All language subtitles for BBC.Filthy.Cities.1of3.Medieval.London.PDTV.XviD.AC3.MVGroup.org.eng

World finance hub, heart of British
government, home to millions.

Today's London is a well-oiled
machine, a truly global city.

And at its heart lies
the Square Mile,

the historic core from
which the modern metropolis grew.

The city of London
is 2,000 years old.

Every street, every square, is built
on layer upon layer of history.

But London has a hidden past,
a filthy secret,

and it's this untold story that
I want to uncover.

Because so much of the London we
know today was born from the dirt
and disease of the 14th century,

a time when the city's authorities
were so overwhelmed by an explosion

of people and their filth, that
nothing short of a catastrophe would
force them to clean up their act.

This is the story of how filth
shaped this city,

of how 700 years ago,
dirt and squalor and disease reached

such epidemic proportions that they
sparked a revolution in attitude,

a revolution that would see
all Londoners come together
to declare war on filth.

'And as I'll discover,
it was a truly disgusting battle.

'From rivers of animal guts
to mountains of excrement,

'deadly diseases and bloody cures,

'the medieval authorities
had a dirty fight on their hands.'

I'm going to get down and dirty
in 14th century grime, to find out

the hard way just how much filth
medieval London had to put up with,

and discover how this
clean and modern city

began to emerge from the muck
of the past.

This is London Bridge,
a major thoroughfare

leading into the city of London,
as it was 700 years ago.

Today, it's packed with thousands
of commuters heading to work

in the Square Mile, but in half an
hour it will be all but empty

and it will be a chance to catch
your breath.

In 14th century London, though,
there'd be no such let up.

As the only bridge over the Thames,
it was a busy thoroughfare,

seething with people,
animals and filth.

In such a prime location, space was
at a premium, precarious high rises

crowded on either side, shop fronts
opened out onto the road,

leaving only a single lane
for traffic.

At times,
it was virtually impassable.

And it wasn't just the
bridge that was like this.

It was the whole city,
all day, every day,

because London was
at bursting point.

The population had gone up by
nearly 500% from the previous

two centuries, overwhelming any
attempt at town planning.

By the start of the 14th century,

London had grown from a small town
of around 17,000 people,

into a thriving city,
with as many as 100,000 inhabitants,

all hemmed in between the river
and the old Roman walls.

There was no escaping the filth.

So why were they all here?

Reaching its peak at the start
of the 14th century,

London had been growing for
200 years, ever since
a radical change of ownership.

After Norman conquest in 1066,
London became the centre

of a great empire that stretched,
at its height,

across the British Isles
and down to the Pyrenees.

It was a time of relative peace
and prosperity, so the economy
boomed and London,

which had once been a wooden city,
was now recast in stone.

London, more wealthy and valuable
than ever, was granted the power

to self govern, by successive writs
and royal charters.

The mighty Tower of London,

an imposing stone bastion
of royal power,

built by the king to protect his
capital, but also a symbol

of just how important London
was to the crown.

The Tower and the city,
cheek by jowl.

The king needed the financial
support of his richest city,

and Londoners were happy to have
strong, stable government,

as long as it didn't interfere
in their affairs.

Enjoying a certain
autonomy from the crown,

London offered a way out of what,
for many, was a tyrannical system.

Out in the countryside, the Normans
had confiscated land

and imposed a system of enforced
labour that turned many people

into serfs, little better
than slaves.

But here in London
it was much freer.

The king trod more warily
when it came to his

rich and volatile capital city.

It had its own laws.

For example, if a serf
could escape here

and survive for a year and a day,
he'd become a free man.

And once you were here,
the opportunities were endless.

Just like today, London offered
the chance to forge a new life,

choose from a variety of trades,
have the opportunity

to join a guild, or enter
the world of commerce.

With its safe harbour, trade
flowed in and out along the Thames.

Vast amounts of English wool
were exported to Europe,

whilst wine, spices and fur
headed into the city.

Myth has it that London
was so prosperous

that the streets were paved
with gold.

If you wanted to make it big,
this was the place to do it.

When they arrived, they discovered
that the streets were not paved
with gold, far from it.

So what was beneath the feet
of a 14th-century Londoner?

First ingredient, because
it is England after all,
is soaking wet mud.

'With few pavements or
solid road surfaces,

'the ground underfoot was just
earth, wet and sticky all winter,

'and choking dust in the summer.'

Ingredient number two, animal dung.

'There were as many animals
as people in London.

'Horses, dogs and pigs jostled with
people for space in the streets.'

Animal entrails.

'Any part of a carcass not
worth eating would have been
dumped in the road.'

Old rotting fish.

'Fish was plentiful, and a popular
alternative to meat on holy days.

Beer. 'A safer option than drinking
polluted medieval water.'

And then a few hours later, urine.

'Privies were a luxury not
everyone could afford.

'Many people used a chamber pot and
then emptied it out of the window.'

Right. I collected up all this mess,

it only remains to dump it
on the streets.

That smells completely
disgusting, unbelievable.

The idea that would have been spread
around permanently is just terrible,
and it would have been

mulched into the streets,
and 100,000 Londoners
walking on it daily.

There we go. That really does
release the smell as well. Eugh!

Bear in mind, of course, lots
of the sewers would be full,

they'd just be ditches anyway.
There wouldn't be a proper way

of cleaning the streets, so
especially in hot, summery weather,

this stuff would just
sit around for weeks.

And there are stories of whole
streets being made impassable,

you just couldn't get from one end
to the other.

Londoners, they weren't stupid,
they're just like you and me,

so they came up with solutions.
They did not want to walk through
this stuff.

