The Worst Jobs in History From the Roman invasion to the reign of Queen Victoria, there have always

been plenty of gruesome and stomach-turning jobs to do. The Dark Ages The Guillemot Egg Collector Farming could be unpredictable and food scarce, so guillemot eggs were an important source of protein in the Saxon peasants diet. The only trouble being that guillemots nest on ledges, precariously balanced on cliff sides, so collecting them meant risking life and limb hundreds of feet above jagged rocks and raging seas. And if this wasnt dangerous enough, angry birds were likely to attack anyone trying to steal their precious eggs. The Churl In Anglo-Saxon times, the churl, or peasant, came lowest down the pecking order. His job was farming a small piece of land keeping his family alive on the food he produced. Ploughing the land with oxen and a wooden plough was essential but difficult and backbreaking work. On top of farming, the churl had to put a roof over his head, which meant building a hut made of wattle and daub. Wattle was made of long, slender hazel branches that were painstakingly woven together to make walls and once these were in place the daub was slapped on to stop the wind howling through. This was a messy, smelly job because daub is made from water, mud, straw and dung! The Bog Iron Hunter The Saxons needed vast quantities of iron for tools and weapons. The Bog Iron Hunter did exactly what his title says; he hunted for iron ore in bogs. In all weathers, he poked around in soggy bogs trying to find up to 40kgs of ore a day for the smelters. The Coin Stamper There was no pay involved, just bed and board and particularly nasty punishments if he was tempted to steal the silver he was making into coins. Stealing just the shavings was punishable with castration and if a whole coin went missing the guilty partys hand was cut off and nailed to the workshop door! The Monk Monks didnt live in monasteries during the Saxon period; they had to build their own wattle and daub huts, just like the churls, and farm the land to feed themselves. On top of the daily grind, which literally meant grinding grain to make flour for the monks daily bread, they had to pray up to eight times a day, including during the middle of the night. Monks also copied manuscripts in meticulous, tiny handwriting in freezing, draughty rooms, which made their bodies and eyes ache horrendously. The Viking Warrior Before they could rape and pillage, Viking warriors had to get from their homeland to Britain. This meant long voyages across stormy seas, rowing for hours on end. Life on board a Viking ship was cramped and uncomfortable, wet and cold with no toilet facilities. Rather than sail round a headland, Vikings would often haul their ships across it, with the help of wooden runners. The runners had to be greased to ease the ship along and the most common grease

used was made from pulverised fish. Bearing in mind that the fish had been kept for days after they were caught, this would have been an exceptionally smelly job. The Middle Ages The Fuller Top of the list of worst jobs in the Middle Ages is the fuller, who washed out the grease and impurities from newly woven woollen cloth. The best way to do this was by putting it in a big vat of stale urine, yes urine, and stomping on it for hours on end. The stench was obviously horrendous and, even though the job was mind-numbingly tedious, the fuller couldnt lose his concentration. Because the process also tightened the weave and thickened the cloth, if it wasnt treated evenly for exactly the right amount of time, the whole bale could be ruined. Once the cloth was ready, the Fuller rinsed it in clean water, carried it up a hill and stretched it out to dry on tenterframes, - the origin of the phrase, on tenterhooks. The Lime Burner Lime was used for making building mortar, which was in demand for the cathedrals springing up all over the country. The lime burner had a thankless, if important, task, heating chalk in a kiln at 1,100C to make quicklime. The dust the quicklime produced could cause blindness and spontaneously combust and burn. If that wasnt enough, the carbon monoxide could make the worker dizzy and he could fall into the kiln with ease. Health and safety was obviously not a high priority in the Middle Ages! The Treadmill Operator This was definitely not a job for vertigo sufferers and was often done by the blind. Imagine a giant hamster wheel, precariously balanced at the highest point (up to 50m) of an almost built cathedral and youve got an idea of what a treadmill looked like. The operator would trudge for hours, turning the treadmill, which moved the winch on a crane. It was monotonous and dangerous because, if the treadmill was damaged by the weather or badly constructed, it could come crashing down. The Arming Squire This job was a cross between a roadie, caterer and lavatory attendant. The arming squire looked after his knights every need, offering him all the comforts of home during travelling army campaigns. This meant dressing, feeding and waiting on his master, as well as taking care of all his belongings on the baggage train, trudging for miles every day before setting up camp. But the worst bit was undoubtedly cleaning the knights armour after a heavy day on the battlefield. On the outside there was mud and blood, but the inside was far worse. Knights didnt get toilet breaks during battle, so the arming squire had to clean what could be described as a big, metal nappy. To add to this, water was too precious to be used for cleaning so the squire would use a mixture of sand, vinegar and a little urine to clean. The Leech Collector These poor unfortunates collected leeches - used for medicinal bloodletting - by wading into marshes and letting the little bloodsuckers cling to their legs. One leech is uncomfortable; imagine pulling a whole bucketful off your body! The wounds often became infected and bacteria from the leeches could cause nasty stomach upsets.

