And You Think Your Job is Hard!

This is another not-a-blog post.

But this one is too much fun to skip.

Channel 4, Belfast's, "The Worst Jobs in History" is an entertaining look at grungy British jobs from Roman times to the Victorian period.

The jobs I read about, from Roman miner to Tudor groom of the stool, Stuart nip picker, and Victorian navvy, were entertainingly - and fairly accurately - described.

I wouldn't take Ireland's answer to "Dirty Jobs" as an authority on culture during the Medieval period. Their summary of social and economic conditions, "while noblemen and their ladies flounce around in sumptuous clothes and are entertained at court and tournament, an army of unlucky souls toils away in some spectacularly hideous employment," isn't entirely complete, or accurate.

Much of our impression of the Middle Ages comes from the colorful excesses of very late Medieval and early Renaissance periods. That period makes excellent cinema, but isn't typical of the half-millennia that came before.

Here's a little about the clothing angle:

• "Medieval Textiles" (.pdf). The emphasis is on Russian clothing, but a few illustrations show what peasants and upper crust wore.
• "Clothing / What was it really like to live in the Middle ages?" at Learner.org is a very brief description, with almost no illustrations: but is a good introduction.
• "Some Extant Clothing of the Middle Ages" gives a pretty good picture, literally, of European clothing from 1000 to the 1500s.