So they came up with
ingenious solutions, in fact.

New ways were invented to lift
you above the squalor,

like these wooden over shoes
known as pattens.

There we go.

And, of course, they'd have got
quite proficient in these,
unlike me.

We know about these because they've
been found in archaeological digs.

I'm in wellies and
it's pretty disgusting.

You really would have wanted a way
to be lifted above the muck,

because there were no waterproof
shoes in those days,

they were walking the streets
in leather.

And on these, although they're quite
unsteady, you could actually just
about walk through the sludge.

But there's one vital ingredient
for the medieval street

that I've avoided so far,
and it's also the most disgusting.

It's something we're all
familiar with,

but these days we've perfected ways
of neutralising it.

Well, the smell's getting worse
every step I take towards
this building.

I still can't believe
I'm voluntarily doing this.

That smell is, basically,
poo particles in the air,
attacking my nose.

Oh, that's appalling. Oh, God!

Doing other history programmes,
I spend my time in the library.

This is Crossness Sewage Works
in southeast London,

where the waste from over two
million people is treated every day.

There's enough excrement here
to fill 20 Olympic-sized
swimming pools every hour.

Oh, Jill, what is this place?
This is our fine screen plant,

where our aim is to get out
as much rag as we can.

You can see a little raft
of it there.

Once you've taken all the
rubbish out, you just leave
concentrated human waste?

Is that what this is?
Yeah, this is sewage.

We still produce all this waste,
but now we've just worked out

a sophisticated way of dealing
with it. But back then,

they couldn't escape this, this
was running down their street,

in the local brook,
through the Thames.

It was just all around
the whole time, this smell.

In the 14th century, of course,
they had no public sanitation.

Undiluted raw sewage collected
in open gutters in the street.

It would have smelled
a whole lot worse.

The time has come
to get face to face

with the final ingredient that we're
missing from that medieval street.

Yeah, there's a little valve
here that's going to allow me

to see some of this vital ingredient
of medieval London.

The trouble is, I'm slightly
concerned, because this is under
very high pressure and I...

The last thing I want to do
is spray it all over myself.

Here it comes, like Mr Whippy.

Whoa, whoa. Urgh!

Ergh! Oh! A little bit
of splashing there.

Right, so here it is, the ingredient
that every Londoner

would have been familiar with.

This is incredibly smelly because
of the gases associated with it,

but it's also home to some of the
deadliest pathogens known to man,

like salmonella and E. coli.

Now we've managed to contain it
in these big tanks

and this little bottle here,
but back then, it would have
been everywhere.

So, here goes.

HE COUGHS

That's unbelievable.

Oh, God. Can I...

Can I go now?

The squalid state of London's
streets may suggest its citizens
were free to run riot.

But this was far from the case.

So who was in charge?

So, Ian, it's not like London's
a sort of anarchy,

I mean, there is government here,
isn't there?

There certainly is government
and, in fact, London has had

its charter for over 200 years by
the time the 14th century begins,

and that charter gives it privileges
which it defends vigorously.

It elects, by the 14th century,
its own mayor,

and that mayor
is selected from 24 aldermen.

Those aldermen are each head
of a ward of the specific
bits of the city.

So it's got a very strong
administrative structure.

Even so, the civic government was
more concerned with law and order

and regulating trade, than
dealing with unprecedented filth.

Cleanliness was a luxury
few could afford.

Most people used the streets
to trade or work in,

and, of course, as a place
to dump their waste.

So this street follows the line
of the original medieval street.

Can you give me any sense of what
it must have been like here?
Much darker.

You'd have found the houses either
side leaning out over to the middle
of the street as each storey

was built up higher. So you could
perhaps have reached across and
touched the house on the side.

But you wouldn't have been looking
up, you'd have been looking down

at your feet and avoiding whatever
you might have trodden in.

Even holder or tenement was meant to
clear the area outside their house,
but, of course, not many did.

If you think how few latrines there
are in London and how much effort
is required to shift everything

out of the city, you realise that
it's not surprising that people
do leave things in the street.

The infrastructure isn't there.

The history of cleanliness is a bit
like a small child who's going to
go to the loo, they don't mention

anything until they're absolutely
desperate, and our records

are the records of absolute
desperation,

when we can't put up with these
terrible smells any longer.

Yes, you do have areas
which really were revolting.

And one of the most desperate
stories of medieval waste management

occurred in what used to be
Ebbgate Lane.

Two proto dodgy plumbers,
Hockiel and Witt,
signed to build some toilets.

Like most medieval latrines,
they were simply seats with a
hole cut out and a long drop.

But according to the book of
customs from 1321, their design
left something to be desired.

By building their toilets
as far out as possible,

they may have kept
their own walls clean,

but it meant human filth now rained
down onto the passersby below.

The street became impassable.

Hockiel and Witt were
hauled in front of the mayor,

where they were hit with a big fine,

but I bet their neighbours wish
they'd been hit with something else.

And it wasn't just Ebbgate Lane
that was overflowing with filth.

All over the Square Mile, the
street names give a vivid impression

of what conditions were like within
the boundaries of the medieval city.

Some still exist - Gutter Lane,
Seething Lane, Staining Lane -

testament to their grubby history,
while others have been renamed
to hide their mucky past.

This is Sherborne Lane, sounds
rather gentile, but 700 years ago,

it had a far less salubrious name.

So were Londoners just mad,
putting up with all this filth?
How did they really feel about it?

And what was the medieval
mindset like when it came to
dealing with poo?

Remarkably, we do know the answer
to some of these questions,

and they're hidden deep within
the bowels of this building.