Tudor and Stuart The Woad Dyer Woad dyers were highly skilled craftsmen, but enjoying their profits was difficult, because no one wanted to come anywhere near them. It wasnt their permanently blue-stained hands that put people off, but the dreadful stink - a bit like rotting boiled cabbage mixed with sewage which hung around them wherever they went. Woad was the plant used to dye wool blue, a colour much in demand at this time, but the process was messy and smelly and the byproducts were noxious and difficult to dispose of. The rest of society despised woad dyers; Queen Elizabeth decreed that no woad should be dyed within five miles of her royal person! The Violin String Maker Vegetarians definitely need not apply for this job. The violin string maker needed a strong stomach as he turned the lower intestines from a sheep into strings fit for a Stradivarius. Pet lovers will be pleased to hear that it was sheep and not catgut that was actually used. The violin string maker sliced open the sheeps stomach, being careful not to damage the precious intestines. The fatty tissue, blood vessels and bile were removed and the intestines cleaned. The thicker bits went off to make sausage skins and the thinner ends were twisted together and dried to make strings. The whole job was skilful but tedious and very messy. The Gong Farmer The gong farmer was the Tudor equivalent of a modern mobile toilet attendant. It was his job to empty the privies (a row of holes in a wooden plank over a tank) of private households. Once the farmers vat was full of gong (dung), he carted it outside the city walls. The job was so unsavoury that gong farmers were only allowed to work during the night and were forced to live together in designated areas. When tobacco arrived in this country most gong farmers became heavy smokers to mask the gut-wrenching pong of the gong! Searchers of the Dead It sounds like the title of a bad horror movie, so imagine what the job description was like! Searchers of the dead sought out plague victims. Once they were identified, the house would be boarded up and the rest of the family quarantined. If you spent your time visiting plagueridden households, chances were youd catch it yourself, so the job wasnt a sought-after position. Searchers of the dead were mostly older women, destitute but with enough medical knowledge to spot plague victims. The pay wasnt great at the best of times, about four pence per body, but prices plummeted during the Great Plague, because the authorities couldnt afford to pay for the hundreds of people dying everyday. The Executioner Wearing a hood or mask didnt fool anyone - the Executioner was a well-known and despised man. He had to deal with rioting crowds, as well as the blood and gore involved with beheadings - and it was even his job to parboil victims heads and put them on stakes. Its no wonder that many executioners eventually committed suicide. Georgian The Mule Scavenger Georgian mill owners cared about profits and not about the lives of their workers - and the mule scavenger probably had the worst job in the mill. They were child apprentices, as young as eight, often from the local workhouse. They got board, lodgings and pocket money to crawl

