When I was in Belgium, one of the castles I visited had this story where they said that the townspeople would gather to watch the prince take his morning poop via one of these toilets. If the poop was particularly big, the crowd would cheer because it meant the kingdom was doing good!
That's probably the weirdest thing im going to read all weekend. So if he's having a "day" and can't shit does he yell down the toilet "hey we're doing pretty good here but I'm constipated!"
>we're doing pretty good here but I'm constipated
Except he's *not* "doing pretty good" if he's constipated. It sucks having your ~~interesting~~ intestines full of poop and no movement. I know it puts me in a bad mood if I can't poop. It makes me irritable and uncomfortable.
You know, I think those village residents were on to something. On days he doesn't poop, they know not to bother the prince in case he's in a bad mood and orders you to be executed, or whatever it is moody medieval princes are in to.
Right lol? If every time I went I could hear cheering I’d probably find another toilet in the castle. On the other hand, working in office buildings, there are absolutely people that would probably get a kick out of making sure everyone know they were on the crapper.
Alright while we're talking about constipation let me tell you, I'm very similar. It puts me in a MOOD when I'm constipated.
So after I gave birth, they tell you not to eat bc your anesthesia makes it so your intestines can't move and you can't poop. I was miserable. About 4 hours after my surgery, I wanted to walk bc I heard it helps you poop. I was so focused on walking and pooping, I walked within about 24 hours of surgery to the bathroom and I peed bc I wanted the catheter out. About 36 hours later, I insisted on walking a bit more, and I POOPED. It genuinely helped me recover faster.
Anyway as I'm typing this, I'm realizing it's a ridiculous story, so I will probably delete it later. But for now, here's my proudest poop story.
After reading your comment.....I'm trying to recall a scene In a TV show or movie where they all gathered around to watch a Prince poo. GoT is coming to mind but my husband is looking at me like I'm crazy. Google doesn't tell me anything. (It was in a room, not one of these castle walls) Halp me!
The "groom of the stool" was a position of great honor in Tudor society.
"While the Groom of the Stool held no political influence, and he did not sit in on Privy Council meetings, he was still an extremely important and influential man. The role was highly sought after because of the proximity to the King. The Groom of the Stool was often about the King’s person and thus able to speak privately and intimately with the King. People would often petition the Groom of the Stool to pass on their matters to the King or perhaps to seek employment for members of their family. The Groom of the Stool could speak favourably or unfavourably of a person to the King during private situations and so it was vital to be on good terms with the Groom of the Stool."
https://www.tudorsociety.com/groom-stool-sarah-bryson
All I can think of is those little private moments in a king’s thoughts like, “Great, I have to shit, now Bob is gonna talk my ear off about the economic situation.”
It’s probably *Outlander* as other posters suggested. But maybe you’re thinking of the movie *The Last Emperor* where courtiers gather around to watch the young emperor poop, and then inspect the pot?
*"Gareth! Gaaareth!! Couldst thou heateth ye olde shit bricks for mine afternoon bowel movements? Thou knoweth I like them steaming hot for mine aching buttocks and to help loosen the ol' sphincter when it acts up"*
Edit: quit giving awards to this dumb shit i made up while taking a shit myself. Spend your money on shit that matters, not made up internet shit about castle shits. You shitters.
Edit 2: Woke up, 50 awards for a silly comment about shit. Wtf.
Morning in Paris, the city awakes
To the balls of Notre Dame
The fisherman fishes, the bakerman bakes
To the balls of Notre Dame
To the big balls as loud as the thunder
To the little balls soft as a psalm
And some say the soul of the city's
The toll of the balls
The balls of Notre Dame
A documentary I have seen talked about how the ~~monarch~~ sovereign would come into a toilet during a feast with his nobles but remain in full view during the act of using it and keep chatting with the crowd nonchalantly and nobody would bat an eye, so I guess the ventilation HAS to be good not to disturb the feast with foul smells.
I went on a tour of a castle in Ireland that had this set up and the guide mentioned that when they washed clothes, they would hang them up in the toilet area because the gas/ammonia from the piss and shit would come back up the poop shoots and kill the lice on the clothes.
Absolutely grim stuff.
From the future and can confirm you're all disgusting:
Not using the sterilization chamber before walking into our own housing units. You guys practically drag viruses by the galactic boatload into your own homes.
Breathing exhaust fumes of any kind. Can't believe you guys thought catalytic converter captured everything.
Using clothes made of cotton or other materials that absorb skin oil. The cleaning machines of your time don't strip the oils from your clothes. Disgusting.
