Historian Dan Snow gets down and dirty in medieval grime to discover the hard way how the London we know was forged in the filth of the 14th century.
State-of-the-art CGI reveals London's streets as they were 700 years ago, and Dan steps into the shoes of a medieval Londoner - wooden platforms designed to help him rise above the disgusting mess underfoot. He spends the night as a medieval muck-raker shifting a staggering six-tonnes of excrement, and has a go at medieval butchery to find out what the authorities were up against.
He also examines the remains of a plague victim to discover how a catastrophic epidemic would help a new and cleaner London emerge from the muck of the past.
State-of-the-art CGI reveals London's streets as they were 700 years ago, and Dan steps into the shoes of a medieval Londoner - wooden platforms designed to help him rise above the disgusting mess underfoot. He spends the night as a medieval muck-raker shifting a staggering six-tonnes of excrement, and has a go at medieval butchery to find out what the authorities were up against.
He also examines the remains of a plague victim to discover how a catastrophic epidemic would help a new and cleaner London emerge from the muck of the past.
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TVTranscript
00:00World Finance Hub, heart of British government, home to millions.
00:10Today's London is a well-oiled machine, a truly global city.
00:15And at its heart lies the Square Mile,
00:18the historic core from which the modern metropolis grew.
00:22The City of London is 2,000 years old.
00:25Every street, every square is built on layer upon layer of history.
00:29But London has a hidden past, a filthy secret,
00:33and it's this untold story that I want to uncover.
00:37Because so much of the London we know today
00:40was born from the dirt and disease of the 14th century,
00:43a time when the city's authorities were so overwhelmed
00:46by an explosion of people and their filth
00:48that nothing short of a catastrophe would force them to clean up their act.
00:52This is the story of how filth shaped this city,
00:56of how 700 years ago dirt and squalor and disease reached such epidemic proportions
01:03that they sparked a revolutionary attitude,
01:05a revolution that would see all Londoners come together to declare war on filth.
01:11And as I'll discover, it was a truly disgusting battle.
01:16From rivers of animal guts to mountains of excrement,
01:20deadly diseases and bloody cures,
01:23the medieval authorities had a dirty fight on their hands.
01:27I'm going to get down and dirty in 14th century grime
01:30to find out the hard way just how much filth medieval London had to put up with
01:35and discover how this clean and modern city began to emerge from the muck of the past.
01:53This is London Bridge, a major thoroughfare leading into the city of London,
01:57as it was 700 years ago.
02:00Today it's packed with thousands of commuters heading to work in the square mile,
02:04but in half an hour it'll be all but empty and there'll be a chance to catch your breath.
02:08In 14th century London, though, there'd be no such let-up.
02:12As the only bridge over the Thames, it was a busy thoroughfare,
02:15seething with people, animals and filth.
02:19In such a prime location, space was at a premium.
02:23Precarious high-rises crowded on either side.
02:26Shopfronts opened out onto the road, leaving only a single lane for traffic.
02:31At times, it was virtually impossible.
02:35But it wasn't just the bridge that was like this.
02:38It was the whole city all day, every day, because London was at bursting point.
02:42The population had gone up by nearly 500% in the previous two centuries,
02:47overwhelming any attempt at town planning.
02:53By the start of the 14th century,
02:55London had grown from a small town of around 17,000 people
02:59into a thriving city with as many as 100,000 inhabitants,
03:03all hemmed in between the river and the old Roman walls.
03:07There was no escaping the filth.
03:10So why were they all here?
03:18Reaching its peak at the start of the 14th century,
03:22London had been growing for 200 years,
03:25ever since a radical change of ownership.
03:30After Norman conquest in 1066,
03:33London became the centre of a great empire that stretched at its height
03:37from across the British Isles and down to the Pyrenees.
03:40It was a time of relative peace and prosperity, so the economy boomed,
03:44and London, which had once been a wooden city, was now recast in stone.
03:51London, more wealthy and valuable than ever,
03:54was granted the power to self-govern by successive writs and royal charters.
03:59The mighty Tower of London, imposing stone bastion of royal power,
04:04built by the king to protect his capital,
04:07but also a symbol of just how important London was to the crown.
04:11The tower and the city, cheek by jowl.
04:14The king needed the financial support of his richest city,
04:18and Londoners were happy to have strong, stable government
04:21as long as it didn't interfere in their affairs.
04:26Enjoying a certain autonomy from the crown,
04:29London offered a way out of what for many was a tyrannical system.
04:35Out in the countryside, the Normans had confiscated land
04:38and imposed a system of enforced labour
04:40that turned many people into serfs, little better than slaves.
04:44But here in London, it was much freer.
04:47The king trod more warily when it came to his rich and volatile capital city.
04:52It had its own laws.
04:54For example, if a serf could escape here and survive for a year and a day,
04:58he'd become a free man.
05:00And once you were here, the opportunities were endless.
05:03Just like today, London offered the chance to forge a new life,
05:07choose from a variety of trades,
05:09have the opportunity to join a guild or enter the world of commerce.
05:14With its safe harbour, trade flowed in and out along the Thames.
05:18Vast amounts of English wool were exported to Europe,
05:22whilst wine, spices and fur headed into the city.
05:26Myth has it that London was once the capital of England,
05:31Myth has it that London was so prosperous
05:34that the streets were paved with gold.
05:37If you wanted to make it big, this was the place to do it.
05:42When they arrived, they discovered that the streets were not paved with gold.
05:46Far from it.
05:48So what was beneath the feet of a 14th-century Londoner?
05:53The first ingredient, because it is England after all, is soaking wet mud.
05:58With few pavements or solid road surfaces,
06:01the ground underfoot was just earth,
06:03wet and sticky all winter and choking dust in the summer.
06:07Ingredient number two, animal dung.
06:10There were as many animals as people in London.
06:13Horses, dogs and pigs jostled with people for space in the streets.
06:18Animal entrails.
06:20Any part of a carcass not worth eating would have been dumped in the road.
06:24Old rotting fish.
06:26Metal and a popular alternative to meat on holy days.
06:29Beer, a safer option than drinking polluted medieval water.
06:32And then a few hours later, urine.
06:35Privies were a luxury not everyone could afford.
06:37Many people used a chamber pot and then emptied it out of the window.
06:41Right, I collected up all this mess.
06:45It only remains to dump it on the streets.
06:51That smells completely disgusting.
06:53The idea that it would have been spread around permanently is just terrible.
06:56And of course it would have been mulched into the streets
06:58with a hundred thousand Londoners walking on it daily.
