6 Of The Dirtiest Jobs Medieval Women Had To Do — You’re Lucky You Didn’t Live in Those Times

Ajouté : 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]to make clothes pure white in the 14th century. People didn't use soap. They used fermented human urine. But soaking bare hands into that solution was actually still considered a lucky job.

[00:00:15]Behind extravagant stone walls.

[00:00:19]Countless women were forced to touch the most horrifying things that all of society despised. There was no glory, only blood, filth, and death sentences dangling over their heads. These are the six most brutal jobs that eroded women's bodies in the Middle Ages by the time we reach the final file. Your perspective on this era will be changed forever.

[00:00:46]Number one, washing clothes in fermented human urine. Most of us today wash clothes with ease because we have washing machines. At worst, we might grimace when forced to hand scrub a stubborn stain. But in many parts of medieval Europe, this seemingly basic task was a brutal endurance test for both the body and the sense of smell. If you were an impoverished working woman in the 14th century, your primary detergent was not sitting on a store shelf. It was sitting inside chamber pots. People of that era called it chamber lie. The term sounds polite, but in reality it was human urine. Why did they have to resort to that during this period? Soap was practically unusable.

[00:01:37]Coarse soap made from animal fat and wood ash was highly corrosive, easily rotting thin fabrics. Meanwhile, the renowned pure castile soap made from olive oil was astronomically priced.

[00:01:53]Only the aristocracy and religious elites could ever hope to afford it.

[00:01:58]Therefore, to eliminate yellow stains, blood spots, or animal fat clinging to clothing, the vast majority of women had to rely on a natural chemical reaction.

[00:02:11]When left to sit for days, urine fermentss and converts into concentrated ammonia. This is a highly effective solvent that breaks down protein and fat structures. To gather enough materials, many women had to place large wooden vats on crowded street corners to collect urine from passing citizens. You couldn't just take it home and use it immediately. It had to ferment for days on end. The ammonia gas accumulated to the point where upon opening the lid, the acrid vapor would strike the nasal cavity and sting the eyes of anyone standing near. A standard laundry formula of the time usually included wood ash, sour grape juice, and this pungent fermented urine. Medieval women didn't know what molecular structures were. They only knew this concoction actually whitened fabric fibers. Washing didn't happen every day. It was often consolidated into a grand wash, a massive laundry event lasting two to three consecutive days without rest.

[00:03:23]Dozens of women knelt on jagged stone floors. They plunged their bare hands into wooden basins filled with fermented urine, scrubbing relentlessly, then fished out the soaking wet. Heavy fabrics to smash them violently against the stones. The deafening sound of beating clothes echoed across the river, blending into the hazy morning fog, but the price of cleanliness fell directly onto the women's bodies, soaking in highly alkaline lie ash and ammonia from dawn until dusk. Their hands gradually turned as red as boiled shrimp. The epidermis was eroded by natural chemicals, peeling off in chunks.

[00:04:09]Bleeding cracks appeared profusely across their knuckles. And remember, in the bone chilling European winter, they still had to grit their teeth and plunge those ulcerated hands into freezing streams to rinse the clothes. Worse than the physical agony was the lingering smell. Ammonia fumes mixed with sweat clung tightly to their epidermis seeped deep into their hair and permeated the washer women's own clothes. No matter how many times they tried to scrub themselves in the river, that pungent stench followed them like a shadow. In many places, people could recognize a washer woman approaching from dozens of meters away entirely by smell. There is a historical detail bearing profound irony. In the 15th century city of Coventry, England, authorities once passed a law forbidding citizens from washing clothes with soap at public water fountains. The recorded reason was that soap chemicals were causing mass fish die-offs. But absurdly enough, there were virtually no texts forbidding them from washing with urine by the riverbank. And that was exactly what the impoverished citizens had to grit their teeth and continue doing. The class divide of the Middle Ages was sometimes laid bare most clearly through a strip of fabric. The washer women received a few thin coins to clean the fragrant snow white gowns of the aristocracy.

[00:05:49]But when they dragged their feet back to their damp huts to wash the ragged clothes of their own families, they were forced to use the urine their husbands and children had relieved into a bucket the night before. Absolutely nothing was allowed to be wasted. Hands bleeding from fermented urine sounds terrible enough, but if you think inhaling ammonia all day was the ultimate torture, you are mistaken. When winter knocked on the door and the city's slaughter houses began operating at full capacity.

