I agree. Ad most goth kids do I learned about it before I was into reinactment and archaeology. And it is depressing. I distinctly remember being depressed while studying it. Poop is fun, especially archeology poop!
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@@dressagegirlkae I saw it, briefly, when I read about the vikings and early medieval times, and I wanted nothing with it. I just pretended it didn't exist and moved on quickly. It's horrible. To think that someone somewhere thought of doing this is just 😰
@ was it actually a thing? I remember reading somewhere that general consensus was that it was dubious in origin and few people believed it was actually something that was done.
A video about historical waste disposal?! Watch me click with the force and speed of a lifetime of IBS bowel movements! I am so stoked that this subject has gotten more room in the conversation nowadays, I remember being so damn disappointed as a kid when I wanted to know everything about pooping, cleaning, work tools, cooking and normal day to day stuff in history, and I found that it was such a small portion of it offered in museums and school litterature. I am deeply uninterested in wars and kings compared to what the porridge tasted like, what socks people wore, which instruments and songs a normal person got to listen to in their life, or how in the world they went to the toilet if they got the sh*ts in the middle of the night after grandmas obligatory evening hot milk as I did. You are doing important work here friend, keep it up!
Everyday people's lives, such as the fate for the poops, is something we can connect with. Definitely more interesting than the grandiosity of battle, which for the everyday soldier was anything but
I was born and raised in a canal house in Amsterdam. This house was built in the 1600s and it had a hard stone set of steps up to the living quarters for the 'masters' and a door under the steps for the servants. The pump for the kitchen was still there although is didn't work anymore, sadly. And under the steps - freezing cold in winter, as I know from experience - was a real 'bog'. A low wall with a deep hole behind it, which somehow was connected to the canal, and a thick oak plank with a hole in it for a 'toilet'. There was also a lid of sorts, although it didn't have a hinge. In the extremely cold winter of '61/'62 our WC froze and we had to use the bog under the outside steps. And was that cold! Oh, was that cold... It took weeks before the situation upstairs was resolved, so we had to use this extremely old and cold 'under-the-steps' bog for nearly the entire winter! However, we were also very glad to have it, because otherwise we wouldn't have had anything else to use! Also in that winter our new coal supply disappeared into the pit that was used for the WC. My parents rented the house and the owners had never even considered that that pit might have to be emptied occasionally, nor had my parents. I don't think either of them had ever lived in a house with a pit like that. So it was so full that it had rotted the wooden beams that held up the basement floor, and when my father went down to get the first coal of the winter, he put the shovel in and down went the coal... Cold all round, that year!
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I can't thank you enough for making _this_ video instead of the torture one. This is a lot more interesting, a bit disgusting but interesting & even amusing. The other one would be just grim. Also, one note on poop as fertiliser: you need to dry it up a bit first because fresh poop is too acidic, specially from animals eating meat (as opposed to herbivores like cows & horses). So in a farm, you'd pile up poop, food waste, unusable bits of plants & crops & any other biological matter that will degrade easily, cover it and let it sink, mingle & dry up. Then whenever you need fertiliser, you go to that pile, take some and spread it on the fields. The process is so easy and effective that it's still done today.
The most abundant and delicious crop of tomatoes I ever grew was when, on the advice of my mother in law, I collected dried horse manure from some fields and put one pat in the bottom of the hole dug for each plant. Apparently it keeps the roots warm, as well as providing nutrients. Well worth the effort, even if the allotment holder next to mine thought I was bonkers and preferred to stick to bottled fertiliser when I offered him some poo. I was very smug when comparing crops when ripe…
@@charlotteillustration5778 yep, horse manure is excellent. I live near Milan, so cow's is the one used in the fields. If I'm not mistaken, horse's also quite expensive if you have to buy it.
We raised chickens when I was growing up, and we had a compost pile (the aforementioned biological matter and poop mingled). There's actually a fair bit of science, and some care required to keep a good compost pile. My dad and I mucked out the chicken coop one year and put a bunch (not even all!) of the chicken poo into the compost pile. We killed it. It took 3 or 4 years for it to cool off enough to start growing things. We also killed my mother's swiss chard patch, she was NOT happy.
Fresh poop - mammalian of any variety - put straight on the vegetation will result in said vegetation getting the veggie equivalent of nappy-rash, chemical burns. The drying allows various chemicals to breakdown into less corrosive substances.
I had a relative who wanted to sell his house (built around 1900-1920). He needed to locate the septic tank first, so they put dye into his drain to find it. He discovered he didn't actually HAVE a septic tank. It was just a pipe running into the nearby creek.
PLEASE write a book on this I would buy a copy for every bathroom in my home so that every guest (and me) will have the MOST appropriate toilet reading
Totally enjoyed this episode! As a nurse I have been up to my elbows in night soil more times than I can count! Keep up these amazing pee--ks into history!
I had a wasp nest in my chimney a few years ago, and they kept getting inside. The landlord told me to just start a fire, and I of course asked "what are the chances that I'll end up with a swarm of angry flaming wasps in my living room" and long story short, the landlord ended up just not doing anything about it. Anyway, good poo video!
Following your landlords suggestion would also be an excellent way to start a chimney fire...😬 My own idea would be to take a bowl, fill it up with methanol, put it in the bottom of the chimney flute that has the wasp nest, and then seal the lower opening so the methanol vapours has nowhere to go but up into the chimney. If you want, you could even up the ambient heat in that room to evaporate the methanol faster. Fairly quickly, the wasps will get intoxicated, blind and then die. After a day or so with a quarter gal./~1liter of methanol to start, the wasps should all be dead. Then you can just open the windows of the room for ventilation, take the bowl out, pour whatever is left back into the bottle/can and call for a chimney sweep unless you prearranged the last part and waited to kill the nest a day or two before the sweeper is due.
We visited a castle ruin on the edge of Scotland, I am sorry that I don't remember which one, and the still very visible and obvious guarderobe was hanging over the sea. The waves crashed into the wall. The spray shot up the hole. "Bidet" became the cry of the day!
Oh my gosh! 😅 That's hilarious! A chamber pot option would seem a vital necessity for those incredibly cold windy winter nights, brrrrrr, if one's other option is being that erm, exposed.... Should whip the smell well away, though! 😝
The cravat makes all the poop talk seem so much classier! So glad you brought up 'Whittington's Longhouse'- it's one of my favourite stories about medieval London. I am perpetually bemused by the fact that the crowning achievement of the career of the real life dude behind the pantomime character was building a colossal toilet multiplex, yet it never makes it into the panto. If I wrote pantos his bold experiment in tidally-flushed khazi design would be the main focus of the story and the cat would have to train as an architect.
My grandparents had a pit toilet right up to 25 years ago. Some places here in Australia, if you go to old farmsteads and see a line of citrus trees, you can almost guarantee that the trees were planted over old pits....they usually 'travelled' across the yard out the back of the house. I knew about garderobes, but not the urinals....fascinating!
I can remember as a kid living in a new housing estate in Sydney (Kondle Park -spelling may not be right) and we had the loo outside. It was a fantastic day when our fancy new house finally had the sewerage connected. My parents were one of the first to build there and the sewerage hadn't been put in yet. That was 50 years ago.
Greetings from a Yorkshire bloke in Darlington, Western Australia. Many public bush campsites in Australia have the traditional " long drop" lavatory. No flush, no water, just do your jobbie and away you go. They're cleaned occasionally and once full, they're relocated. Don't forget that some houses today have opted for a composting toilet where the contents are allowed to break down and then safely used on the garden. Again, no water or chemicals, just pure poo and wee, and a bit of straw to soak up any excess liquid. They're very clean and surprisingly not smelly. Thanks for a superbly informative video.
The same is true of outhouses in the American South -- not citrus, but other fruit trees. BTW, at one point, the regulation that outhouse pits had to be six feet deep (~2 meters), because it was discovered that the parasite hookworm could only crawl three feet before it died.
@@lianegordon971I recall visiting a zoo on the Charente coast in 1992. Their toilet building had only 2 toilets - male and female. It's the only time I encountered the old French toilets with the deep shaft and one slat of wood on 2 opposite sides to stand on. No toilet paper either. Or sinks to wash hands. I was glad that I only needed a wee.
Well this is timely! I'm in the midst of deciding my toilets for my off-grid farm house. I'm required to have a septic tank and leach line, but I have no intention pooping in perfectly good, reusable water; so I'm evaluating all the different toilet systems out there. Incinerating toilets seem to be the least hassle, but getting a reliable fire breathing dragon might prove very expensive.
I'd suggest a self composting toilet. There's also the option of having a toilet that allow you to collect the saltpeter in sollution or crystal form once bacteria has had their way with the ammonium in the excrement and efluvia.