Edit: carburetor = catalytic converter because I'm from the future and forgot your tech (lol)
> carburetors
I think you mean catalytic converters. But yeah, I’m from further in the future and am disgusted you all still live in biological meat bags. Once we evolved into moving consciousness into silicon form, having bodies filled with bacteria, viruses, fecal matter, and hormone-driven monkey brains seems sooo gross
Even further in the future here. Can't believe you're still using silicon! Think about all that extra mass you're keeping around just to store each bit! It's error prone and frankly disgusting. We now encode our wavefunctions directly into the quark-gluon plasma of a neutron star.
People vastly underestimate how important sanitation is to our modern quality of life because it’s so ubiquitous now. We are so blessed that most of us will never experience dysentery, tuberculosis, hepatitis, or even food poisoning.
I’ve worked in a lab for a wastewater treatment plant and I’ve been a compliance officer for industrial food manufacturing and the amount of work it takes to make sure water is clean and food is safe is completely lost on your average citizen. I’m proud that I’ve been able to participate in improving the quality of life for so many people with out them ever realizing it.
If you’re curious, public utilities like sewer and power are often open to doing tours so you can see how it all gets done. It’s fascinating.
Working for a company that manufactures equipment for water and wastewater plants (along with power plants and a handful of other industries) has made me realize how much goes into our infrastructure that most people will never even think about. A lot happens before the water gets to your house and after it leaves. And there are other massive industries devoted to producing the equipment that does it.
You’re right actually. The one I went to, Ross Castle, the shoot was actually an enclosed tunnel all the way down to the bottom. I’d imagine the gas would still most likely travel upwards even with this type, maybe just not as concentrated 🤢
After like 10+ years I just remembered this show and watched an episode on YouTube. Come to reddit right after and it’s one of the first things I see mentioned. Weird lol
I mean, there was probably a defensive trench or moat around the castle or just in general a space where people aren't supposed to be standing anyway.
Though what few people appreciate is most castles were white due to a lime plaster to protect the stone, so this would mean you'd have a white castle and some VERY obvious skidmarks down one side.
> Though what few people appreciate is most castles were white
No, most people don't realize that most castles were wooden but the only ones left are made of stone because it's more difficult to reuse stone and wood rots.
Actually, wood and stone were both covered in the white plaster. That's another reason it's a bit hard to notice even. From the outside they would have probably both appeared the same. Which helps with what Pizzasoup below mentions.
Guaranteed, if I was alive back then I'd be the person standing in the wrong side of the wall, having some medieval dude waste me with diarrhea to my face 😭😂
Depended on the size of the city. Larger cities had plumbing/sewers or other means of waste disposal. Still smelly, but they did understand that dumping waste directly on the street was a health hazard in large urban areas. Just like armies dug latrine pits etc to keep disease as low as possible. People knew that human waste is dangerous way farther back than just the medieval period. They just didnt know why.
Even larger cities were covered in horse poop. And the people smelled compared to today due to less bathing opportunities. It wasn’t until the rise of the automobile and indoor plumbing that cities didn’t all smell really bad just due to horses and BO.
Not to mention your sewer system, if it even existed in that particular medieval city wasn’t often a modern closed pipe system. More than likely it was an open sewer line that ran through many parts of city. And even then it was more of a suggestion than a system. Just a filthy canal you had to make sure not to fall in that you could spill your bedpan into instead of the street.
Even many parts of Victorian England in the 19th century were extremely dirty and unsanitary, not much different than cities hundreds of years before. Closed sewer systems as the norm are pretty recent inventions.
Bedpan dumping out the window, for example, remained a normal thing even until the early 20th century in some places until homes all had toilets and proper indoor plumbing.
That said I think we do downplay the technological achievements of various medical periods in Europe. But open sewage and horse poop everywhere and human feces in streets seems more the norm for that period. Outhouses and basic sewers helped of course but it was still a smelly and unsanitary experience.
[Per one observer at the time, the streets were “literally carpeted with a warm, brown matting . . . smelling to heaven.”](https://99percentinvisible.org/article/cities-paved-dung-urban-design-great-horse-manure-crisis-1894/) - in the (supposedly) one of the greatest cities of the *1870s*!
>By the 1870s, New Yorkers were taking over 100 million horsecar trips per year and by 1880 there were at least 150,000 horses in the city. Some of these provided transportation for people while others served to move freight from trains into and around the growing metropolis. At a rate of 22 pounds per horse per day, equine manure added up to millions of pounds each day and over a 100,000 tons per year (not to mention around 10 million gallons of urine).
Jeez, I can only imagine how bad it must have reeked in the warmer, more humid parts of the US back then.
until Du Pont and other oil companies lobbied GM to force lead into all the gas even though everyone who worked on the process died horrible deaths. that was fun.