07:01There we go.
07:03That really does release the smell as well.
07:06Bear in mind, of course, lots of the sewers would be full.
07:09There'd just be ditches anyway.
07:11There wouldn't be a proper way of cleaning the streets.
07:15So especially in hot summery weather, this stuff would just sit around for weeks.
07:19And there are stories of whole streets being made impassable.
07:22You just couldn't get from one end to the other.
07:24Londoners, they weren't stupid. They're just like you and me.
07:27And so they came up with solutions.
07:29They did not want to walk through this stuff.
07:31So they came up with ingenious solutions, in fact.
07:33New ways were invented to lift you above the squalor.
07:36Like these wooden overshoes, known as pattens.
07:41There we go.
07:43And of course they've got quite proficient in these, unlike me.
07:46We know about these because they've been found in archaeological digs.
07:50I'm in Wellies and it's pretty disgusting.
07:52So you really would have wanted a way to be lifted above the muck.
07:56Because of course there were no waterproof shoes in those days.
07:58So they were walking the streets in leather.
08:00And on these, although they're quite unsteady,
08:02you can actually just about walk through the sludge.
08:12But there's one vital ingredient for the medieval street that I've avoided so far.
08:17It's also the most disgusting.
08:20It's something we're all familiar with,
08:22but these days we've perfected ways of neutralising it.
08:28Well, the smell's getting worse every step I take towards this building.
08:32I still can't believe I'm voluntarily doing this.
08:34That smell is basically poo particles in the air attacking my nose.
08:39Oh, that's appalling.
08:41Oh, God.
08:43I'm doing another history programme if I spend my time in the library.
08:47This is Cross Ness Sewage Works in south-east London,
08:51where the waste for over 2 million people is treated every day.
08:56There's enough excrement here to fill 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools every hour.
09:01Oh, Jill, what is this place?
09:03This is our fine screen plant, where our aim is to get out as much rag as we can.
09:08You can see a little raft of it there.
09:10And once you've taken all the rubbish out, you just leave concentrated human waste.
09:14Is that what this is? Yeah, this is sewage.
09:16We still produce all this waste,
09:18but now we've just worked out a sophisticated way of dealing with it.
09:20But back then, they couldn't have escaped this.
09:22This was running down their street in the local brook through the Thames.
09:26It was just all around the whole time.
09:28But this smell!
09:30In the 14th century, of course, they had no public sanitation.
09:34Undiluted raw sewage collected in open gutters in the street.
09:38It would have smelled a whole lot worse.
09:41The time has come to get face-to-face
09:44with the final ingredient that we're missing from that medieval street.
09:49Yeah, there's a little valve here that's going to allow me to see
09:52some of this vital ingredient of medieval London.
09:56Now, the trouble is I'm slightly concerned because it's under very, very high pressure.
09:59The last thing I want to do is spray it all over myself.
10:02Here it comes, like Mr. Whippy.
10:05Whoa! Whoa!
10:11A little bit of splashing there.
10:14Right, so here it is.
10:16The ingredient that every Londoner would have been familiar with.
10:20This is obviously incredibly smelly because the gas is associated with it,
10:23but it's also home to some of the deadliest pathogens known to man,
10:26like salmonella and E. coli.
10:29Now we've managed to contain it in these big tanks and this little bottle here,
10:33back then it would have been everywhere.
10:36So, here goes.
10:42That's unbelievable.
10:45Oh, God.
10:47Can I go now?
10:52A squalid state of London's streets may suggest its citizens were free to run riot.
10:58But this was far from the case.
11:01So, who was in charge?
11:05So, Ian, it's not like London's a sort of anarchy.
11:08I mean, there is government here, isn't there?
11:10There certainly is government.
11:12In fact, London has had its charter for over 200 years,
11:15by the time the 14th century begins,
11:17and that charter gives it privileges which it defends vigorously.
11:21It elects, by the 14th century, its own mayor,
11:24and that mayor is selected from 24 aldermen.
11:2724 aldermen are each head of a ward for the specific bits of the city.
11:31So, it's got a very strong administrative structure.
11:34Even so, the civic government was more concerned with law and order
11:38and regulating trade than dealing with unprecedented filth.
11:43Cleanliness was a luxury few could afford.
11:46Most people used the streets to trade or work in,
11:48and, of course, as a place to dump their waste.
11:51So, this street follows the line of the original medieval street.
11:54Can you give me any sense of what it must have been like here?
11:57Much darker. You'd have found the houses either side
12:00leaning out over to the middle of the street.
12:02So, each storey was built up higher on each side.
12:05So, you could perhaps have just reached across
12:07and touched the house on the other side,
12:09but you wouldn't have been looking up.
12:11You'd have been looking down at your feet
12:13and avoiding whatever you might have trodden in.
12:15Every holder of a tenement was meant to clear the area outside their house,
12:19but, of course, not many did.
12:21When you think how few latrines there are in London
12:24and how much effort is required to shift everything out of the city,
12:28you realise that it's not surprising that people do leave things on the street.
12:33The infrastructure isn't there.
12:35The history of cleanliness is a bit like a small child who's going to go to the loo.
12:39They don't mention anything until they're absolutely desperate.
12:42And our records are the records of absolute desperation,
12:45where we can't put up with these terrible smells any longer.
12:48We do have areas which really were revolting.
12:53And one of the most desperate stories of medieval waste management
12:57occurred in what used to be Ebgate Lane.
13:01Two proto-dodgy plumbers, Hockeel and Witt, decided to build some toilets.
13:06Like most medieval latrines, they were simply seats with a hole cut out and a long drop.
13:11But according to the Book of Customs from 1321,
13:14their design left something to be desired.
13:18By building their toilets as far out as possible,
13:21they may have kept their own walls clean,
13:23but it meant human filth now rained down onto the passers-by below.
13:28The street became impassable.
13:34Hockeel and Witt were hauled in front of the mayor when they were hit with a big fine,
13:38but I bet their neighbours wish they'd been hit with something else.
13:43And it wasn't just Ebgate Lane that was overflowing with filth.
13:48All over the Square Mile, the street names give a vivid impression
13:52of what conditions were like within the boundaries of the medieval city.
13:56Some still exist.
13:58Gutter Lane, Seething Lane, Staining Lane.
14:01Testament to their grubby history.
14:04While others have been renamed to hide their mucky past.
14:08This is Sherbourne Lane. Sounds rather genteel.
14:11But 700 years ago, it had a far less salubrious name.