I've had a composing toilet myself and there's nothing like it for fertilizer!! For our family of four (admittedly the kids were little), we'd only need one potato. Twice the size of a large man's fist! Just make sure to follow the installation and usage instructions carefully; you don't want the mix to get too wet. Ours was iirc a Sun-mar, a self-contained electrical unit, but if you've got a basement you can put the collection part into, then you can have something that basically looks like a regular toilet in the bathroom (the self-contained units are large enough that they come with a step), and you only have to empty those ones something like every six months, instead of roughly once a month. Plus if you're off the grid they've got a model that doesn't require an electrical feed (it might use solar?) but it's not as efficient and not really suitable for full-time use by a family-- at least, not twenty years ago when we got ours! But I'd definitely recommend a composing toilet myself. Don't have any experience with incinerating toilets though. I've used outhouses on and off for most of my life as well (we had one for the first year and a half or so until we got the composting toilet) and honestly, they're fine as well, but you kind of want a chamber pot for the middle of the night (just don't slip or trip when you're carrying it out to the outhouse to empty it!), and they're less appealing at -30C with wolves howling in the background, lol. The composing toilet was definitely a better option!
I will say it’s inspiring to see my mans having a poo behind a wattled fence. I feel like I can do anything now. Thank you Jimmy for this one I’m glad you chose this topic over Blood Eagle I genuinely like learning about the daily life of people than whatever that is 😅 that seems quite dire. Reminding me that coprolites exist with the phrase “brown trout” instead brought me unmatched joy 😂
This video has been outrageously fun - and funny. You should write that book on 'toilets through the ages'. It would make a great read and a great gift for family and friends. I would also really love if you wrote a book about your archaeological specialty, which I believe you said is graveyards and/or headstones?! I love cemeteries and graveyards - especially really old ones. Both of these topics are way more interesting than most people realize. I always enjoy your videos Jimmy, and I'm so glad you didn't do the 'other' video. This was a far better choice. Take care and best wishes. 🌱
A couple of the counties around my neck of the woods are doing lots of fascinating archeology to document historic cemeteries. Before COVID times I got to attend a lecture on the work being done in Prince George's County, Maryland and it was really moving how dedicated folks are to preserving our ancestors' final resting places.
@@amym.4823 I'm glad to hear they're doing some cemetery archaeology and documenting things along the way. Our ancestors/predecessors were real people with real lives and they have stories of their own. There is so much we could learn from them. I really like when people respect the deceased and take care of their ancestor's resting places. It's appalling to me, how many graveyards and cemeteries have been torn up, just for the sake of creating a parking lot, or some concrete monstrosity - like out west here, where I live. I find it quite disturbing.
I really appreciate you finding torture depressing and not wanting to go into detail about it. It makes me more likely to watch that video if you ever end up making it. I might still not watch it because I'm just too sensitive and descriptions (let alone depictions) of torture give me nightmares for days, but knowing that you won't enjoy getting into the gory details is a plus.
Thank You Jimmy for doing this video on toilets and not torture porn!!! I don't think I could have stood it either. [Added after actually watching it 🤪] And so interesting and fun! I lived out bush for a few years in my youth, and one place had an outhouse that you had to walk through the garden, the fruit orchard and into a paddock to use. We called it Fort Courage. A mate of mine painted a sign for it. The cows used it as a scratching post, which was a bit disconcerting when you were engrossed in your novel. I made an indoor 'porta potty' out of an industrial bucket - made a nice comfy wooden seat with a lid, lined the bottom with wood ash and threw a little more on top any time anybody did their business. It was a good stop-gap for when it was raining or snowing. When the weather improved, I'd trek out to Fort Courage and empty it.
When I went to Ireland and did an archaeological excavation last yr, we found a huge long cobbled drain!! The tower house/castle next to our site also had a lavatory that, interestingly, was converted into a food trash chute when the castle (built in the early 14th century, modified in the early 17th century) was modified! Previous excavations had excavated the base and found THOUSANDS of fish bones and oyster shells!! Thanks for doing this video!!!
There's a great video on RUclips with none other than Sir Tony Robinson stomping about in a bucket of old urine while reenacting historic fulling methods, I think. Bless his heart, it was the real deal, too, not just tinted water or something 😅
During an excavation in Trondheim (Norway) they found viking age toilet pits containing grape seeds. There was also plenty of parasites. But I find it interesting that they would have had access to grapes. I wonder if they had access to fresh grapes or if it was all raisins.
Wonder what the source of the grapes was? France? Italy? Possibly Vinland? Might be fascinating to do an analysis of the seeds and see if one could trace their continent of origin! Could finally settle the debate of "is it Vínland or Vinland?" Was it named for grapes or meadows? :D
Interesting "to some of us at least". Me. It's me. I'm "some of us". How people actually went about their day is always the most interesting part of history.
Wormwood was the traditional treatment for intestinal worms. Artemisia absinthium, as it’s name suggests is also an ingredient in absinthe. Wormwood is somewhat toxic (which gives absinthe its purported effect) but in the right dose will kill the worms without killing you.
Thank you for posting this! I learned about this from an herbalist who grew up seeing an older country doctor who would dose his patients with wormwood once a year for parasites. I jokingly mentioned something about this to a couple of guys who were nudge-nudge-wink-winking about the *other* properties of wormwood, and they looked at me like I had sprouted a second head.
That treatment could work to lessen the number of worms but the only way a community can really stop infections is #1 using soap and washing hands after using the toilet #2 cooking all vegetables #3 cooking all meat including fish #4 boiling all water before using and #5 wearing shoes.
@helenahsson1697 it's called a garderob from garde de robes as someone else has said. Literally a clothing guard in English - because the flies swarming the waste products would keep the moths away so the clothes would last longer 😅
@@holarayYes, it is french and just means closet or wardrobe (hm, where did this word come from). It was brought to Britain by the Normans and their castle builders
I remember in 2009 Norway, the exchange student program organized a ski weekend and warned us ahead of time "any misbehavior will mean the culprits have to muck out the outhouse into the cesspit." This immediately backfired somehow, with people lining up to clean the outhouse, and the program leaders had nothing to do at the end of the trip but restock firewood.
Just watched this video for a second time and it brought back memories with a jolt. Upon reflection I realized that we had a cesspit in the backyard when I was a child. My Grandmother bought her house in 1915. I never gave it a thought but we only had a chemical toilet in the house and cold running water until 1960. Grandmother died in 1958 and my Father moved into the house and modernized it with indoor plumbing, including a hot water tank and a proper toilet. This was in a middle class suburb of Toronto Ontario. I also remember my Mother telling me about the time she took the 'pail' to the cesspit, slipped on the ice and got covered in the yuck. Now it all makes sense. By the way, I'm 77.
I have pictures of the old Roman street drains from when we went to visit the archaeological site at Glanum. Not just because they were cool, but because I knew that that's what people would want to see. So what I'm saying is OF COURSE that book would be fascinating. (Please call the chapter about the uses for saved urine "precious bodily fluids" though.)
The toilets are always one of the first thing I seek out in historic sites, my family thinks I’m weird, but getting rid of your waste is vital to your health and the health of a community.
So, my husband and I just got back from York. We saw the coprolite at the Jorvik museum. It is huge! My husband couldn’t believe a human being actually produced it!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I would absolutely buy any book you wrote, but especially so on toilets. 🚽 I read Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization by W. Hodding Carter a number of years ago, and it remains one of the most interesting things I've ever read.
So interesting and honestly you had me laughing about poop, much better video than torture! When camping out in the backcountry, campsites have a pit toilet that's just a box with a hole in the top, that we would call a "thunder box". Same idea but it doesn't have walls around it or anything.
LOL I had forgotten about popty-ping, thanks for the reminder! I have ulcerative colitis so I am the resident Poo Expert in my friend group. This video will give me more fun factoids to regale/disgust them with haha!
Rereading Terry Pratchett's Discworld books and the Raising Steam has some fun stuff about poo. An elf was put down a guarder robe as well in another book. 😄🖖💕.
I think this video might be the highlight of my seven year old's summer vacation. We were both shrieking with laughter! Way better than torture methods lol
❤ I'm interested in the fan language. I'm all about passive aggressive fu type of language. I actually thought there was a secret language that the older church ladies would have in how they wielded their fans. VINDICATION 😂😂😂
Very glad to know I'm not the only one slightly obsessed with this aspect of history (also weirdly we were talking about that coprolite in the discord not long ago)
So sorry you're still having such a rough time, but I love that you stopped and thought about whether we needed graphic descriptions of the blood eagle, or whether we were all better off with poo. Excellent call, and my word that Georgian weekend looks wonderful too! Too short notice to plan the longer trip this year, so I really hope it becomes an annual thing. PS Write the book!!!
