LIFE IN THE TOWNS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
1. 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.
2. 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."
3. 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 some water-course, so that the sewage might be safely carried away.
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.
4. 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. 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, high and low, rich and
poor, 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 water-course.
5. 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 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 wood-work 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".
6. 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.
7. 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
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 wood-work, plague
and pestilence was always very near.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. Usually, however, a town had to depend upon wells for its
water-supply; 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.
11. 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, are questions needing
attention in many places. 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.
12. One of the most loathsome of the diseases common in the 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.
13. =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.
14. 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 demonstrations for our hospital 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.
=Summary.=--The monasteries in the Middle Ages were the
best-drained buildings. "Underground passages" often met with
near old monastery ruins were, for the most part, _sewers_. The
gutter which ran down the middle of the town streets formed a kind
of sewer. Towns on the slope of a hill were the best drained. In
the Middle Ages there were no big manufacturing towns. Each town
supplied most of its own wants. Different trades had their own
quarters in the town, which is shown in some old street-names.
Refuse was left lying about the streets, and the dead were buried
in churchyards in the town. In some cases water was brought from
a distance in wooden or leaden pipes to "conduits" in the town.
Most towns depended on wells, which were often tainted with sewage
matter. _Leper hospitals_ were founded and placed outside the
walls of nearly all the towns. Other hospitals sprang up in the
towns. None of them were large, or at all like our hospitals.
They were alms-houses and homes, not places where folk went to be
healed.