14:20So were Londoners just mad putting up with all this filth?
14:23How did they really feel about it?
14:25What was the medieval mindset like when it came to dealing with poo?
14:28Well, remarkably, we do know the answers to some of these questions,
14:31and they're hidden deep within the bowels of this building.
14:36I'm about to have a look at a very rare and valuable document,
14:39one of very few that survives from this period,
14:42and it's going to give me a great sense of what life was actually like
14:45for normal Londoners in the 14th century.
14:48It's held here at the London Metropolitan Archive,
14:51and it's hardly been touched for 700 years.
15:00This is the Assize of Nuisance.
15:04It's basically a list of grievances brought by the people of London
15:07to the attention of the government.
15:09It's absolutely beautiful. It's hard to believe it's 700 years old.
15:13Many of these complaints actually refer to the issue of filth,
15:17and to me it's such an important reminder that Londoners
15:20weren't just the impotent victims of the mess that lay all around them,
15:23they were actually trying to do something about it.
15:26There were regulations in place to stop Londoners
15:29throwing their waste onto the streets,
15:31even though they were often ignored.
15:34And these records show that some people were coming up
15:37with ingenious ways of getting rid of it,
15:39often giving their neighbours cause to complain.
15:42Here's a classic.
15:44The case of Henry de Young and John Koenig from 1347.
15:48The Assize concerns their waste pipe, which they had diverted
15:52to pump their effluent into the cellar of the property next door.
15:56This fantastic case of medieval nimbyism
15:59was investigated and upheld by the Mayor and Alderman
16:02who ordered the pipe to be removed within 40 days.
16:06If this manuscript's going to last another 700 years,
16:09people like me with sweaty, dirty hands
16:12are going to have to wear these gloves when they handle it.
16:15The next example is that of Alice Wade.
16:19Just here, I think.
16:24Now, she didn't really want to pipe her waste into the streets,
16:28so instead she came up with an ingenious solution
16:31of sending it into the rainwater gutter.
16:34She made a wooden pipe to channel it away.
16:37The problem was the poo often blocked up the gutter,
16:40so her neighbours were greatly inconvenienced by the stench.
16:44Again, she was given 40 days to remove the nuisance.
16:49Londoners were becoming increasingly sick
16:52of taking crap from their neighbours.
16:54With so many peed off citizens, the authorities had their work cut out.
17:00It's all too easy to imagine medieval London as one great anarchic mess.
17:04In fact, this document is a sharp reminder
17:07that we're dealing with a complex, regulated society.
17:10These are just some of the many attempts that were made
17:13to overcome the problems created by that number of people
17:16living in such close proximity with each other.
17:19And the fact they all too often failed to deal with those problems
17:22doesn't mean they were bad or stupid.
17:24It just shows that the sheer scale of that challenge
17:27overwhelmed their resources.
17:36Punishing individuals in a city of thousands
17:38wasn't going to get the streets clean.
17:40Even fines, which were hard to enforce,
17:42did little to change the culture of medieval fly-tipping.
17:45In 1309...
17:47In 1309, a charge of 40p was levied
17:50on those found dumping rubbish outside their own house or anyone else's.
17:53The trouble is, wealthy Londoners seemed quite happy to pay the fine
17:56if and when they got caught,
17:58and the city was probably pretty glad to collect the money.
18:01As if nothing could stop the people making a mess,
18:04it fell to the authorities to clean it up.
18:06And they came up with three professions
18:09without which no modern city could survive.
18:13For years, muck-rangers have been on the city's books,
18:16gathering filth and rubbish from the streets
18:19and taking it by cart or boat beyond the city walls.
18:22They were the first street cleaners.
18:25By the turn of the century,
18:27surveyors of the pavement were added to the payroll,
18:29paid for by each ward.
18:31They were there to preserve the pavement
18:33and remove all nuisances of filth.
18:35The bin men had arrived.
18:40It all seems rather obvious.
18:42I mean, London would grind to a halt today without these guys,
18:45because that's exactly what was happening in medieval London.
18:47It was grinding to a halt under its own grime.
18:50And the task of cleaning London 700 years ago was so massive
18:54that it would become one of the most disgusting jobs in history.
18:58I'm going to find out exactly what they were up against
19:02by having a go at the worst job of all,
19:04the third and final role created in medieval London.
19:09The inventively named gong farmers,
19:11they were early drain cleaners, I suppose,
19:14and they had to go round cleaning out cesspits and privies,
19:18which meant using one of these and one of these,
19:21they had to clean up a lot of that.
19:32That smells appalling. It's also really warm.
19:45HE COUGHS
19:47Oh, gag every time it does that.
19:49If you're wondering why we're dumping horse manure
19:52on a street in the city of London,
19:54it's because we have a record of one particular gong farmer,
19:57a guy called Thomas Mason.
19:59Now, this superhuman gong farmer managed to clean up, on this street,
20:03six tonnes of human and animal waste in one night.
20:07So that's one man, one street, six tonnes.
20:11One man, one street, six tonnes.
20:14Thomas Mason, just how tough are you?
20:18The gong farmers faced a mammoth task.
20:21Medieval Londoners produced around 50 tonnes of excrement every day.
20:25There were no proper sewers, so all of it had to be removed by hand
20:29and dug out of the cesspits of all the privies and public latrines in London.
20:33HE COUGHS
20:35Inhaling all that horse poo is getting a little boring.
20:38They had to be emptied regularly to stop the build-up of noxious smells
20:42and often at night to make sure they could be kept open all day.
20:51Not only was the work disgusting, it was also fraught with danger.
20:57It's hard enough shifting a pile that's sitting on the street.
21:02Down in the cesspits, filled with thousands of litres of raw excrement,
21:06there was a chance of being asphyxiated by the fumes
21:09or worse, picking up a lethal disease lurking in the rotting faeces.
21:13Very inefficient.
21:15As one celebrated case illustrates, medieval cleaners could come to a sticky end.
21:24Richard, a successful muckraker, was fortunate enough to own his own privy
21:29in his house in the parish of Little St Bartholomew.
21:32According to the coroner's roll of 1326,
21:35despite slaving away cleaning up other people's filth,
21:38it appears that Richard had a rather unfortunate accident in his own.
21:44The floorboards of his privy had become so rotten they could no longer take his weight.
21:51Richard dropped into his own excrement and died.
21:56Only for his body to be discovered by fellow muckraker,
21:59William Scott.
22:03But the gong farmer's revolting and hazardous profession wasn't without its perks.