In the upper part of Sweden, manure and human waste were essential for surviving in the countryside. There are only four months of the year for cultivating crops up here, so to yield a maximum harvest you needed a lot of manure. On my dad's farmstead, the toilet was next to horses in the stable. (We got an indoor modern toilet in 1970.) There were two seats, and all the waste went down to the common manure pile. In the stable, you mucked out the horse and pig manure through a small opening at floor level, which had a little wooden door. In our dialect, this opening was called "vinnöga" (vindöga, "wind eye"), a word which the vikings exported to Britain as 'window'.
The Blood Eagle is so worn out at this point. But while a toilet can be broken in, it doesn't get boring lol Also, nice to see you so excited about a topic like this. It really makes for quite an engaging video
When you mentioned the garderobes in castles, I had to laugh because it reminded me of a building blocks model my husband and I recently built: Blaustein Castle by BlueBrixx (Lego alternative). The designer included a lot of historically accurate details among which is a garderobe with remnants of "poop" on the outside of the castle wall. So delightful!
This was especially interesting to watch as someone who grew up with a composting toilet! Is there any evidence of them using materials (eg sawdust, dirt) in cesspits to make them smell less? (Also if you wrote a book on medieval poop I would absolutely 100% buy it)
I have heard (in a podcast on the topic made by graduated historians) that here in Germany at least straw was used to soak up the liquid waste, same as with animal dung. That stuff was also mixed with straw and if you keep it on the dry-ish side that way it's supposed to hardly stink.
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@@lydianoack4552 I remember some early medieval regulations on waste disposal (not strictly poop) in Freiburg, Baden-Baden. If I remember correctly, the local industry/crafters were dumping their stuff into the canals which made the area stink horribly.
I remember seeing a urinal in a Martello Tower in Orkney, positioned so that the guards on duty could relieve themselves without being exposed to potential enemy fire. On the other side of the world, terrace houses in Sydney often still have the nightsoil lane behind them. Sometimes they have been left for pedestrian access, but others have been purchased so that the often tiny courtyard behind each house can be extended by a metre or so.
There’s a book by Hans Zinsser called “Rats, Lice, and History” , published in 1935, and still available everywhere, including kindle. I highly recommend it. Another book is “Dust, Mud, Soot and Soil: The Worst Jobs In Victorian London”, of which I have a kindle copy. That book appears to have dropped off the Earth, so I’m glad I have it- a truly fascinating read
Thanks for the book recs! 🙏 I love the fact that historical & archeological education these days have shifted to focus so much more on the everyday life and the common experiences of the past, not just a few uber-rich people & their power struggles.
Fascinating! And thank goodness you did this and not the blood eagle. I remember learning where the phrase, "too poor without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of" came from when I was young--that led to learning about dye and waste. It's a section of history that gets shadowed by all the "glitz and glamour" of the wealthy. But it shouldn't. Good structural design had to take into account waste and what to do with it afterwards. I am curious if there is any evidence of a modern septic system or even a gray water system. Although with so much water your area receives there probably isn't but then you never know.
I'm so glad you did this video on medieval toilets rarher than the blood eagle! Don't think I could handle one on that. and I loved this one! I agree with you that how people in the past dealt with their waste is fascinating topic. I really learned a lot. Thank you Jimmy!
"Dunny man" is what I grew up calling "night soil men". Yes, write a book on this. And look at hydrothermal carbonisation technologies used today as poop processing procedures.
Our farm still has a three seat outdoor toilet, it's still in use since we only have one toilet indoors and sometimes more than one kid needs to go and can't wait so they run outside. Works fine and with sawdust and some chalk it doesn't smell.
Pooping is so much more self care, than blood eagle-ing and we are all for self care. Granted, I would have liked a mention of the 12C Erfurt Latrine Disaster.
Years ago I toured the Pavilion in Brighton. I was so disappointed that they destroyed the Prince Regents toilet room. How interesting would it be to see what it looked like, how it was appointed. I find the bathroom - lavatory fascinating, high born and low born, all have to poop.
Oh please write a book on Viking-era poo and poo management. There's got to be a fun, Jimmy-branded twist on the topic in there somewhere. Maybe even some firsthand experimental archeology. Also, my mom still has an outhouse to this day. Got a brand new one built a few years back, even, and it super proud of how much nicer it is than the old one (it even has shelves for her decorative knick-knacks and incense, lol).
We had a tv series in greece back in 1999-2000. One of the main characters was a professor that for the entirety of the series was writing a dissertation about the drainage system in the Byzantine empire 😂😂. Thank you for the videos 😊
9:29 my mom does a lot of natural dyeing, especially with various plants, and some recipes in older books specifically include "the urine of pregnant women, or men who drank strong drink"
Speaking of medieval toilets, the castles built by the Teutonic knights in the 13th and 14th centuries have one very notable architectural feature; the latrine tower. These towers were connected via a bridge to the innermost “quadrangle” of the castle (basically a fortified cloister) and usually were built over some form of flowing water. Some of my favorite examples of this can be found in the castles at Malbork, Kwidzyn, and Toruń.
Makes sense - if you're being besieged for a month or two, you definitely don't want that stuff piling up in your castle stinking and spreading disease, or getting into the well! Although creatively offensive uses for collected waste in repelling attackers from the battlements do inevitably come to mind... 🤭
Here in Melbourne, Australia you can still see the history of waste disposal all across the city. It wasn't until 1887 that our first sewerage system was built, and even then it was only the innermost areas, with everywhere else still operating on outhouses and nightsoil collection up until even the 1940s. As a result, the older areas are criss-crossed by a multitude of alleyways between and behind houses (often with a little channel in the middle for "runoff"), ironically now home to trendy cafes/bars and considered an key part of the city's charm rather than an unsightly necessity. We definitely take modern sewerage systems for granted!
Yes! We have an unmade lane behind our house in Melbourne, & until recently still had an outdoor loo ( as well as one in the bathroom). Mozzies always an issue because it was cool & damp in there, because the garden tap was in the outside wall of the loo. Lots of “ stink pipe” tall aeration pipes still around on streets at the end of lanes too.
We still had an outdoor toilet! It had been changed to a plumbed toilet from a dunny long before I came along, but Mum had a stock of amusing tales of the dunny men from her childhood. (Dad grew up on a farm, so they had a long drop.)
In Australia they were dunny men. And they were employed well into the 20th century. My great aunt used to have a dunny and it was still emptied by a dunny man. Not sure when it stopped, but I remember them talking about it when I was little. She died in 1986.
These things really are much more within living memory than one realises! Esp. in more rural areas, where full reticulation still just isn't a thing? (And they can disappear faster than one expects... In Christchurch many of us got a sudden trip back to chamberpot & outhouse equivalents in 2010-11 thanks to massive earthquakes trashing all the drainage for months on end! 🤦🏻♀️ I was glad to have been a country kid & at least have had some experience of living off-grid, to help adjust?)
19:03 Jimmy. Sounds like you're talking of experience here. I can imagine you testing it out, for research and science of course, and then being told off to not wee in there.. xD Love this video! Great way to begin another week :D People often wrinkles their noses whenever the talks go onto how people relieved themselves, but I've been fascinated with waste areas since I was a kid, my parents dug out the garden for ponds and found our property was on top of an old stoneage waste area (Denmark)! Tons of oystershells, flint (arrow heads, axe heads, knifes, scrapers, you name it) and broken clay pot pieces.
"Catchy, catchy for the splashy, splashy" My inner twelve year old loved this video. Seriously, it was very informational. I have heard other historians state that in most mediaeval cities there were stiff fines for just chucking your "nightsoil" out the window. Love the channel and keep up the great work.
Thanks for another interesting video Jimmy, In parts of Australia, generally either rural properties or in very small villages there is no sewerage provision and septic systems are common. These are emptied when the time comes using a tanker truck with a pump. The modern equivalent of the nightsoil man? In those areas you will sometimes also see long drop toilets particularly for public conveniences (although they are being replaced with septic systems too), known colloquially as a ‘dunny’. The wooden box design is ubiquitous, but it was only when I was travelling in Europe and that I realised this was what toilets would have looked like for the European colonisers (because it was what was already in use in those places they had come from) and hence what was built.
The solid human waste (with urine included) was definitely used for tanning - the caves in Nottingham still have the tanning pits from the Middle Ages and they still smell! Urine by itself decomposes to ammonia and is great for cleaning off the grease and hair from skins, then the mix cures the skin.
Love that you did this rather than the frankly fetishism surrounded blood eagle. Domestic living and domestic dwellings and the practices therein are sooo fascinating. The change in homes from the Victorian age to the Edwardian and then between the wars completely obsesses me, because it tells us how people lived, how they saw themselves, how they wanted to be perceived. To go back even further to a time when people lived in a completely different way is as thrilling as going to another country.
THANK YOU for NOT making a video about a violent way of death. And a big thanks for this delightful and informative one - hmm, perhaps that book idea is a good one? And I have to add a shout out to the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett, where he happily describes night-soil men, and the many uses of what they collect.