around under the mules (weaving machines) and collect fluff and cotton. The mills were hot, humid and very noisy and mule scavengers worked 12 to 14 hours at a time, with no proper meal breaks. Concentration was everything, as they had to move with the rhythm of the mule. One slip and they could lose a finger, a hand or even their life, as they were crushed in the heavy machinery. The Castrato Although they came from Italy, castratos sang all over Europe. They were usually from poor families, their parents breaking the laws of church and state to have them castrated at around nine years old, so they would retain their boyish voices. Many of these unfortunate boys didnt even have a good singing voice and only a tiny percentage of those made it to the top. Even then the castrato was doomed to have no normal family life, with undeveloped genitals and limbs out of proportion with their plump bodies. The Navy Due to a shortage of men willing to fight for king and country, many sailors were impressed into service against their will. Life on board a Georgian navy vessel was incredibly hard, with harsh punishments for anyone who broke the rules. The loblolly boy assisted the ships surgeon, holding patients down while their limbs were amputated. Caring for the sick meant he was always at risk from disease, which was responsible for more deaths than fighting. The top man had one of the most vital and dangerous jobs on board; he adjusted the sails from the top of the yardarm, risking life and limb during storms and battles. Down below, the powder monkey, boys as young as six, had the perilous task of ferrying highly flammable gunpowder cartridges from the magazine in the bowels of the ship to the gun captain above. The Resurrection Man The pay wasnt bad but that didnt really make up for the appalling nature of the job. Surgeons were desperate to study anatomy and hone their craft, but the only bodies they were legally allowed to dissect were those of executed criminals. Thats where the resurrection man came in. He supplied surgeons with fresh corpses by digging them up as soon as they were buried. The only problem was that people believed you wouldnt go to heaven on Judgement Day if your body was in pieces. Relatives would stand guard over the graves of loved ones for weeks, until they could be sure the corpse was too rotten to be of any use. Resurrection men also had to deal with bodies buried up to twelve feet deep or encased in mortsafes, metal frames padlocked around a coffin. Victorian The Tanner Leather was a vital Victorian commodity and tanners were highly skilled workers, but they were forced to live on the fringes of society because of the noxious stink that went with the job. Raw hides were dipped in a sickly-sweet smelling lime solution for a week before the tanner scraped off the rotting flesh and hair. They were then soaked in bate - warm, steaming gravy made from water and dog faeces, which removed the lime, softened the hides and stank the yard out something terrible! Over the next year, the hides would be soaked in various tanning solutions before the meticulous rinsing and drying out process began. The work was dull, strenuous and very, very smelly. Little wonder that tanners usually married other tanners!

The Pure Collector Pure is actually the word for dog poo! The pure collector roamed the streets, scooping the poop left by our canine friends, not for health and hygiene reasons, but for profit. Well someone had to provide the tanners with enough doggie-do-do for their bate! The Match Maker Were not talking about the kind of matchmaker who gets happy couples together, but the kind who actually makes matches. They were mostly women, paid a pittance in a job that could disfigure them for life. Matches were made by dipping small sticks of wood into white phosphorus - a toxic substance that caused phossy jaw. The match maker would first get a toothache; the jaw would then swell up with weeping abscesses and slowly rot away. The only treatment was surgical removal of the jawbone, an agonizing operation that would disfigure the sufferer for life. Workhouse Jobs The worst fear of the poor in Victorian society was to be sent to the workhouse; once you were there it was extremely difficult to get out again and was often worse than being in prison. Most of the inmates were very young or very old, unmarried mothers and the mentally impaired. One workhouse job was oakum picker, unravelling old, tar covered rope, which would rub the fingers raw. If an inmate were young and healthy they would be used as stonebreakers, breaking rocks into smaller stones used to make road foundations. Inmates werent paid for the jobs they did, they just got a bed and the most meagre rations. The Mud Lark Mud larks were scavengers, often very small children, who had to make a living by poking around in mud on the banks of the River Thames. But it wasnt just confined to mud. In Victorian London, the sewers emptied into the Thames and mud larks would have no choice but to wade through excrement while scavenging. They couldnt afford shoes and wore nothing but rags, even in freezing conditions. Nails and glass would stick in their feet and disease and infection was all around them. But if a mud lark didnt collect enough coal, metal or anything else they could sell before the tide rose, they would starve until they could begin hunting through the excrement again when the tide had subsided.