Britain hasn't just been made by generals and politiCians and Courtiers,
but by a whole host of ordinary people, young and old,
dediCated to doing the real spadework.
This time...
Rlsklng your neck to malntaln the heart of rural llfe.
Shlftlng poo to produce enduring lmages of the countryslde.
And savlng souls In the vlllage by eatlng bread off a corpse.
WelCome to The Worst Rural Jobs in History.
Britaln's an urban natlon. 90% of the populatlon llves In towns.
We thlnk of the countryslde as a place of tranqullllty,
a nostalglc scene of vlllages and flelds, somewhere to escape and relax.
But for most of our hlstory, llvlng In the country has meant the toughest of llves
for hosts of anonymous workers.
Take the ultlmate pastoral scene.
In medleval tlmes, sheep outnumbered the populatlon 10 to 1.
They were a vltal source of meat and clothlng.
The wool trade supported the economy.
And It all relled on shepherds,
who were as common then as checkout glrls are today.
The shepherd's 24/7 job was toughest In the Mlddle Ages.
They had to follow thelr flocks, lugglng heavy hurdles and tools, for mlles
to pen sheep that needed treatment.
They were lonely, out In all weathers, roughlng It In temporary shelters.
Ow!
Shepherds had to do everything for their valuable charges, even dagging -
the equivalent of wiping a sheep's bottom.
I'm supposed to be doing this piece to camera with David,
but I've got this sheep here that's trying to back off all the time,
so I've got my knee firmly up its bottom,
and these little cows have wandered into shot.
What are we doing?
We're going to dag them. What does that mean?
That means taking the wet, dirty faeces off the back.
Yeah. Where I've got my knee, in fact. That's right.
God, it doesn't half want to shift. Stay there!
And the reason we do it is that if we leave it, flies lay their eggs,
particularly the greenbottle, which is smaller than the bluebottle.
And the eggs will hatch out into hundreds of maggots,
which'll eat into the skin.
And it can happen very, very quickly, within a matter of a day.
She doesn't realise I'm about to do her a favour, though, does she?
No. Alright. Well...
How do we do this?
These look pretty fearsome - very early scissors.
So, what do I do with these?
If you move, you're gonna get this up your bottom, you know that.
Right.
Oh, yeah, we just cut the wool.
Now, I'm not gonna cut into anything that belongs to the sheep by mistake, am I?
As long as you're careful.
So worried about cutting the flesh.
Oh, hang on, here's a bit here. I know what that is. Yep.
Right. Ready? That's it. That's it.
And then clip all this off.
And if acting as human toilet paper weren't bad enough,
shepherds had an even more revolting job to perform on young male lambs.
Another job shepherds had to do was to castrate male lambs.
How did they do that?
The shepherd used to cut the end of the scrotum off with a sharp knife,
squeeze the testicles out and draw them out with his mouth.
You're joking! Holding them with his teeth.
This was the best way to do it. I'm not gonna have to do that, am I?
Because to try and do it with your fingers, they'd slip out.
Yep. And also, your fingers would be dirty.
But the mouth was the cleanest part
and also had some antiseptic effect from the saliva.
You'd draw them out,
and then they would often put a mixture of tansy and butter
smeared on the wound to stop the flies getting to it.
Oh! I've had a kebab like that before now.
One of the few times shepherds got human company
was when the sheep came to be washed in the nearest stream.
Why do we have to wash the wool? Why don't we just sell it dirty?
Clean wool is worth about 30%- more than dirty wool.
Although the downside is dirty wool weighs more.
(Both laugh)
How many days a week were the shepherds working?
Oh, seven days a week.
They had very few days off.
So that meant they couldn't even go to church?
No, and that bothered them.
So when they were buried,
they always asked for a lock of wool to be put in their coffin
to prove to God that they were a shepherd.
Ooh-eh! Ha-hoo!
I'll tell you what.
It may be June, but it isn't half nippy.
OK? Yeah, I'm fine, thanks.
Whahh!
By heck, it's cold.
Now, what are we gonna do with these here sheep, then?
We're gonna wash the sheep. They'll be let into the river.
And we'll scrub them with our hands. Yeah.
And that'll help get them clean. And then let them out the other end.
(Sheep bleat)
Oh, you've gone below your waders, haven't you?
Oh, I'm so pleased about that.
A brief splash on a hot day is quite refreshing,
but after 20 minutes, the cold begins to seep into the bones.
Shepherds had to stick at this for 12 hours,
and there was no change of clothes at the end of the day.
Next one, please. Oh!
Oh, it doesn't want to come in, does it?
Whay!
Come on, darling. Here you come. Nice... good wash.
That's it. Oh!
I'm not sure if it's any cleaner than it was.
Ouch! It trod on my foot!
So the...
...the poor old shepherd...
...never even got to heaven
unless he got his bit of wool to wave at the Pearly Gates,
but at least he was never mistaken for the devil.
(SHEEP BLEATS)
Being taken for Lucifer was just one downside
in another worst job from the wool trade.
Sheep were marked with iron-ore dye
sold by the reddleman - the unluckiest sales rep ever.
I am a reddleman.
I sell red and I look red and I am red.
For centuries, the reddleman wandered from village to village selling his wares,
and his face and his body and his clothes were permanently stained red.
And every time he turned up at a different village,
the children would run away, because they thought he was the devil.
How do we know?
Because Thomas Hardy recorded his humiliating fate
in his novel 'Return of the Native'.