I'm about to have a look at a very
rare and valuable document,

one of very few that survives
from this period,
and it's going to give me

a great sense of what life was
actually like for normal Londoners
in the 14th century.

It's held here at the
London Metropolitan Archive

and its hardly been touched
for 700 years.

This is the Assize of Nuisance,
just basically a list of grievances

brought by the people of London
to the attention of the government.

It's absolutely beautiful, it's
hard to believe it's 700 years old.

Many of these complaints actually
refer to the issue of filth,

and, to me, it's such an important
reminder that Londoners

weren't just the impotent victims of
the mess that lay all around them,

they were actually trying to
do something about it.

There were regulations in place to
stop Londoners throwing

their waste onto the street,
even though they were often ignored.

And these records show that
some people were coming up with
ingenious ways

of getting rid of it,
often giving their neighbours
cause to complain.

Here's a classic, the case of Henry
Young and John Koenig from 1347.

The Assize concerns their waste
pipe, which they had diverted

to pump their effluent into the
cellar of the property next door.

This fantastic case of medieval
NIMBY-ism was investigated and
upheld by the mayor and alderman,

who ordered the pipe to
be removed within 40 days.

If this manuscript's going
to last another 700 years,

people like me with sweaty, dirty
hands are going to have to wear

these gloves when they handle it.

And the next example is
that of Alice Wade,

just here, I think.

Now, she didn't really want to
pipe her waste into the street.

So instead she came up with an
ingenious solution of sending
it into the rainwater gutter.

She made a wooden pipe
to channel it away.

The problem was, the poo
often blocked up the gutter,

so her neighbours were greatly
inconvenienced by the stench.

Again, she was given 40 days
to remove the nuisance.

Londoners were becoming
increasingly sick of taking
crap from their neighbours.

With so many peed off citizens, the
authorities had their work cut out.

It's all too easy to imagine
medieval London as one
great, anarchic mess.

But this document is a sharp
reminder that we're dealing with
a complex, regulated society.

There are just some of the
many attempts that were made

to overcome the problems created by
that number of people living in such
close proximity with each other.

The fact they all too often failed
to deal with those problems

wasn't because they were mad
or stupid,

it just shows that the sheer scale
of that challenge

overwhelmed their resources.

Punishing individuals in a city
of thousands wasn't going to get
the streets clean.

Even fines, which were hard to
enforce, did little to change the
culture of medieval fly tipping.

In 1309, a charge of 40p was levied
on anyone who was found dumping

rubbish outside their own house,
or anyone else's.

The trouble is, wealthy Londoners
seemed quite happy to pay the fine,

if and when they got caught,
and the city was probably pretty
glad to collect the money.

So as nothing could stop the
people making a mess, it fell to
the authorities to clean it up.

And they came up with
three professions, without which
no modern city could survive.

'For years, muck rakers
have been on the city's books,

'gathering filth and rubbish
from the streets

'and taking it by cart, or boat,
beyond the city walls.

'They were the first
street cleaners.'

By the turn of the century,
surveyors of the pavement

were added to the payroll,
paid for by each ward.

They were there to preserve
the pavement and remove all
nuisances of filth.

The bin men had arrived.

It all seems rather obvious.

I mean, London would grind to a
halt today without these guys.

But, of course, that's exactly what
was happening in medieval London.

It was grinding to a halt
under its own grime.

And the task of cleaning London
700 years ago was so massive

that it would become one of the
most disgusting jobs in history.

I'm going to find out exactly what
they were up against,

by having a go at
the worst job of all,

the third and final role
created in medieval London.

The inventively named gong farmers.

They were early drain cleaners,
I suppose, and they had to go
round cleaning out

cesspits and privies, which meant
using one of these and one of these,

you had to clean up a lot of that.

That smells appalling.

It's also really warm.

HE COUGHS

Oh! I gag every time it does that.

If you're wondering why
we're dumping horse manure on
a street in the city of London,

it's because we have a record
of one particular gong farmer,
a guy called Thomas Mason.

Now, this superhuman gong farmer
managed to clean up, on this street,

six tonnes of human and animal waste
in one night,

so that's one man,
one street, six tonnes.

Thomas Mason,
just how tough are you?

The gong farmers
faced a mammoth task.

Medieval Londoners produced around
50 tonnes of excrement every day.

There were no proper sewers, so
all of it had to be removed by hand,

dug out of the cesspits,
of all the privies and
public latrines in London.

Inhaling all that horse poo

is getting a little boring.

They had to be emptied regularly to
stop the build up of noxious smells,

and often at night, to make sure
they could be kept open all day.

Evening.

'Not only was the work disgusting,
it was also fraught with danger.

'It's hard enough shifting a pile
that's sitting on the street.

'Down in the cesspits,
filled with thousands of litres
of raw excrement,

'there was a chance of being
asphyxiated by the fumes, or worse,

'picking up a lethal disease
lurking in the rotting faeces.'

Not very efficient.

'As one celebrated case illustrates,

'medieval cleaners could
come to a sticky end.'

FARTING

Richard, a successful muck raker,
was fortunate enough to own

his own privy, in his house in the
parish of Little Saint Bartholomew.

According to the coroner's roll
of 1326, despite slaving away

cleaning up other people's filth,
it appears that Richard had a rather
unfortunate accident in his own.

The floorboards of his privy
had become so rotten they could
no longer take his weight.

Richard dropped into his
own excrement and died,

only for his body to be discovered
by fellow muck raker, William Scott.

But the gong farmer's revolting
and hazardous profession
wasn't without its perks.

The reason they did this

frankly awful work
was because, actually,

it was very well rewarded.

