Viking and Medieval Toilets! Pooping in the Past!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- This is a very, very short introduction to just a few of the ways people found to deal with the problem of poo (and pee) piling up in the medieval age! From pits, latrines, and buckets, to garderobes and river bridges, there's so much to explore in this filthy, fascinating subject that I will absolutely end up doing another video on pooping and historical toilets! Oh poop yes!
Brace yourselves, get a nice soft almanac ready, and let's... er... jump in.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Thank you for *not* making the torture video. I think we all know what kind of "viking enthusiasts" would swarm the comments on that.
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
"For example, your Urban Pooper -- and your Rural Pooper."
I freaking love you so much. Thank you for brightening my otherwise dismal day.
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... 🤭
10:40 I read somewhere that there has been evidence of herbs being used both to cover the toilet smell, but also to keep away moths. Lavender and rosemary are supposed to be good for detouring the little buggers.
One thing that speaks for how we viewed going to the loo in Sweden was that outhouses were called "hemlighus" meaning "secret houses". This name has been used since at least the 1300's and actually refers to the secrets being shared in the intimate setting of the outhouse (or indoor closet). In other words; it was a bonding experience and a place for gossip.
We still sometimes use the word today (usually in a joking manner), but most people think it means secret house as in "a house for private bodily functions", which wasn't the case in the past.
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!
Thanks for covering this and not the torture one!
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.
"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.
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.
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!
I got the mad giggles at the museum display poo. It was the little plastic holders that did it for me. Time and perception changes everything. Brilliant. Even if i am a year late, that made my day.
I did a lot of traveling in my "youth". Out houses were often filled in , and the whole little building moved a few feet over new holes.
"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.
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.
Eventually the cess pits were also found to be a good source for potassium nitrate. Kind of useful when mixed with charcoal and sulphuric.
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.
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
another way for the terlet to have 2 post holes would be if it was a simple tarp structure... a large tarp would be stretched out behind and anchored to the ground with something like a tent stake, or possibly anchored to trees, and there'd be a flap to enter and close in the front. it also could've been made like a more traditional round tent using two posts, possibly with a post across the top.
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.
Mans out here lookin dapper af
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.
A kid's book about Pooping in the Past would be amazing. Kids would love it and you could do the illustrations yourself. Your self of humor would really resonate with them.
Great video! I knew about the more modern aspect a bit, as I had an ancestor who suffocated in a London cesspit while emptying it in the 1850s and I did some research out of curiosity, but it's great to hear about how it worked in the medieval period.
Edit: the bit about reading the vellum is probably more accurate than I'd like, lol. Chaucer's Merchant Tale has May, a young woman who's married an ancient lecherous knight called January, essentially arrange her affair with January's squire, Damien, by smuggling his letters in her bosom, reading them on the loo, then tearing them up and throwing them in the loo.
What's equally fascinating are all the industrial 7ses medieval people found for waste. Thinking cloth processing and laundry in particular. Also tanking, most likely.
i expect a combination of a quality exhibition on this theme accompanied by a quality book/catalogue that shall be written by you. it would, no, it WILL be magnificent!
As someone who lived with an outhouse as the only facility for years, I can assure you that a lid doesn't keep the stink in! Throwing ashes down did help a bit but it's still a big pile of poo
A serious humuorful video. Diolch yn fawr.
There's a folk song about west country men drinking beer, which implied there wee was the best for "charging the king's cannon". Napoleonic French men were expected to collect thier eau and ferment it so to produce material that they couldn't get due to blockades.
I need exactly this so much.
Less serious, sad, and horrifying, more interesting and fascinating history 💜
❤ 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 interesting and fun. My hubby is a health inspector so this was interesting for us.
Fascinating video, and I love your enthusiasm! If only I were in or around York and could come say hello!
The Night Soil Men were a critical component of the growth of The City of London and made Greater London possible.
That was much better than blood and gore! Have a great week!
Good choice of topics as everyone poops but not everyone wants to torture people! ♥️
Wish I could go to the York georgian festival. Amazing video. *thanks in Welsh*
When I was a kid in 1999 the new house my parents bought and moved us into, (in wsetern sydney) only had a Dunny can, an out house (Dunny) with a specal seat that had a bucket that went under it (can) obviously renovating the bathroom to get an indoor toilet was a top priority for my mother but for about 6 months a man came weekly to take away the full buckets.
I was eating my dinner when your video pooped up and I then found myself trying to swallow my not-worm filled food. So tonight I've learned we've all come waaaaay up in the work since we no longer live in smoke filled homes and no longer eat worm infested food. Too bad they hadn't come up with the composting toilet!
8"x2" 'brown trout' sounds impressive.
What a great video! thank you!
I think for a while at least some of the huge skyscrapers in dubai weren't connected to a sewage system so they had to have theirs trucked out! and those are some of the tallest/most impressive feats of engineering we've ever created :D
Imagine crapping out of the window of the Burj Khalifa! What a terrifying thrill that would be!