MAN: "Like his van, he was completely red.
"He was not temporarily overlaid with the colour. It permeated him."
Shepherds and reddlemen had a really tough time,
and all that to keep the nation in socks.
But that was nothing compared to putting roofs over their heads.
Today, thatched cottages are part of heritage Britain,
the very symbol of rural life.
But when they were built, these were poor workers' hovels,
thatched with the cheapest materials - reed or sedge.
Harvesting all that thatch was tough regardless,
but in the Cambridgeshire Fens, getting a roof was positively dangerous.
The Fens are full of this stuff.
It's a kind of a reed, and it's called sedge, and it's very difficult to get through,
and people have been harvesting it for centuries
in order to use it for thatch and animal fodder
and even for stuffing their mattresses with.
Although, quite honestly, I wouldn't like to sleep in this stuff,
because if you catch it the wrong way, it's razor-sharp.
It's only a reed, Kev. Why is it so sharp?
Well, it's actually a sedge, Tony.
They've not just leaves, they're actually a saw sedge,
and if you take a look along the edges of the blades there,
you can see the serrated edge
running all the way down the length of the blade there.
Oh, yeah, yeah. If you go like this, there's no problem at all, is there?
Yeah. Yeah.
Come back the other way... It's extraordinary.
You get snagged by these tiny, tiny little blades.
So how did they manage to harvest it?
Well, up until the 1950s, we used to use hand tools, like scythes and sickles,
and we'd move along the row, cutting the material
and tying them up into bunches.
But you'd still slash your arms, wouldn't you?
We used to have bindings
running up our entire length of our hands and around our arms,
and then use leather or string to bind them onto their arms,
and that offered some protection
against some of these barbed edges that we've got on here.
Right, let's get bound up. OK.
Do you want to give me a hand? Here we are, here.
If you just hold your arm out there.
It would have been all the way down to the arm there.
And over.
The material they used, it would have been the thicker the better, really.
It may be quite uncomfortable, but it offered that bit more protection.
Do we know anything about the injuries that people actually sustained?
From harvesting the sedge,
only really what we know of the injuries that we sustain while we're doing it today.
Which are what?
Deep lacerations - down to the bone in some cases -
on the legs, on the arms, on the face,
and particularly around the tops of the legs as you're tying the bundles.
So it can be incredibly painful.
And then, of course, you've got the problem
that you're using sharp tools - scythes and stuff.
Exactly.
Sedge is cut in midsummer.
Working wrapped up, in full sun, caused heat stroke.
And there was also the dreaded fen ague -
malaria from mosquitoes in the marsh.
Workers eased the shivers with 'comfort', which was opium.
Villages were allotted an area of fen to cut,
but it's a wonder anyone took up the option.
Were there professional sedge cutters, or did everybody do it?
No, it was a whole family affair.
The adults would use the scythes, the women would collect the sedge up
and the children would tie the bundles.
So you're doing it on top of everything else you do.
On top of everything else that you had to do.
And they would use the material for thatching
or they would sell it on to earn some money to buy some food for themselves.
There we go. Alright.
Does it matter that this is a right-handed scythe and I'm left-handed?
Well, traditionally, it would have been a right-handed tool.
If you were left-handed, you would have just had to have got on with it
as a right-handed tool.
So, sweeping... sweeping in like this, yeah?
That's it.
Am I doing this right? That's perfect. That's perfect.
It was a very long, laborious job.
Sedge was cut here well into the 20th century,
but it's a really ancient worst job.
A Saxon poem says, "Sedge Groweth in water, woundeth grimly
"Drawing blood from any man that maketh any grasp at it."
(Kevin laughs)
I thought I'd chopped it all away.
Half of it's still hanging on.
And it cuts.
This is a sedge stake. I thought it was just a stick in the ground.
Oh, no, it's a special stick, and you pull this string around.
Yeah. Yeah.
And we feed one end through the loop, and now we start to tie.
You've got to get them tight, because as they dry out, the water evaporates.
If they're not tight enough, it all falls out. Yeah.
Bearing in mind, you got the sun beating down on you.
Yeah.
1 down. 1,000 to go.
Cheers, mate.
But if cutting every inch of a thatched roof by hand was bad,
there was worse to come.
The industrial revolution saw a huge population explosion.
The country needed vast quantities of Britain's staple food - bread.
So landowners looked to technology
for new ways of harvesting and processing the wheat that made it.
(WHISTLE BLOWS)
When you buy a new machine to do a job for you,
you think, "Oh, great, that's gonna make my life easier," don't you?
Well, that's not always the case for everybody concerned.
Take threshing, which is separating the wheat from the chaff,
which was traditionally done by guys whacking at it with flails,
and then the farmers started buying threshing machines,
and, sure, it made their lives easier -
the job got done quicker, and they made more profits -
but as far as the actual threshers were concerned,
half of them were immediately made redundant
and the other half were faced with a whole new bunch of really bad jobs.
The corn was harvested in the autumn,
then kept in barns until the winter for threshing.
So, although we've got a perfect day today,
men feeding the machines then would have worked in freezing conditions
with a machine that could kill or maim in an instant.
And there's another risk, because while the corn is in the barn,
it's home to all sorts of vermin.
Am I dressed OK? Yes, you're not too bad.
But I think you ought to have your yoks, as we say in Lincolnshire.
What are yoks?
These are bits of binded twine that you tie around the bottom of your trouser leg.
Why?
To stop rats and mice running up them.