The average wage for a normal
labourer doing anything else

was about six pence a day,
but a gong farmer could get 18 pence

for clearing away
one tonne of waste,

so he's earning several times that
of an equivalent labourer.

In fact we know that what a gong
farmer could earn in just 11 nights,

it would take a skilled labourer
six months to earn.

Where there's muck, there's brass,
and London had plenty of muck.

'So much of it, in fact, that the
city's army of cleaners found
themselves fighting a losing battle.

'London, like Richard the raker,
continued to flounder
in its own waste.'

So what did the gong farmers
do with all this mess once
they'd collected it up?

Well, they were supposed to
take it far outside the city walls
and dump it.

Some of them could make extra
money selling it as fertiliser.

But truth be told, a lot of them
just got rid of it inside the city,

on someone else's patch,
or, of course,

they just threw it in the Thames.

Take her away.

So it wasn't just the streets
that were beginning to
overflow with filth.

Well, I've been up all night
shovelling horse poo.

The smell's still in my nose, I've
got poo on my clothes, on my skin.

What I need is a bath.

Despite the common use of London's
waterways for dumping waste into,

they were also the place
many people went to bathe.

In the middle ages,
from king to commoner, you'd have
stunk to the 21st century nose.

But it's a common misperception
that they were all dirty people.

They weren't, they used to wash
their hands and their faces,

and they associated
cleanliness with godliness.

Dirt was for the devil.

They wouldn't have had that
much chance to wash, of course.

In the winter,
the rivers all froze over,

so it would have been limited
to a few baths every summer,

in the Thames.

Pretty chilly,
given it's the height of summer,

but like the gong farmers,
I'm going to wash in the Thames.

Like them, of course,
I don't have any soap.

The trouble is, as the population
of medieval London expanded,

this river became a dumping ground
for all their waste.

So whilst some people tried
to bathe in it, even drink it,

just up the way, there might be
people pooing in it.

By 1345, one Thames dock had become
so corrupted by dung and other filth

that the city's government insisted
on a tax on all boats using it -

a tax which, in turn, was used to
pay five carters to cleanse it.

If the water remained foul, the
men were to be thrown into prison.

The rising tide of excrement
wasn't the only dirty problem

the mayor and the alderman
had on their hands.

London's commercial success
had created great wealth and power

and that brought a different kind
of filth to the city.

Like it or not,
putting up with the grime

was the price Londoners had to pay
to be close to the action.

By the 14th century, the kings
of England had decided they needed

a permanent seat for royal
government, and chose Westminster,

about a mile up river
from the City of London,

where the river water
was a lot fresher.

And they built
this magnificent palace,

designed to overawe their subjects.

The palace of Westminster occupied
a prime riverfront location

to the west, and up wind
of the busy, dirty city of London.

And around it
formed a more upmarket community,

a magnet for nobility,
courtiers and the rich.

Now one of London's
wealthiest areas,

back then,
Westminster was a separate town,

and over the centuries, it became
the political heart of the country,

a role it still plays today.

This giant Westminster hall
is the oldest surviving part
of that palace.

Anyone who wanted to be close
to royal power,

to come to the Courts of Justice
held in this hall,

or the coronation banquets
also held here,

or attend Parliament,
that was next door,

needed to have a house nearby.

And that new class of people
brought with them great wealth

and an insatiable appetite
for luxury goods,

and the City of London was ideally
placed to meet those demands.

Many London merchants grew rich
furnishing this extravagance,

and they in turn wanted to emulate
the luxury lifestyle.

The word was out, there was money
in these filthy streets

and fortunes to be made.

As more and more people flocked to
London to get a slice of the action,

London experienced the growing pains
of a city that was forced to exist

in an area barely larger
than that of a village.

By the 14th century,
the overcrowded capital

had become filthier than ever,

thanks to a mini medieval
industrial revolution.

Foul chemicals
from leather-tanning factories,

putrid run-off from brewers
and fishmongers

spilled into the street and rivers.

But there was one profession that
saw London sink to new depths

when it came to industrial waste.

London's mercantile elite were keen
to show off their wealth,

and what better way to do it
than to eat the food of kings?

They demanded meat and lots of it.

Lift at the end. Getting round
that corner was interesting.

'700 years ago,
without refrigeration,

'preserving meat meant
drying, salting or pickling it.

'But to provide fresh meat,

'the only way was to walk a live
beast into town, kill it...'

First, we've got to shave him.
We need hot water, so we've got
a big copper on the go.

'..and butcher it at
the point of sale.

'But butchery was a messy business.

'Records show that dealing
with butcher's waste

'was an ongoing problem
for the city's authorities.'

Whoa, so scald him?

'First-hand experience
gives you some idea of
what they were up against.'

Then we get the knives. There we go.

Now just imagine you're... Shaving.
Doing your shaving, yep.

'It wasn't just butchers clogging up
the streets with foul animal
remains.

'Furriers and tanners
also plied their filthy trades
inside the city walls.'

So they'd do this out in the street,
or in the cellar in the house?

You wouldn't want to do it
indoors, cos it's pretty messy.

You've got all this outer layer skin
and some of the less useful hair.

So the best thing to do is just
do it out in the alley. Agh...

So much waste was being dumped,
that in 1310,

the scouring of furs
was banned in the main streets.

A year later the flaying,
or skinning, of horses

was also completely outlawed
in the city.

We are creating a lot of mess here.

It's all the stuff you exfoliate
when you get your pumice stone out.

I'm not a regular exfoliator myself.
I'm constantly amazed,

why did people go to the cities
in the first place?

Fame, money, opportunity.

Why do they do it now?
It's still a nasty hell hole.