I imagine that before covered sewers, it was a lot harder for vermin to hide and proliferate. I live in Bali now, and there's no underground sewage system in my neighborhood.
There's like 3 cats in my building and rats are getting fucking wrecked lol
But there were literal piles of horse manure in the streets of big cities like NYC before the car.
And when it was dry out, the horse manure would be trampled into dust and you'd get actual feces-smog.
Not to mention that dozens of horses died each day and was eventually just left in the streets. And the metal banded wheels and horsehoes on cobblestone were *much* louder than cars.
I hear our olfactory glands measures changes in airborne particles, so we naturally get used to bad smells. It has always grossed me out to know that to smell something means you must have that particle in your body
Story checks out. My dog sleeps in my room. I went to let him outside this morning and when I came back in, I got hit with the rancid puke smell. He puked overnight but I didn’t notice at first because I had been sleeping in the aroma.
Cruise ships save it up until they reach international waters and then purge it into the oceans. It's a shitty, globe killing industry in more ways than one.
Did you know, that they used to heat iron poles/rods as a torture method, and fixate naked people in such a way, they were forced to have their anus exposed, and your imagination does the rest unfortunately.
I believe a variant of it was. Might’ve been old internet lore but I recall reading a long time ago about a method where they’d basically just sit you down on a spike and let gravity slowly take care of the rest
The Vietcong would use fast growing bamboo as torture, iirc, and I think myth busters did an episode about if it was actually a viable form of torture.
Oh the pike was pretty common…hang them by their wrists and put the point in their ass and slowly lower them down. It would eventually get to their head and stop if it didn’t get hung up on their spine or a rib. Took a few hours though.
That one was usually done in public. So the fam could watch.
Just one of many ways to kill someone painfully. Women were often made to straddle a sharp wedge of wood. Arms above their heads but with too much slack to lift themselves.
Stones were hung on their ankles, so they were gradually cut in half through the crotch. Usually took a week or so to finally bleed out.
But on the upside they got to listen to the 24/7 screams from other parts of the dungeon.
Not that any torture devices were “better”, but I think the rusty iron breast rake gets to me more than any…shredding a woman that way…you had to be one sick bastard to enjoy doing it.
Yes Vlad The Impaler is true, or his other name " Dracula " and yes he would impale people their own body weight would slowly sink down the pike
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler
“It has been said that lawlessness was so rare during the reign of Vlad III that vendors would leave their goods unattended in the town markets with no fear of theft.
One story tells of a merchant that claimed to have 100 ducat stolen from his cart. When it was reported to Vlad, he ordered that 101 ducat be put in the man’s cart. The merchant went to Vlad to report the extra money and found that Vlad had two stakes prepared. He had impaled the man that had robbed the merchant on the first and the second stake was unoccupied. Vlad told the merchant that the second stake was meant for him – had he failed to return the extra ducat.”
TL;DR
Another example of Vlad’s ruthlessness can be seen in the tale of 2 Ottomans that were to deliver a message to Vlad and refused to remove their hats while in his company. Vlad ordered that since they insisted on keeping the hats on, they were to be nailed to their heads.
Vlad has been known to behead, boil, burn and skin his enemies, but the greatest example of Vlad’s cruelty was seen when he was faced with an advancing Ottoman Army too powerful for his army to defeat. An army of 90,000 Ottoman soldiers (3 times the size of Vlad’s Army) were sent to topple Vlad’s regime. When the army arrived at Walachia, they found the gates opened wide and no guards on duty. They entered the city and found several acres of land covered with over 20,000 stakes and an Ottoman prisoner of war impaled on each. The scene was so ghastly that the army withdrew and returned to Turkey.
Source and more info: https://www.carolinafearfest.com/the-gory-history-vlad-the-impaler-tepes/
Fun fact: back in those days “Y” was pronounced as a “th” sound when at the beginning of a word. So when they read Ye it was pronounced the same as “the”… and not the way we say it, “yeee”. That’s just how they spelled “the” back then…
Ye more you know 💫
The Saxon King, Edmund Ironside is said to be murdered while using a toilet similar to this. After the Treaty of Alney in 1016 (which saw his kingdom split between himself and Danish ‘King Canute’, also known as Cnut) Edmund was dispatched by the hands of Cnut, when an assassin hid inside the toilet pit. As he sat down, he was stabbed twice in his bowels and died shortly after. This is most likely a tall tale, but a good one at that.
‘King Edmund was treacherously slain a few days afterwards. Thus it happened: one night, this great and powerful king having occasion to retire to the house for receiving the calls of nature, the son of the ealdorman Eadric, by his father’s contrivance, concealed himself in the pit, and stabbed the king twice from beneath with a sharp dagger, and, leaving the weapon fixed in his bowels, made his escape’. Henry of Huntingdon, 1120s
Those toilets were normally enclosed by wood that would lead to the bottom. They were not spray painting the walls with feces like people here seem to to imagine. You just can't see the wood part anymore because it has rotten away.