[00:06:24]These women had to take another step deeper into an environment flooded with a thick liquid that was far more grotesque and horrifying. Number two, cleaning slaughter houses and gutting animals. In the final months of the year, particularly November, the atmosphere in medieval European cities began to change to prepare winter food reserves. Thousands of pigs, cows, and sheep were herded into centralized slaughter houses. Once the male butchers had swung their knives and finished their work, the most grueling, filthy, and haunting tasks fell squarely onto the shoulders of women. In the scalding house of the slaughterhouse, women had to stand amidst thick steam rising from massive vats. They poured boiling water over pig carcasses, using bare hands and dull knives to scrape away every last bristly hair.

[00:07:26]But that was just the surface. The true nightmare lay inside. One of the most horrific steps was processing the internal organs, especially cleaning the intestines during times of scarcity.

[00:07:41]Animal intestines were not thrown away.

[00:07:44]They were utilized as sausage casings, the primary survival food for the poor.

[00:07:49]But for that casing to be usable, the intestines had to be turned inside out.

[00:07:55]Here, women had to plunge their hands into the still steaming abdominal cavities of livestock, pulling out long tracks of intestines, feces, mucus, and stomach acids spilled out, running down their arms and clinging to their fingernails and coarse aprons. They spread the pile of intestines across rough wooden planks, inverted them, and scrubbed relentlessly with freezing cold water to expel the waste. Step into the space of a November slaughterhouse.

[00:08:31]What would you see? Dim light filtering through narrow windows. Animal carcasses hanging upside down on iron hooks. The floor is a slimy swamp, a mixture of dripping blood, mucus, and dirty water trickling towards the drains. Women had to stand, soaking their feet in that liquid puddle for hours on end. The stench of blood mingled with the smell of organs created a suffocatingly dense atmosphere.

[00:09:01]parts like hearts, livers, and lungs were swiftly sorted and tossed into wooden barrels at their feet. When night fell, they dragged themselves away from the slaughterhouse in clothes stained with dark, smeared streaks. Their hands, stiff from the freezing wind, were coated in a layer of coagulated, greasy animal fat. The bitterest part of this job lay in how society viewed them.

[00:09:32]Historian Jacqu Lagoff noted a heartbreaking detail. Those who processed and sold internal organs were frequently relegated to the absolute bottom of society. In many areas, they were despised on the same level as lone sharks or prostitutes. The given reason was that they had too much contact with the impurity of flesh. The upper class refused to touch those gelatinous piles of organs. Those leftover scraps of meat became the sole lifeline for the destitute.

[00:10:05]The poor bought that food from the very hands of the women who were shunned by the community. Almost no one wanted to do this job. Yet, no one could survive the winter without those cheap meatsted pig intestines. The stench of blood and organs at the slaughterhouse might make one turn away, but at least it produced food to sustain life. The third job we are about to mention generated the only light for the night. But the price paid was a rotting stench that assaulted the old factory senses so profoundly that the entire city had to drive them away.

[00:10:43]Number three, making candles from decomposing animal fat. Tallow Chandler.

[00:10:49]When the sun set, medieval cities plunged into a thick absolute darkness.

[00:10:56]Light became a form of power that clearly demarcated social class. The nobility and the church illuminated their spaces with pure beeswax candles which burned smoothly and emitted a faint sweet scent of honey. But the light of the poor rire. It was harsh, nauseating, and saturated with the stench of dead flesh. The vast majority of laborers at that time could never afford beeswax. The only light they had was the tallow candle. A candle molded from the crude fat of buffaloos, cows, sheep, and pigs salvaged from the very muddy slaughter houses we just discussed. To turn that gelatinous pile of fat into a burning candle, one had to endure a process that was an absolute sensory atrocity.

[00:11:53]Inside dilapidated workshops, candle makers, mostly women, had to manually chop up slabs of raw fat. In an environment with no refrigeration, many slabs of fat had already begun oozing rancid fluids. They threw everything into giant copper cauldrons, boiling it furiously to separate the liquid fat from the tendons and mucous membranes. The hot fat vapor hovered in the air, creating a dense, greasy fog.

[00:12:26]It carried the acrid, burning stench of decomposing meat mixed with boiling fat.

[00:12:33]This smell was so horrific that in an era where open sewers ran along the streets, tallow rendering workshops were still constantly sued by citizens, authorities in many places forced them to relocate to the most remote outskirts because neighbors simply could not stomach the prolonged nausea every time the fat rendering furnaces were fired up. Inside the workshop, the women worked to the bone, holding bunches of wicks. They plunged them deep into the bubbling cauldron of fat, pulled them up to cool, and dipped them again. That cycle was repeated hundreds of times a day. Boiling fat splattered, leaving red, blistered burns on their flesh, but burns would eventually heal the putrid stench.