Cos this is lovely.

There was some regulation. Butchers
had specific areas of the city

where they were allowed
to do their work.

There were three open-air
slaughter houses, known as
shambles in medieval London,

where the blood of countless animals
flowed into runnels

directed towards
the city's clogged gutters.

Right, there's your spine,
and without my fingers in the way,

you're going to smash straight
through that. Feeling accurate?

Yeah, pretty... Go for it.

That's better, that's sounding good.
Oh, straight in.

Just get sprayed
with bone fragments.

The smell is making me slightly
queasy. It will get a lot worse
when we open the insides up.

Good.

Pork was a popular favourite
with medieval diners.

A pig's ability to eat pretty much
anything and turn it into protein

meant that many people
kept their own pigs.

Is that enough? If you're not sure,
stick your finger in

and see if you can pop through into
the space. I think I can feel it...

You're in. Hook the point
then pull it down?

Work it down
until you hit the breast bone,

then you can't go
any further that way.

HISSING

That's a definite puncture,
that's the gas coming out.

Starting to get that little whiff
about it. Oh, my God!

That is disgusting.

'Domestic pigs were supposed to be
penned up,

'but records show regular complaints
of them roaming the streets

'or breaking into gardens.'

Oh, man, this is just disgusting.

'At one stage, there were so many
escaped pigs fouling the city

'that killers of swine were
appointed to keep the numbers down.'

Drop them into the bowl there.
Let's let that knife down.

'The most disgusting part of
my medieval butchery adventure...'

Oh, God. Oh...

'..is taking out
the steaming entrails.'

This is extraordinary.

'Around five kilos of organs
and stinking poo,

'wrapped in slimy membrane.'

I will never, ever, ever
eat pork again, in the same way.

'But in a time
when meat was expensive,

'no part of the animal
went to waste.'

I think I've got the heart - it's
like a muscle. Yep. Big...muscle.

And they'd have eaten this?
Absolutely, roast heart's lovely.

'The prime cuts were destined
for the wealthy.

'And for those less well-off,
they got the rest.'

That's a heart. Yep.

'The offal, head and trotters -
even the entrails - have their use.'

If you want to have sausages,
the next thing we've got to do

is find the right-sized
bits of tubing,

which we've got down the bottom...
This is quite warm still.

That's ideal for sausage skins,
you can just split it off

away from the back there,
you've got a nice bit of piping.

And all of that, you can smell the
excrement in it, can't you? Yep.

Yep. Well, you've got to
wash that out next. What?

It's amazing what you get used to
in this life.

I've never butchered an animal
before, and now I'm squeezing poo

out of it's not-long-dead intestine.

You wonder how people lived
amongst the excrement and mess,
and here we are,

within a day, I'm getting quite used
to it. This seems normal. Yeah.

Everything we've done today
has involved pouring huge amounts
of muck onto the streets.

You wouldn't want it
in the house, would you?

So what happens to it there?
Ah, a simple solution.

Bucket of water,
send it downhill to the neighbours.

There you go, just flush it away.

You always want to live uphill,
don't you?

As long as your house is clean,
you're fine,

it's now somebody else's problem.

London was producing
gigantic amounts of animal waste,

streets were overflowing
with the stuff.

The city had to act.

The way the medieval authorities
tackled the butcher's
discarded offal

is a great example of
their trial-and-error approach.

So much animal waste was now being
produced, that the age-old solution

of just dumping it in the streets
was no longer acceptable.

The sights and smells
of all those animal entrails

running down the middle
of the street

was driving even the most
filth-hardened Londoners crazy.

The authorities came up
with a new solution,
and that lay under my feet.

This is what's left of the
Fleet River - it's now a sewer -

which is pretty much what it
ended up being seven centuries ago.

So somewhere round here, in 1343,

the butchers were told to come
and dump all their waste,

as it was said at the time, for the
cleanliness and decency of the city.

And they did so, and the price
they paid was, appropriately enough,
a boar's head.

But soon even the fast-flowing Fleet
was overwhelmed,

it became a putrid sewer
and absolutely stank,

so much so that it was
said to be injurious to the health
of prisoners in a nearby prison.

The authorities needed another plan,
they needed a bigger river.

London's biggest river, in fact.

The butchers were sent,
with their waste,

to the banks of the mighty Thames.

Right near this spot
was St Nicholas Shambles,

where animals were slaughtered.

All that needed to be done was to
transport the unwanted parts

down to the Thames - simple.

But there was one flaw
in this brilliant plan,

and that is that the Thames
is a long way over there.

In fact, the Thames
was a bumpy 10-minute walk
through London's busy streets.

The plan was that they
would dump all this offal

off a long wooden pier that
was built out into the Thames,

where Blackfriars is today.

It was known as Bocker's Brigga -
butcher's bridge.

The trouble was, of course, after a
long day of butchery and slaughter,

safe waste disposal
was the last thing on your mind,

and all too often, a lot of this
fell out along the way.

The excessive amount of
bloody remains being dropped
in the streets and the river

became so bad
that even the King complained.

He said, "From the putrefied blood
running in the streets

"and the entrails thrown
into the water of the Thames,

"the air in the city has been
greatly corrupted and infected."

Neither solution was perfect -

you either had rotting flesh,
entrails and waste products

clogging up the streets of London,
or the Thames.

So as a result, after years of
dithering and indecision,

butchers were banned from the city.

And there's another way in which
modern butchers are a world away

from those in the 14th century.

These days, butcher's shops are
models of antibacterial cleanliness.

700 years ago,
what you found on a chopping block

could be rather more hit-and-miss.

In 14th century London, the Guild
of Butchers did what they could

to provide quality control.