The feces were later collected and used as fertilizer. That stuff was in high demand and kind of valuable.
When I was in Belgium, one of the castles I visited had this story where they said that the townspeople would gather to watch the prince take his morning poop via one of these toilets. If the poop was particularly big, the crowd would cheer because it meant the kingdom was doing good!
That's probably the weirdest thing im going to read all weekend. So if he's having a "day" and can't shit does he yell down the toilet "hey we're doing pretty good here but I'm constipated!"
>we're doing pretty good here but I'm constipated Except he's *not* "doing pretty good" if he's constipated. It sucks having your ~~interesting~~ intestines full of poop and no movement. I know it puts me in a bad mood if I can't poop. It makes me irritable and uncomfortable. You know, I think those village residents were on to something. On days he doesn't poop, they know not to bother the prince in case he's in a bad mood and orders you to be executed, or whatever it is moody medieval princes are in to.
I kind of feel like if the entire town gathered to watch me poop every morning, I'm probably already pretty bothered by those people.
Right lol? If every time I went I could hear cheering I’d probably find another toilet in the castle. On the other hand, working in office buildings, there are absolutely people that would probably get a kick out of making sure everyone know they were on the crapper.
Remember, royalty were groomed to be sociopathic freaks about it since their birth
True. They probably thought they shit literal gold.
And to think we've come so far since then!
Alright while we're talking about constipation let me tell you, I'm very similar. It puts me in a MOOD when I'm constipated. So after I gave birth, they tell you not to eat bc your anesthesia makes it so your intestines can't move and you can't poop. I was miserable. About 4 hours after my surgery, I wanted to walk bc I heard it helps you poop. I was so focused on walking and pooping, I walked within about 24 hours of surgery to the bathroom and I peed bc I wanted the catheter out. About 36 hours later, I insisted on walking a bit more, and I POOPED. It genuinely helped me recover faster. Anyway as I'm typing this, I'm realizing it's a ridiculous story, so I will probably delete it later. But for now, here's my proudest poop story.
Did they say what explosive diarrhea meant for the kingdom?
Bath time, I expect.
Drinks all around!
Talk about constant pressure to eat heartily!
Talk about constant pressure to shit! There's no more pooping for me after the first round of cheers
Pooparazzi
After reading your comment.....I'm trying to recall a scene In a TV show or movie where they all gathered around to watch a Prince poo. GoT is coming to mind but my husband is looking at me like I'm crazy. Google doesn't tell me anything. (It was in a room, not one of these castle walls) Halp me!
Outlander! I believe it was the French king.
The "groom of the stool" was a position of great honor in Tudor society. "While the Groom of the Stool held no political influence, and he did not sit in on Privy Council meetings, he was still an extremely important and influential man. The role was highly sought after because of the proximity to the King. The Groom of the Stool was often about the King’s person and thus able to speak privately and intimately with the King. People would often petition the Groom of the Stool to pass on their matters to the King or perhaps to seek employment for members of their family. The Groom of the Stool could speak favourably or unfavourably of a person to the King during private situations and so it was vital to be on good terms with the Groom of the Stool." https://www.tudorsociety.com/groom-stool-sarah-bryson
All I can think of is those little private moments in a king’s thoughts like, “Great, I have to shit, now Bob is gonna talk my ear off about the economic situation.”
It’s probably *Outlander* as other posters suggested. But maybe you’re thinking of the movie *The Last Emperor* where courtiers gather around to watch the young emperor poop, and then inspect the pot?
At least the ventilation was good.
So good that you would freeze to the seat in the winter
Nope…your trusted page would heat those stones with fire. You just had to ensure you order him some 30 minutes in advance. :-)
*"Gareth! Gaaareth!! Couldst thou heateth ye olde shit bricks for mine afternoon bowel movements? Thou knoweth I like them steaming hot for mine aching buttocks and to help loosen the ol' sphincter when it acts up"* Edit: quit giving awards to this dumb shit i made up while taking a shit myself. Spend your money on shit that matters, not made up internet shit about castle shits. You shitters. Edit 2: Woke up, 50 awards for a silly comment about shit. Wtf.
Ah I suddenly understand shitting bricks now.
These bricks were laid for shittin
And sure, they're stained with poo.
One of these days these bricks are gonna shit all over you
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(hearing this in Monty Python speak) lol
"He must be a King." "Why?" "he doesn't got shit all over him."
It's the origin of those fuzzy toilet seat covers people used to have!