Illuminating video as always! I was just talking about the Lloyds Bank coprolite to my youth group the other week!! Also yes!!! I’ve been to Orford and seen the pee hole 😄 one of the main things I remember about it
I'd buy the History of Poo and Toilets :)
Now THIS is my kind of history 😂
You should totally write a book about this!
my 93 year old grandaunt still has an outouse and the seat is identical to the coppergate one
Freaking awesome video! I love how much you love toilets and poo😂
Please write a book on this (if you'd like)! I partlyhave historical toilets to thank for piquing my interest in history (the "Where did they pee?" Question 7 year old me had of the American Girl books and kid's book about Mesopotamia I found at the library pretty well jumpstarted a lifelong interest in all things history, lol. I never said I was super highbrow). Also, if anyone has an answer: what did many historical nomadic/pastoralist people do about the call of nature? Did the Scythians have chamber pots, or just wee into a bush every time? I can't find much reading on this, I'm afraid. But anyways, it's so true that some of the most illuminating historical finds can be some of the lowliest. Garbage and cesspits can tell some really neat stories about the daily lives of people of the past, and I think they're a good contrast to the glittery hoards and great men that are usually taught at the expense of all else (glittery hoards and great men are also interesting, but they're not the sum total of a society, either).
Watched this video on the toilet. Never felt so connected to history.
I am so glad you chose this over the Blood Eagle. My modern stomach wouldn't have been able to handle that.
Always down to listen about pewp!
Thank you for the variety of 'poo' synonyms! Made me laugh 🙂
I would read the heck out of a book on historical poo, Pooing through the ages..... Do it.
I wish I was in York that week! Or any week for that matter. Urine is also useful in fulling.
good ol' toilet humor saves the day!
20:03
Some eastern district of the metropole Berlin didn't have connection to the sewage system - until 2010!
In the saga of Thorstein Shiver I believe there is an outhouse with 11 spots next to each other 😅
PLEASE WRITE A BOOK ON MEDIEVAL TOILETS, WASTE AND HOW IT WAS REUSED!!!! This is a book that needs to exist in our world with your name on it. (if at least for the humor of it all)
Ngl I would definitely buy and read this book! Sounds hysterical
I was(am) fascinated by "bathrooms" as a child so this is very interesting tome. My husband comes from Pakistan and there are still no real sewage systems there & none when he was a child they did their business on a trough at the side of the house( mudbrick hut) dried mud brick and the Bungee would come and clean them every few days ( in that HOT climate!!!) in most rural areas in India and Pakistan this is still done...In India people just do it at the side of the lane where their shanty is....I have seen many kinds of "toilets" and I am glad to live in Canada where they are flushes....this fact kept my wonder lust down too. I rather not think about being a woman in the olden days or even in an under developed country. PS I'd buy that book.
Warderob/closet is actualy only named Garderob in Sweden for some reason.
ah just perfect for lunch!
This was fascinating! Thanks for the vid!
My partner recommends Osmotherley priory for the toilets
Oooh! Added to The List!
I echo the glad chorus of those who would rather hear about outhouses than an especially nasty way to die. Read The Vikings as a child and never got over the trauma. Dont remember if it was in the movie with Tony Curtis. Yeah, Im old enough to be your Grandma!
You SHOULD write a book on this!
Interesting… Garderobe in German means Wardrobe or a cupboard where you hang clothes….so maybe there is something to the urban legend!
Man... I'm so glad we have a proper sewer system these days.
We have a composting toilet on our cabin and so have many people in my country 😂
The every day life of normal people are often more interesting then the very worst sides of people with power over others. Sorry about the spelling dyslectic.
I'd love to know more about how medieval people wiped their bums. Did they wash like folks in the Middle East and India do, or was the climate in England a deterent to that sort of thing?
Oh, dang! Dance work shops and Fan language. Wish I was anywhere near York. I am sort of close to New York.
P.S. I'll be at Old Sturbridge Village for Redcoats & Rebels the first weekend in August. Come Say Hello to me. 6th Connecticut Regiment
As cool as the York Georgian Festival may be, I can't see the "Y" in the fan, so my brain insists on seeing the design as reading "Ork Georgian Festival," which would ALSO be cool, let's be honest.
Poop vs poo; pooping vs pooing. If we're 'pooping in the past' in 'Viking & medieval toilets', why are we using the modern American noun & verb? And why 'medieval' rather than 'mediaeval', come to that?
I'd probably buy and read the book...
Only Historical nerds would consider Pooping and Toilets cheeirful
My grandpa used say that the best applesauce was made with the apples from the tree that grew by the outhouse 🍎🍏
And i thought the guys that clean the portable johns on construction sites had it bad....
Hi, we'll be at York at the end of August this year. Anything we should not miss to visit? Thank's for any advises! Greatings from a german reanactress
PLEASE write a book in this.
Oooh, nice cravat!!
You *should* write a book on this!
WHEN you are writing this book, include any/all etymology relevant.
Because all that shit is fascinating, pun intended
Looking very snazzy!
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 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 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!
There is something highly amusing about hearing "Urban Pooper" and "Rural Pooper" in a Welsh accent. :D
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 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
Sanitation workers are heroes and always have been! Thanks for an excellent and thoroughly entertaining video.
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!
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.
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 TH-cam 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 😅
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.
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! 😝