22:09The reason they did this, frankly, awful work
22:13because actually, it was very well rewarded.
22:16The average wage for a normal labourer doing anything else
22:20was about six pence a day.
22:22A gong farmer could get 18 pence
22:26for clearing away one tonne of waste.
22:29So he's earning several times that of an equivalent labourer.
22:33In fact, we know that what a gong farmer could earn in just 11 nights,
22:37it would take a skilled labourer six months to earn.
22:40Where there's muck, there's brass.
22:43And London had plenty of muck.
22:46So much of it, in fact, that the city's army of cleaners
22:49found themselves fighting a losing battle.
22:52London, like Richard the raker, continued to flounder in its own waste.
22:57So what did the gong farmers do with all this mess once they'd collected it up?
23:01Well, they were supposed to take it far outside the city walls and dump it.
23:06Some of them could make extra money selling it as fertiliser.
23:10But truth be told, a lot of them just got rid of it inside the city
23:14on someone else's patch.
23:16Or, of course, they just threw it in the Thames.
23:19Take it away!
23:22So it wasn't just the streets that were beginning to overflow with filth.
23:34Well, I've been up all night shovelling horse poo.
23:37The smell's still in my nose.
23:39I've got poo on my clothes, on my skin.
23:42What I need is something to wash it off with.
23:45I've got poo on my clothes, on my skin.
23:48What I need is a bath.
23:52Despite the common use of London's waterways for dumping waste into,
23:56they were also the place many people went to bathe.
24:00In the Middle Ages, from king to commoner, you'd have stunk the 21st century nose.
24:04But it was a common misperception.
24:06They were all dirty people.
24:08They weren't. They used to wash their hands and their faces.
24:11And they associated cleanliness with godliness.
24:14Dirt was for the devil.
24:16They wouldn't have had that much chance to wash, of course.
24:19In the winter, the rivers all froze over,
24:21so it had been limited to a few baths every summer in the Thames.
24:30It's pretty chilly, given it's the height of summer,
24:32but, like the gong farmers, I'm going to go and wash myself off in the Thames.
24:35Like them, of course, I don't have any soap.
24:42The trouble is, of course, as the population of medieval London expanded,
24:45this river became a dumping ground for all their waste.
24:48So, whilst some people were trying to bathe in it, even drink from it,
24:51just up the way, there might be people pooing in it.
24:55By 1345, one Thames dock had become so corrupted by dung and other filth
25:01that the city's government insisted on a tax on all boats using it,
25:05a tax which in turn was used to pay five carters to cleanse it.
25:09If the water remained fouled, the men were to be thrown into prison.
25:15The rising tide of excrement wasn't the only dirty problem
25:18the mayor and the aldermen had on their hands.
25:21London's commercial success had created great wealth and power,
25:25and that brought a different kind of filth to the city.
25:29Like it or not, putting up with the grime was the price Londoners had to pay
25:33to be close to the action.
25:37By the 14th century, the kings of England had decided
25:40they needed a permanent seat for royal government,
25:43and they chose Westminster, about a mile upriver from the city of London,
25:47where the river water was a lot fresher,
25:49and they built this magnificent palace to protect the city.
25:53The Palace of Westminster occupied a prime riverfront location
25:57to the west and upwind of the busy, dirty city of London.
26:03And around it formed a more upmarket community,
26:06a magnet for nobility, courtiers and the rich.
26:11Now one of London's wealthiest areas, back then,
26:14it was a place of luxury and luxury.
26:17And this giant Westminster Hall is the oldest surviving part of that palace.
26:21Anyone who wanted to be close to royal power,
26:24to come to the courts of justice that were held in this hall,
26:27or the coronation banquets also held in here,
26:30or attend Parliament that was next door,
26:32needed to have a house of honour, a palace of honour,
26:35and a house of honour.
26:37And it was here that the royal family lived.
26:40It was here that the royal family lived.
26:43And that new class of people brought with them great wealth
26:46and an insatiable appetite for luxury goods,
26:49and the City of London was ideally placed to meet those demands.
26:54Many London merchants grew rich furnishing this extravagance,
26:58and they, in turn, wanted to emulate the luxury lifestyle.
27:06The word was out there was money in London.
27:10The word was out there was money in these filthy streets
27:13and fortunes to be made.
27:15As more and more people flocked to London to try and get a slice of the action,
27:19London experienced the growing pains of a city
27:22that was forced to exist in an area barely larger than that of a village.
27:29By the 14th century, the overcrowded capital had become filthier than ever,
27:34thanks to a mini-medieval industrial revolution.
27:39Foul chemicals from leather-tanning factories,
27:43putrid run-off from brewers,
27:45and fishmongers spilled into the streets and rivers.
27:49But there was one profession that saw London sink to new depths
27:52when it came to industrial waste.
27:56London's mercantile elite were keen to show off their wealth,
28:00and what better way to do it than to eat the food of kings?
28:03They demanded meat, and lots of it.
28:06Getting around that corner was interesting.
28:08700 years ago, without refrigeration,
28:11preserving meat meant drying, salting or pickling it.
28:15But to provide fresh meat, the only way was to walk a live beast into town,
28:19kill it...
28:20First of all, we've got to shave him.
28:22We need some hot water, so we've got a big copper on the go.
28:25..and butcher it at the point of sale.
28:27But butchery was a messy business.
28:30Records show that dealing with butcher's waste
28:32was an ongoing problem for the city's authorities.
28:36First-hand experience gives you some idea of what they were up against.
28:39And then we get the knives.
28:41There we go.
28:42Now, just imagine you're... Shaving.
28:44..doing your shaving, yeah.
28:45It wasn't just the butchers clogging up the streets
28:48with their foul animal remains.
28:50Furriers and tanners also plied their filthy trades inside the city walls.
28:54So they'd have done this on the street or in the cellar in the house?
28:57Where would they have done this?
28:58Well, you wouldn't want to do it indoors because it's pretty messy business.
29:01You've got all this sort of outer layer of skin
29:03and less useful hair coming off here.
29:05So the best thing to do is just do it out in the alley.
29:08So much waste was being dumped that in 1310,
29:11the scouring of furs was banned in the main streets.
29:15A year later, the flaying or skinning of horses
29:18were also completely outlawed in the city.
29:20We are creating a lot of mess here.
29:23It's all the stuff you exfoliate when you sort of get your pumice stone out.
29:26I'm not a regular exfoliator myself.
29:28I'm just constantly amazed.
29:30Why did people go to the cities in the first place?
