they wanted to hold Norway together and they wanted to stay together as a team to fight against the Nazis. And I think that's a very brave thing to do. So the humble paperclip,

which a Norwegian had been believed to have invented, actually he was the third person to invent it, but they wore that as a little badge of honour and I think that's an amazing thing to do. That's so cool. We love horror histories. Oh, thank you. That's very kind. We love Horror Histories. Oh, thank you. That's very kind.

I love it too. I've had a lot of fun working on it. It's a very silly show. What's your favourite episode of Horror Histories? Ah, we've made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. I can't do that. But I mean, we've done over 2,000 sketches. What's one of your favourite sketches?

I like the Tugendham and Carmen sketch. That was excellent in his tune. That song, you know, the rap. The song, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is a good one. Yeah, I mean, we've got to work on it for 11 years. They're still making the The song, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a good point. Yeah, I mean, we've got to work on it for 11 years. They're still making the show now without me, actually. I've just left a year ago,

but it's been an incredible delight to work on it. It's such a fun, silly show. I got to write quite a lot of the sketches. I got to write the stupid death sketches, which is fun. So I got to write those cheesy jokes and I got to write some songs. I got to write a song for Rowan Atkinson,

who was a huge comedy hero for me when I was growing up. So that was a huge honour to got to write some songs I got to write a song for Rowan Atkinson who was a huge comedy hero for me when I was growing up so that was a huge honor to get to write for him and then meet him can we watch the season where like we like choose which actors we like the best and then we'll like choose a season where these guys these guys are connoisseurs Greg Jenner thank you very much that was outstanding thank. Everyone should buy the book, yeah? Yeah. And what's it called, Greg? It's called You Are History. And you can get it on audiobook as well if you want to read it to you with funny sound effects and silly voices. But it's brilliantly illustrated. It's sold out in most shops, actually, which is nice. But you can get it from Amazon, Foils and Daunts and Wordery. Those are the shops that have got copies. So yeah,

hopefully a fun read. I hope your audiobook is as good as certain audiobooks we listen to where the kids say that the actors and readers are much better than their dad at the accents. Brutal. Yeah, we were listening to David Tennant the other day. Yep, he is good. Is he better than your dad? Yeah.

No, even you admitted that he was better than you. Yeah, I think I'm prepared to admit that. He is a national treasure, Dan, let's be honest. He is a genius. Yeah, he is amazing. But I do do a good Professor Dumbledore is a national treasure, Dan. Let's be honest. He is a genius. He is a genius. Yeah, he is amazing. But I do do a good Professor Dumbledore, don't I, guys? It's fine.

It's fine. Stephen Fry's is better. Brutal. No, you do a good Hagrid one and a good Snape. Both of which you will never be hearing on this podcast. Say a big thank you to Greg Jenner. Thank you. Well, thank you very much for your great questions.

It was lovely to chat. What are we going to do next to know family story time? Francis Drake. No. Spanish I'm on it. Francis Drake. No.

What do you want, Orla? Boudicca. We've done Boudicca. Francis Drake. Boudicca. We've done Boudicca. We've done Boudicca. Fancy straight!