- 2 days ago
Subscribe and chill with me while I explain the universe one strange fact at a time.
00:00 The Leech Collector
01:31 Treadmill Prison Laborer
03:03 The Fuller (a.k.a. Cloth Washer With Pee)
04:27 Resurrectionists (a.k.a. Grave Robbers for Science)
05:42 The Tosher (London Sewer Hunters)
07:09 The Powder Monkey (Cannon Helper on Warships)
08:32 Gong Farmers (Medieval Poop Collectors)
09:43 The Matchstick Girls (Victorian Factory Workers)
11:09 The Knocker-Up (Human Alarm Clock)
12:15 The Powdered Wig Maker (Mercury Madness)
00:00 The Leech Collector
01:31 Treadmill Prison Laborer
03:03 The Fuller (a.k.a. Cloth Washer With Pee)
04:27 Resurrectionists (a.k.a. Grave Robbers for Science)
05:42 The Tosher (London Sewer Hunters)
07:09 The Powder Monkey (Cannon Helper on Warships)
08:32 Gong Farmers (Medieval Poop Collectors)
09:43 The Matchstick Girls (Victorian Factory Workers)
11:09 The Knocker-Up (Human Alarm Clock)
12:15 The Powdered Wig Maker (Mercury Madness)
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00So let's start. Number 10, the leech collector. Picture yourself standing in waist-deep swamp
00:06water, barefoot, waiting for slimy leeches to wriggle up your legs and latch on. That's not
00:11a nightmare. That was the actual job description of leech collectors in the 18th and 19th centuries.
00:17Doctors were obsessed with bloodletting, and leeches were the miracle workers of the time.
00:22Demand was so high that someone had to supply these wriggly little vampires to apothecaries,
00:27and that someone was usually poor villagers, women, or children the cheapest labor around.
00:33The method was as brutal as it was simple. Step into infested ponds, let the leeches bite,
00:38then peel them off into jars, over and over. Collectors lost so much blood that anemia,
00:44fainting, and infections were occupational hazards. Some even collapsed mid-job and drowned in the very
00:51bogs they worked. To make it worse, leeches could carry nasty diseases, so donating your blood
00:56often meant donating your health too. At one point, leech collecting got so out of hand that leech
01:03populations nearly collapsed in parts of Europe. And all this suffering, for a medical practice that
01:08didn't even work half the time, most patients weren't even healed, they just got weaker. Imagine risking
01:14your life in a swamp only for the product to be about as useful as medieval snake oil. Leech collecting
01:20wasn't just unpleasant, it was slow-motion self-destruction, disguised as honest work. Next
01:26time you complain about mosquitoes at a picnic, just be glad you're not getting a paycheck to feed
01:31them. Number nine, treadmill prison laborer. When you think treadmill, you picture the gym maybe
01:36sweating while watching reruns of The Office. But the treadmill started out as a punishment device in
01:4319th century British prisons. And no, not the burn calories, live longer kind of punishment, because
01:49this was literally designed to crush people's souls. Invented by Sir William Cubitt in 1818,
01:57the prison treadmill was basically a giant hamster wheel for humans. Prisoners climbed endless wooden
02:03steps attached to a rotating drum hour after hour, day after day. Some treadmills powered mills or pumped
02:10water, but many did nothing at all. The point wasn't productivity, it was suffering. Prisoners endured
02:16six to ten hours of climbing daily, sometimes the equivalent of thousands of vertical feet. Their
02:22legs blistered, their knees gave out, and exhaustion was constant. Guards enforced silence so you couldn't
02:29even complain to your fellow inmates. One 1820's prison report described men collapsing, fainting,
02:35or being carried off the wheel entirely. The monotony was considered part of the punishment.
02:41Critics later called the treadmill monstrous torture, and by the late 1800's it was banned.
02:47Ironically, about 100 years later, gyms reinvented the treadmill as exercise equipment. So, yeah,
02:53when you're groaning about cardio, remember, the machine under your feet was first designed to
02:58psychologically and physically break prisoners, and honestly, it still kind of feels like it.