29:32Fame, money, opportunity.
29:35Why do they do it now? It's still a nasty hellhole.
29:40Because this is lovely.
29:42There was some regulation.
29:44Butchers had specific areas of the city
29:46where they were allowed to do their dirty work.
29:48There were three open-air slaughterhouses,
29:50known as shambles in medieval London,
29:53where the blood of countless animals flowed into runnels
29:56directed towards the city's clogged gutters.
30:00Right. There's your spine.
30:02And without my fingers in the way,
30:04you're just going to smash straight through that.
30:06OK? Are you feeling accurate? Yeah. Go for it.
30:10That's better. That's sounding good.
30:12Whoa! Straight in.
30:14It gets sprayed with bone fragments.
30:16The smell is making me feel slightly queasy.
30:19Ah, the smell will get a lot worse when we open the insides up.
30:22Good.
30:25Pork was a popular favourite with medieval diners.
30:28A pig's ability to eat pretty much anything and turn it into protein
30:32meant that many people kept their own pigs.
30:35Pretty armoured. Is that enough?
30:37If you're not sure, if you stick your finger in
30:39and just see if it can pop through into the space.
30:41I can feel it. You're in.
30:43OK, so here we go. I need to hook the point and pull it down.
30:46Just work it down until it hits the breastbone.
30:48You can't go any further that way.
30:51That's a definite puncture. That's the gas coming out.
30:54It doesn't get that little whiff about it.
30:56God, that is disgusting.
30:58He's keen not to break that.
31:00Domestic pigs were supposed to be penned up,
31:03but records show regular complaints of them roaming the streets
31:06or breaking into gardens.
31:08Man, this is just disgusting.
31:10At one stage, there were so many escaped pigs fouling the city
31:14that killers of swine were appointed to keep the numbers down.
31:17Drop them into the bowl there.
31:19Let's let that knife down.
31:21The most disgusting part of my medieval butchery adventure
31:25is taking out the steaming entrails.
31:28This is extraordinary.
31:30Around five kilos of organs and stinking poo
31:33wrapped in slimy membrane.
31:35Never, ever, ever eat pork again in the same way.
31:40But in a time when meat was expensive,
31:42no part of the animal went to waste.
31:44Oh, I think I've got the heart. It's like a muscle.
31:47Big, big muscle.
31:49And they'd have eaten this in the Middle Ages?
31:51Absolutely. Roast heart's lovely.
31:53The prime cuts were destined for the wealthy,
31:55and for those less well-off, they got the rest.
31:58That's the heart.
32:00The offal, head and trotters.
32:02Even the entrails have their use.
32:04If you want to have sausages, the next thing we've got to do
32:07is find the right-sized bits of tubing,
32:10which I think we've got down the bottom here.
32:12Oh, this is really quite warm still.
32:14That's ideal for sausage skins.
32:16You can squeeze it off away from the back there.
32:18You've got a nice bit of piping.
32:20And all of that, you can smell the excrement in it, can't you?
32:23Yeah. Well, you've got to wash that out next.
32:25What?!
32:30It's amazing what you get used to in this life.
32:32I've never butchered an animal before,
32:34and now I'm just squeezing poo out of its not-long-dead intestine.
32:38You wonder how people live amongst all that excrement and all that mess,
32:41and here we are, within a day, I'm getting quite used to it now.
32:44It's quite normal.
32:46Well, everything we've done today
32:48has involved pouring huge amounts of muck onto the streets.
32:51Absolutely. You wouldn't want it in the house, would you?
32:54So what happens to it there?
32:56Ah, a simple solution.
32:58Bucket of water, send it downhill to the neighbours.
33:01There you go. Just flush it away.
33:03You always want to live uphill, don't you, in this world?
33:06As long as your house is clean, you're fine.
33:08It's now somebody else's problem.
33:14London was producing gigantic amounts of animal waste.
33:18Streets were overflowing with the stuff.
33:20The city had to act.
33:24The way the medieval authorities tackled the butchers discarded offal
33:28is a great example of their trial-and-error approach.
33:31So much animal waste was now being produced
33:34that the age-old solution of just simply dumping it in the streets
33:37was no longer acceptable.
33:39The sights and smells, all those animal entrails running down the middle of the street
33:43were driving even the most filth-hardened Londoners crazy.
33:46As a result, the authorities came up with a new solution,
33:49and that lay under my feet.
34:00This is what's left of the Fleet River.
34:03It's now a sewer, which is pretty much what it ended up being seven centuries ago.
34:08So somewhere around here in 1343,
34:11the butchers were told to come and dump all their waste,
34:14as it was said at the time, for the cleanliness and decency of the city.
34:19And they did so, and the price they paid was appropriate enough of Boer's head.
34:23But soon even the fast-flowing fleet was overwhelmed.
34:26It became a putrid sewer, an absolute stank,
34:29so much so that it was said to be injurious to the health of prisoners in nearby prison.
34:34The authorities needed another plan. They needed a bigger river.
34:38London's biggest river, in fact.
34:41The butchers were sent, with their waste, to the banks of the mighty Thames.
34:46Very near this spot was St Nicholas' Shambles, where animals were slaughtered.
34:51All that needed to be done was to transport the unwanted parts down to the Thames.
34:55Simple. But there was one flaw in this brilliant plan,
34:58and that isn't the Thames. It's a long way over there.
35:03In fact, the Thames was a bumpy ten-minute walk through London's busy streets.
35:08The plan was that they would dump all this offal off a long wooden pier
35:13that was built out into the Thames, where Blackfriars is today.
35:16It was known as Bokker's Brigger, Butcher's Bridge.
35:19The trouble was, of course, after a long day of butchery and slaughter,
35:23safe waste disposal was the last thing on your mind,
35:26and all too often a lot of this fell out along the way.
35:33The excessive amount of bloody remains being dropped in the streets and the river
35:37became so bad that even the king complained.
35:40He said,
35:50To be honest, neither solution was perfect.
35:52You either had rotting flesh, entrails and waste products clogging up the streets of London,
35:57or the Thames.
35:59Of course, after years of dithering and indecision, butchers were banned from the city.
36:06And there's another way in which modern butchers are a world away from those in the 14th century.
36:13These days butcher shops are models of antibacterial cleanliness.
36:19700 years ago, what you found on a chopping block would be rather more hit and miss.
36:26In 14th century London, the Guild of Butchers did what they could to provide quality control.
36:31They appointed master butchers to regulate the industry and try and enforce some standards.