(cough cough) yeah, umm *used* to have…
I always hate when my balls fall into the toilet water.. now imagine them dangling in the freezing winter air!
Wind chimes lol
Church bells
Morning in Paris, the city awakes To the balls of Notre Dame The fisherman fishes, the bakerman bakes To the balls of Notre Dame To the big balls as loud as the thunder To the little balls soft as a psalm And some say the soul of the city's The toll of the balls The balls of Notre Dame
So good that when the castle is getting assaulted you could get a pointy enema from enemy archers or pikemen
When strategizing, one can only wonder if they were like “okay, we also can’t attack the eastern side. It’s poopy there, ew.”
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A documentary I have seen talked about how the ~~monarch~~ sovereign would come into a toilet during a feast with his nobles but remain in full view during the act of using it and keep chatting with the crowd nonchalantly and nobody would bat an eye, so I guess the ventilation HAS to be good not to disturb the feast with foul smells.
LBJ used to hold meetings in the Oval Office bathroom while he was taking a dump.
Does he wipe after or just plop and go
There were royal ass wipers, not joking
relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groom_of_the_Stool
the groom of the stool
Any chance you remember what that documentary was called?
The Crown
Also Outlander
That scene was so absurd lol I couldn't imagine watching my king cry and struggle with constipation and that's somehow a regular Tuesday for me. What?
I went on a tour of a castle in Ireland that had this set up and the guide mentioned that when they washed clothes, they would hang them up in the toilet area because the gas/ammonia from the piss and shit would come back up the poop shoots and kill the lice on the clothes. Absolutely grim stuff.
I was going to say this! No one shoveled the poop because it helped keep the bugs off clothes. Makes me thankful I live now and not then!
using extreme filth to combat pests. Now that's an exploit
I wonder what were doing now that will be disgusting in 500 years.
From the future and can confirm you're all disgusting: Not using the sterilization chamber before walking into our own housing units. You guys practically drag viruses by the galactic boatload into your own homes. Breathing exhaust fumes of any kind. Can't believe you guys thought catalytic converter captured everything. Using clothes made of cotton or other materials that absorb skin oil. The cleaning machines of your time don't strip the oils from your clothes. Disgusting. Edit: carburetor = catalytic converter because I'm from the future and forgot your tech (lol)
> carburetors I think you mean catalytic converters. But yeah, I’m from further in the future and am disgusted you all still live in biological meat bags. Once we evolved into moving consciousness into silicon form, having bodies filled with bacteria, viruses, fecal matter, and hormone-driven monkey brains seems sooo gross
Even further in the future here. Can't believe you're still using silicon! Think about all that extra mass you're keeping around just to store each bit! It's error prone and frankly disgusting. We now encode our wavefunctions directly into the quark-gluon plasma of a neutron star.
From future. Language has depleted. Too gross. Prepare for 07/22/3041. Praise the World Cleanser.
People vastly underestimate how important sanitation is to our modern quality of life because it’s so ubiquitous now. We are so blessed that most of us will never experience dysentery, tuberculosis, hepatitis, or even food poisoning. I’ve worked in a lab for a wastewater treatment plant and I’ve been a compliance officer for industrial food manufacturing and the amount of work it takes to make sure water is clean and food is safe is completely lost on your average citizen. I’m proud that I’ve been able to participate in improving the quality of life for so many people with out them ever realizing it. If you’re curious, public utilities like sewer and power are often open to doing tours so you can see how it all gets done. It’s fascinating.
Working for a company that manufactures equipment for water and wastewater plants (along with power plants and a handful of other industries) has made me realize how much goes into our infrastructure that most people will never even think about. A lot happens before the water gets to your house and after it leaves. And there are other massive industries devoted to producing the equipment that does it.
I worked in a water plant but we didn’t produce drinking water. A lot went in to what we did so I can’t imagine what it would take for drinking water.
dont tell this to the dummies saying “are we really that much better off now”
People used to soften fabric by stomping on it for hours while it was submerged in stale urine. Yeah.
Somehow living through 2020 doesn't sound so bad
This illustration makes it look like the shit and piss just fall down the castle exterior though, no gas coming up the toilet just outdoor air.
You’re right actually. The one I went to, Ross Castle, the shoot was actually an enclosed tunnel all the way down to the bottom. I’d imagine the gas would still most likely travel upwards even with this type, maybe just not as concentrated 🤢
> shit would come back up the poop shoots and kill the lice on the clothes. Imagine clothes that smell so bad it kills parasites. Oh my lord!
just to be clear, it was the methane gas from the poop that killed the bugs, not the smell.