They really did? That wasn't just a myth?
No, no, no. They really did have to do it.
Who were the people who did this? Well, they were mostly farm labourers.
But it was a very busy time, so it would be a question of all hands on deck.
Most of the threshing was done by contractors,
so the farmer would ring up the contractor and say,
"Can you come and thresh my stack next week?"
He would bring the machinery.
The engine driver was a specialist, so he'd come with the machine,
but the farmer himself would provide the rest of the labour.
So everybody would get involved - the farmer himself, the farm workers,
children off school, and, indeed, the farmer's wife -
they'd all be called in to help with this very busy time of year.
Alright, here I go, then. OK.
Right, Ron, how do I do it? RON: Hello.
You put in the fork near the string. Yeah.
Pick it up, move it over and just flick it like that.
OK, so, then... There's one for you.
So which end of that's gotta be facing him?
The ears facing the engine.
Didn't really flick it, did I? No.
Show me how... You'll stab his hand if you're not careful.
Right. Yeah.
RON: So, like this. TONY: Oh, that was a good one.
So, if you'd like to have a go. Alright.
That's a bit heavier, that one, so... Oh, thanks, mate.
Right. Put it in near the string. That's right. Lift it up.
Ooh, it is heavy, isn't it? Yeah, go on.
(Laughs)
That was useless! That was so bad.
It's a rotten sheaf! No, no, no, no.
Look at the state of that sheaf. It's a good one. Look. Watch.
Easy. Alright.
Stand by to be impressed. Fork in the middle.
Yes! Oh, no!
Come on! That was fine. Gravity got in the way.
No... He's making the pile shorter so I'll get it on.
Don't worry about that. This is going on.
Well done. Just about.
RON: Fork in the middle.
You had to pitch quickly. Everyone was paid by the sheaf.
Oh! The master! You've got the idea now.
So it's thirsty work.
Labourers were traditionally given up to six pints of beer a day.
When you look at the business end of the thresher,
it's a wonder they didn't all end up as mince.
Here we go. Oh, God! Nearly fell off.
Right.
What you have to do is get these sheaves in.
Yeah. Get your knife under there, pick 'em up.
Yeah. Keep hold of the knot.
Press them. Press them in.
Must always keep hold of the strings and that.
Why do I have to keep hold of the strings?
Because at the end of the day, they used to count the strings.
Yeah. So you know how much you've got to...
Plus they use the strings to tie the sacks up.
And my legs.
And your legs, of course.
Can I have a go at one of my own? Yes, you can.
The crushing jaws shaped the whole machine.
It feels very unstable.
You can see how easily accidents could happen.
They must have had a lot of accidents on this machine.
Well, people have gone in, lost their limbs and that, where they've fallen in.
Yeah.
And I believe one or two have been killed in the machine as well, yes.
I'm not surprised.
MAN: "Inquest at Horringer on Monday last, on Alfred Last,
"an able-bodied man in the employ of Mr...
"...threshing machine, he became later in the afternoon intoxicated.
"His foot, he placed incautiously among the wheels of the machine
"and received severe fractures of the leg.
"Frightful accident.
"As the wife of a labourer named Price was feeding a steam threshing machine
"upon the premises of Mr Joseph...
"...right down the mouth of the machine.
"When she was extricated, she was in a state of insensibility, if not quite dead,
"and her arm was crushed to atoms and torn out of the shoulder socket.
"...at Hole Farm, Finchingfield.
"Harry Coote, 26, a Toppesfield man,
"was feeding the threshing machine with beans.
"He left the feeder to get a fork from E. Cook, who was on the fore part...
"...slipped and stepped onto the revolving drum.
"He was immediately drawn in by the left leg
"and his lower body was torn away and smashed to pulp.
"He died without speaking."
But incredibly, risking life and limb on top of the thresher
wasn't the least popular part of the process.
The worst job of all, probably, was in the chaffhole,
and this is the chaffhole.
And usually, it was the job of the young lad, the newest recruit,
to go into the chaffhole and keep the bottom of the drum clear of the chaff.
And then it would be bagged up and used for chicken feed, probably.
Yeah. Have to watch this bit, don't you? Yeah, you have to watch your head.
That's it.
If you were a little kid and you lost your concentration...
Well, it was usually the youngest lad who was given this job,
or the oldest chaps who couldn't get up on the drum anymore.
(Laughs)
That's it.
It gets in your ears, in your eyes, down your throat, down your front,
down your back - everywhere.
Let's say we've done this job, shall we?
Lmagine doing that from dawn till dusk.
Yeah, I've imagined it. Off we go. Day after day. (Laughs)
But after the threshing, there's one last horrible job.
Before the forklift truck,
the corn carrier had to lug 16-stone bags of grain up a ladder
to keep it out of reach of rats.
(Puffs)
And that's the way it goes.
Hey.
As the country's changed, so have the jobs.
Today, you'll seldom see a mole catcher with his willow trap
or rows of moles hung up on fences to show he's done his work.
We've dumped the mad prehistoric job of harvesting stinging nettles.
Oh, blimey!
(Laughs)
Oh, what can I say on telly?
It was just too painful a way to get string and fibre for clothing.
And the fen diggers, with their beckets and slubbing spades,
put themselves out of a job as soon as they'd drained the Cambridge marshes.
And gone too is perhaps the strangest worst job ever.
Sin eating started in the superstitious Middle Ages,
but was still recorded in the Rhondda Valley in 1881.