They appointed master butchers
to regulate the industry

and try and enforce some standards.

But there's evidence
that even the Guild of Butchers

struggled to control
some Londoners who were on the make.

Protected by the anonymity
of a big city,

some saw the chance to make
a quick buck by flogging manky meat.

Records described how one makeshift
butcher, John Jarlson,

was found guilty of selling
"putrid and stinking meat
to the peril of lives",

after he tried to sell the flesh of
a dead sow he'd found in a ditch.

Cracking down on butchers trying
to use the cloak of night

to hide the quality of their wares,

the city authorities
ordered that butchers,

"shall sell no meat by the light of
candle, but by clear daylight only."

And it seems they made
the punishment fit the crime.

Anyone caught breaking the law
was tied to a pillory,

to have the dodgy meat
burnt under their nose.

With the streets and rivers full
of excrement and rotting carcasses,

and no real understanding of
the link between disease and filth,

it's not surprising
that sickness was rife.

But if the diseases
were dangerous enough,

the treatments were often worse.

Many sick people
were treated by barbers,

hairdressers, who had the skills
and tools to cut and chop, so were
allowed to pull teeth, or let blood.

With the discovery of microbes not
due for another three centuries,
there was no scientific knowledge

of how illness could be linked
to the unhygienic conditions
in the streets.

Hiya.

'And, as I'm about to find out,

'the tools and techniques used
to treat illness were
just as filthy and dangerous.'

What chance did medieval medicine
have of curing what ails you?

Mmm, not very good -
it depends how ill you were.

If I went to a medieval doctor,

what principles would they use

to treat me? Firstly,
it's to get things OUT of the body.

For example, if you had a very bad
eye infection, what I would do is,

I'd get dry dog poo, grind it up,
put it in a piece of folded paper
and literally blow it into your eye.

We believe
this would irritate the eye,

make the eye water, and bring out all
the impurities of the eye at
the same time, so cure the eye.

So the idea is to remove these
evil things from your body.

What other kind
of techniques would they use?

If you suffer from a slight madness,
what we would do is,
is we'd actually...

Well, get on your knees
and I'll show you.

What I'd do is
I'd get a knife like this one here,

I would make

a Y-shaped cut into your skull.

We would pare back the skin.

Now, you're quite lucky,
that's the only bit that hurts.

'The invisible cause of some illness
was put down to evil spirits
and called for radical intervention.

'Trepanning,
an ancient technique of drilling'

or scraping a hole in the skull,
thought to release the spirit, was
still practised in medieval times.

'It was more likely to cause
a nasty infection and
indeed, records detail

'many cases of barber surgeons
maiming, or even killing,
their patients'

with their questionable techniques.

I'm not looking forward
to my treatment.

Imagine I went to a medieval
doctor, were they good at diagnosis?

They would do a diagnosis, they
would look at you, they would see
what's wrong with you,

as like we do nowadays, but for
internally, what they would
do is, a bit like today,

they'd like a bit of your wee.

Is that an invitation?

Well, if you want to get some,

and then we'll see how you are.
I'll be back in a sec.

Sorry, it's not much, you
caught me by surprise a bit there.

No, that's fine, that's fine.
I'm very pleased, it's clear, that's
very good. That is very, very good.

I'd hope so. But I am a bit
concerned about the colour.

Really? Yes. It's golden!

I find that, to me it's
got a green tinge. What?

If you hold up the jar,
I would look at the colour and decide
how well or unwell you are.

The darker it is,
the more unhealthy you are.

Basically there'd be a lot of blood
in the urine, and at that point,

you'd be very, very unwell, and what
you need to do is to be bled.
You're a sadist.

I think this is really taking
the idea of getting things
out of me to the extreme.

You'd be bled at least once a year,
if you're high ranking, because
it was felt it was good for you.

Several leeches were typically
applied to the prescribed body part,

and each leech can absorb
four to six times its own
body weight in human blood.

No wonder they only feed about
once a year. Is it hungry?

Yes, it should be hungry.

I'm sure it's in my head,
but I can sort of...

I'm imagining it just draining
all the blood out of my arm.

Such was their enthusiasm
for bloodletting that some
barber surgeons used knifes,

and sometimes accidentally cut into
arteries and killed their patients.

Eventually the authorities
stepped in. That is really

wriggling around now, it's
having a great feed at my expense.

Master surgeons were ordered
to oversee their juniors

in cases where their clients
were in peril of death.

Even so, records show
barber surgeons continued to kill
and maim their patients.

14th century England was a pretty
dangerous place - the average

life expectancy was 35,
so at 31 years old,
I wouldn't have much time left.

There was a lack of understanding
about hygiene and medicine
and filth everywhere.

People found it hard to even work
out what the problem was, let alone
come up with any solutions.

It would only take one more
ingredient to tip London over
the edge into total catastrophe.

By the middle of the 14th century,
London was as densely-populated
as it had ever been.

The authorities' attempts to
clean up were piecemeal, reactive

or, all too often, simply ignored.

Despite the squalor,
London continued to boom.

Since the Norman conquest,
international trade had expanded,
and so too had the city.

The port of London
went into overdrive.

In one year alone, the records show
that 20,000 tonnes - that's about

18 million litres of wine -
were imported here.

To meet this bulging demand, new and
bigger merchant ships were built.

And of course, as fast as London
grew, so did the rubbish and filth.

But in the docks, resourceful
Londoners found a use for it.

With all that merchandise
getting shifted, space on the
docks really was at a premium.

Then the merchants came up with
an idea that solved two of London's

most pressing problems -
that lack of space
and the over-abundance of waste.