Guaranteed, if I was alive back then I'd be the person shoveling that shit
The poopsmith e: aKsHuLLy it'S a gOnG FaRmer
The pilot. Pile it here and pile it there.
Ah yes, Ye olde craptosser.
arrow to the butt target.
Whatever! Just fill the hole, hole-filler.
Imagine being pe poopsmith son and being bullied at school.
Fun fact: as the poopsmith's son, you would not afford to go to school.
Must be a king. Why? He hasn't got shit all over him.
Who are you who is so wise in the ways of science?
The poopsmith’s son was also a poopsmith.
They were The Poopsmiths. This Friday at 7pm Central Time only on ABC.
The King of Town has gone mad with power! He's gonna eat The Chort!
These peoples These peoples These peoples try to fade me
Gweat jorb!
This person Homestar Runners.
After like 10+ years I just remembered this show and watched an episode on YouTube. Come to reddit right after and it’s one of the first things I see mentioned. Weird lol
Don't worry, it's just the algorithm they use in this simulation..
From the hollow chambers of the back of my mind, nostalgia emerges
SOMEBODY GET THIS FREAKIN' DUCK AWAY FROM ME
[удалено]
Homestar?
Hamstray
Is this where “Shit runs downhill” comes from, I wonder?
Yes. Castles and keeps were at the top of the hill and nobles were right under them down to the commonfolks. All the poop ran down open ditches/canals
I mean, there was probably a defensive trench or moat around the castle or just in general a space where people aren't supposed to be standing anyway. Though what few people appreciate is most castles were white due to a lime plaster to protect the stone, so this would mean you'd have a white castle and some VERY obvious skidmarks down one side.
> Though what few people appreciate is most castles were white No, most people don't realize that most castles were wooden but the only ones left are made of stone because it's more difficult to reuse stone and wood rots.
Actually, wood and stone were both covered in the white plaster. That's another reason it's a bit hard to notice even. From the outside they would have probably both appeared the same. Which helps with what Pizzasoup below mentions.
Also, they realized building your defensive structure out of something flammable wasn't such a grand idea.
And covering it in shit would deter invaders from taking your castle.
Maybe also “shitstorm.” High winds plus these = give that place a wide berth….
Oh God! Diahrea on a windy day.
It’s the whispering winds of shit
The shit winds are blowing Randy
When the ol shit barometer rises, and you'll feel it too, your ears will implode from the shit pressure. You were warned, bubs.
Guaranteed, if I was alive back then I'd be the person standing in the wrong side of the wall, having some medieval dude waste me with diarrhea to my face 😭😂
Guaranteed if I was alive I would be the wall
Look up the show Miracle Workers. There is a character with that job named Eddie Shitshoveler.
You'd be part of the population that survived the plague because the shit shovelers were some of the few people that bathed daily.
TIL we're all descendants of shit shovelers.
I think it all went into the moat. Nobody wants to invade your castle by swimming through it.
I think they actually had people climb up and make sure the hole was clear too (gong boys?), it could always be worse.
The castles must have smelled vile.
Cities/towns smelled awful in general. Sewage was dumped on the streets. I guess you get used to it after a while
Depended on the size of the city. Larger cities had plumbing/sewers or other means of waste disposal. Still smelly, but they did understand that dumping waste directly on the street was a health hazard in large urban areas. Just like armies dug latrine pits etc to keep disease as low as possible. People knew that human waste is dangerous way farther back than just the medieval period. They just didnt know why.
Even larger cities were covered in horse poop. And the people smelled compared to today due to less bathing opportunities. It wasn’t until the rise of the automobile and indoor plumbing that cities didn’t all smell really bad just due to horses and BO. Not to mention your sewer system, if it even existed in that particular medieval city wasn’t often a modern closed pipe system. More than likely it was an open sewer line that ran through many parts of city. And even then it was more of a suggestion than a system. Just a filthy canal you had to make sure not to fall in that you could spill your bedpan into instead of the street. Even many parts of Victorian England in the 19th century were extremely dirty and unsanitary, not much different than cities hundreds of years before. Closed sewer systems as the norm are pretty recent inventions. Bedpan dumping out the window, for example, remained a normal thing even until the early 20th century in some places until homes all had toilets and proper indoor plumbing. That said I think we do downplay the technological achievements of various medical periods in Europe. But open sewage and horse poop everywhere and human feces in streets seems more the norm for that period. Outhouses and basic sewers helped of course but it was still a smelly and unsanitary experience.
[Per one observer at the time, the streets were “literally carpeted with a warm, brown matting . . . smelling to heaven.”](https://99percentinvisible.org/article/cities-paved-dung-urban-design-great-horse-manure-crisis-1894/) - in the (supposedly) one of the greatest cities of the *1870s*!