We sometimes tend to think of the countryside
as being full of tight-knit, mutually supportive communities,
but if you got on the wrong side of them,
then you could find yourself living in the loneliest place on Earth,
and there was no-one who was ostracised more
than the person who did my next worst job,
who was the sin eater,
and his job involved eating bread off a corpse.
Because in the countryside,
they believed in a mixture of religion and old-style folk magic.
And one of the things that they thought was
that if someone died without their sins being forgiven, then they would go to hell.
So if someone passed away without absolution,
they would place some salt and some bread on the corpse,
which were supposed to absorb the sins,
and then the sin eater came along,
and in order to get rid of the sins completely, he ate the salt and...
...the bread,
so now all the sins were inside him.
And if you did it, he got paid sixpence and a bowlful of beer,
but the unfortunate thing was that now the local people shunned him
because he was so riddled with sin,
which seems pretty unfair,
because without him, this poor bloke would still be in purgatory.
Of course, as the countryside moved into the modern era, the sin eater died out.
But the jobs just got worse and worse.
Until the 18th century,
the only people who really knew their way round the countryside were the locals.
But with the threat of invasion by the French,
accurate maps became vital.
The Defence Ministry, the Board of Ordnance,
started a survey of the south of England.
This Ordnance Survey
employed highly trained surveyors and their luckless assistants.
The worst job of pole man provided the legwork
behind a national institution.
Without the job of the pole man, we wouldn't have these fantastic things.
Today, Ordnance Survey maps are part of the way we appreciate the countryside.
Apart from anything else, they stop us useless townies from getting lost.
But imagine the longest, the worst day you've ever had,
traipsing through mud and stinging nettles and bushes,
and you'll just get an inkling of the horrible job of being a pole man.
The first job was to get a basic idea of the layout of the land by triangulation.
By taking two known points and sighting a third in relation to them,
the survey covered the land with a honeycomb of readings.
And the pole man had to trudge every inch of the course.
Frances? Tony.
The church is northeast, and that building over there's north-northwest.
Thanks very much. I'll jot that down here.
What's that table?
This is one of the several sorts of instruments
that people could have used to fill in the details
after they'd fixed the main triangulation points.
Why was it such a bad job?
I mean, alright, it wasn't that much fun
schlepping up a hill and back again,
but people would just do that on a day out.
Well, it might be lovely weather today, but it wouldn't be always like that.
You would be out in the rain and the fog
and even the snow if you were really unlucky.
And if you're the surveyor's assistant,
your surveyor is gonna be sending you to all the nastiest bits
where he doesn't want to go himself.
And I bet I'm carrying all your stuff, aren't I?
Absolutely. Nice heavy equipment.
And quite a lot of miles to travel.
So, what did the pole man do with his pole?
The pole is for carrying to a far distant point
where the surveyor can actually sight it
and mark the bearing down on the map
so that that point can then be fixed.
So, what do you want me to do?
I'd like you to take a pole
and go off to roughly where that telegraph pole is over there, please.
Mapping one field could mean miles of walking back and forth
through thistles, mud and mire.
And if you got the instructions wrong, it meant double the distance.
It's further than it looks, actually.
I couldn't tell what you were trying to show me with your signals.
Ah, I was trying to say, "Go further up the hill to the next corner."
But now you've come back, um,
it's, "Go further up the hill to the next corner from here," I'm afraid.
(Speaks indistinctly) Yeah. Thanks a lot.
That's alright.
Eventually, surveyors came up with a signal system that worked
until walkie-talkies.
The next thing we need to have a go at
is measuring on the ground with a chain,
because there are some places where you couldn't actually use a sighting pole.
Originally, people used rope, ropes with knots in at suitable intervals,
for measuring distances.
But very often it rained and the ropes got wet and the length changed.
What did the local people feel about all these surveyors
traipsing up and down their land?
Well, very often, they didn't like it very much,
as you could probably imagine.
If it was the Ordnance Survey, they thought,
"What's the government up to,
"sending these military types around to tramp across our fields?
"Are they gonna put the taxes up?"
Or if it was an ordinary landowner who was having his field surveyed,
they'd all think, "Well, he's gonna put the rents up for all the tenants
"and make more money out of us."
In Devon, the locals were so hostile, they stoned the surveyors.
But it was the work itself that was the real downside, especially the chain.
Even in 1771, a surveyor moans
that he "can't get an assistant to lead the chain over rough mountains
"for under a shilling a day".
Right?
Alright, there's one. OK.
And then drag it back along the same line.
One chain is a cricket pitch - 22 yards.
80 make one mile.
Even if this was the wrong sign, I wasn't telling Frances.
I think this place is pretty well surveyed now.
What do you think the very worst part of being a surveyor was?
Well, perhaps the worst thing would be when you thought you'd got to the end
and you thought you'd got a final result
and somebody came along and raised some doubt or other
and you had to go back and check something all over again.
So I think, really, we need you to take that compass
and go back up to the top of the hill and check the original readings.
Are you serious?
Well, as your boss, I think I should be serious.
(Sighs)
Uh... That's the pole man's job.
I'm resigning.
But although our Ordnance Survey maps rely on his work,
our mental picture of the countryside of the past
relies on a very different worst job.
John Constable is the quintessential painter of the countryside.
Today, pictures like this can seem charged with chocolate-box nostalgia,
but in his day, Constable was seen as daringly new.
What was so revolutionary was the clouds,
which he painted with meteorological accuracy,
and the white flecks he used
to render the shifting flicker of light and weather on leaves.
Contemporaries found this unique way of using white paint so startling
that they contemptuously referred to it as 'Constable's snow'.
And this snow, as well as things like glazed pots and even make-up,
required a lead-white paint-maker
prepared to dedicate himself to hours of painstaking and highly toxic work.
What are we doing here?
This is a very, very old process. This is called the stack process.
Ancient Romans, ancient Egyptians were doing it.
This is corroding blue lead into white lead.
So I just keep pulling it towards me? Just keep going.
You don't have to pull. Push away.
From the 17th century onwards,
penniless women were bought at hiring fairs
to make lead-white on a large scale.
Heavy sheet lead is rolled into coils
so they can be corroded using a primitive chemistry.
I was about to find out how primitive.
You'll find this is a bit hummy in here. TONY: A bit hummy?
(Laughs) Wow!
You just get hit by this wall of ammonia.
What is it, horse dung?
This is horse dung corroding the lead.
In the bottom of each of these pots is vinegar. They used to use urine.
So, what's the chemical reaction that takes place there?
What's taking place here
is that the lead is first of all being converted into lead acetate.
The lead acetate, in the atmosphere here from the dung,
which is giving off carbon dioxide,
is then converted to lead carbonate,
lead carbonate and lead hydroxide, and that is white lead.
So, what do we do now?
We've got to fill the whole of this space here.
The whole of it. Everywhere here. With these little pots?
And then we shut the doors and lock it up for six months.
Oh, right. Good idea.
Now, while I set these out...
There's a shovel. Yeah.
You'll find a heap of dung round the corner, find a barrow.
Lots of dung, please.
It's a worst job. It's shovelling horse dung.
Off you go.
The women who stacked the dung didn't have the foggiest about the chemicals,
but they did know how tough the job was.
They had to build stacks up to 12 metres high.
Then they'd carry trays of lead weighing 25 kilos up ladders
amid the stench of ammonia from the tonnes of horse poo.
It was disgusting, but it worked.
If you've ever experienced the heat in the middle of a compost heap,
that's what acts as the catalyst for the 6-month chemistry experiment.
Come on!
It's only grass.
Yes, it's grass, but processed via a horse's bottom and heaving with bacteria,
causing all manner of stomach problems for the unsuspecting workers.
You wouldn't like to borrow a pair of gloves?
Now you say, would I like to borrow a pair of gloves?
(Laughs) (Laughs sarcastically)
What happens next? Right.
What we've got to do is pack that a bit firmly around there.
The important thing is to keep these...
These pots have got to be clean. Yeah.
So...
Pull one of those out. Yep.
And then... it goes in... like that.
You'd be... Easier to try... Try that one there.
OK.
And pop the pot in. And just check that there's nothing inside it and it is clean.
'Cause you've got to keep the lead clean. Yep.
OK.
So into that will go the vinegar, then will go this...
The coil will sit above the vinegar like that,
and then we leave that for six months.
And what does it look like at the end of six months?
I'll show you.
Well, that's a bit different, isn't it? Yes, Tony.
This is actually a simulation.
Because if this were white lead, this would be a toxic substance.
Toxic for the workers? Toxic for the workers.
Toxic for you and me. Oh.
This is why you've given me these gloves.
I've given you the gloves. Thank you.
But if this were white lead, we're not properly protected.
I understand, yeah. Right?
So, what a worker would be involved in is taking this out of here,
and bear in mind this is a woman and this weighs...
...that's nine kilos, one-and-a-half stone.
Yeah. You then have to lift this coil out.
And... unroll it.
Can I have a go? Yes, do. Go on.
Sort of get all the powder off. Normally, you'd be collecting this in a tray.
Yeah. So, I can see that all this dust is coming off it.
Yes, and you're breathing. What would it do to us?
Well, if you were a pregnant woman,
this would have an effect on the developing nervous system,
could possibly cause abortion,
could lead to learning difficulties in young children.
How did you know whether you'd ingested so much of this
that you were putting your unborn child at risk?
Well, in the 19th century, when people started to be concerned about health...
In fact, they were concerned in the 18th century.
In the French Revolution, they tried to do away with white lead altogether,
but found that they couldn't.
Inspectors used to go round the factories
and ask all the workers to stand like divers,
with their arms out in front of them like that.
And if a person couldn't raise his hands, it was called wrist drop.
And he couldn't raise his hands
because the signal from his brain to his fingertips was not constant,
so he couldn't hold his hand up.
It didn't always work.
In 1872, a teenager called Charlotte Rafferty
had worked forjust five months
at the lead-white firm of Walkers, Parker & Co.
Before she collapsed and died.
Bit more oil.
The powder was mixed with oil to form a paste.
Artists then further diluted this.
But even with the minute quantities they used on their canvas,
they drank milk to try and prevent absorbing the lead.
So we've got our lead-white paint,
and I'm going to use this bit to paint a tiny little object
that has transformed our countryside.
The golf ball.
The countryside has always been what we've made it.
Today, more and more of it's used for leisure, rather than survival.
Golf started with Scots hitting stones down rabbit holes with sticks.
Today, there are 2,485 golf courses in Britain,
gobbling up a quarter of a million acres of countryside.
But the game would never have spread
without the invention of the first proper golf ball - the feathery.
It was made from bull's hide and boiled feathers by a craftsman with a worst job.
Why worst? Just enter his workshop.
Phil. PHIL: Hello, Tony.