They drove piles out there, in the
river, boarded them up and filled up
this space with thousands of tonnes

of London's waste, thereby
reclaiming land that could be
used as walks, sometimes stretching

as far as 100 metres
out into the river.

London became bigger
and busier than ever.

London's port was flooded with goods
and people from around the world,

which was great for business,
but left London wide open to
other less desirable visitors.

When reports of a terrible disease
spreading across Western Europe

reached Britain, international
trade continued virtually unchecked.

And filthy London was defenceless
against a new and deadly import.

The rubbish-filled streets may
have been wretched for humans,
but they were paradise for these.

Rats pretty much had
the run of the place.

Black rats are different
from their modern brown cousins,
who like the low life.

These black Asian rats were tree
dwellers, and they liked to climb.

Preferring the high life, these rats
moved into the rafters of houses,
along with their fleas.

And in the autumn of 1348,
they brought with them an epidemic

so catastrophic it would ultimately
redefine the political and social
structure of the entire country.

In busy London, they were
brought in to close contact
with humans, rich and poor alike.

Records show that very near this
spot, the artist John De Mims lived

with his wife Matilda and
his daughters Isabella and Alice.

They would have been
completely unaware

that their furry house guests
were more than an inconvenience,

because circulating in their blood
was one of the deadliest bacteria
known to man, Yersinia pestis,

the bubonic plague.

As the rats succumbed to disease,
their resident fleas hopped off

to find a new home,
with devastating effect,

because a single flea carries around
100 plague bacteria in its guts.

One bite can be lethal.

London and the De Mims soon
found themselves in the grip
of a cataclysmic plague.

On 19th of March 1349, just five
months into the plague epidemic,

he decided to prepare for the worst,
and wrote a will in which he left
all his property to his wife.

The bubonic plague
is still deadly today.

As many as 3,000 cases are
reported worldwide every year.

Scientists are still struggling
to defeat this age-old enemy.

This is the Ministry of Defence's
state-of-the-art, Defence Science
and Technology Laboratory.

Behind these two-metre
thick concrete walls,

lie some of the deadliest
microorganisms on the planet.

Bubonic plague is so lethal
that this is one of only a handful

of labs anywhere in the world that's
secure enough to study it.

Here, I'm about two metres away from
Petra, who's working on it now, and
it's very sobering being this close.

She's holding it up
to the window now.

It's amazing to think
that even though this

is one of the most sophisticated
containment facilities in the world,
I'm still feeling this nervous.

Back then, of course, there
wouldn't have been these walls

and these doors separating
me from that disease.

Back then, it was on your street,
it was in your house and it was
killing members of your family.

To give me an idea

of the extreme precautions that
are taken when handling the plague,

I've been allowed
into an ultra-secure lab.

So the last time I touched a Petri
dish was when I did GCSE chemistry,
and that was a long time ago.

I never thought that my pursuit
of history would take me
to a high-security

military technology lab,
dealing with dangerous pathogens.

But Yersinia pestis is far
too dangerous for an amateur
like me to get anywhere near.

That's E-coli there?

That's E-coli, and plague looks a bit
like that. It's a relative of E-coli.

Really? A bit of a bad boy, though.

It's worse than E-coli?
Just a bit worse.

And you wouldn't let me
touch plague like this? No.

Say a healthy person develops
plague, what happens to them
and how quickly does it happen?

Bubonic plague,
so that's after you've been bitten by
an infected flea, after several days

you would develop the bubo,
which is a swelling of the lymph node
draining the site of the bite.

Bubonic plague gets its name from
the bubos, or pus-filled swellings
which form at the lymph node

nearest to the site of a bite
from an infected flea.

But it would come to be known
by a simpler name - the Black Death.

Why was it known as the Black Death?
There's so many bacteria in the blood
that your body can't cope with it,

and it triggers coagulation in the
blood vessels, and that tends to
collect at the fingers and toes.

It takes about two weeks for bubonic
plague to kill its victims.

But the bacteria can go airborne

and go straight into
someone else's lungs.

That's called pneumonic plague,
and it's much more deadly.

Trouble is, before the study
of microbiology, no-one knew
how it spread

or how to deal with it, as
records from later outbreaks show.

Pneumonic plague
has a death rate of 100%.

Everybody dies.
If you had one case in the house,
they would shut the house up.

So it wasn't a case of saying
goodbye to your father
and leaving because you were healthy.

You had to be locked in the house
with this person that you know
is your death sentence.

Why do you crazy people
keep things like plague?

Why not just destroy it all?

You need to understand your enemy,
so we spend a lot of time here
understanding plague, understanding

how it causes disease,
so we can test antibiotics.
And there's a need for a vaccine.

The only way you can protect
large populations of people,
really, is with a vaccine.

We are just as vulnerable to plague
now as we've ever been?

As individuals, yes.

I would hope that in the developed
world we would be somewhat better
equipped than medieval London,

although the impact would still be
massive if you had a similar outbreak
like you had in the 1300s.

Seven centuries later,
we're still working on a vaccine
that's effective against the plague.

14th century medicine
stood no chance.

Three weeks after Mims
wrote his will, he was dead.

When his widow came to make her
will, she made no mention of her

two daughters, and we can only
assume that they too had perished.

Swift, virulent and incurable,
the Black Death wiped out
entire families in days.

In London's dirty,
overcrowded streets,
the spread was irresistible.

The city's authorities were
powerless to contain the outbreak.

All they could do was try to deal
with the accelerating death toll.

Contemporary accounts
reported that over 200 bodies
a day were being buried.

The Black Death gripped London
for up to two years.

