19 Disgusting Jobs From History That Honestly Made Me Happier To Clock In Today

Chances are you own at least one woollen item, but you probably haven’t thought about how intensive the process of turning sheep’s coats into clothing is. You know who was very aware of the labour involved, though? Fullers, who worked throughout history from Ancient Rome to 15th century England. Untreated wool is oily, greasy, and dirty, and it has a coarse and scratchy finish that’s way too harsh to wear. Back in the day, fullers used to soften the fibres by trampling over them in vats filled with aged urine (side note: old pee used to be used for everything from whitening teeth to softening leather). The ammonia-rich environment really did banish the grease from wool, but it meant that somebody had to spend up to eight hours trampling up and down in a bucket of foul fluid!

You know those people who remove and replace tyres on Formula One cars faster than most of us can drive? Well, an arming squire was basically the Medieval equivalent of that! Their job involved maintaining, fixing, and applying a knight’s armour, sometimes mid-battle (and no, they didn’t wear any armour themselves as they rushed into the scuffle). To add insult to injury, arming squires also had to remove the blood, sweat, mud, and other mess from the armour after a fight – oh, and of course they were given aged urine as a cleaning agent.

Yup, this job pretty much lives up to its name – these workers used to walk into leech-filled ponds and usher the lil’ suckers into buckets. Leeches were used for blood-letting, which was believed to be a kind of cure-all for everything from disease to infection. They became so popular in Europe that leeches had almost become extinct in Ireland, Wales, the Netherlands, and England by the 18th century, which would have been a shame seeing as surgeons still find them useful today!

19th century London was a real mish-mash of extreme wealth and extreme poverty – while some residents were struggling to eat, others were accidentally throwing their riches down the toilet in the form of dropped coins and misplaced trinkets. Groups of toshers began to scavenge the sewers in search of flushed finances, metal, and rags, often led by an experienced elderly pro who knew every nook and cranny of London’s grimiest gold mine. The job was technically illegal, but the pay was good enough to incentivise some – toshers could earn up to the equivalent of $20,000 per year in today’s money.

Burials had been organised by community leaders like churchwardens pre-plague, but their workload spiralled out of control after the disease stormed London (to the extent that some had to bury the dead in mass graves rather than individual plots). As a result, the government hired ‘plague bearers’ in July of 1665. Their job was to search for, carry, and bury the plague dead, and they were housed in churches to keep them separate from the rest of society. Aside from the obvious risk of infection that came with the job, plague bearers also had to contend with the “unquenchable stench and fest” of endless corpses (yikes).

The position was invented by King Henry VII during his reign to oversee pretty much every aspect of his bowel movements, from addressing the king’s diet to witnessing the act itself. Oddly enough, the job was considered highly prestigious – after all, you got to spend one-on-one time with royalty, and could even use your poop-side chat to influence his political decisions. Shockingly, the role was still going strong until 1901 when King Edward VII ended the practice.

Lime mortar has been a crucial building material since around the first century BC, but it takes a lot to turn its chalky origins into the cement-like finished product. Workers were needed to remove the carbon monoxide from the calcium-rich stone, which is where lime burners stepped in! Their job involved heating limestone in a kiln at around 800°C, exposing themselves to harmful carbon monoxide and suffocating chalk dust. As if all that wasn’t enough, the finished product was prone to explosion when it came into contact with water (ouch).

Almost nothing went to waste in the Middle Ages, and that included discarded animal bones and rags which could be reused for glue, fertiliser, paper, and more. The bone collector went from door to door, sometimes with a horse and wagon, calling out for folks’ unwanted food scraps and worn-out rags – their work days lasted for about ten hours, and many became so desperate for saleable goods that they’d rummage through dust trucks and peoples’ ash piles for objects.

In a supposed attempt to reform Victorian criminals, Sir William Cubitt forced prisoners to power giant water pumps and corn mills by stepping along a giant wheel for hours at a time (which makes a grim kind of sense when you think about the word). Convicts would become weak and injured after months of gruelling, fruitless labour, leading the British Prison Act to ban the practice in 1898.

Their job included gutting and salting herrings at record speed for up to fifteen hours (they were paid per barrel, so the faster workers made more money). Herring girls would try to protect their hands from the inevitable cuts that come from handling sharp knives and bones by using cloths and flour, but it didn’t work and injuries would often become infected. As if all that wasn’t enough, the workers would be denied access to hotels and even their own homes thanks to the foul smell of fish!

Oakum is a hemp fibre that was in high demand at sea because of how well it protects wood from water, and you can get it from one of two sources: virgin hemp plants, and unwound old rope. Ill-behaved sailors and prisoners were given the task of unravelling metres and metres of rough, thick rope with their bare hands, often causing bursitis, infection, and scarring.

When you think of Tudor achievements, a few things might come to mind: gorgeous dresses, glamorous knights, and stunning houses, for example. Plumbing, however, was not a great feature of the age – in fact, most people did their business in communal latrines called cesspits. Of course those massive piles of vile substances didn’t clean themselves, and seeing as parts of London only had 16 latrines per 30,000 people in the 14th century the job of waste removal became vital! Gong farmers were hired to take the mess away at night, charging local councils two measly shillings per tonne of removal. The dangerous job was brimming with bacteria, and it sounds like it might just have been one of the smelliest tasks of the day!