03:03Number eight, the fuller. Forget your laundry detergent smelling like lavender. In ancient
03:09Rome, washing clothes meant soaking them in human urine, and the poor souls who had to handle this
03:15every day were called fullers. Here's how it worked. Public urinals collected giant pots of urine,
03:21which was rich in ammonia. Ammonia is actually a decent cleaning agent, so fullers stomped dirty togas
03:28in vats of pee, squishing the fabric around with their bare feet. Imagine a grape stomping festival,
03:35but instead of making wine, you're making the worst smelling laundry service in history. The work
03:41was brutal. Hours of standing in caustic, liquid, corroded skin, blistered feet, and left workers smelling like
03:48a walking latrine. Fullers also used clay and lye, which burned the skin even worse. They weren't exactly
03:55respected members of society either. In fact, Roman writers joked about how fullers could never wash
04:02off the stench of their own trade. And yet, this gross profession was absolutely essential. Freshly
04:08laundered togas were a status symbol, and wealthy Romans wanted their whites looking crisp. So fullers
04:15had steady work, but at the cost of permanent stink and total social humiliation. So yeah, laundry day has
04:22always been miserable, but at least modern detergent doesn't come from your neighbor's chamber pots.
04:27Number seven, resurrectionists, aka grave robbers for science. In the 18th and 19th centuries, medical
04:34schools desperately needed cadavers for anatomy lessons. Problem, society didn't really like the idea of
04:41legally donating bodies. Solution, hire resurrectionists who snuck into graveyards at night and dug up fresh
04:48corpses. Sounds like a horror movie, right? For many families it was. People buried loved ones with
04:53iron cages called mort safes, or even armed guards to keep resurrectionists away. But the demand was huge,
05:00and the pay was good. Sometimes a body could fetch the equivalent of several months' wages. For the
05:05resurrectionists, though, it was a nightmare profession. Digging graves in secrecy was grueling,
05:11filthy, and dangerous. They risked collapsing soil, fights with rival body snatchers, and mob justice if
05:18caught. Families sometimes attacked suspected robbers, and courts often punished them severely.
05:24The ultimate scandal came with Burke and Hare in Scotland, who decided grave robbing was too much work
05:30and just started murdering people to sell their corpses. Career advancement in this field could mean
05:35digging up the dead or helping make more of them. Either way, it was one of history's grimiest,
05:40most terrifying jobs. Number six, the Tosher. Imagine wading waist deep through Victorian London's
05:47sewers, armed with a lantern, a pole, and a sack. That was the life of the Toshers, men who made
05:54a
05:54living scavenging for lost valuables in the city's underbelly. If coins, jewelry, and discarded goods,
06:01if it slipped into the drains, a Tosher might find them. Sounds adventurous, right? Only if your
06:06definition of adventure includes drowning in human waste. Toshers had to crawl through cramped,
06:12pitch-black tunnels filled with raw sewage, rats, and toxic gases. Methane could ignite from a lantern,
06:19while hydrogen sulfide might silently knock you unconscious. Then there were the infamous flushes,
06:24sudden surges of water when storms hit, or toilets above were emptied, sweeping unlucky Toshers into
06:30oblivion. And let's not forget the constant risk of infection. Cuts from debris often turned septic,
06:36and many died from cholera and typhoid. Despite the misery, Toshers kept at it because the pay
06:41could actually be decent. A dropped gold ring or silver spoon might fetch more than a week's honest
06:47wages. Some even worked in family teams, bringing along children to squeeze into the tightest pipes.
06:52Victorian society both despised and relied on them, disgusted by their work, yet quietly grateful when
06:59lost valuables were returned. So yeah, treasure hunting in the sewers wasn't quite Indiana Jones,
07:05it was more like fear factor meets a very unhygienic death trap. Number five, the powder monkey,
07:12cannon helper on warships. If you were a scrawny teenager in the 18th or 19th century, congratulations,
07:19you might get stuck as a powder monkey. These kids, some as young as 10, were tasked with ferrying gunpowder
07:25from the ship's magazine to the cannons during naval battles. Picture sprinting back and forth across
07:31a ship that's rocking violently, carrying bags of explosives, while cannon fire and musket balls
07:37whizz past your head. Not exactly a safe summer job. The magazines where powder was stored were basically
07:44giant bombs waiting to go off. One stray spark could vaporize the whole ship. That meant powder
07:50monkeys often worked barefoot or with cloth-wrapped shoes to avoid static. On deck, they dodged falling
07:57rigging, splinters, and enemy gunfire, knowing a single mistake could turn them into confetti.
08:02Many didn't survive long enough to grow out of the job. Captains valued powder monkeys because they were
08:07quick and small, able to weave between gunners, but the pay was miserable, and the trauma was lifelong.
08:14Accounts describe boys permanently deaf from cannon blasts, scarred from burns, or emotionally broken
08:21from watching crewmates torn apart beside them. So next time you hear the term child labor, remember
08:27that some kids were sprinting across death traps with explosives strapped to their backs.