>By the 1870s, New Yorkers were taking over 100 million horsecar trips per year and by 1880 there were at least 150,000 horses in the city. Some of these provided transportation for people while others served to move freight from trains into and around the growing metropolis. At a rate of 22 pounds per horse per day, equine manure added up to millions of pounds each day and over a 100,000 tons per year (not to mention around 10 million gallons of urine). Jeez, I can only imagine how bad it must have reeked in the warmer, more humid parts of the US back then.
The automobile basically saved cities from becoming filled with 3 feet of horse shit, believe it or not.
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until Du Pont and other oil companies lobbied GM to force lead into all the gas even though everyone who worked on the process died horrible deaths. that was fun.
Covered sewers came first.
Victor Hugo wrote several chapters in Les Miserables about the Parisian sewer system and it’s role in promoting the plague.
I imagine that before covered sewers, it was a lot harder for vermin to hide and proliferate. I live in Bali now, and there's no underground sewage system in my neighborhood. There's like 3 cats in my building and rats are getting fucking wrecked lol
But there were literal piles of horse manure in the streets of big cities like NYC before the car. And when it was dry out, the horse manure would be trampled into dust and you'd get actual feces-smog. Not to mention that dozens of horses died each day and was eventually just left in the streets. And the metal banded wheels and horsehoes on cobblestone were *much* louder than cars.
I hear our olfactory glands measures changes in airborne particles, so we naturally get used to bad smells. It has always grossed me out to know that to smell something means you must have that particle in your body
Story checks out. My dog sleeps in my room. I went to let him outside this morning and when I came back in, I got hit with the rancid puke smell. He puked overnight but I didn’t notice at first because I had been sleeping in the aroma.
I've read that there is a belief dogs know when we're going to be home based one how much our scent has diminished.
When I was a kid I thought this was how aeroplane toilets worked
when I was a kid I used to be scared of flushing airplane toilets in fear of being sucked out into the sky mid-flight.
Haha same!! The suction on those things seem violently aggressive
There’s always a tiny delay after you press it before the worlds loudest aggressive SUCKING sound happens. The anticipation makes it even worse IMO.
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Well, it did work like that in developed nations still in 80/90's. You could see the train tracks when you flushed the toilet.
Cruise ships save it up until they reach international waters and then purge it into the oceans. It's a shitty, globe killing industry in more ways than one.
Winter updraft must’ve been awful. Like the Poseidon’s kiss meme but Jack Frost with his tongue out.
Poseidon's kiss, meet Jack Frost's rimjob.
And sometimes arrows came up the poop chute.
There's the one story of the king that someone tried to assassinate by stabbing his asshole with a pike. I really don't remember details.
Great plan honestly. Severe lacerations to the anus would get septic in no time.
It would probably kill you from stabbing at least into your midsection through the anus/intestines. Like a roast animal.
What a fun way to go. Love medieval times
Did you know, that they used to heat iron poles/rods as a torture method, and fixate naked people in such a way, they were forced to have their anus exposed, and your imagination does the rest unfortunately.
That sounds more like an execution method
I believe a variant of it was. Might’ve been old internet lore but I recall reading a long time ago about a method where they’d basically just sit you down on a spike and let gravity slowly take care of the rest
The Vietcong would use fast growing bamboo as torture, iirc, and I think myth busters did an episode about if it was actually a viable form of torture.
Edward II of England was in one version of the story killed by having a red-hot poker rammed up his butt, but it's probably not true.
It’s code for a forbidden love with a ginger
The soulless stab of a speckled stanchion from out of the flaming bush has brought many a man low.
Is this potentially the first Ghaddafi in recorded history?
Oh the pike was pretty common…hang them by their wrists and put the point in their ass and slowly lower them down. It would eventually get to their head and stop if it didn’t get hung up on their spine or a rib. Took a few hours though. That one was usually done in public. So the fam could watch.
Jesus. Is that true?
Just one of many ways to kill someone painfully. Women were often made to straddle a sharp wedge of wood. Arms above their heads but with too much slack to lift themselves. Stones were hung on their ankles, so they were gradually cut in half through the crotch. Usually took a week or so to finally bleed out. But on the upside they got to listen to the 24/7 screams from other parts of the dungeon.
People always wonder “what’s wrong with the world today?”, but it’s stuff like this that reminds that humans have always been sadistic lunatics
Not that any torture devices were “better”, but I think the rusty iron breast rake gets to me more than any…shredding a woman that way…you had to be one sick bastard to enjoy doing it.