It claimed the lives
of half the city's population,
maybe as many as 50,000 people.

With half its workforce gone
and a third of its civic
government wiped out,

you might think that London would
have descended into total chaos.

But in fact,
something quite surprising happened.

One of the most revealing insights
into the way

London's authorities coped with
the epidemic, was the way

they dealt
with the huge number of dead.

Wow. So this
is a plague victim, is it, Jelena?

This skeleton is a male skeleton,

and he was found
from East Smithfield,

which is the catastrophe cemetery

just near the Tower of London. It's a
unique site, there isn't another site

like it in Great Britain,
and it's because it has such
tightly-dated parameters

for 1348/1350, that
we know the individuals buried there
died from the plague.

So this was a special cemetery
just for plague victims?

It was, yes. It was actually
planned and thought out and prepared
in trying to cope with the amount

of people that were dying so quickly.
So how exactly were they all buried?

There were individual burials,
and then also there were
these mass trenches,

that were very long lines,
and within that you had people that
were just neatly placed out in rows.

In the spaces in between the adults,
they often would find children.

The people, as they were buried,
were in the orientation that we
would expect, on an east to west,

very carefully, in nice, neat rows,
and not just thrown in rather
randomly, as you would think,

when you were faced with
a catastrophe like that and people
are dying very, very quickly.

You imagine the plague as sort
of anarchy or social breakdown,

but it sounds to me like if they're
setting aside bits of land,

digging neat trenches,
that someone's still in charge,
that the systems are in place?

Yeah, it is remarkable, because
if we think of the amount of people

that were dying, the rapidity of it,
everything really is sort
of falling apart almost,

but they were able to carry on,

put things into place, prepare
an area and try to cope with all of
those people dying, and so quickly.

It's very sobering. It makes you
think whether modern government,

even with all its resources would be
able to cope in the same way.

Yes, I'm not quite sure whether they
would. I always hope they would.

They don't like an
inch of snow, do they?

It seems the city strove to bury
its dead with dignity, even during
the horror of the plague years.

This refusal to submit
is an indication of 14th century
Londoners' astonishing resilience.

The city kept going,
in some ways, it was reborn.

The records show that despite
devastating fatalities,

the growing civil service
managed to hold things together.

This magnificent guildhall
was built just after the plague,

by the government of London, to show
off their power and prestige.

London was beginning to function
like a proper city.

The number of civil servants
tripled from just eight

at the start of the 1300s,

earning a total of £20 per year,

to 24, with an annual income of up
to £200, by the following century.

With a bigger,
better-funded civil service,

looking after
a greatly-reduced population,

London's government launched an
all-out assault on the city's grime.

The plague had focused Londoners'
minds on the filth around them.

A link between dirt and disease was
made, even if it was understood from
a distinctly medieval point of view.

The foul smells themselves,
evil miasmas, were thought
to be the cause of sickness.

Taking no chances after the
catastrophic scale of the plague,
London began to clean up its act.

The role of Sergeant of the Channels
was created, the first civil servant
charged with keeping the city clean.

The number of city cleaners
was ramped up, and the fine
for illegally dumping waste

shot up to a staggering £20, the
equivalent of over £10,000 today.

It didn't happen overnight,
but a cleaner London
was beginning to emerge.

But most crucially of all,
a new civic pride was borne
on London's grimy streets.

People were learning that
co-operation and collective action

were a necessity of urban life,
and the arrival of one man
would come to encapsulate the idea

of common good that was penetrating
to the heart of London's government.

When Dick Whittington first arrived
in London, he was a young man

with one thing on his mind -
making lots of money.

And indeed, he did make
a fortune in filthy London
and became lord mayor three times.

But he also embodies the new
collective, responsible spirit

of the age which followed
the catastrophe of the plague.

He spent his life
supporting charitable works.

He founded this church, for example.

And when he died, he left nearly all
of his money to improving the city,

building free toilets for the public
to use, and hospitals for the poor.

In the mid-20th century,
they tried to dig up his body,
which was buried in this church.

And they discovered no body.

What they did find
was a mummified cat.

'And the legacy lives on.'

First formed in the medieval period,
the governing body
of the square mile

is the City of London Corporation,
the oldest of its kind in the world.

And one of its key roles has always
been organising the collection and
disposal of its citizens' waste.

I've tried to catch a glimpse, and
hopefully that's all I've caught,

of how the muck and grime
that nearly destroyed London

seven centuries ago, in fact
laid the foundations on which
the modern metropolis was built.

Rubbish then, like now, was taken
outside the city and disposed
of away from the homes of Londoners.

It's amazing to think that so much
of London's waste is still moved
in an organised way by river.

It's a system
that really is the descendant of the
14th century's fight against filth.

And it's this ability to co-operate
and take collective action, even in
the face of a catastrophe

like the plague,
that would prove vital
to the expansion of urban life.

And London, once a filthy city,
would in time become the centre

of the richest and most
powerful empire in history,

and remains to this day,
one of the greatest cities on earth.

Next time on Filthy Cities,
revolutionary Paris.

Just 200 years ago, Paris was
famously one of the foulest
and smelliest cities in Europe.

I'll be sniffing out the rotten
story of how filth and squalor
drove Parisians to revolution.

I'll experience the most stinking
of Paris' gruelling industries,

recreate the foul smell
that choked the streets,

and come face to face with the
ultimate killing machine. Yikes!

All to understand how ordinary
Parisians fought to clean up their
ancient cesspit from the bottom up.

And you can join me in
my immersive journey online.

You can find out where to
get your scratch and sniff card,

then you'll be able to really
experience stinky Paris during its
most disgusting period in history.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk