Our nation's history has been built
not just by leading characters making big political decisions,
but by a huge supporting cast of ordinary men and women
prepared to do some really lousy jobs.
This time...
Breaking your back to quench the city's thirst.
Oh, God!
Burning your toes to keep the traffic moving.
And the utter tedium
of making the building blocks of the urban landscape.
Welcome to The Worst Jobs in the City.
Today, 90%- of us live in cities. It wasn't always like that.
In the Middle Ages, most of Britain was rural.
Towns slowly grew as people came together to make money by trading,
or to earn money by looking after the traders.
Cities are artificial, aren't they?
If you're in the country, then you can live off the land,
but in the town, everything has to be brought in and provided for you,
even water.
Nowadays we get our water from the tap, but for hundreds of years,
thousands of people living in cities had no running water.
Mind you, today, most of us have a slurp on one of these occasionally, don't we?
And it's no problem.
Mind you, if you've ever carried a party pack of the stuff around,
you'll know how bad this next worst job can be.
It's the back-breaking task of being a water caddy.
Water caddies had been around since the 1500s,
but by the Georgian times,
up to a quarter of the population had flocked to the cities,
which still had no running water.
18th-century Edinburgh presented the water caddies
with their ultimate challenge -
its buildings were up to eight storeys high.
Of course, the first thing that the water caddy had to do
was fill up his caddy with water.
Presumably, Liz, there must have been loads of wells dotted all over the city.
Well, no, there wasn't, because when they brought water in here in 1681,
they only put five of these wells in the whole length of the high street.
For how many people? About 30,000 people.
So this is what I carry the water around in.
That's right. This is what the water caddies carried them around in.
Can I fill it from here? I'm afraid there's naught there anymore.
So it's gonna be this... It's gonna have to be that.
Could you hold my bung? I will indeed.
The maths is simple.
12 two-litre bottles of water weighs 24 kilos, plus the barrel -
that's over 30 kilos of weight I've got to carry on my back.
Right. What do I do?
They carried it over their shoulders.
Oh, blimey! I can't even lift it off the ground!
Oh, God!
Gaw, I don't know how I'm gonna get up! Now...
(Grunts) Bloody thing!
You alright?
A bit further up.
Liz, it's choking me - this leather strap.
You have to pull the strap away from your face.
Is that better? Yeah.
How far did they go?
Well, the high street, the whole length of the high street,
and then, of course, down on either side.
There's steep hills down on either side. And then up the stairs at the tenements.
Many of the caddies were ex-soldiers,
but this was an equal-opportunity worst job,
as their wives also did this back-breaking task.
Where now?
Up there.
Up here? Oh...!
Come on, then!
LIZ: No, no. See you later.
Great.
My muscles are screaming after 10 minutes,
but the water caddies had to keep going for hours.
Like me, they left a trail of water behind.
But it was important not to lose too much - they were paid per barrel.
To earn a maximum wage of three shillings per day,
they had to make a staggering 36 trips.
How's it going?
Great.
I've got water dripping down my back, all my muscles are aching,
and I've got a permanent stoop.
You know, the caddies in Edinburgh were recognised for a permanent stoop.
I'm not (BLEEP) surprised, Liz.
That will be a shilling fine for swearing.
Two shillings if you argued with somebody up at the well.
And as much as six shillings if you made a nuisance of yourself.
Now, I'm just going straight on. See you later.
Up there, round the corner. Nearly there.
I never thought I'd make it.
(Sighs)
Now, this would be your regular route,
because each caddy had their same houses that they served,
so you'd be in the habit of coming up this steep route.
Can I take this off now? I'm afraid not.
Because, you see, the poor lived down on the ground floor,
because it was smelly and it was overcrowded.
The middle classes, the people you're bringing the water for, they lived...
...up the stairs.
So I'm afraid it's up the stairs you have to go.
Can't you just tell me that? No.
You've got to go.
At least it's a bit warmer in here.
Obviously, it is steeper here.
(Groans)
Never gonna get this open with this on!
Well, I may have risked a cricked neck and a slipped disc and a hernia,
but in my next worst job, I risk death.
(Groans) Blimey!
Fire - for centuries, the greatest risk to life in the city.
With space precious and people crammed into multi-storey buildings,
wood, thatch and open fires created a live-in tinderbox.
It wasn't until the 19th century
that people organised an official force to fight the ultimate urban nightmare.
If your idea of the fire service is brave, bold heroes or heroines
surrounded by high-tech equipment,
think again.
In days gone by, fire-fighting really was a worst job.
Smoke is one of the greatest dangers in a blaze.
Today's crews have sophisticated breathing apparatus.
Unlike the early fire-fighters, who had to trust in a silly hat,
a piece of hose and a colleague known as a bellows boy.
Is this a bellows? Yes. A basic bellows.
Individual outside, called the bellows boy,
would pump that, force air through the hose, into the visor,
and allow the fire-fighter to breathe clean air.
How do you get it on? It's not easy.
These two things are like a wishbone, aren't they?
God, it's like a torture thing!
There I am. Yep. Yep?
Oh! OK? Can you see?
Yep.
Can you shut my windows? Right. We're going in.
You know what's really horrible, is that I can only see from here upwards.
Below, there's just nothing.
When you go into that smoky building... Yeah?
...the only sense you can really rely on is feel.
You can feel the heat. You need to feel your way around the building.
And keep as low as you possibly can - if possible, below the smoke layer.
We're going in? And in you go. Keep low.
And I'll do the bellows.
TONY: Oh, wow.
It's so weird in here.
Can't see anything at all.
This turn-of-the-century breathing system was relatively sophisticated.
When Captain Shaw founded the fire service in 1865,
his men had nothing.
They relied on natural pluck and big moustaches,
which they grew to cover their mouths.
They'd hold their breath and run into blazes,
earning the title 'smoke eaters'.
I can just make out this wall...
...here now.
I don't know how I would have been able to rescue anybody,
'cause I wouldn't have seen them.
Think I'm gonna see if I can get out now,
although, to be quite honest, I can't even see where the door is.
That'd be a nightmare, wouldn't it, if you were stuck in something like this
and couldn't find your way out.
I think this is it here.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.
Hey!
Do you know, that wasn't nearly as bad as I feared it would be. Um...
Can you get this helmet off me?
That was actually much better than I thought it would be.
But there's something about that fresh air coming all the time
that is really reassuring.
The big risk is, the further you go in, the harder the bellows boy had to pump.
Yeah.
Any debris that falls on the hose in there immediately cuts off your air supply.
Yeah.
And it's not unknown for perhaps roofing materials to fall down,
the bellows boy to leave the post, and, again, your air's cut off.
I was feeling really secure till you told me that.
But the high-rise city meant the fire-fighter's job got even worse.
If you think it was bad walking into a smoking building
with only a hose to prevent you from being asphyxiated,
imagine what it must have been like outside the building.
Fair enough, the fires tended to start down the bottom,
but as the buildings went higher, so did the flames,
and, unfortunately, so did the firemen.
When did this kind of ladder come in?
This is called a hook ladder, Tony,
and it was introduced into service in the UK from about 1900.
First developed in France.
Pull that out there, hook it out,
and then you would scale the outside of a building,
going up one floor at a time,
spinning that round, smashing any windows
to put that in the window and hook on the sill,
and you'd climb up each floor progressively.
Almost limitless. As high as the building.
Well, shall we have a go on this? OK, put it down.
We'll start from the bottom, shall we? Alright. We've got to start properly.
OK. We'll turn it over. This bit's called the bill.
Yeah. We'll turn it over and rest it on that.
Yep.
OK. Come this end. Right.
What you have to do is grip that with your right hand.
This is the third round. Just grip that under there.
You call that a round, not a rung? Yeah.
They tell me bells are rung, not ladders. And rounds are climbed.
OK. And then lifting it up.
You'll be pushing with that one, pulling with this one.
Oh! Gorblimey! It's heavy.
OK? Yeah.
Keep it going, keep it going. There we go.
Now you've got it up, you put it into the building.
PETER: There you go.
TONY: That secure?
Let's have a look. There we are. It stays where it can.
PETER: Yeah. You're good to go. TONY: Looks a bit wobbly to me.
Right, I'll get kitted up, then. Lovely.
Right, Pete. I've got my rig.
I've got my mini-camera, so you can see the terror on my face as I go up.
You look very safe.
Right, you haven't enjoyed the luxury of 16 weeks training,
so just take it at your own speed,
conserve your energy, because when you get to the top,
you may well have to bring someone down on your shoulders.
Sure.
Come on!
Just getting my leg up isn't too easy.
Was this actually dangerous?
Well, up until 1956, Tony, there were six deaths using this.
Six deaths where?
All in the training centre. None operationally.
And this is the training centre? This is the training centre.
But rest assured that if you use this in anger, for rescue purposes,
you were more or less assured of a medal.
I think I'd rather do without.
One medal winner was George Swain.
In 1916, he not only got to the top floor of a burning building in East London,
he carried two children out alive on one of these ladders.
Lift the ladder up off the sill so you clear the hook.
Yeah. Right. Now turn the ladder outwards.
Yeah.
And now, gradually ease it up to the next floor.
My God, it's heavy. (Groans)
That's it. Take it out from the building. That's it. Keep going.
All the way. (Groans)
Once you're clear of the sill, swing the hook back in
and let the ladder rest on the sill.
Well done. That it?
Now ease yourself round to the front of the ladder
and put your left foot on the round above your right.
Oh, my God.
It'll do that until you've got your weight centre on the ladder, Tony.
Just take it nice and easy. Yeah.
Just keep coming round.
That's it. No, down a bit, down a bit.
That's it. You're there. Oh, frig.
OK? Yep.
Right, off we go again. Nice and slowly.
Oh!
I wish this was over.
Oh!
That's it. A couple more.
Now, from that point, left leg, swing it into the building.
Right. Over the sill.
That wasn't what I was supposed to do. (Sighs)
I'm there! We got there, Tony. Well done.
Now I've got to rescue someone from a blazing building,
when, actually, all I feel like doing is having a nice lie-down.
Cor.
But firemen didn't have the riskiest jobs in the city. Dockers did.
Our major cities grew because of trade,
made possible by access to big rivers and the sea.
At the heart of this trade were the docks.
By 1900, the busiest of them all were in London.
A fifth of all Londoners worked
keeping this heart of the British Empire beating.
But at a cost.
After mining and deep-sea fishing, dockers had the most industrial injuries.
Danger came in many forms, like the grain porters,
who risked suffocation as they worked in grain stores and ship's holds.
You probably can't see it, but there's actually two articulated vehicles
and a load of lads working up the far end of this warehouse.
But they're practically invisible.
It's like a London smog here because of all the dust that's kicking up.
Very much so.
You can imagine how dusty it would have been on a bulk grain ship,
where most cargoes were being discharged by hand,
or using old mechanical sort of grab elevators
and later on, of course, suction elevators.
The whole dust just being blown up, will get in your eyes, get in your hair,
get down your throat in particular.
Very, very sort of difficult cargoes to work. You were working against time.
You're working with cargoes that were not only dusty,
but very, very hot by nature as well.
Hot? Is this stuff hot? Come and have a feel.
I mean, you know, this is, I think, probably malted barley. It smells like it.
Put your hand in.
It is! It's really nice.
Gone up about 10 degrees in there. Yeah.
You'll also notice that we're sinking as well.
So if you're working down in a hold,
it was very hard to climb up in the hold of a ship.
It's like walking on very, very soft sand.
Yeah. You could sink up to your waist.
So the guys who worked on board ship
usually wrapped sacking from their knees round their feet.
They were called toe rags.
They did that to stop the grain getting into their trousers.
Some of it was very spiky.
Toe rags? Toe rags, yeah.
That's what we used to call thieves when I was a kid in London.
It feels up here as though you could just be sucked down into it.
Well, you could - you had to be very careful where you're working,
obviously, in ships' holds,
especially if the pneumatic sort of elevator's sucking out the grain
very, very rapidly through very large-diameter sort of hoses.
If you weren't very careful,
you could find that the area around you was being sort of sucked away
and, rather like being sort of caught in an undercurrent in the sea,
you could be sucked under
and the grain around you could topple in on you.
So there was a danger of sort of suffocation.
So, not always a nice cargo to work with.
I tell you what, the one thing that I noticed more than anything else about this job
is this flipping dust.
We've only been doing it for about a couple of minutes,
and already it's in my eyes, in my throat.
I want to have a good cough-up.
This is not a job that I would recommend.
In fact, the port threw up plenty of worst jobs -
whether it was carrying rotting meat, or bales of sugar that rubbed your skin raw.
Unpleasant cargoes like lamp black could turn you black for a fortnight.
If that wasn't enough,
many dockers risked being crushed by falling cargo.
But strangely, one of the most dangerous jobs was also one of the most skilled.
And it was a job that was around down the docks
until the middle of the 20th century.
Ron, you were a deal porter when you were a lad, weren't you?
When I was 20, yes.
What was deal, and how did you port it?
Deal is timber that's shipped in on the boats, yeah,
and once it's on the quays, we took it from A to B.
So you just lifted this up? Yeah, lift it up.
How did you carry it? I carried it on my shoulder.
Yeah.
Wear this. Yeah.
So this is really what you'd have worn?
Yes, this is a backing hat. A what hat?
A backing hat. Backing hat.
Yeah.
And it would have protected your shoulder
and stopping all the sawdust going down inside your neck.
Go on, then. Show us how you do it. Right.
How high do you want it?
High as my shoulder. I'll bend down. Yeah.
Then if you hadn't got the middle, you'd just push it forward like that.
Push it forward, yeah. And then you run up the...
Oh, we have to run? Yes.
This is how you would do it, actually.
But you'd have been carrying more than one, yeah?
Oh, more than one. About three. Yeah. Oh!
And you go up... Nearly had my head off there.
Oh. (Chuckles)
Of course, the docks would have been much more crowded in those days.
Oh, yes. Bustling.
What was so dangerous about it?
Well...
...if you missed your...
...missed your footing, you'd fall,
and it wouldn't be on the flat, like this is.
Yeah. It would be...
You'd have a series of what they call horses, trestles...
Yeah.
...going up, low, going up and up until you got up to the top.
So you'd go right the way up to the top of something like that?
As high as those over there, yes.
So how many of those do you reckon
you would have been likely to carry at a time?
It would have been about...
...as many as the chap who's holding it up, as many as he could hold up,
at ease, then you'd carry it on your shoulder.
The deal porters carried up to 40 kilos of timber at a time.
20 feet above ground,
precariously balancing on a plank the size of a gymnast's beam,
one slip or gust of wind
meant a fall straight onto the concrete below.
Here we go.
Oh, the turn isn't too easy.
Up we go.
Many dockers worked as casual labour.
But deal porters had to be trained.
Even a single plank at low level requires skill and concentration.
Eh!
But without the risky job of deal porting,
the city would have been starved of one of the essentials of the building trade.
Drop.
Pretty good for a first go, I think!
The 18th century saw the industrial revolution transform Britain's landscape.
A huge building boom turned villages into cities
as a million people moved from country to town.
This expansion needed a cheap building material.
Bricks were cheap,
but the process of making them was far from cheerful.
The 18th century was the heyday of the poor old pugger-
the lowest of the low in the tedious business of brick production.
How did they use to make these things, Mike?
Well, one at a time in a box mould, with soft, squidgy clay
that they would just fling into the mould, dry it and fire it.
One at a time? One at a time, yes.
But during the expansion of the big cities in the 18th and 19th centuries,
they must have needed thousands of these.
Oh, millions. Millions upon millions.
I mean, it is the staple of British building, a brick,
because it's an easy thing to make, an easy thing to handle.
So, what kind of clay was it that they used?
Oh, mud. Soft mud like clay. Like that stuff over there.
They'd dig it up in the fields, lay it down like that in the late summer, autumn,
the winter would get at it and the frost would break it down
and make it into a soft, mud-like consistency.
They'd then take it into... under some cover
and make it into the finer clay that we want to throw into the mould.
Is this pugging?
Pugging is the preparation of the clay, yes,
and the final part is actually treading it,
a rather laborious thing of treading it, to get it into a nice... muddy state.
He's gonna teach me to be a little pugger.
That's right!
Right. Do I jump in?
Well, we don't jump in. We just sort of... Try and tread it out.
So march up and down, rather than dance around frantically.
So I think we would want to try and get some order in this.
Oh, it's cold, isn't it?! Yes, alright.
Come on. Oh, wow. Oh!
Gorblige, it's cold!
But, you see, we are mixing it up.
This... this is fairly late stage we're doing this now.
Who were the people who would have done this?
Well, the chaps would have done this, the labourers.
Yeah.
They'd have the body weight to make it worthwhile.
You wouldn't want anybody frail doing it, and slight, like children or small women.
Mainly women worked on the moulding side.
They were throwing the clay into the moulds.
And would the children have done any work?
And the children would probably be taking large lumps of clay to those women,
so they'd be carrying up to six or seven kilos, perhaps even more.
Very hard, long hours,
and certainly as far as children are concerned,
bit of exploitation there, I think.
Shall we say this is done? I think so.
I think that's pretty well formed.
I think the circulation's completely stopped in my feet!
Absolutely. Yeah. Oh!
And roll it.
Just like... like... Like that.
After all that pugging,
the clay was thrown into moulds and the brick formed.
And... now what? Vertically down.
Oh, chuck it in here? Yeah.
MICHAEL: That's exactly right. BOTH: Yeah.
Lift it off to see what you've...
Every brick was made like this,
and it took 40,000 of them to build one house.
TONY: Oh, that's not bad, is it? MICHAEL: That's not bad.
That would have been put out in the field for about six weeks,
let the sun and the air and the wind dry it off.
We'd have put it in the kiln then. Fire it for a week or so.
Fire would go out, and at the end of the day, we'd have a brick like that.
Actually, very similar, 'cause we've got that corner knocked off that one.
It wasn't just me - they did it too. What a relief to know that!
I reckon my great-grandfather did that one.
Making bricks meant getting your feet mucky for a living.
But it was still better than a job dedicated to keeping people's shoes clean.
Cities didn't stop growing after the industrial revolution.
London's population quadrupled,
from a million in 1800 to 4.5 million in 1880.
It wasn't just the biggest city in Britain,
it was the biggest the world had ever seen.
And it wasn't just teeming with humans.
There was only one form of horsepower for transport,
and that was... well, a horse.
Or, rather, thousands and thousands of horses.
And, of course, every horse had its own active bowels,
which meant there was loads of poo all over the place.
So you weren't just dodging the horse and carts,
you were dodging all the stuff that they left behind them.
You can imagine what the state of the streets would have been.
It would have been virtually impossible to get across,
particularly if you'd got nice clothes on,
if you were a fine lady with a long coat and a long dress.
So the city threw up another worst job, which was crossing sweeper.
So, am I allowed to do this?
Absolutely. But in order to maintain your right to do so, you have to do it regularly.
Some people actually managed to claim a single crossing for 10, 20, 30 years
and to make a good living out of it.
Well, this is my first morning, so I'll clear a path for you,
and then off you go, alright?
What sort of people did this?
The poorest of the poor.
Mainly the elderly, and young children, a lot of disabled people,
a lot of people who couldn't get any other kind of work.
It really was on the edge of begging.
One group who were regularly identified as crossing sweepers
were black refugees from the American Revolution -
ex-slaves who ended up in London
with no settlement, no place to go and no employment.
It's mainly young people?
They ran across the whole gamut of ages,
from 12-year-olds through 90-year-olds.
Someone typical might be someone like William Donovan, who was 19 years old,
lived in a common lodging house with 98 other people
in Macklin Street in London.
He would have earned just a few pence a day,
taking care of, owning, a particular crossing.
Alright, darling, over you come.
TONY: Pretty good, I think, for a first time.
TIM: Absolutely. Thank you, young man.
How much did I get for this? Cheers, love.
A farthing, a ha'pence, a penny. I got a penny.
If you were lucky, you got something.
But the important thing is you couldn't actually ask for it.
It had to be in the form of a tip.
If you asked for it, that became begging and you were subject to vagrancy laws.
So I couldn't advertise?
Well, you could advertise by, for example, writing signs in the manure itself
or perhaps making little sculptures in it.
What sort of signs?
Well, the 19th-century equivalent of "Hungry and homeless, please help."
You could say, "God bless the poor," or, "God bless the Queen."
There are examples of people creating anchors and flowers.
Oh, well, that's very nice, isn't it?
Although, I have to be honest, it wasn't that difficult a job.
That's what made it so good for the disabled.
There are instances of crossing sweepers missing both legs.
There are characters like Joe in Dickens's 'Bleak House'
that is actually mentally retarded
but could still make a living, a very meagre living, as a crossing sweeper.
There you are. Little smiley face.
Although it does look little bit more like a death's head, I think.
So, what was the downside?
You really needed the crossing sweeper when it was cold,
when it was wet, when it was miserable.
And you didn't want to be on the streets yourself.
If you were in rags, you were freezing.
Something else they did was tumbling.
Young boys, in particular, would tumble across a crossing
in advance of the person they were leading across.
So, in combination with your advertising and a bit of tumbling, perhaps...
I think I'll just stick with the drawing for the moment.
I did do a pretty good job.
Absolutely. I'd cross on that. Come on, then.
But it wasn't just horse poo that provided a living
for those at the bottom of the heap.
Then, as now, people in cities kept dogs,
and there was dog poo all over the place.
You wouldn't have thought, would you, that there'd be a job
where you could make good money collecting up this stuff,
but there was in the 19th century.
It was called the 'pure collector'.
Why pure?
Well, it's a bit of a joke. It's ironic.
I mean, there's nothing particularly pure about this muck, is there?
The dog muck was sold to tanners,
where it became basic in the tanning process.
And the pure collectors were usually elderly women,
who could make six or seven shillings a day doing this.
Someone's trod in this bit.
Mind you, if you were really lucky,
you could get a contract with a local dog kennel,
in which case, you could make up to 10 bob a day.
I think I've just trod in some of it, actually.
Let's call this a day, shall we?
The rise of Britain's cities also created whole new lifestyles.
People worked different hours to their country cousins,
and they didn't always want to go home when it got dark.
In the back streets, gambling dens, seedy drinking establishments
and brothels flourished.
The 18th century also saw the rise of paid entertainment for the masses.
But being an entertainer in Georgian Britain, especially a woman,
was a tough, sordid business.
People wanted cheap thrills and violence.
A night out for the urban poor
often meant watching two people beating the living daylights out of each other.
But these weren't just Mike Tyson look-alikes.
Welcome to the worst job of the fighting woman.
Terry, where did these women fight?
Well, they usually tried to avoid the city fathers, shall we say,
by fighting outside the city walls - Blackfriars, the stairs -
anywhere where the actual councillors couldn't get to touch them,
stop them carrying out their activities.
And what sort of fighting did they do?
Brutal - swords, axes, two-hand swords,
bare-knuckle boxing, wrestling.
Quite some fearsome ladies.
Can you show me a few of the moves? Not personally, no.
But I know a lady that can. Peta, this way, please.
Can you just put your arms through there, please, Tony?
Is that really the kind of clothes they would have worn?
Absolutely, yes.
I mean, there was an advert from the early 18th century
describing just such clothes.
Would have fought in a petticoat, which wasn't an undergarment in those days.
It was actually part of the day-to-day attire.
So it wouldn't have been seen as any way being sort of frivolous or naughty.
Peta's quite a slight woman, isn't she?
I'd imagined that they would be really burly.
Well, not really. Not in every case.
In the same advertisement,
the English champion was described as being small and petite,
whereas the Irish champion was described as being quite burly.
So they had different sizes, just as they do now.
So, we're doing bare-knuckle fighting, are we?
Bare-knuckle fighting, yes.
You're wearing these because they actually harden the fists and arms,
and they would have been delivering quite some powerful blows,
and Peta's fists and arms as well,
so it's for your own protection.
How long would they have gone on for?
Well, basically, until one person couldn't stand anymore.
Some fights are on record as having lasted several hours.
Oh, great. So, what do we do?
Just step forward and start throwing punches, Tony.
Alright.
Ooh!
You got me on the nose then.
So, what kind of women were they who did this fighting?
For the most part, working-class women who wanted to earn some extra money.
Market workers. There's a record of two women having a grudge fight.
Yeah.
She kicked me! She's allowed to. She's allowed to.
She's allowed to? Yes, it was in the rules. Yes.
In the case of the two women, Elizabeth Wilkinson, Hannah Highfield,
they held half-crown coins in their hands.
If they dropped a coin, that would signify the end of the fight,
thus preventing excessive injury.
Can I have a rest? OK. Sit down, then.
So, apart from the...
...bare-knuckle business, what else was there?
Well, they fought with weapons -
two-hand swords, battleaxes, sword and dagger,
sword and shield, quarterstaffs, cudgels.
They were all-round martial artists.
They were the equivalent of your Shaolin fighter.
What's this thing? Looks like something for fishing.
(Laughs) It's actually a cudgel.
It's a weapon in its own right,
but also used to train the art of sword fighting.
And this was in simulation of the metal hilt, to protect the hand.
But they did actually use these... Oh, yes. This was called a pot.
...for their fighting?
Did they get... very... badly... injured?
Oh, yes, people died on occasion,
usually from poor medical treatment rather than the wounds itself.
They didn't try to kill each other.
They actually tried to cause wounds - cutting of muscles, arms, tendons.
How much did they get paid?
Well, it was difficult to say.
The money was thrown in the ring in appreciation,
a bit like your modern boxers call nobbins.
Every time somebody scored a point, or, rather, caused a wound,
people threw money in the ring.
TONY: Oh!
So then, just then, they'd have lobbed some in for...
Oh, blimey! Peta!
Stop a minute. Please.
Ow! Oh, nice shot.
I'm sure she's not supposed to do that.
So, were there any other weapons that they used?
Oh, yes, they fought with swords of different kinds, yes,
such as this broadsword here.
This is slightly later in period, but the same type of thing they would have used.
Oh, that kind of thing must have hurt them, surely!
Absolutely, yes. It caused serious wounds, yes. It caused deaths.
There was a famous fight in the early 1720s
between the English and Irish fencing champions.
In the first bout, the Irishwoman, poor woman,
she had a severe cut across her forehead which required stitching up on stage.
No anaesthetic. Needle and cotton, glass of whisky - on she went.
Bout two - same thing, another wound.
Stitched up on stage again. Another glass of whisky. On she went.
The third wound, right across the neck and throat,
was so bad, she obviously couldn't fight on.
She didn't die, but she couldn't fight on.
Took her share of the money and went home.
And this is what I've got to do now? Yes. Absolutely.
Right.
Hang on, Peta.
(Terry laughs)
I'd have slaughtered her. It would have just been horrible.
But after the fight was over and the bars were closed,
you still had to get home.
And there was no street lighting in the dangerous back streets.
And the rule of thumb in Worst Jobs in History
is that when there's a job that's so awful no-one in their right mind will do it,
you get a small child.
So when the city gents decided that they needed to be escorted home
by someone acting like a mobile street lamp,
who did they choose?
A little boy.
These children were called 'link boys', and in cities like Edinburgh,
they guided people home with their flaming torches, called links.
So, why was it such a bad job?
Let's imagine these streets at night.
There were no toilets, and at 10 o'clock at night,
you were allowed to throw all the waste out these windows.
Down it came, onto the cobbles of the closes, down the walls,
and these poor kids had to walk through in their bare feet
in these disgusting conditions,
either escorting gentlemen walking or perhaps ladies in sedan chairs.
And, presumably, these boys had no idea who the men were?
Ah, no. Indeed, that was another danger.
They could be drunk, they could be obstreperous,
but they could also be dangerous.
I mean, uh...
...older men preying on young boys, you know, in the dark, late at night.
These boys, also, were very poor
and probably could be tempted by a few pennies.
So, yes, indeed, it was a very dangerous job from that angle.
Was there much work for these lads? Oh, yes.
Although Edinburgh can be a cold, windy city, a lot of activity took place outdoors.
In Edinburgh, there were lots of coffee shops, alehouses, houses of ill-repute,
and just around here, of course, is the old Assembly Rooms,
where the aristocrats came to dance and socialise.
And the link boys, of course, would stand outside these places looking for work.
So these boys must have been quite a fixture of the city.
Oh, yes. Visitors to the city noted them.
For instance, the poet Robert Burns stayed here.
He says about the link boys in one of his poems,
"Whose flambeaus flash against the morning skies
"and gild the ceilings of our chambers."
How much would a link boy have earned?
Oh, very little. Just a penny or two.
And, you know, the sad thing is that sometimes they had to beg
to actually get the money to buy the links, of course,
so that they could work in the evening.
So they would be tired, they'd be covered in filth,
they ran the risk of being assaulted,
and at the end of the day, they earned a penny?
That's it.
But it wasn't just kids who did the worst jobs.
Urban Britain has been built on immigrant labour.
Before the Asians there were Jews, before them, the Irish, and so on.
They arrive with nothing and start at the bottom,
ironically, often in the fashion industry, making clothes for the very rich,
like the fur processors,
who softened pelts for the haute couture of Jane Austen's London.
Vest and pants. You're probably thinking, "Tub of lard."
And you'd be absolutely right
because lard, or tallow, as they used in those days,
was central to my next worst job, which is fur processing,
which was done in the late 18th and 19th century by immigrants,
mainly German Jews.
What they did was that they got bits of fur
and turned them so that the skin-side was uppermost,
and then they would put the tallow on them, like a very thick marge sandwich.
(Groans)
There we go.
Fold it in two, put it into the barrel,
and then you just jumped into the barrel and started treading.
And you trod for hour after hour after hour.
Imagine a room, a basement, like this, full of blokes in barrels,
treading in their underclothes.
Some of them were actually naked,
because it got incredibly hot in these places.
Partly, they had to keep the temperature up
so that the tallow would mix with the fur properly,
but also, just the sheer effort of the exercise made you sweat.
In fact, there was a German countess who came into a place like this
and was confronted by all these blokes dripping with sweat -
so much sweat, in fact, that she thought
that the perspiration itself was the thing that made the fur soft.
No wonder they called these places sweat shops.
The smell of semi-putrefied skins and sweat would have been overpowering.
Try jogging for eight hours on a treadmill at your gym
and you'll see just what it took to create high fashion.
Well, I think that's enough for me.
But, amazingly, these Germans didn't have the worst job in the city.
That job was reserved for some Italians.
I've been looking at the worst jobs
which make our towns and cities what they are.
But which is the worst job of all?
Being a human tap was hard work, but a lot cleaner than some jobs.
Pure collecting was certainly the smelliest, but could earn you a fair wage.
And the risky job of fireman at least had hero status right from the beginning.
No, for me, the very worst job was a tedious, sticky, painful task
which was done by Italian immigrants in the 19th century.
This was their tool of choice.
It's called a punner.
It may not look much, but it weighs about 5kg.
So you wouldn't want to lug this about all day.
Nevertheless, carrying this was the least unpleasant part
of the deeply revolting Italian job of being an asphalt paviour.
Until the 19th century,
our city's roads were cobbles or compacted stones.
Perfect for cartwheels, but terrible for tyres.
City transport as we know it depended on the invention of asphalt roads.
It allowed bicycles, cars, taxis and buses to move freely.
The first asphalt road in Britain was laid in 1871.
It was a marvel, but it was only made on the sweat and pain
of the asphalt paviours who built it.
What did they use these things for, Dave?
Well, the asphalt itself was poured out as a molten substance,
and then to compress and to compact the asphalt,
the workers would use these punners to hammer it down.
Why has yours gone into a stove?
Because the punners also had to be heated before they could be used.
How hot's that?
I can give you an idea. If we put it in here...
So it's seriously hot. Seriously hot.
So once the stuff had been laid, what did the guys actually do?
They would pummel it down until you had a flat surface.
But this is really hot stuff. How did they get near it?
They would have to walk on it.
In what?
Well, this is the extra twist to the job.
Because all the contemporary accounts emphasise the fact
that not only did workers have to walk on the asphalt to pummel it down,
but in order not to injure the asphalt, as the contemporary accounts put it,
they had to do this while not wearing boots.
This is an Indian fakir's job, isn't it? It is.
And this is what I've got to do now? It most certainly is.
I'd better heat this thing up first.
I'm really not looking forward to this. I'll go and get my clobber on.
In order to build a modern road,
the asphalt has to be heated to over 150 degrees
so that it can be worked into a smooth surface.
Now we've got machines to cope with the heat,
but back in the 19th century,
it had to be laid and worked by hand, or, rather, foot.
So there's just this between me and first-degree burns.
Yeah, we've got accounts from Charles Booth,
the great chronicler of the late-19th-century poor,
and others,
to attest to the fact that those laying the asphalt wore slippers.
It's bizarre, isn't it?
Shall I get some of this stuff out, then?
I can hardly walk in these things.
And rake it out of here. And rake it out.
OK.
In front of me was a truck with over four tonnes of asphalt,
heated up to 160 degrees Centigrade.
Ow! Blimey!
Oh! It's like little pinpricks.
Working on the asphalt was so bad that English workers refused to do it,
claiming folk from the Mediterranean had naturally harder feet.
I start in the middle?
Yep. Start in the middle and work out.
Doesn't feel too bad.
It's getting warm. It's getting warm.
(Chuckles)
I can't concentrate on the pounding. I'm just worried about my feet.
It's a very weird sensation, 'cause it's starting to get hotter,
but I just don't know how hot it's gonna get.
Do you know what, I'm slightly apprehensive about...
...these slippers, which...
God almighty, I'm getting off here.
(David laughs)
It suddenly shoots up.
Right, back.
Oh, God! (CAR HORN HONKS)
Oh! I got some in...
(Groans)
Yow.
I got that in... in the slipper.
And let's see the state of those, underneath.
Right.
In contrast to their blistering work on the roads,
the Italians also sold ice-cream on their days off.
Like most immigrants, they saw their worst jobs
as a stepping stone to greater things.
One, Signor Geradani, ended up owning his own asphalt company.
I've been going... I must have been going for about five minutes,
and it's completely useless.
Apart from anything else, the level of the pounder keeps altering all the time,
and because my feet get so hot, I keep running through the damn stuff.
Losing skin was agony, but to add insult to injury,
the Italians were actually paid less than their English workmates.
I tell you what the real problem is.
When you first start, your shoes are really cold,
and they take some time to warm up.
Look, see all that stuff on me here.
Can you see? All that... that...
It's all really burning...
...burning into me.
As you continue doing it,
your shoes get hotter and hotter,
so you've got no cooling-down time.
I've got blisters. Can you see?
That's gonna be a zonking great blister tomorrow.
I've got tiny little burn marks...
...all over the bottom of my feet.
I haven't even st...
Look at the sole of that foot there.
I've sacrificed my sole for the British road system.
Oh, that's actually burnt the skin off there.
But if you think that this job's bad, believe me,
there are plenty more worst jobs in history.
Next time, I'll find out what women with cricket bats
had to do with the king's love life,
how being a royal messenger could be a painful business,
and why the very symbol of monarchy meant mushing up rotten shellfish.
Phwoa! (Coughs)