Life in the Towns of the Middle Ages
Disease was one of the great dangers always lurking in a town.
Plague of some kind or other was never very far away, and it
frequently made its presence felt. People had not realized the
sinfulness of dirt.
The best-drained buildings were the monasteries and colleges. Near
the ruins of every big monastery, from time to time, underground
passages have been discovered, many of them big enough for a man to
walk along upright, and leading nobody knows where. When these were
found, people shook their heads and said: "Ah, those old monks; you
don't know what they were up to! They made these secret passages,
going for miles and miles underground, so that they might get in
and out of the monastery, and be up to all sorts of mischief,
without anyone being the wiser."
Many wonderful tales have been told about these underground
passages; but, as a matter of fact, most, if not all of them,
have turned out to be sewers, which the monks made from their
monasteries to a watercourse some distance away, so that the sewage
might be safely got rid of. The monks were usually in advance of
the townsmen of those days in sanitary matters. No doubt a sanitary
engineer of the present day would be able to point out how much
better the drainage-works could have been carried out; but the
monks set an example in this matter which, bit by bit, the rest of
the nation began to follow.
The chief streets of the town and the market-place were paved with
huge lumps of stone, sloping towards the middle of the street from
the houses on each side of the way, a gutter or "denter" running
down the middle. All sorts of filth were flung into the gutter,
for there were no drains from the houses in early days. When a
heavy shower of rain fell, the water flushed the gutter more or
less. If the street happened to be pretty level, the gutter, or
denter, was just an open sewer all the year round; and it did its
deadly work in poisoning the worthy citizens, though they did not
realize it. Those towns were the best drained which were perched on
a steep slope, so that the contents of the gutter found their way
speedily to the nearest watercourse. By that means they got rid of
_some_ of the filth, but they did not improve the watercourse.
There were no great manufacturing towns in those days. Most of the
ordinary articles used by the townsfolk were manufactured in the
town itself, and much of the work went on in the open air. The
butcher killed his animals in the street, before his shop, and
that added to the horrors and stenches of the gutter. But then all
the butchers in a town were located in one part of it. Even now
most old towns have got a Shambles, or Butchers' Row, or Butchery
Street, or place of similar name, near the market-place. Other
trades had their own parts of the town, where they made and sold
their goods. Cordwinder Street or Shoemakers' Row are still common
street names. The smith and the armourer did much of their work out
in the open street; the joiner put together there any big piece of
woodwork which he had in hand; the wheel-wright "shut" his tyres;
the chandler melted fat and made candles. The streets of the town
must have been very noisy and very "smelly".
There were no footways for passengers. Wagons, drays, and
wheel-barrows there were, but carriages had hardly been invented,
and coaches and light-wheeled vehicles had not been dreamt of.
Travellers mostly went on horses or mules.
[Illustration: _The Shambles, York; a street that preserves its
narrow, mediæval character_]
No doubt the tradesmen were expected to clear up the mess they made
in front of their houses, and the apprentices had to sweep up. But
that usually meant only drawing the rubbish together to the great
refuse-heap close to the house, which the fowls and the pigs, to
say nothing of the children, speedily managed to scatter. Now
and then the town authorities would wake up and make a fuss, and
these heaps would be carted away to a spot outside the town; but
usually the street was looked upon as the handiest place into which
to fling any refuse from the houses. However clean the citizens'
houses might be inside, and however richly ornamented the woodwork
and the furniture, plague and pestilence were always very near.
Still, though many persons died, and were buried close by in the
little churchyard, where for hundreds of years the dead had been
buried, people lived, and throve, and did good work. For one thing,
they lived a great deal in the open air, and they were not so much
afraid of draughts in their houses as we are.
The water-supply of a town was a very important matter. Here,
again, the monasteries and colleges frequently led the way, and
showed how water might be brought by pipes from a distant spring.
It was not an uncommon thing for water to be brought in this way
to a "conduit" in the market-place, whence the people fetched it
as they needed. Many a good wealthy citizen has performed the
pious work of providing his town with a supply of water. Parts of
old water-pipes, some of wood and some of lead, laid for such a
purpose, have often been discovered in recent years.
Usually, however, a town had to depend upon wells for its
water-supply, and water drawn from the nearest stream; and with
open gutters running through the town it is very easy to see that
many of these wells supplied water which, at times, could not have
been pure, however bright and clear it may have looked, and it
could never be relied upon as really fit for drinking purposes.
In the villages the dangers arising from want of proper drainage
and from impure water were not quite so great as in the towns. Yet
even now, in this twentieth century, how to drain our villages
properly, and provide them with a good water-supply, is an urgent
problem in many places. For many years people have realized that
the evil exists, but we have been slow to apply the right remedy
because of the expense. And the nation has greatly suffered in
health in consequence. We have seen that the houses in the villages
were usually close together, and men had not realized that dirt
is one of the greatest enemies of mankind. There are a good many
people, even in our time, who see no great harm in having pigsties,
refuse-heaps, and manure-heaps close to their houses.
One of the most loathsome of the diseases common in Norman times
and later was leprosy. The lepers were kept out of the towns, but
at first very little was done for them. The refuse of the markets,
and the food that was so bad that it had to be carted outside the
town, was thought to be good enough for them. Gradually, however,
we find hospitals for lepers established. They were not what we
understand by hospitals, places where sick folk could be doctored
and nursed and cured; they were religious houses which poor lepers
might enter, and in which they might have safe shelter, care, and
attention for the rest of their sad lives. They were always built
outside the walls of the towns.
Other hospitals for poor and suffering people were also
established. They were not large buildings, with wards holding
scores of people. They were little religious houses, each with its
chapel and priests to carry on its services, providing homes for
small numbers--perhaps half a dozen or a dozen. Almost every town
had a number of these hospitals.
Kings, bishops, earls, and citizens all took part in this good
work. Every founder expected that every day "for ever" he and
his family should be prayed for by the inmates. Some hospitals
were "founded" or established as thank-offerings for escape from
some great danger; some to "make up" for some wrong that had been
done and could never be put right, and to show that the founder
was "really sorry"; some were built for good reasons, others for
selfish reasons. Nowadays we arrange fêtes and demonstration, whist
drives, entertainments, bazaars, sales of work, jumble sales,
dances, for our hospital funds, Red Cross funds, and orphan funds,
and we are asked to buy tickets because "it's a good cause". We get
some enjoyment for ourselves and help the hospital; thus, as it
were, doing good and receiving good at the same time. We need not
look down upon our ancestors as being merely selfish creatures.
[Illustration: _Hospital of St. Cross, Winchester, founded 1136.
Under the archway beneath the tower the wayfarers "dole" is still
distributed_]