As much of a gore hound I am, I'm so glad that you released this video instead! This is really interesting, plus your mental health is far more important than any video. Also, I'm so sad I won't be in York in a couple of weeks because that Georgian weekend sounds incredible! I hope everyone has a lot of fun.
When you mention some big cities in Europe with human waste collection still operating into the 1950s, I can't help but think of a fascinating autobiographical graphic novel I read a couple of years ago called "Ramshackle" by Allison McCreesh. It's about some neighbourhoods that still exist in Yellowknife NWT in Canada's North where in ground plumbing would freeze, so residents use "honey buckets" to collect waste until the city government picks it up
When I visited Conisborough Castle a couple years ago the Garderobe managed to retain its original smell! I can only hope it was the medieval poop causing that smell and not some intrepid modern visitors wanting to test the facilities
Some museums actually purchase various scents to add to the immersion! there's a wonderful company that sells all sorts of gnarly smells from rotting food to sweat and bile
Poo smells like poo because of a very simple aroma molecule called _Indole_ - which, curiously, also makes certain flowers smell “floral” - it’s very easy to make the poo-smelling version in a lab (to produce a convincing poopy aroma without any of the biological risks associated with real human faeces)
@@emperorofpluto Interesting. There was a 1960s band called Indole Ring in Vancouver. Psychedelics were developed from indole, which makes a certain sense,common precursor I guess.
I work at Conisbrough Castle and this comment made me laugh! My sense of smell isn't great but I feel like I need to test this with all the toilets we can access next time I work 😂
@@ashnicfire It must have been one of the ones in the main wall as the keep was closed at the time for COVID measures, good luck finding the smell! It was also pretty rainy that day so that must have helped release the smell I shall have to pay another visit and sniff around myself too lol, as well as properly visit the keep
Scatological books are always popular! Sorry you’ve been having a rough time, and I’m glad you chose to go for a less grim subject to research for this video. Hope things improve.
Honestly hearing about the night soil men reminds me of septic tank workmen. Septic tank workers definitely have the advantage of technology making their work cleaner, but they still come out and empty your tank of poo to this day. Where I live, septic tanks are far more common than being on a sewage system because of how spread out things are.
Awesome video!! I lived off-grid for many years with a composting toilet, possibly triggered by a job in the 80s working on an archaeological dig in Ohio where the garbage midden pits were excavated. We used a process called floatation to look at food grains and cooked food (it floats) to look at the ethnobotanical evolution of corn. Thanks so much for fun history!
@@mirjanbouma We found a dog skeleton in one of the pits which looked very intentionally placed! The main research centered on a variety of dent corn found as this was an agricultural community. We actually had a primitive garden using replica tools so we could get the feel for how hard they worked to grow crops. We measured the types of seeds found and how much. The research went into the director's dissertation so that was exciting.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Native American, Fort Ancient Culture. This was very primitive corn compared to what we have today. Smaller kernels and fewer rows. But the distinctive dent in the kernel and very starchy - so good for cornmeal.
Thank you for sitting down, dressed as a Georgian Gentleman, to hold forth on matters scatological! We can all relate - everyone has to deal with toilets, they're the great leveller for humans and one of the biggest logistical headaches for settlements since forever! Sorry to hear you're not having a great time, hope things pick up for you. At least you're not a mediæval gong-farmer!
I grew up using a chamber pot under the bed, because the "dunny" was outside, and grandma preferred us to be inside of a nighttime. We just emptied it out into the toilet in the morning, no worries She also taught us to sleep back-to-back to stay warm (and likely prevent little feet from kicking the other set of little feet, too)
I'd like to take a moment to revel in the GIGANTIC FOSSILIZED SPLASHER that is mounted on a wall in a museum! Poor person must have just about had a coronary pushing that out! I would have named it and considered raising it as one of my own after giving birth like that! What a legacy to leave behind eh?
I have, on occasion, had massive poops that came out easily. Usually when the poop is being difficult it doesn't come out in such large chunks (at least for me).
I've dropped a deuce as large as that, & it *DEFINITELY* was an uncomfortable experience. The longer a person is constipated, the more moisture the body takes out of the stool, & the more difficult it becomes to expel. Things were quite... painful after a while. My situation was caused by medication.
I was a bit concerned sitting down to this with a bowl of peanut butter oatmeal, but I should have not doubted Jimmy to make it an entertaining and educational breakfast. 😅
Loved the “crap” history Jimmy! There is a fabulous Australian 2006 movie called “ Kenny” written by & starring Shane Jacobsen, all about a man who works for a Porta- Loo company. When cleaning the toilet tank Kenny says “ There’s a smell in here that will outlast religion” ! It has now become a classic Aussie saying and quite applicable to some of the history - and comments about toilet smells - presented here!
in the states, rural areas use "septic systems" which ideally break down the waste and leach it into the ground, but do need to be pumped out occasionally...
I've just spent a week doing field research on different ways people deal with human waste nowadays. Also called a holiday in rural Hungary. From the classic outhouse with wooden board with a hole in it (much like yours, with a lid on) to a porcelain throne outhouse-and-cesspit combo with a watering can instead of a classic flush, to flushing toilets fed by rainwater, and the showers were just as varied. Quite the adventure. I hadn't used the classic hole-in-the-ground outhouse in years and found it less stinky than I remembered, and more convenient than the watering can hybrid.
This was wonderful. Much better than torture. It is fascinating how humans have solved sewage thru the ages. Now you've mentioned a book though you must write it. I would definitely buy it.
When I lived in York I remember being shocked when I was told that my house didn’t get city sewage in the modern sense of the word until the 1960s. I was told that it was because the water table was less than a foot underground and then everything made more sense. They literally had to wait until modern materials were impermeable to water from both directions: the inside water couldn’t get out and the outside water couldn’t get in. And apparently we had to wait for plastic piping for that.
Funnily enough, I learned a bit about later medieval poop management from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, haha. One thing I've heard other archeaologists say about garderobes is that clothes were sometimes put in there to AIR them, as they could be drafty.
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There are more than enough other places people can learn about the blood eagle. Not everyone is going to talk about medieval poops.
Not everyone but still a lot of people, including those who also claim the Palace of Versailles was built without bathrooms.
I agree. Ad most goth kids do I learned about it before I was into reinactment and archaeology. And it is depressing. I distinctly remember being depressed while studying it. Poop is fun, especially archeology poop!
@@dressagegirlkae I saw it, briefly, when I read about the vikings and early medieval times, and I wanted nothing with it. I just pretended it didn't exist and moved on quickly. It's horrible. To think that someone somewhere thought of doing this is just 😰
@ was it actually a thing? I remember reading somewhere that general consensus was that it was dubious in origin and few people believed it was actually something that was done.
It's the great unifier of us all - we gotta poo.
There is something highly amusing about hearing "Urban Pooper" and "Rural Pooper" in a Welsh accent. :D
A video about historical waste disposal?! Watch me click with the force and speed of a lifetime of IBS bowel movements! I am so stoked that this subject has gotten more room in the conversation nowadays, I remember being so damn disappointed as a kid when I wanted to know everything about pooping, cleaning, work tools, cooking and normal day to day stuff in history, and I found that it was such a small portion of it offered in museums and school litterature. I am deeply uninterested in wars and kings compared to what the porridge tasted like, what socks people wore, which instruments and songs a normal person got to listen to in their life, or how in the world they went to the toilet if they got the sh*ts in the middle of the night after grandmas obligatory evening hot milk as I did. You are doing important work here friend, keep it up!
As a fellow follower of the history of common life, I cosign this message!
Everyday people's lives, such as the fate for the poops, is something we can connect with.
Definitely more interesting than the grandiosity of battle, which for the everyday soldier was anything but
I was born and raised in a canal house in Amsterdam. This house was built in the 1600s and it had a hard stone set of steps up to the living quarters for the 'masters' and a door under the steps for the servants. The pump for the kitchen was still there although is didn't work anymore, sadly. And under the steps - freezing cold in winter, as I know from experience - was a real 'bog'. A low wall with a deep hole behind it, which somehow was connected to the canal, and a thick oak plank with a hole in it for a 'toilet'. There was also a lid of sorts, although it didn't have a hinge. In the extremely cold winter of '61/'62 our WC froze and we had to use the bog under the outside steps. And was that cold! Oh, was that cold... It took weeks before the situation upstairs was resolved, so we had to use this extremely old and cold 'under-the-steps' bog for nearly the entire winter! However, we were also very glad to have it, because otherwise we wouldn't have had anything else to use! Also in that winter our new coal supply disappeared into the pit that was used for the WC. My parents rented the house and the owners had never even considered that that pit might have to be emptied occasionally, nor had my parents. I don't think either of them had ever lived in a house with a pit like that. So it was so full that it had rotted the wooden beams that held up the basement floor, and when my father went down to get the first coal of the winter, he put the shovel in and down went the coal... Cold all round, that year!
I can't thank you enough for making _this_ video instead of the torture one. This is a lot more interesting, a bit disgusting but interesting & even amusing. The other one would be just grim. Also, one note on poop as fertiliser: you need to dry it up a bit first because fresh poop is too acidic, specially from animals eating meat (as opposed to herbivores like cows & horses). So in a farm, you'd pile up poop, food waste, unusable bits of plants & crops & any other biological matter that will degrade easily, cover it and let it sink, mingle & dry up. Then whenever you need fertiliser, you go to that pile, take some and spread it on the fields. The process is so easy and effective that it's still done today.
You don't use fresh manure on fields even if it's from cows or horses. It would burn everything.
The most abundant and delicious crop of tomatoes I ever grew was when, on the advice of my mother in law, I collected dried horse manure from some fields and put one pat in the bottom of the hole dug for each plant. Apparently it keeps the roots warm, as well as providing nutrients. Well worth the effort, even if the allotment holder next to mine thought I was bonkers and preferred to stick to bottled fertiliser when I offered him some poo. I was very smug when comparing crops when ripe…
@@charlotteillustration5778 yep, horse manure is excellent. I live near Milan, so cow's is the one used in the fields. If I'm not mistaken, horse's also quite expensive if you have to buy it.
We raised chickens when I was growing up, and we had a compost pile (the aforementioned biological matter and poop mingled). There's actually a fair bit of science, and some care required to keep a good compost pile. My dad and I mucked out the chicken coop one year and put a bunch (not even all!) of the chicken poo into the compost pile. We killed it. It took 3 or 4 years for it to cool off enough to start growing things. We also killed my mother's swiss chard patch, she was NOT happy.
Fresh poop - mammalian of any variety - put straight on the vegetation will result in said vegetation getting the veggie equivalent of nappy-rash, chemical burns.
The drying allows various chemicals to breakdown into less corrosive substances.
I had a relative who wanted to sell his house (built around 1900-1920). He needed to locate the septic tank first, so they put dye into his drain to find it.
He discovered he didn't actually HAVE a septic tank. It was just a pipe running into the nearby creek.
Oops! Good thing they found out, so they could do something about it.
I'm imagining everyone being like "So THAT'S my the creek always smelled like an outhouse!"
D:
Yuck
PLEASE write a book on this I would buy a copy for every bathroom in my home so that every guest (and me) will have the MOST appropriate toilet reading
Sanitation workers are heroes and always have been! Thanks for an excellent and thoroughly entertaining video.
Totally enjoyed this episode! As a nurse I have been up to my elbows in night soil more times than I can count! Keep up these amazing pee--ks into history!
I had a wasp nest in my chimney a few years ago, and they kept getting inside. The landlord told me to just start a fire, and I of course asked "what are the chances that I'll end up with a swarm of angry flaming wasps in my living room" and long story short, the landlord ended up just not doing anything about it.
Anyway, good poo video!
Following your landlords suggestion would also be an excellent way to start a chimney fire...😬
My own idea would be to take a bowl, fill it up with methanol, put it in the bottom of the chimney flute that has the wasp nest, and then seal the lower opening so the methanol vapours has nowhere to go but up into the chimney.
If you want, you could even up the ambient heat in that room to evaporate the methanol faster. Fairly quickly, the wasps will get intoxicated, blind and then die.
After a day or so with a quarter gal./~1liter of methanol to start, the wasps should all be dead. Then you can just open the windows of the room for ventilation, take the bowl out, pour whatever is left back into the bottle/can and call for a chimney sweep unless you prearranged the last part and waited to kill the nest a day or two before the sweeper is due.
Here in the U.S., many archaeologists examine what was left in the pits.............the artifacts that were discarded in those places are astonishing!
"What do you think your medieval job would be? I'd be a [cottagecore inspired rosy-tinted farmer]"
Me: "I'd be a pay toilet franchisee."
We visited a castle ruin on the edge of Scotland, I am sorry that I don't remember which one, and the still very visible and obvious guarderobe was hanging over the sea. The waves crashed into the wall. The spray shot up the hole. "Bidet" became the cry of the day!
Oh my gosh! 😅 That's hilarious! A chamber pot option would seem a vital necessity for those incredibly cold windy winter nights, brrrrrr, if one's other option is being that erm, exposed.... Should whip the smell well away, though! 😝
The cravat makes all the poop talk seem so much classier! So glad you brought up 'Whittington's Longhouse'- it's one of my favourite stories about medieval London. I am perpetually bemused by the fact that the crowning achievement of the career of the real life dude behind the pantomime character was building a colossal toilet multiplex, yet it never makes it into the panto. If I wrote pantos his bold experiment in tidally-flushed khazi design would be the main focus of the story and the cat would have to train as an architect.
My grandparents had a pit toilet right up to 25 years ago. Some places here in Australia, if you go to old farmsteads and see a line of citrus trees, you can almost guarantee that the trees were planted over old pits....they usually 'travelled' across the yard out the back of the house.
I knew about garderobes, but not the urinals....fascinating!
I can remember as a kid living in a new housing estate in Sydney (Kondle Park -spelling may not be right) and we had the loo outside. It was a fantastic day when our fancy new house finally had the sewerage connected. My parents were one of the first to build there and the sewerage hadn't been put in yet. That was 50 years ago.
I'm sure they were healthy trees. Not a bad idea.
Greetings from a Yorkshire bloke in Darlington, Western Australia.
Many public bush campsites in Australia have the traditional " long drop" lavatory. No flush, no water, just do your jobbie and away you go. They're cleaned occasionally and once full, they're relocated.
Don't forget that some houses today have opted for a composting toilet where the contents are allowed to break down and then safely used on the garden. Again, no water or chemicals, just pure poo and wee, and a bit of straw to soak up any excess liquid. They're very clean and surprisingly not smelly.
Thanks for a superbly informative video.
The same is true of outhouses in the American South -- not citrus, but other fruit trees. BTW, at one point, the regulation that outhouse pits had to be six feet deep (~2 meters), because it was discovered that the parasite hookworm could only crawl three feet before it died.
@@lianegordon971I recall visiting a zoo on the Charente coast in 1992. Their toilet building had only 2 toilets - male and female. It's the only time I encountered the old French toilets with the deep shaft and one slat of wood on 2 opposite sides to stand on. No toilet paper either. Or sinks to wash hands. I was glad that I only needed a wee.
Well this is timely! I'm in the midst of deciding my toilets for my off-grid farm house. I'm required to have a septic tank and leach line, but I have no intention pooping in perfectly good, reusable water; so I'm evaluating all the different toilet systems out there. Incinerating toilets seem to be the least hassle, but getting a reliable fire breathing dragon might prove very expensive.
I'd suggest a self composting toilet.
There's also the option of having a toilet that allow you to collect the saltpeter in sollution or crystal form once bacteria has had their way with the ammonium in the excrement and efluvia.
My friends have had a self composting toilet for many years (successfully and satisfactorily)
I've had a composing toilet myself and there's nothing like it for fertilizer!! For our family of four (admittedly the kids were little), we'd only need one potato. Twice the size of a large man's fist!
Just make sure to follow the installation and usage instructions carefully; you don't want the mix to get too wet.
Ours was iirc a Sun-mar, a self-contained electrical unit, but if you've got a basement you can put the collection part into, then you can have something that basically looks like a regular toilet in the bathroom (the self-contained units are large enough that they come with a step), and you only have to empty those ones something like every six months, instead of roughly once a month.
Plus if you're off the grid they've got a model that doesn't require an electrical feed (it might use solar?) but it's not as efficient and not really suitable for full-time use by a family-- at least, not twenty years ago when we got ours!
But I'd definitely recommend a composing toilet myself. Don't have any experience with incinerating toilets though.
I've used outhouses on and off for most of my life as well (we had one for the first year and a half or so until we got the composting toilet) and honestly, they're fine as well, but you kind of want a chamber pot for the middle of the night (just don't slip or trip when you're carrying it out to the outhouse to empty it!), and they're less appealing at -30C with wolves howling in the background, lol.
The composing toilet was definitely a better option!
I will say it’s inspiring to see my mans having a poo behind a wattled fence. I feel like I can do anything now.
Thank you Jimmy for this one I’m glad you chose this topic over Blood Eagle I genuinely like learning about the daily life of people than whatever that is 😅 that seems quite dire. Reminding me that coprolites exist with the phrase “brown trout” instead brought me unmatched joy 😂
This video has been outrageously fun - and funny. You should write that book on 'toilets through the ages'. It would make a great read and a great gift for family and friends. I would also really love if you wrote a book about your archaeological specialty, which I believe you said is graveyards and/or headstones?! I love cemeteries and graveyards - especially really old ones. Both of these topics are way more interesting than most people realize. I always enjoy your videos Jimmy, and I'm so glad you didn't do the 'other' video. This was a far better choice. Take care and best wishes. 🌱
A couple of the counties around my neck of the woods are doing lots of fascinating archeology to document historic cemeteries. Before COVID times I got to attend a lecture on the work being done in Prince George's County, Maryland and it was really moving how dedicated folks are to preserving our ancestors' final resting places.
@@amym.4823 I'm glad to hear they're doing some cemetery archaeology and documenting things along the way. Our ancestors/predecessors were real people with real lives and they have stories of their own. There is so much we could learn from them. I really like when people respect the deceased and take care of their ancestor's resting places. It's appalling to me, how many graveyards and cemeteries have been torn up, just for the sake of creating a parking lot, or some concrete monstrosity - like out west here, where I live. I find it quite disturbing.
I really appreciate you finding torture depressing and not wanting to go into detail about it. It makes me more likely to watch that video if you ever end up making it. I might still not watch it because I'm just too sensitive and descriptions (let alone depictions) of torture give me nightmares for days, but knowing that you won't enjoy getting into the gory details is a plus.
Yes please to the Poo Book :D Also I LOVE that your accent got more pronounced as you were talking, especially over the filthy bits
Thats the excitement, so cute!
Thank You Jimmy for doing this video on toilets and not torture porn!!! I don't think I could have stood it either. [Added after actually watching it 🤪] And so interesting and fun! I lived out bush for a few years in my youth, and one place had an outhouse that you had to walk through the garden, the fruit orchard and into a paddock to use. We called it Fort Courage. A mate of mine painted a sign for it. The cows used it as a scratching post, which was a bit disconcerting when you were engrossed in your novel. I made an indoor 'porta potty' out of an industrial bucket - made a nice comfy wooden seat with a lid, lined the bottom with wood ash and threw a little more on top any time anybody did their business. It was a good stop-gap for when it was raining or snowing. When the weather improved, I'd trek out to Fort Courage and empty it.
"For example, your Urban Pooper -- and your Rural Pooper."
I freaking love you so much. Thank you for brightening my otherwise dismal day.
Have a nightmare, wake up, find a new video from Jimmy, enjoy medieval toilets, feel better
When I went to Ireland and did an archaeological excavation last yr, we found a huge long cobbled drain!! The tower house/castle next to our site also had a lavatory that, interestingly, was converted into a food trash chute when the castle (built in the early 14th century, modified in the early 17th century) was modified! Previous excavations had excavated the base and found THOUSANDS of fish bones and oyster shells!! Thanks for doing this video!!!
Definitely would read Everybody Pooped: Medieval Edition!!! Let yourself go on that worm tangent sometime... sounds fascinating!!!
Pee îs also used for dying clothe with Woad. and for cleaning linen. It sounds gross but it is a fact, and it works.
Yes, it is the ammonia in the urine that set the dye and bleached the linen. They also used old (the older the better) urine to tan hides.
There's a great video on RUclips with none other than Sir Tony Robinson stomping about in a bucket of old urine while reenacting historic fulling methods, I think. Bless his heart, it was the real deal, too, not just tinted water or something 😅
During an excavation in Trondheim (Norway) they found viking age toilet pits containing grape seeds. There was also plenty of parasites. But I find it interesting that they would have had access to grapes. I wonder if they had access to fresh grapes or if it was all raisins.
Wonder what the source of the grapes was? France? Italy? Possibly Vinland? Might be fascinating to do an analysis of the seeds and see if one could trace their continent of origin! Could finally settle the debate of "is it Vínland or Vinland?" Was it named for grapes or meadows? :D
Interesting "to some of us at least". Me. It's me. I'm "some of us".
How people actually went about their day is always the most interesting part of history.
Wormwood was the traditional treatment for intestinal worms. Artemisia absinthium, as it’s name suggests is also an ingredient in absinthe. Wormwood is somewhat toxic (which gives absinthe its purported effect) but in the right dose will kill the worms without killing you.
tansy and type of ragwort was used to
Older generations of my family used to treat intestinal worms with small doses of kerosene. 😬
Thank you for posting this! I learned about this from an herbalist who grew up seeing an older country doctor who would dose his patients with wormwood once a year for parasites.
I jokingly mentioned something about this to a couple of guys who were nudge-nudge-wink-winking about the *other* properties of wormwood, and they looked at me like I had sprouted a second head.
That treatment could work to lessen the number of worms but the only way a community can really stop infections is #1 using soap and washing hands after using the toilet #2 cooking all vegetables #3 cooking all meat including fish #4 boiling all water before using and #5 wearing shoes.
oh my ! yipes ! @@keephurn1159
As a Swede hearing Jimmy calling it a garderobe is just so fun. Wardrobe in Swedish is garderob, and yes, it's pronounced the same 😂 This is amazing 😁
goodness, maybe there IS some truth to keeping one's clothes in the garderobe 🤔😅
@@moxiebombshell It's definately possible 😅😂 I need to find out the connection, there must be some reason why we call it a garderob.
@@helenahsson1697 it's just the french for wardrobe (from garde de robes)
@helenahsson1697 it's called a garderob from garde de robes as someone else has said. Literally a clothing guard in English - because the flies swarming the waste products would keep the moths away so the clothes would last longer 😅
@@holarayYes, it is french and just means closet or wardrobe (hm, where did this word come from). It was brought to Britain by the Normans and their castle builders
I remember in 2009 Norway, the exchange student program organized a ski weekend and warned us ahead of time "any misbehavior will mean the culprits have to muck out the outhouse into the cesspit."
This immediately backfired somehow, with people lining up to clean the outhouse, and the program leaders had nothing to do at the end of the trip but restock firewood.
Just watched this video for a second time and it brought back memories with a jolt. Upon reflection I realized that we had a cesspit in the backyard when I was a child. My Grandmother bought her house in 1915. I never gave it a thought but we only had a chemical toilet in the house and cold running water until 1960. Grandmother died in 1958 and my Father moved into the house and modernized it with indoor plumbing, including a hot water tank and a proper toilet. This was in a middle class suburb of Toronto Ontario. I also remember my Mother telling me about the time she took the 'pail' to the cesspit, slipped on the ice and got covered in the yuck. Now it all makes sense. By the way, I'm 77.
Even if I weren't interested in this (which I am, to be clear), I'd still be into how into it you are. You got so animated and it was lovely to see.
I have pictures of the old Roman street drains from when we went to visit the archaeological site at Glanum. Not just because they were cool, but because I knew that that's what people would want to see. So what I'm saying is OF COURSE that book would be fascinating. (Please call the chapter about the uses for saved urine "precious bodily fluids" though.)
The toilets are always one of the first thing I seek out in historic sites, my family thinks I’m weird, but getting rid of your waste is vital to your health and the health of a community.
So, my husband and I just got back from York. We saw the coprolite at the Jorvik museum. It is huge! My husband couldn’t believe a human being actually produced it!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I would absolutely buy any book you wrote, but especially so on toilets. 🚽 I read Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization by W. Hodding Carter a number of years ago, and it remains one of the most interesting things I've ever read.
So interesting and honestly you had me laughing about poop, much better video than torture!
When camping out in the backcountry, campsites have a pit toilet that's just a box with a hole in the top, that we would call a "thunder box". Same idea but it doesn't have walls around it or anything.
LOL I had forgotten about popty-ping, thanks for the reminder!
I have ulcerative colitis so I am the resident Poo Expert in my friend group. This video will give me more fun factoids to regale/disgust them with haha!
Please do write a book on this! I will buy it! XD Long live the poo flue!
Wait, if not popty-ping, then what? The prosaic meicrodon? Surely there's a slang.
Rereading Terry Pratchett's Discworld books and the Raising Steam has some fun stuff about poo. An elf was put down a guarder robe as well in another book. 😄🖖💕.
Don't forget Harry King - Ankh Morpork's "King of the Golden River"
The one with the elf in the garderobe was Lords and Ladies
Oh, the irony of getting a MiraFiber ad before the video.
Get yourself reg’lar
I think this video might be the highlight of my seven year old's summer vacation. We were both shrieking with laughter! Way better than torture methods lol
❤ I'm interested in the fan language. I'm all about passive aggressive fu type of language. I actually thought there was a secret language that the older church ladies would have in how they wielded their fans. VINDICATION 😂😂😂
Very glad to know I'm not the only one slightly obsessed with this aspect of history (also weirdly we were talking about that coprolite in the discord not long ago)
Same here, my horticulture class presentation was on compost, waste and forms of beneficial rot. There’s dozens of us!