36:36But there's evidence that even the Guild of Butchers struggled to control some Londoners who were on the make.
36:45Protected by the anonymity of a big city,
36:48some saw the chance to make a quick buck by flogging manky meat.
36:53Records described how one makeshift butcher, John Jarlson,
36:56was found guilty of selling putrid and stinking meat to the peril of lives,
37:01after he'd tried to sell the flesh of a dead sow he'd found in a ditch.
37:06Cracking down on butchers trying to use the cloak of night to hide the quality of their wares,
37:10the city authorities ordered that butchers
37:13shall sell no meat by the light of candle, but by clear daylight only.
37:19And it seems they made the punishment fit the crime.
37:23Anyone caught breaking the law was tied to a pillory to have the dodgy meat burnt under their nose.
37:31With the streets and rivers full of excrement and rotting carcasses,
37:35and no real understanding of the link between disease and filth,
37:39it's not surprising that sickness was rife.
37:41But if the diseases were dangerous enough, the treatments were often worse.
37:47Many sick people were treated by barbers, hairdressers,
37:51with the skills and the tools to cut and chop,
37:53so were allowed to pull teeth or let blood.
37:57With the discovery of microbes not due for another three centuries,
38:00there was no scientific knowledge of how illness could be linked
38:03to the unhygienic conditions in the streets.
38:08Oh, yeah, and as I'm about to find out,
38:10the tools and techniques used to treat illness
38:13were just as filthy and dangerous.
38:15What chance did medieval medicine have of curing what ails you?
38:20Not very good. Depends how ill you were.
38:22So if I had something wrong with me and I went to a medieval doctor,
38:25what principles would they use to treat me?
38:27First thing is to get things out of the body.
38:29For example, if you had a very bad eye infection,
38:32what I'd do is I'd get dry dog poo,
38:35grind it up, put it in a piece of folded paper
38:38and literally blow it into your eye.
38:40We'd believe this would irritate the eye,
38:42make the eye water and bring out all the impurities of the eye
38:46at the same time, so cure the eye.
38:49So the idea is to remove these evil things from your body.
38:52I mean, what other kind of techniques would they use?
38:54Well, if you suffer from a slight madness,
38:56what we would do is, is we'd actually...
38:58Well, I'll tell you what, get on your knees and I'll show you.
39:01What I'd do is, is I'd get a knife right this one here,
39:04I would make a Y-shaped cut into your skull.
39:09We would pare back the skin.
39:11Now, you're quite lucky, that's the only bit that hurts.
39:15The invisible cause of some illness was put down to evil spirits
39:19and called for radical intervention.
39:21Trepanning, an ancient technique of drilling or scraping a hole
39:25in the skull thought to release the spirits,
39:28was still used in medieval medicine.
39:30Trepanning or scraping a hole in the skull,
39:32thought to release the spirits,
39:34was still practised in medieval times.
39:37It was more likely to cause a nasty infection.
39:39Indeed, records detail many cases of barber surgeons
39:42maiming or even killing their patients
39:44with their questionable techniques.
39:47I'm not looking forward to my treatment.
39:50Imagine I went to a medieval doctor.
39:52How would they know what was wrong with me?
39:54Would they get a diagnosis? They would do a diagnosis.
39:56They would look at you, they would see what's wrong with you,
39:59but for internally what they would do is, a bit like today,
40:03they'd like a bit of your wee.
40:05Is that an invitation?
40:07Well, if you want to get some and then we'll see how you are.
40:13I'll be back in a sec.
40:15Sorry, it's not much, you caught me by surprise a bit there.
40:18No, that's fine, that's fine. I'm very pleased.
40:20It's clear, that's very good.
40:22That is very, very good. Well, I hope so.
40:24But I'm a bit concerned about the colour.
40:26Really? Yes. It's golden.
40:28And that, to me, has got a green tinge. What?
40:31If you hold up the jar, I would look at the colour
40:34and decide how well or unwell you are.
40:37Of course, the darker it is, the more unhealthy you are.
40:40Basically, there'd be a lot of blood in the urine.
40:42At that point, you'd be very, very unwell.
40:44And what you need to do is to be bled.
40:46You're a sadist.
40:50I think this is really taking the idea
40:52of getting things out of me to the extreme.
40:54You'd be bled at least once a year if you're high-ranking
40:57and you thought it was good for you.
40:59Several leeches were typically applied to the prescribed body part.
41:03And each leech can absorb four to six times
41:06its own body weight in human blood.
41:09No wonder they only feed about once a year.
41:12Is it hungry? Yes, so it should be hungry.
41:17I'm sure it's just my head, but I can sort of...
41:19I'm imagining it just draining all the blood out of my arm.
41:22Such was their enthusiasm for bloodletting
41:24that some barber surgeons used knives.
41:26Sometimes accidentally cut into arteries and killed their patients.
41:29Eventually, the authorities stepped in.
41:31That is really wriggling around now.
41:33It's having a great feed at my expense.
41:36Master surgeons were ordered to oversee their juniors
41:40in cases where their clients were in peril of death.
41:43Even so, records show barber surgeons
41:46continue to kill and maim their patients.
41:5014th century England was a pretty dangerous place.
41:53The average life expectancy was 35, so at 31 years old,
41:57I wouldn't have much time left.
41:59There was a lack of understanding about hygiene and medicine.
42:02There was filth everywhere.
42:03People found it hard to even work out what the problem was,
42:06let alone come up with any solutions.
42:09It would only take one more ingredient
42:11to tip London over the edge into total catastrophe.
42:18By the middle of the 14th century,
42:20London was as densely populated as it had ever been.
42:23The authorities' attempts to clean up were piecemeal, reactive,
42:27or all too often, simply ignored.
42:31Despite the squalor, London continued to boom.
42:34Since the Norman conquest, international trade had expanded
42:38and so too had the city.
42:40The port of London went into overdrive.
42:42In one year alone, the records show that 20,000 tonnes,
42:46that's about 18 million litres of wine, were imported here.
42:50To meet this bulging demand, new and bigger merchant ships were built.
42:56And of course, as fast as London grew, so did the rubbish and filth.
43:00But in the docks, resourceful Londoners found a use for it.
43:04With all that merchandise getting shifted,
43:06space on the docks really was at a premium.
43:08Then the merchants came up with an idea
43:10that solved two of London's most pressing problems,
43:13that lack of space and the overabundance of waste.
43:16They drove piles out there in the river,
43:19boarded them up and filled up this space
43:22with thousands of tonnes of London's waste,
43:25thereby reclaiming land that could be used as wharves,
43:29sometimes stretching as far as 100 metres out into the river.