[00:13:26]however, clung permanently. It seeped into their pores, latched onto their hair and clothes, turning them into paras shunned by society simply for carrying the smell of rot. The products they created were murky yellow candles, slick and slimy to the touch. When lit inside cramped huts, they emitted thick black smoke and rire of burning fat.

[00:13:54]more terrifyingly because they were essentially just solidified food. These candles became prime targets for swarms of rats. Citizens waking up in the middle of the night to the scratching sound of rats gnawing on candles right by their heads was a daily occurrence.

[00:14:12]The history of the candle industry also recorded deeply ironic shadows. In London, the worshipful company of Tallow Chandlers once struggled with a slew of internal fraud lawsuits. Some candle makers wanting to cut costs secretly sneaked cheap lard, foul smelling fish oil, and even pulverized scrap animal intestines into the rendering pots. When caught, these fraudsters were sentenced to the pillary in the market square with the very stinking candles they had made hung dangling around their necks. The tallow candles had inadvertently lured hordes of rats from the sewers right up to people's beds. But the rats didn't just come to eat fat. They carried uninvited guests on their backs, pathogens waiting to plunge all of Europe into an ocean of corpses. And when death knocked on the door, it was once again the impoverished women at the bottom of society who had to plunge their hands deep into the darkness to clean up the aftermath. Number four, collecting rat corpses during the plague. Tallow candles didn't just emit a foul stench. They were a lucrative feast that attracted sewer rats crawling up from open drainage ditches in expanding European metropolises.

[00:15:40]Rats multiplied exponentially amidst towering piles of garbage and moldy straw lining the floors. Then the plague swept through as authorities dimly realized the presence of rats was closely linked to the mass deaths. They began offering a bounty of a few pennies for every rat corpse handed in. Healthy men naturally sought safer jobs. The task of clearing away this pathogen-ridden trash was once again pushed into the hands of the most destitute women. The woman walked in with a filthy cloth sack, no gloves, no protective gear. She had to thrust her bare hands deep into slimy wall crevices or dig through moldy piles of straw under the beds of the sick to snatch giant greasematted sewer rats. Having yellowed teeth sink into bleeding fingers was a daily occupational hazard.

[00:16:41]But the grim reaper's scythe did not lie in the bite. Inside that wriggling cloth sack were dozens of rat corpses piled on top of each other, radiating a pungent, decaying odor. When a rat dies, its body temperature begins to cool. The plague carrying fleas paracetizing that slick fur immediately leaped to the nearest warm-blooded host, the very woman carrying the sack. They unknowingly absorbed the full brunt of the pathogen.

[00:17:14]There is a historical fact deeply steeped in irony. In many regions during this period, due to an absolute lack of understanding, the masses began blaming and exterminating cats, believing they harbored dark magic when the meat natural predator vanished. The rat population exploded even more violently.

[00:17:38]The female rat catchers suddenly became the only living shields for the entire city. In fact, out of sheer desperation, some people secretly caught live rats and brought them home, breeding them right in their fleafested basement to maintain a steady stream of bounty money. They received a few blood stained coins, but the price was usually paid just a few days later when they woke up with a dark purple. Throbbing booo the size of a chicken egg swelling under their armpit. Catching rat corpses meant burrowing into infected sewers. But in the next section, we will step into glamorous castles where a job existed that wasn't just physically filthy, but shackled the woman to ultimate humiliation.

[00:18:32]That was when they had to manually scrub the very thing society at the time deemed the most terrifying impurity.

[00:18:41]Number five, washing menstrual rags for the aristocracy.

[00:18:46]You might think living in a lord's castle, wearing silk, and attending banquetss was what women enjoyed in the Middle Ages. Yes, but that was for the aristocracy.

[00:18:58]At the absolute bottom of the food chain in those magnificent stone mansions were the lowest ranking maidservants.

[00:19:06]They were shoved into a job that wasn't just physically filthy, but shackled them to ultimate humiliation, washing the intimate linen cloths of the lady of the house. During this era, women often used multi-layered linen cloths tied around their hips for absorption during their menstrual cycle. Fabric was incredibly expensive, so throwing it away was absurd. They absolutely had to be washed clean for reuse.

[00:19:38]And naturally, the jewel adorned fingers of the noble ladies would rarely dain to touch that crimson water. This task was entirely contracted out to the servants at the bottom. Put yourself in the shoes of that servant girl, waiting for the dim light of dawn. She had to carry a lonely wooden basin down to the riverbank. Her dry hands plunged into the freezing water, beginning to vigorously scrub the dried. Coagulated blood caked deep into the fabric fibers.

[00:20:11]She had to use skin burning lie ash to dislodge the stubborn stains. The water in the basin slowly turned dark red. But she wasn't just facing a physical stain.