So sorry you're still having such a rough time, but I love that you stopped and thought about whether we needed graphic descriptions of the blood eagle, or whether we were all better off with poo. Excellent call, and my word that Georgian weekend looks wonderful too! Too short notice to plan the longer trip this year, so I really hope it becomes an annual thing. PS Write the book!!!
In the upper part of Sweden, manure and human waste were essential for surviving in the countryside. There are only four months of the year for cultivating crops up here, so to yield a maximum harvest you needed a lot of manure. On my dad's farmstead, the toilet was next to horses in the stable. (We got an indoor modern toilet in 1970.) There were two seats, and all the waste went down to the common manure pile. In the stable, you mucked out the horse and pig manure through a small opening at floor level, which had a little wooden door. In our dialect, this opening was called "vinnöga" (vindöga, "wind eye"), a word which the vikings exported to Britain as 'window'.
The Blood Eagle is so worn out at this point. But while a toilet can be broken in, it doesn't get boring lol
Also, nice to see you so excited about a topic like this. It really makes for quite an engaging video
When you mentioned the garderobes in castles, I had to laugh because it reminded me of a building blocks model my husband and I recently built: Blaustein Castle by BlueBrixx (Lego alternative). The designer included a lot of historically accurate details among which is a garderobe with remnants of "poop" on the outside of the castle wall. So delightful!
This was especially interesting to watch as someone who grew up with a composting toilet! Is there any evidence of them using materials (eg sawdust, dirt) in cesspits to make them smell less?
(Also if you wrote a book on medieval poop I would absolutely 100% buy it)
I second the buying a book on medieval poop! I'd probably buy several to give as gifts as well!
Did people sprinkle ashes over the waste in the outhouse?
I know that lime/lyme was used more recently. It was used in mortar for building with, but perhaps someone with more knowledge can answer.
I have heard (in a podcast on the topic made by graduated historians) that here in Germany at least straw was used to soak up the liquid waste, same as with animal dung. That stuff was also mixed with straw and if you keep it on the dry-ish side that way it's supposed to hardly stink.
@@lydianoack4552 I remember some early medieval regulations on waste disposal (not strictly poop) in Freiburg, Baden-Baden. If I remember correctly, the local industry/crafters were dumping their stuff into the canals which made the area stink horribly.
Thank you for *not* making the torture video. I think we all know what kind of "viking enthusiasts" would swarm the comments on that.
Finally! YT has recommended a decent channel!! New sub here.
I remember seeing a urinal in a Martello Tower in Orkney, positioned so that the guards on duty could relieve themselves without being exposed to potential enemy fire. On the other side of the world, terrace houses in Sydney often still have the nightsoil lane behind them. Sometimes they have been left for pedestrian access, but others have been purchased so that the often tiny courtyard behind each house can be extended by a metre or so.
Mans out here lookin dapper af
Thanks for covering this and not the torture one!
There’s a book by Hans Zinsser called “Rats, Lice, and History” , published in 1935, and still available everywhere, including kindle. I highly recommend it. Another book is “Dust, Mud, Soot and Soil: The Worst Jobs In Victorian London”, of which I have a kindle copy. That book appears to have dropped off the Earth, so I’m glad I have it- a truly fascinating read
Thanks for the book recs! 🙏 I love the fact that historical & archeological education these days have shifted to focus so much more on the everyday life and the common experiences of the past, not just a few uber-rich people & their power struggles.
Fascinating! And thank goodness you did this and not the blood eagle. I remember learning where the phrase, "too poor without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of" came from when I was young--that led to learning about dye and waste. It's a section of history that gets shadowed by all the "glitz and glamour" of the wealthy. But it shouldn't. Good structural design had to take into account waste and what to do with it afterwards. I am curious if there is any evidence of a modern septic system or even a gray water system. Although with so much water your area receives there probably isn't but then you never know.
'She doesn't have a pot to piss in' is what I heard from my grandmother.
I'm so glad you did this video on medieval toilets rarher than the blood eagle! Don't think I could handle one on that. and I loved this one! I agree with you that how people in the past dealt with their waste is fascinating topic. I really learned a lot. Thank you Jimmy!
"Dunny man" is what I grew up calling "night soil men".
Yes, write a book on this.
And look at hydrothermal carbonisation technologies used today as poop processing procedures.
I love everything about this! From the lovely archeology to the wide-eyed glee.
Our farm still has a three seat outdoor toilet, it's still in use since we only have one toilet indoors and sometimes more than one kid needs to go and can't wait so they run outside. Works fine and with sawdust and some chalk it doesn't smell.
Pooping is so much more self care, than blood eagle-ing and we are all for self care. Granted, I would have liked a mention of the 12C Erfurt Latrine Disaster.
Oh my! Wikipedia says “[King Henry] departed as soon as possible.” I can only imagine.
History Calling covered it a couple weeks ago. :)
Fascinating. In _Unreliable Memoirs_ Clive James has a hilarious story about the 20th century version of the nightsoil man.
Oh! Yes! I forgot about that! 🤣
Years ago I toured the Pavilion in Brighton. I was so disappointed that they destroyed the Prince Regents toilet room. How interesting would it be to see what it looked like, how it was appointed.
I find the bathroom - lavatory fascinating, high born and low born, all have to poop.
Imagine taking a dump so epic people put it in a museum hundreds of years later they’re so impressed…
Goals
Thank you for giving us an in-depth look and not just going through the motions!
Oh please write a book on Viking-era poo and poo management. There's got to be a fun, Jimmy-branded twist on the topic in there somewhere. Maybe even some firsthand experimental archeology.
Also, my mom still has an outhouse to this day. Got a brand new one built a few years back, even, and it super proud of how much nicer it is than the old one (it even has shelves for her decorative knick-knacks and incense, lol).
I'm now 71, and I remember my "twin" cousin falling into their cess pit in rural Worcestershire when she was about six.
We had a tv series in greece back in 1999-2000. One of the main characters was a professor that for the entirety of the series was writing a dissertation about the drainage system in the Byzantine empire 😂😂. Thank you for the videos 😊
9:29 my mom does a lot of natural dyeing, especially with various plants, and some recipes in older books specifically include "the urine of pregnant women, or men who drank strong drink"
Speaking of medieval toilets, the castles built by the Teutonic knights in the 13th and 14th centuries have one very notable architectural feature; the latrine tower. These towers were connected via a bridge to the innermost “quadrangle” of the castle (basically a fortified cloister) and usually were built over some form of flowing water. Some of my favorite examples of this can be found in the castles at Malbork, Kwidzyn, and Toruń.
Makes sense - if you're being besieged for a month or two, you definitely don't want that stuff piling up in your castle stinking and spreading disease, or getting into the well! Although creatively offensive uses for collected waste in repelling attackers from the battlements do inevitably come to mind... 🤭
Looking very dapper, especially for a vid on the waste place! Another good one 😊
Here in Melbourne, Australia you can still see the history of waste disposal all across the city. It wasn't until 1887 that our first sewerage system was built, and even then it was only the innermost areas, with everywhere else still operating on outhouses and nightsoil collection up until even the 1940s. As a result, the older areas are criss-crossed by a multitude of alleyways between and behind houses (often with a little channel in the middle for "runoff"), ironically now home to trendy cafes/bars and considered an key part of the city's charm rather than an unsightly necessity.
We definitely take modern sewerage systems for granted!
Yes! We have an unmade lane behind our house in Melbourne, & until recently still had an outdoor loo ( as well as one in the bathroom). Mozzies always an issue because it was cool & damp in there, because the garden tap was in the outside wall of the loo.
Lots of “ stink pipe” tall aeration pipes still around on streets at the end of lanes too.
We still had an outdoor toilet! It had been changed to a plumbed toilet from a dunny long before I came along, but Mum had a stock of amusing tales of the dunny men from her childhood. (Dad grew up on a farm, so they had a long drop.)
In Australia they were dunny men. And they were employed well into the 20th century. My great aunt used to have a dunny and it was still emptied by a dunny man. Not sure when it stopped, but I remember them talking about it when I was little. She died in 1986.
These things really are much more within living memory than one realises! Esp. in more rural areas, where full reticulation still just isn't a thing?
(And they can disappear faster than one expects... In Christchurch many of us got a sudden trip back to chamberpot & outhouse equivalents in 2010-11 thanks to massive earthquakes trashing all the drainage for months on end! 🤦🏻♀️ I was glad to have been a country kid & at least have had some experience of living off-grid, to help adjust?)
I would 100% buy a book about viking and medieval toilets if you ever get a chance to write it!
19:03 Jimmy. Sounds like you're talking of experience here. I can imagine you testing it out, for research and science of course, and then being told off to not wee in there.. xD Love this video! Great way to begin another week :D People often wrinkles their noses whenever the talks go onto how people relieved themselves, but I've been fascinated with waste areas since I was a kid, my parents dug out the garden for ponds and found our property was on top of an old stoneage waste area (Denmark)! Tons of oystershells, flint (arrow heads, axe heads, knifes, scrapers, you name it) and broken clay pot pieces.