43:32London became bigger and busier than ever.
43:37London's port was flooded with goods and people from around the world,
43:41which was great for business,
43:43but left London wide open to other, less desirable visitors.
43:48When reports of a terrible disease spreading across Western Europe
43:52reached Britain, international trade continued virtually unchecked.
43:56And filthy London was defenceless against a new and deadly import.
44:02The rubbish-filled streets may have been wretched for humans,
44:05but they were paradise for these.
44:11Black rats pretty much had the run of the place.
44:14Black rats are different from their modern brown cousins,
44:17who liked the low life.
44:19These black Asian rats were tree dwellers and they liked to climb.
44:29Preferring the high life, these rats moved into the rafters of houses,
44:33along with their fleas.
44:36And in the autumn of 1348, they brought with them an epidemic
44:40that would ultimately redefine the political and social structure
44:43of the entire country.
44:45In busy London, they were brought into close contact with humans,
44:49rich and poor alike.
44:53Records show that very near this spot,
44:55the artist John de Mims lived with his wife Matilda
44:58and his daughters Isabella and Alice.
45:02They would have been completely unaware that their furry houseguests
45:06were more than an inconvenience,
45:08because circulating in their blood was one of the deadliest bacteria known to man,
45:12Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague.
45:16As the rats succumbed to disease,
45:18their resident fleas hopped off to find a new home,
45:21with devastating effect.
45:24Because a single flea carries around 100 plague bacteria in its guts,
45:28one bite can be lethal.
45:31London and the de Mims soon found themselves in the grip of a cataclysmic plague.
45:39On the 19th of March, 1349, just five months into the plague epidemic,
45:44he decided to prepare for the worst
45:46and wrote a will in which he left all his property to his wife.
45:51The bubonic plague is still deadly today.
45:54As many as 3,000 cases are reported worldwide every year.
45:58Scientists are still struggling to defeat this age-old enemy.
46:03This is the Ministry of Defence's state-of-the-art
46:06Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.
46:09Behind these two-metre-thick concrete walls
46:12lie some of the deadliest microorganisms on the planet.
46:18The bubonic plague is so lethal
46:20that this is one of only a handful of labs anywhere in the world
46:24that's secure enough to study it.
46:27Here I'm about two metres away from Petra, who's working on it now,
46:30and it's very sobering being this close.
46:33She's holding up to the window now.
46:35It's amazing to think that even though this is
46:38one of the most sophisticated containment facilities in the world,
46:41I'm still feeling this nervous.
46:43And back then, of course, there wouldn't have been these walls
46:46and these doors separating me from that disease.
46:49Back then, it was on your street, it was in your house,
46:52and it was killing members of your family.
46:59To give me an idea of the extreme precautions that are taken
47:02when handling the plague, I've been allowed into an ultra-secure lab.
47:06So the last time I touched a Petri dish was when I did GCSE Chemistry.
47:10That was a long time ago.
47:12I never thought that my pursuit of history would take me
47:15to a high-security military technology lab.
47:18Dealing with dangerous pathogens.
47:21But Yersinia pestis is far too dangerous for an amateur like me
47:25to get anywhere near.
47:27Oh, that's E. coli there.
47:29That's E. coli, and plague looks a bit like that.
47:31It's a relative of E. coli.
47:33Really?
47:34Bit of a bad boy, though.
47:35It's a bit worse than E. coli?
47:37Just a bit worse.
47:38And you wouldn't let me touch plague like this?
47:40No.
47:41Say a healthy person develops plague,
47:43what happens to them and how quickly does it happen?
47:45Bubonic plague.
47:46So that's after you've been bitten by an infected flea.
47:49After several days, you would develop the bubo,
47:52which is a swelling of the lymph node draining the site of the bite.
47:57Bubonic plague gets its name from the bubos, or pus-filled swellings,
48:02which form at the lymph node nearest to the site of a bite
48:05from an infected flea.
48:07But it would come to be known by a simpler name.
48:10The black death.
48:12Why was it known as the black death?
48:14There's so many bacteria in the blood that your body can't cope with it
48:18and it triggers coagulation in the blood vessels
48:21and that tends to collect at the fingers and toes.
48:26It takes about two weeks for bubonic plague to kill its victims.
48:31But the bacteria can go airborne
48:34and go straight into someone else's lungs.
48:37That's called pneumonic plague.
48:39Trouble is, before the study of microbiology,
48:42no-one knew how it spread or how to deal with it,
48:45as records from later outbreaks show.
48:48Pneumonic plague has a death rate of 100%.
48:52Everybody dies.
48:54If you had one case in the house, they would shut the house up.
48:58So it wasn't a case of saying goodbye to your father
49:01and leaving because you were healthy.
49:03You had to say goodbye to your family.
49:06Why do you crazy people keep things like plague?
49:09Why not just destroy it all?
49:11You need to understand your enemy.
49:13So we spend a lot of time here understanding plague,
49:16understanding how it causes disease,
49:18so we can test antibiotics.
49:20And there's a need for a vaccine.
49:22The only way you can protect large populations of people
49:25really is with a vaccine.
49:27We are just as vulnerable to plague now
49:29as we were when we first discovered it.
49:33We are just as vulnerable to plague now as we've ever been.
49:36As individuals, yes.
49:38I would hope that in the developed world
49:40we would be somewhat better equipped than medieval London,
49:43although the impact would still be massive
49:45if you had a similar outbreak that you had in the 1300s.
49:50Seven centuries later, we're still working on a vaccine
49:53that's effective against the plague.
49:5614th-century medicine stood no chance.
50:02Three weeks after Mimms wrote his will, he was dead.
50:06When his widow came to make her will,
50:08she made no mention of her two daughters.
50:10We can only assume that they too had perished.
50:15Swift, virulent and incurable,
50:17the Black Death wiped out entire families in days.
50:27In London's dirty, overcrowded streets,
50:29the spread was irresistible.
50:33The city's authorities were powerless to contain the outbreak.
50:38All they could do was try to deal with the accelerating death toll.
50:42Contemporary accounts reported
50:44that over 200 bodies a day were being buried.
50:48The Black Death gripped London for up to two years.
50:52It claimed the lives of half the city's population,
50:56maybe as many as 50,000 people.
51:00With half its workforce gone
51:02and a third of its civic government wiped out,
51:04you might think that London would have descended into total chaos.
51:08But, in fact, something quite surprising happened.