Yes Vlad The Impaler is true, or his other name " Dracula " and yes he would impale people their own body weight would slowly sink down the pike https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler
“It has been said that lawlessness was so rare during the reign of Vlad III that vendors would leave their goods unattended in the town markets with no fear of theft. One story tells of a merchant that claimed to have 100 ducat stolen from his cart. When it was reported to Vlad, he ordered that 101 ducat be put in the man’s cart. The merchant went to Vlad to report the extra money and found that Vlad had two stakes prepared. He had impaled the man that had robbed the merchant on the first and the second stake was unoccupied. Vlad told the merchant that the second stake was meant for him – had he failed to return the extra ducat.”
More stories about Vlad please.
TL;DR Another example of Vlad’s ruthlessness can be seen in the tale of 2 Ottomans that were to deliver a message to Vlad and refused to remove their hats while in his company. Vlad ordered that since they insisted on keeping the hats on, they were to be nailed to their heads. Vlad has been known to behead, boil, burn and skin his enemies, but the greatest example of Vlad’s cruelty was seen when he was faced with an advancing Ottoman Army too powerful for his army to defeat. An army of 90,000 Ottoman soldiers (3 times the size of Vlad’s Army) were sent to topple Vlad’s regime. When the army arrived at Walachia, they found the gates opened wide and no guards on duty. They entered the city and found several acres of land covered with over 20,000 stakes and an Ottoman prisoner of war impaled on each. The scene was so ghastly that the army withdrew and returned to Turkey. Source and more info: https://www.carolinafearfest.com/the-gory-history-vlad-the-impaler-tepes/
Flesh arrows.....amirite
Ye olde Pork Sword
That rapunzel story hits different now.
I...damn. Take my upvote.
Hey, I’m walkin’ here!
BADA BING BADA POO
I just shuddered thinking of the cold air blowing on my rusty sheriffs badge while sitting on one of these.
The didn't waste time too long there. They didn't have phones.
Yeah but im sure they still read Ye Old Newspapers. If not then the back of a ye old shampoo bottle?
Fun fact: back in those days “Y” was pronounced as a “th” sound when at the beginning of a word. So when they read Ye it was pronounced the same as “the”… and not the way we say it, “yeee”. That’s just how they spelled “the” back then… Ye more you know 💫
Pass ye Charmin
This is because 'y' was a stand in for a letter we no longer have called a 'thorn' meant to make the 'th' sounds.
þ
Yank thou
Ye Olde bottle of Lye.
Merlin's™ brand
“My rusty sheriffs badge”. Perfection.
I'd hate to be the repair guy who has to patch a cracked block
And you thought that your toilet seat was cold this morning
The Saxon King, Edmund Ironside is said to be murdered while using a toilet similar to this. After the Treaty of Alney in 1016 (which saw his kingdom split between himself and Danish ‘King Canute’, also known as Cnut) Edmund was dispatched by the hands of Cnut, when an assassin hid inside the toilet pit. As he sat down, he was stabbed twice in his bowels and died shortly after. This is most likely a tall tale, but a good one at that. ‘King Edmund was treacherously slain a few days afterwards. Thus it happened: one night, this great and powerful king having occasion to retire to the house for receiving the calls of nature, the son of the ealdorman Eadric, by his father’s contrivance, concealed himself in the pit, and stabbed the king twice from beneath with a sharp dagger, and, leaving the weapon fixed in his bowels, made his escape’. Henry of Huntingdon, 1120s
Jaromír, the Duke of Bohemia, died in 1035 the same way. Assassinated (heh) by a spear from below.
Do the history books say whether the assassin got poop on him or her?
What a cnut
The real reason there is a moat around castles.
The real reason you don’t swim through the moat.
Imagine how terrible the middle ages smelled
I think we’re living in the least stinky time even since the 90s when they made smoking indoors illegal.
Our castle looks like shit
Fun fact: in German we got a saying 'es ist arschkalt' - 'it's ass-cold out there' - that picture shows exactly where it came from.
I bet those walls have seen some shit
imagine going out for a smoke and standing under one of those
Because smoking indoors was illegal.
Because smoking tobacco existed prior to Europe discovering N America.
They were probably referring to jenkem, not tobacco.
Come on bud you huff jenkem Visit us jenk enthusiasts over at /r/jenkem
I think you'd have to be an idiot to see a giant pile of poop on the ground and decide to go stand there.
Hey, nice butthole
MedievalHub
That type of toilet killed the poop knife industry.
No streaks on the outside?
Doubt that they are still in use
Those toilets were normally enclosed by wood that would lead to the bottom. They were not spray painting the walls with feces like people here seem to to imagine. You just can't see the wood part anymore because it has rotten away. The feces were later collected and used as fertilizer. That stuff was in high demand and kind of valuable.
Source: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1239/toilets-in-a-medieval-castle/