"Catchy, catchy for the splashy, splashy" My inner twelve year old loved this video. Seriously, it was very informational. I have heard other historians state that in most mediaeval cities there were stiff fines for just chucking your "nightsoil" out the window. Love the channel and keep up the great work.
Thanks for another interesting video Jimmy,
In parts of Australia, generally either rural properties or in very small villages there is no sewerage provision and septic systems are common. These are emptied when the time comes using a tanker truck with a pump. The modern equivalent of the nightsoil man?
In those areas you will sometimes also see long drop toilets particularly for public conveniences (although they are being replaced with septic systems too), known colloquially as a ‘dunny’. The wooden box design is ubiquitous, but it was only when I was travelling in Europe and that I realised this was what toilets would have looked like for the European colonisers (because it was what was already in use in those places they had come from) and hence what was built.
The solid human waste (with urine included) was definitely used for tanning - the caves in Nottingham still have the tanning pits from the Middle Ages and they still smell! Urine by itself decomposes to ammonia and is great for cleaning off the grease and hair from skins, then the mix cures the skin.
Love that you did this rather than the frankly fetishism surrounded blood eagle. Domestic living and domestic dwellings and the practices therein are sooo fascinating. The change in homes from the Victorian age to the Edwardian and then between the wars completely obsesses me, because it tells us how people lived, how they saw themselves, how they wanted to be perceived. To go back even further to a time when people lived in a completely different way is as thrilling as going to another country.
THANK YOU for NOT making a video about a violent way of death. And a big thanks for this delightful and informative one - hmm, perhaps that book idea is a good one? And I have to add a shout out to the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett, where he happily describes night-soil men, and the many uses of what they collect.
As much of a gore hound I am, I'm so glad that you released this video instead! This is really interesting, plus your mental health is far more important than any video.
Also, I'm so sad I won't be in York in a couple of weeks because that Georgian weekend sounds incredible! I hope everyone has a lot of fun.
When you mention some big cities in Europe with human waste collection still operating into the 1950s, I can't help but think of a fascinating autobiographical graphic novel I read a couple of years ago called "Ramshackle" by Allison McCreesh. It's about some neighbourhoods that still exist in Yellowknife NWT in Canada's North where in ground plumbing would freeze, so residents use "honey buckets" to collect waste until the city government picks it up
My daughter lives there and it seems "the steam guy " sometimes is required to open the line to the sewage system.
When I visited Conisborough Castle a couple years ago the Garderobe managed to retain its original smell! I can only hope it was the medieval poop causing that smell and not some intrepid modern visitors wanting to test the facilities
Some museums actually purchase various scents to add to the immersion! there's a wonderful company that sells all sorts of gnarly smells from rotting food to sweat and bile
Poo smells like poo because of a very simple aroma molecule called _Indole_ - which, curiously, also makes certain flowers smell “floral” - it’s very easy to make the poo-smelling version in a lab (to produce a convincing poopy aroma without any of the biological risks associated with real human faeces)
@@emperorofpluto Interesting. There was a 1960s band called Indole Ring in Vancouver. Psychedelics were developed from indole, which makes a certain sense,common precursor I guess.
I work at Conisbrough Castle and this comment made me laugh! My sense of smell isn't great but I feel like I need to test this with all the toilets we can access next time I work 😂
@@ashnicfire It must have been one of the ones in the main wall as the keep was closed at the time for COVID measures, good luck finding the smell! It was also pretty rainy that day so that must have helped release the smell
I shall have to pay another visit and sniff around myself too lol, as well as properly visit the keep
Scatological books are always popular! Sorry you’ve been having a rough time, and I’m glad you chose to go for a less grim subject to research for this video. Hope things improve.
Honestly hearing about the night soil men reminds me of septic tank workmen. Septic tank workers definitely have the advantage of technology making their work cleaner, but they still come out and empty your tank of poo to this day. Where I live, septic tanks are far more common than being on a sewage system because of how spread out things are.
Awesome video!! I lived off-grid for many years with a composting toilet, possibly triggered by a job in the 80s working on an archaeological dig in Ohio where the garbage midden pits were excavated. We used a process called floatation to look at food grains and cooked food (it floats) to look at the ethnobotanical evolution of corn. Thanks so much for fun history!
Cool! Did you find anything you'd share with us?
@@mirjanbouma We found a dog skeleton in one of the pits which looked very intentionally placed! The main research centered on a variety of dent corn found as this was an agricultural community. We actually had a primitive garden using replica tools so we could get the feel for how hard they worked to grow crops. We measured the types of seeds found and how much. The research went into the director's dissertation so that was exciting.
@@foxruneecWere you studying indian cultures or early European settlers growing corn? When did dent corn emerge as a distinct type?
@@gregorymalchuk272 Native American, Fort Ancient Culture. This was very primitive corn compared to what we have today. Smaller kernels and fewer rows. But the distinctive dent in the kernel and very starchy - so good for cornmeal.
Thank you for sitting down, dressed as a Georgian Gentleman, to hold forth on matters scatological! We can all relate - everyone has to deal with toilets, they're the great leveller for humans and one of the biggest logistical headaches for settlements since forever!
Sorry to hear you're not having a great time, hope things pick up for you. At least you're not a mediæval gong-farmer!
I grew up using a chamber pot under the bed, because the "dunny" was outside, and grandma preferred us to be inside of a nighttime. We just emptied it out into the toilet in the morning, no worries
She also taught us to sleep back-to-back to stay warm (and likely prevent little feet from kicking the other set of little feet, too)
I'm watching this just before bed & I'm worried I'll be dreaming about how those tennis balls got in there
I'd like to take a moment to revel in the GIGANTIC FOSSILIZED SPLASHER that is mounted on a wall in a museum! Poor person must have just about had a coronary pushing that out! I would have named it and considered raising it as one of my own after giving birth like that! What a legacy to leave behind eh?
I have, on occasion, had massive poops that came out easily. Usually when the poop is being difficult it doesn't come out in such large chunks (at least for me).
And just think, it decreased in size over the centuries. Ow.
I think when they first discovered it, it was described as "eye wateringley big".
@@DanceswithDustBunnies Yowtch. Yeah, I should think so. An item like that may have shrunk a little over time, losing some moisture. Egad.
I've dropped a deuce as large as that, & it *DEFINITELY* was an uncomfortable experience. The longer a person is constipated, the more moisture the body takes out of the stool, & the more difficult it becomes to expel. Things were quite... painful after a while. My situation was caused by medication.
Wish I could go to the York georgian festival. Amazing video. *thanks in Welsh*
I was a bit concerned sitting down to this with a bowl of peanut butter oatmeal, but I should have not doubted Jimmy to make it an entertaining and educational breakfast. 😅
hahaha I would have had to finish one without the other, you're made of stronger stuff than I!
Cheers from the future! I enjoyed this over breakfast too
Loved the “crap” history Jimmy!
There is a fabulous Australian 2006 movie called “ Kenny” written by & starring Shane Jacobsen, all about a man who works for a Porta- Loo company. When cleaning the toilet tank Kenny says “ There’s a smell in here that will outlast religion” !
It has now become a classic Aussie saying and quite applicable to some of the history - and comments about toilet smells - presented here!
in the states, rural areas use "septic systems" which ideally break down the waste and leach it into the ground, but do need to be pumped out occasionally...
You really should write a book on it! And this was just what I needed to watch whilst recovering from an upset stomach
I've just spent a week doing field research on different ways people deal with human waste nowadays. Also called a holiday in rural Hungary. From the classic outhouse with wooden board with a hole in it (much like yours, with a lid on) to a porcelain throne outhouse-and-cesspit combo with a watering can instead of a classic flush, to flushing toilets fed by rainwater, and the showers were just as varied. Quite the adventure. I hadn't used the classic hole-in-the-ground outhouse in years and found it less stinky than I remembered, and more convenient than the watering can hybrid.
This was wonderful. Much better than torture. It is fascinating how humans have solved sewage thru the ages. Now you've mentioned a book though you must write it. I would definitely buy it.
When I lived in York I remember being shocked when I was told that my house didn’t get city sewage in the modern sense of the word until the 1960s. I was told that it was because the water table was less than a foot underground and then everything made more sense. They literally had to wait until modern materials were impermeable to water from both directions: the inside water couldn’t get out and the outside water couldn’t get in. And apparently we had to wait for plastic piping for that.
Funnily enough, I learned a bit about later medieval poop management from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, haha. One thing I've heard other archeaologists say about garderobes is that clothes were sometimes put in there to AIR them, as they could be drafty.
So glad you decided to put out an episode on crap rather than a crap episode.