51:11One of the most revealing insights
51:13into the way London's authorities coped with the epidemic
51:16was the way they dealt with the huge number of dead.
51:22Wow. So this is a plague victim, is it, you know?
51:26This skeleton is a male skeleton
51:28and he was found from East Smithfield,
51:30which is a catastrophe cemetery just near the Tower of London.
51:33It's a unique site.
51:34There isn't another site like it in Great Britain
51:37and it's because it has such tightly dated parameters
51:41for 1348-1350 that we know the individuals buried there
51:45died from the plague.
51:46So this was a special cemetery just for plague victims?
51:49It was, yes.
51:50It was actually planned and thought out and prepared
51:53in trying to cope with the amount of people that were dying so quickly.
51:57So how exactly were they all buried?
51:59There were individual burials
52:01and then also there were these mass trenches
52:04that were very long lines
52:06and within that you had people that were just neatly placed out in rows.
52:12In the spaces in between, the adults, they often would find children.
52:16The people, as they were buried,
52:18were in the orientation that we would expect,
52:20on an east-west,
52:21very carefully in nice, neat rows
52:23and not just thrown in rather randomly,
52:25as you would think when you're faced with a catastrophe like that
52:28and people are dying very, very quickly.
52:30Can you imagine the plague as sort of anarchy or social breakdown?
52:33But it sounds to me like if they're setting aside bits of land,
52:36digging neat trenches,
52:37actually that someone's still in charge,
52:39that the systems are in place.
52:40Yeah, I mean, it is quite remarkable
52:42because if we think of the amount of people that were dying,
52:45the rapidity of it,
52:46everything really is sort of falling apart almost,
52:49but they were able to carry on, put things into place,
52:52prepare an area
52:53and try to cope with all of those people dying and so quickly.
52:57It's very sobering.
52:58I mean, it makes you think whether modern government,
53:00even with all its resources and complexity,
53:02would actually be able to cope in the same way.
53:04Yes, I'm not quite sure whether they would.
53:06I always hoped they would, but...
53:08They don't like an inch of snow, do they?
53:12It seems the city strove to bury its dead with dignity,
53:15even during the horror of the plague years.
53:18This refusal to submit
53:20is an indication of 14th-century Londoners' astonishing resilience.
53:27The city kept going.
53:29In some ways, it was reborn.
53:31The records show that despite devastating fatalities,
53:34the growing civil service managed to hold things together.
53:37This magnificent guildhall was built just after the plague
53:41by the government of London to show off their power and prestige.
53:45London was beginning to function like a proper city.
53:51The number of civil servants tripled from just eight
53:54at the start of the 1300s, earning a total of £20 per year,
53:58to 24, with an annual income of up to £200 by the following century.
54:04With a bigger, better-funded civil service
54:06looking after a greatly reduced population,
54:09London's government launched an all-out assault on the city's grime.
54:13The plague had focused Londoners' minds on the filth around them.
54:18A link between dirt and disease was made,
54:21even if it was understood from a distinctly medieval point of view.
54:25The foul smells themselves, evil miasmas,
54:28were thought to be the cause of sickness.
54:31Taking no chances after the catastrophic scale of the plague,
54:34London began to clean up its act.
54:37The role of sergeant of the channels was created,
54:40the first civil servant charged with keeping the city clean.
54:44The number of city cleaners was ramped up,
54:47and the fine for illegally dumping waste shot up to a staggering £20,
54:52the equivalent of over £10,000 today.
54:56It didn't happen overnight, but a cleaner London was beginning to emerge.
55:01But most crucially of all,
55:03a new civic pride was born on London's grimy streets.
55:07People were learning that cooperation and collective action
55:10were a necessity of urban life,
55:12and the arrival of one man would come to encapsulate the idea of common good
55:17that was penetrating to the heart of London's government.
55:22When Dick Whittington first arrived in London,
55:25he was a young man with one thing on his mind, making lots of money.
55:29And indeed, he did make a fortune in filthy London,
55:33and became Lord Mayor three times.
55:36He also embodies a new collective, responsible spirit of the age,
55:39which followed the catastrophe of the plague.
55:42He spent his life supporting charitable works.
55:45He founded this church, for example.
55:47And when he died, he left nearly all of his money to improving the city,
55:51building free toilets for the public to use and hospitals for the poor.
55:55In the mid-20th century, they tried to dig up his body,
55:58which was buried in this church, and they discovered no body.
56:02What they did find was a mummified cat.
56:07And the legacy lives on.
56:10First formed in the medieval period,
56:12the governing body of the Square Mile is the City of London Corporation,
56:16the oldest of its kind in the world.
56:19And one of its key roles has always been organising the collection
56:23and disposal of its citizens' waste.
56:26I've tried to catch a glimpse, and hopefully that's all I've caught,
56:30of how the Mark and Dick of the Square Mile
56:33and, hopefully, that's all I've caught,
56:35of how the muck and grime that nearly destroyed London seven centuries ago
56:40in fact laid the foundations on which the modern metropolis was built.
56:46Rubbish then, like now, was taken outside the city
56:49and disposed of away from the homes of Londoners.
56:53It's amazing to think that so much of London's waste
56:56is still roofed in an organised way by river.
56:59It's a system that really is the descendant
57:02of the 14th century's fight against filth.
57:08And it's this ability to co-operate and take collective action,
57:11even in the face of a catastrophe like the plague,
57:14that would prove vital to the expansion of urban life.
57:18And London, once a filthy city, would in time become the centre
57:22of the richest and most powerful empire in history,
57:26and remains to this day one of the greatest cities on Earth.
57:35Next time on Filthy Cities, revolutionary Paris.
57:39Just 200 years ago, Paris was famously one of the foulest
57:42and smelliest cities in Europe.
57:46I'll be sniffing out the rotten story of how filth and squalor
57:49drove Parisians to revolution.
57:52I'll experience the most stinking of Paris' gruelling industries.
57:58Recreate the foul smell that choked the streets.
58:03And come face to face with the ultimate killing machine.
58:06Yikes.
58:08All to understand how ordinary Parisians fought to clean up
58:11their ancient cesspit from the bottom up.
58:14And you can join me in my immersive journey.
58:17Go online at bbc.co.uk slash filthycities
58:21to find out where to get your scratch and sniff card.
58:25Then you'll be able to really experience stinky Paris
58:28during its most disgusting period in history.
58:35And Filthy Cities continues here on BBC HD next Tuesday at the same time.
58:39Next tonight, we're heading to modern-day Albert Square for EastEnders.