08:32Number four, gong farmers, medieval poop collectors. In medieval England, cities didn't have plumbing,
08:38they had cesspits, giant holes under buildings where human waste collected for months or years,
08:43and eventually, someone had to clean those out. Enter the gong farmers, whose entire job was
08:49shoveling, hauling, and carting away other people's filth. Work started at night, when the smell was
08:54slightly less unbearable and fewer people were around to gag. Gong farmers climbed into cesspits,
09:00often chest-deep in sewage, and filled buckets to be hauled up and dumped into carts. They risked collapsing
09:05pits, suffocation from toxic fumes, and drowning in sludge. Records tell of workers overcome by gases like
09:12methane and simply never coming back out. Despite the disgust, gong farmers were paid surprisingly
09:17well, sometimes several times more than a skilled craftsman. But they were social outcasts. People
09:23crossed the street to avoid them and laws restricted where they could live. Even after a wash, the stench
09:30clung to their clothes and skin, branding them for life. The job was basically a professional poop
09:36wrangler. Necessary, yes, but also proof that in history, somebody always got stuck with humanity's
09:42dirtiest work. Number three, the matchstick girls. In the 1800s, cheap matches were big business.
09:49Factories in London and beyond churned them out by the millions, employing mostly poor young women and
09:54girls. The job sounded simple. Dip sticks into phosphorus, dry them, and pack them into boxes.
10:00But there was one problem. Phosphorus is extremely toxic. Day after day, workers inhaled phosphorus
10:07fumes that caused a horrifying condition called Fosse jaw. Their teeth rotted, gums turned black,
10:14and pieces of jawbone literally died and crumbled out of their mouths. The pain was excruciating,
10:21and the stench made the victims social pariahs. Many girls also suffered lung damage, miscarriages,
10:26and early deaths all for pennies a day. Factory owners knew about the dangers but ignored them,
10:32because profits came first. Some even fined workers for missing shifts, forcing sick girls
10:39to keep working until they collapsed. The scandal finally broke into public view in the late 1800s
10:45when striking match girls demanded better conditions and helped push reforms. Looking back,
10:50the matchstick girls story is both tragic and inspiring, a reminder of how dangerous normal
10:56factory jobs once were, and how workers literally had to risk their lives just to light other people's
11:03cigars. Number two, the knocker up. Before alarm clocks were affordable, there was a bizarre profession.
11:09The knocker up. From the 1700s to the early 1900s, working class people in Britain and Ireland hired human
11:17alarm clocks to wake them up for their shifts. The knocker ups tools? A long stick, a peashooter,
11:23or even just a loud knock on the window. Sounds harmless. Not exactly. Knocker ups had to work
11:28brutal hours, wandering city streets from 2am to dawn in all weather. They battled freezing rain,
11:34howling winds, and aggressive stray dogs just to make sure grumpy factory workers got out of bed.
11:39If you had a customer on the fifth floor, you'd better have strong lungs or a good aim with that
11:44peashooter. The job didn't pay much, and it came with plenty of hazards, drunks starting fights,
11:49thieves lurking in alleys, and sheer exhaustion from walking miles every night. And if you failed
11:54to wake someone, you risked being fired, or worse. Still, knocker ups kept society running during the
12:01industrial revolution, making sure factories and trains started on time. They were eventually replaced
12:07by cheap alarm clocks, which, let's be honest, are still annoying, but at least they don't need to stand
12:12outside your window at 4am, pelting peas at the glass. Number one, the powdered wig maker.
12:18Finally, let's talk about one of the fanciest, yet most miserable jobs in history. Wig making in
12:24the 17th and 18th centuries. Those towering powdered wigs worn by nobles and judges. They weren't just a
12:32fashion statement, they were also a death sentence for the people who made them. Wig makers used mercury
12:37nitrate to treat animal furs, which gave the wigs their smooth, shiny look. The problem? Mercury vapor
12:44is incredibly toxic. Inhaling it day after day caused tremors, memory loss, mood swings, and eventually,
12:53organ failure. The phrase, mad as a hatter, actually came from a similar mercury-related trade,
12:59but wig makers weren't far behind. Workers often died young, while their wealthy clients strutted around
13:05oblivious showing off their prestige hair. Even the powder used on wigs contained toxic ingredients
13:11like lead and arsenic, so both makers and wearers weren't exactly safe. But the fashion craze was
13:17unstoppable, at least until natural hairstyles and hygiene started winning out. So, yeah, behind every
13:24nobleman's fabulous curls was some poor artisan slowly being poisoned to death. Fashion has always had its
13:30victims, but wig makers really paid the ultimate price. Thank you for watching and sticking till the
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