[00:20:23]She was touching what medieval society considered a dark omen influenced by ancient writings. Many people of the era vaguely believed that menrating women carried a toxic aura. Rumors spread that menstrual blood could sour oak barrels of wine, wither crops, drive hunting dogs mad, and bring bad luck to men.

[00:20:47]Therefore, washing them was never allowed to happen in public. It was a suffocatingly stealthy act. The maid had to find a hidden corner, turning her back to the world to wash. Drying also had to be hidden behind rocks or bushes, far from the eyes of guards and guests. The boundary of safety was incredibly thin.

[00:21:12]If word of her mistress's cycle accidentally leaked, she could be thrown out on the street. Other servants shot her evasive glances. believing her hands were tainted by impurity. But there is a chilling ironic truth. The famous physician Bernard de Gordon once noted in his medical texts that to truly diagnose the health of a noble woman, a doctor must carefully examine the color and state of that intimate cloth.

[00:21:44]meaning the trembling maid washing cloths by the river was inadvertently the one holding the life or death secret regarding her mistress's health. But of course, no one ever bothered to lower themselves to tell her that. More terrifyingly, in the records of the Inquisitions, these bloodstained cloths were frequently suspected to be materials used for dark magic. The boundary between a servant scrubbing with her head down and an accused witch suddenly became razor thin. Being despised for touching intimate cloths was already mental torture. But the final job on this list will take you straight into a truly blood soaked room. A place where women had to fight death with bare hands only to receive one of the most brutal verdicts in history. Number six, midwifery with bare hands in the swamp of life and death. In the Middle Ages, the birthing chamber was a segregated realm where men were virtually banned.

[00:22:51]When a woman went into labor, all self-proclaimed prestigious physicians had to step back. Standing between the mother and the threshold of life and death was only one barrier, the midwife.

[00:23:05]And their weapons were nothing but their bare hands. There were no bright surgical lights, no smell of sterile medical alcohol, no heistic equipment.

[00:23:16]There was only the flickering sickly yellow light of wax candles, air thick with the smell of sweat, and gut-wrenching screams of agony. In that deprived environment, the midwife had to do everything by touch. When complications arose during birth, they thrust their unglloved hands directly inside the mother's body to rotate a stuck fetus. They had to brace themselves to forcefully pull the placenta out. If bleeding spiraled out of control, they had no choice but to grab rolls of coarse rags and stuff them tightly inside to stop the hemorrhage in sheer desperation.

[00:23:59]The most brutal moments occurred when a life failed to survive in the womb before even being born. To save the fading mother, the midwife had to use bare hands and a few crude homemade tools to extract the fetal remains. No anesthesia for comfort, no antibiotics to fight infection. Every naked maneuver took place in a swamp of bodily fluids interspersed with broken screams. After everything ended, they continued kneeling on the dirt floor to do the cleanup, using their hands to gather the amniotic sack, the placenta, and wiping the pulled blood in the wooden basin at the foot of the bed. carefully wrapping the unfortunate little body in a dark piece of cloth. When the screaming stopped, a chilling silence blanketed the room. A few days later, if the mother ran a fever and died from infection, the crowds of that era didn't know how to blame bacteria. They sought a target to vent their rage. And the midwife was usually the bullseye for every accusatory glare. The women in this profession mostly lived meagerly in poverty. Sometimes they secretly saved a piece of the amniotic sack or umbilical cord to sell to peddlers of folk remedies just to trade for a few crusts of bread to survive the day. But that very act of survival combined with medical instincts sharper than the common person pushed them off a cliff.

[00:25:39]In 1484, the manual The Hammer of Witches, Malas Malipicarum, was published, igniting decades of darkness.

[00:25:49]Religious inquisitors aimed their spears directly at midwives. They argued with extreme malice because the midwife was the only one in a closed room with the mother. Any tragic incidents were often blamed on their use of dark magic for sacrifices.

[00:26:07]Thousands of skilled midwives were arrested, tortured, and pushed onto the burning stake. The sharpest irony of history lies here. The stronger their medical knowledge, the more lives they saved, the more likely they were to be condemned for using magic. A profession holding the mission of welcoming life ultimately morphed into a ruthless death sentence that incinerated their own lives. Six jobs, six dark corners wreaking of sweat, tears, and bleeding wounds. History is not only built by the bricks of magnificent castles, but it is also held up by the rough, slimy hands of nameless women at the bottom of society. What do you think is the most brutal limit of endurance a human has ever had to taste on today's list? Leave your thoughts in the comments section and don't forget to hit like and subscribe to the channel so we can continue uncovering the thorny pages of history still gathering dust. See you in the next Secrets.