We're gonna make golf balls. We are.
Hang on. I was about to say, "Why on earth would that be a worst job?"
But I think I already know. The smell's probably set you up for it.
This is horrible! Whatever is this?
Feathers and water.
Feathers? That's correct.
No idea that boil... (Coughs)
...boiling feathers smelt quite so bad.
So, what is it we're making, precisely?
Ah! We're making, precisely, an early form of golf ball.
Known as a feathery, hence the feathers.
It's not round, is it? No.
It's like a pixie's rugby ball.
Can you see that little stitch all the way along there?
It's very light.
That's the three pieces. The body...
Featheries stopped being made in the 1850s.
Phil's re-created the feathery pattern from museum exhibits.
The leather's sewn together before being turned inside out
and stuffed with the stinking feathery gunk.
Do that. Give it a chance to cool down a bit.
Yep.
For two centuries, featheries were the only golf ball.
Hundreds of craftsmen and apprentices did this mind-numbing job
amidst the stench of great vats of feathers.
It is extraordinary, actually.
You see... how much... feather there is left.
We've got virtually that much feather into this.
Until 1850, feathery makers made a good, if tedious and smelly, living.
Supply never met demand for their throwaway product.
Cor!
Cut fingers, stinky feathers and flies buzzing round.
How many of these do you reckon you'd make in a day?
At the time, they reckoned about three to five a day.
And how many would you need for one round of golf?
Between seven and eight.
So one bloke couldn't make in a day enough balls
for some other chap to use for one round.
That's correct. Extraordinary.
Grab just a little bit, then put it in your hands,
and then just roll it round your hands to totally cover the ball.
Nice and slowly.
That's rather nice.
But in the mid-19th century, the invention of the latex gutta-percha ball
destroyed the feathery market,
leaving hundreds of workers destitute.
So, do these first featheries for 150 years actually work?
Oh, wow!
That really shifted, didn't it? That's excellent.
If it wasn't for the advances of the feathery man,
then blokes like Tony would still be driving stones down hills
and putting them into rabbit holes.
But it has to be said that sticking your face
into a vat full of rancid, boiling feathers
does make it a worst job.
Although, at least your feet are dry and firmly on the ground,
which is more than can be said for the very worst rural job of all.
I've been looking at some of the worst jobs
that have made our countryside what it is today,
but which is the very worst?
Ouch! It trod on my foot!
Keeping the nation in wool was tough,
but at least the shepherds didn't risk ending up as steak tartare
like the threshing machine workers.
And even the outcast reddleman had a stable, if monochrome, living.
No, for me, the very worst is a mind-numbingly terrifying job
without which we wouldn't have one of the most important symbols of village life.
It's the steeplejack.
The countryside revolves round the communities who've made it what it is.
For centuries, the spire of the village church
has been the symbolic heart of rural life.
But these stone beacons are fragile.
They're literally tied together with iron.
Without the steeplejack,
these key features of the landscape would simply collapse.
Here I am as a steeplejack.
Actually, steeplejacks were really respected,
because they were skilled craftsmen,
and they earned quite a good wage as well.
But, frankly,
any job which involves climbing about 60 metres up into the air
and just clinging on to a bit of stone
is my idea of hell.
And when it got to the Victorian period, it was even worse, because of the smog,
which meant that all the ironwork got corroded
and everything was covered in black gunk.
Roger, I know today I'm gonna have to put all this safety kit on,
but what kind of gear did they have to protect themselves in Victorian times?
In the Victorian times, they would have had absolutely nothing.
They'd have just had a straight ladder up the side of the church spire,
and you would have had to climb that and do your work when you got to the top.
You would have had a bosun's seat, which we're still using today,
but there would have been no safety devices on that at all.
Photos from one steeplejack firm show just how perilous it was.
Three men from this company had falls from more than 60 feet.
TONY: Why did they go up there? ROGER: To maintain the structure.
Before we started installing lightning conductors
onto these sort of structures to protect them,
they were struck by lightning quite frequently,
with consequent damage to the masonry and the weathervanes, etc.
So, what do you want us to do today?
I want you to go right to the very tip of the spire to fetch the weathercock down.
That's not been repaired for at least 50 years.
So it's not just that I've got to go up there.
I've got to go right up to the very top... That's it.
...and pick out the largest, heaviest thing that hasn't been touched for 50 years.
That's the one, yep. Oh, fantastic.
And wouldn't you know it? This isn't any old spire.
St Mary's Bloxham has got the highest spire in Oxfordshire.
Thanks.
Oh, wow!
A magnificent view.
That's...
Mind you, looking down, it is a little bit scary.
And this is, what, halfway up? This is halfway up, yes.
So a little breather here, and then...
Then on up to the top of the spire.
Christ, all up there.
Lord, oh, Lord, oh, Lord, oh, Lord!
I don't know if I can do this.
I'll have a go.
Yep. You'll be fine, Tony.
How would they have got the fixings for the ladders?
They would have driven a wedge into the wall, an iron wedge...
Yeah.
...and just tied the ladders to that.
And then when they got to the top of one ladder,
climb up to that and then rig another ladder on top?
That's it, yeah. Tie the two lengths of ladder together.
I thought this ladder was gonna be at an angle. It's vertical!
It's not exactly vertical, Tony.
It's got the same angle as the spire.
You could have fooled me!
My legs are shaking already, and I haven't even got onto the first rung.
Mm-hm.
Imagine what it must have been like before you had all this stuff.
Right, here we go.
Now, what I know I mustn't do is look down,
so... just keep up a regular rhythm, I think,
and just not worry about anything at all.
Here, Rog? Yes, Tony?
What did they do if they wanted a wee?
Well, if you've ever been walking around in town
on a nice, clear, sunny day...
Yeah.
...and you've felt a spot of moisture on your forehead, that's a steeplejack.
I'm glad you told me that.
Parish records are littered with steeplejack fatalities
from lightning strikes, collapsed scaffolding and deadly falls.
The luckiest, or unluckiest, Victorian steeplejack
was a chap called Larkin.
He survived three falls from height,
only to be killed, ironically, by toppling just 15 feet.
Hey, it's here!
Here, Roger, we're there!
Yep. Finally got to the top, Tony.
TONY: I didn't think it would actually be golden.
ROGER: There's still a few little bits of gold left on it.
But it's pretty rough, that is, by our standards.
I don't fancy standing up very much.
Ugh...
It's wobbly with you on it, I tell you.
(Moans)
Get a good, firm grip of that. You'll be fine.
This come off here? Yep. Just...
Is it gonna be very heavy?
It's got a bit of suction in it because it's quite tight on the rod.
God, how much higher does it go? There it goes.
That's it.
Do you want to pass it down to me?
Hang on! Yep?
What's that there? That's a bullet hole, Tony.
That'll date from the Second World War. Right.
Chuck it down to me, mate.
OK, Tony. You ready for it? Yeah. Here we go.
That's what you came all the way up here for.
There we are. Job done. No, no, not quite. No.
Oh, I forgot the ball!
Cheers, mate.
Incredible feeling of satisfaction,
although we've got to take this little lot back down the bottom again now.
But if it hadn't been for the steeplejacks and the threshers
and the nettle harvesters,
then we wouldn't have the fantastic countryside that we've got today.
And the same's true of our towns and our industry and our monarchy.
It was the work force who made the history of Britain happen.
Britain's history hasn't just been made
by kings and queens and generals and admirals,
but by a whole host of ordinary people doing a lot of really terrible jobs.
And if you don't believe me, take a look at how we came to rule the waves.
This time, luxury liners that needed people working with sacks on their heads.
I am the gunier-man!
How Britain's very first navy survived on minimal rations.
And why the heroes who kept our coasts safe didn't like getting their toes wet.
Welcome to The Worst Maritime Jobs in History.
The sea put the 'great' in Great Britain.
International trade, politics and our military success
have all depended on controlling the oceans.
Many of our greatest heroes were sailors -
legends like Nelson, Drake or Captain Cook.
But despite having trading connections long before the Romans,
we hadn't explored the ocean's potential.
We had no navy.
The sea kept us captive, prey to invaders.
But in the 9th century, the threat of the skilled seagoing Vikings
forced a national crisis.
It was Alfred the Great who got into the record books
as the first king to fight back successfully against the Vikings.
He built our first navy, which was a fleet of ships
based on the drakkar, or dragon ships, of the Vikings.
But if you were a land-loving Saxon desperately trying to emulate a Viking,
which means 'sea warrior',
you must have had a really miserable time.
So my first worst job is the Saxon oarsman.
Saxon oarsmen had a double challenge.
They had to fight the Vikings,
but first they had to overcome their own fear and prejudice about going to sea.
They were forced to copy the enemy from the north.
So my landlubber's learning curve also begins on a freezing Norwegian fjord,
with a bunch of experimental archaeologists.
Most Viking craft were comparatively small
and well built for stability and speed.
But as soon as you're on the water, you get a worrying insight
into how scary Viking technology must have been for the novice Saxons.
How come we've just got onto the boat and it's full of water?
It leaks.
Why?
The planks, basically, are not tight, and it needs time for the wood to swell,
and as you can see, it leaks.
Have a look here, just where my feet are.
It's a constant problem, because if it rains, it fills with water.
Yeah. If there's waves, it fills with water.
It's a lousy job.
Look at this.
This is what me as an oarsman would have had to use
for the bits that I couldn't reach with the bucket.
What do you call that? It's just... It's just...
Basically, it's called a spoon.
It's called a spoon. Wouldn't you know it?
There's an awful lot of water actually under this decking.
I'm not taking that up. If you take that up...
Look down here. Look. Terrific.
So I've got to be chucking this stuff out the way all the time?
Yeah.
The water's only just above freezing, the wind chill about -10.
If your hands are sore from rowing,
bailing, an absolutely essential part of the oarsman's job,
turns them red raw.
And the only alternative to bailing is the back-breaking business of rowing.
There's a lead man who rows. And that's me.
And basically, everybody keeps pace with me.
So it's got to be the guy who basically is at the front, or, rather, at the back,
so everybody can see him.
But a little craft like this could cross the North Sea.
They were the long-haul aircraft of their day,
forging the Vikings' international reputation,
at the cost of personal comfort.
Even Vikings hated it.
In one saga, the hero moans about spending his Ionely winter
on the ice-cold sea, hung round by icicles.
If they didn't make landfall, nights were spent in the open boat,
with only animal skins and their hairy mates for warmth.
Food was pretty basic too.
That's what's called fairnalaw, and that's salted and dried meat.
Ham? Yeah.
And basically... Yeah?
Try a bit.
What do you think? That's alright.
Yeah, and the other alternative is...
Fish. I'm not quite so sure about this!
Pretty bony.
God, it stinks! Yeah, it does.
But did you bite into the fleshy bit or? I bit into that bit there.
And you just rip it off, bones and all, and just chew it.
That's disgusting!
I can see you're impressed.
But it doesn't taste like smoked fish, does it? It just tastes manky.
(Laughs)
Got a mouthful of bones. Yeah.
But it's very good for you.
The Saxon oarsman set the nation on a new course.
In the centuries that followed, Britons really took to the sea.
Improved design made for much larger ships for trade and warfare.
But our history at sea has always meant worst jobs on land as well.
And the massive expansion in medieval shipbuilding
needed raw ingredients.
Britain's maritime tradition starts here, with wood.
But in order to work the wood to make the ships,
you needed the skills of the shipwright, who was such a highly prized craftsman
that he'd certainly never sully his hands
by making the basic component of the ship - the plank.
Making ships with sawn planks was a new technology.
Literally at the cutting edge was one bad job and one worst job.
Damian? Yeah?
Who was the chap who made the planks for the shipwright?
Well, it was a pair of them.
One down the hole there and one up here, the sawyers,
'cause you always have at least two.
They would saw out the planks for the shipwright by the 16th century,
and also a lot of the other timbers of the ship.
They prepared most of the timber for the shipbuilding.
TONY: So, what was so bad about the job?
Just unending labour. I mean, you know, six days a week doing this.
I mean, we play at it.
We do it for an afternoon at a weekend a few times in the summer. That's OK.
But six days a week, hour after hour.
They had a real reputation for drinking, and you can see why.
It's thirsty work, but it's also numbing work, and, you know,
you'd rather be doing almost anything else, I think, after a while.
The heyday of the under-sawyer came in Tudor times.
Thousands of them were employed after the Spanish Armada,
building 174 ships in London alone.
They got through 40,000 tonnes of wood.
Whole forests were turned into millions of planks and mountains of sawdust.
And a word for a whole new underclass was born.
What are these things, these great grips? These iron staple things?
They're called dogs.
The top-sawyer, usually the most senior person,
standing over the dogs, the top dog,
and then the underdog, the more junior person, underneath them.
You're the top dog and Joe's the underdog.
Joe, you're the underdog. Do you mind if I take over?
Certainly not. Away you go.
Well, those are small planks you could use for small-boat-building.
You know, for a big ship, they'd be an awful lot bigger than that.
It's a bit manky down here, isn't it? Any hole in the ground gets wet, yeah.
A lot of them would be wet and rather stinky.
So... Alright, what do I have to do?
Well, the idea is you concentrate on the line,
you steer the saw, just like a children's scooter, but only on the downstroke.
And on the upstroke, you push up slightly to help me lift the saw.
OK, I'm gonna lift it now. Yeah.
OK? And then we'll go down.
You've got to tell me if you're going off the line.
You have to help me a bit on the upstroke.
Yep.
(Tony coughs)
(Coughs)
I tell you what is so difficult about this - it's all this flippin' dust.
Uh, it is when we get a gust of wind and it blows it,
but most of it's going down in front of where you're cutting.
I'm down here. It isn't.
Isn't it? (Coughs)
This has got to be the worst job in the shipyard, hasn't it?
It probably was one of the very worst jobs.
Very hard on the hands, and get in your lungs.
Yeah.
Don't tip more on!
That's not on you. That's right in front of you.
You have to do that, otherwise you can't see the line
and you can't see what you're cutting.
There may not have been a worse job in the shipyard,
but once the under-sawyers' ships were launched,
a brand-new world of employment misery bobbed onto the horizon.
The 16th century was a turning point for the British at sea.
Queen Elizabeth's navy managed to fend off the awesome Spanish Armada.
Walter Raleigh went exploring and discovered potatoes.
And Francis Drake went round the world on the 'Golden Hind'.
They got the glory, but all the work was done by anonymous sailors.
There were 80 on the 'Golden Hind', risking death in battle,
falling from the rigging or being swept overboard.
But there was one arduous task beneath deck
that strained every fibre even before leaving port.
Sailors had to haul the anchor,
up to a tonne of metal stuck in the sea bed,
in the most cramped conditions imaginable.
If you're a physiotherapist, look away now.
TONY: What do I do?
Tony, your job is to push the capstan.
You're gonna have to get one of the bars out here with the guys.
Come on, guys. Let's get those capstan bars out.
Put the bar in the slot. Yeah.
And then, with all the other guys... you're gonna drive the capstan round
to pull the anchor cable up.
OK.
ANDREW: Everybody ready? Yep.
OK, let's go.
Sometimes this job took days.
The commonest injury for sailors was a rupture.
This feels a physically hard job, but was it at all dangerous?
ANDREW: Yes, this could be a very dangerous job.
If the cable snapped, the capstan would spin back and knock the men over.
If the anchor snags, it could be really hard work to try and pull it out.
Presumably you were quite vulnerable when the anchor was rising.
As most of the crew had to be used to get the anchor up,
this was a perfect time for somebody to attack you,
to catch you, quite literally, with your crew below deck, running round the capstan.
There'd be nobody upstairs to defend the ship.
It's a very vulnerable time.
(Sighs)
Yep, that's it. Hooray!
Great job! (Sighs)
Can we get up top and have a look?
Yeah, we better go and see if you've done the job.
Thanks, guys.
Oh, wow. That is big, isn't it?
Yep, that is a really big one.
No wonder it took quite so much effort, but job done.
Although, having said that, there is one even worse job, isn't there,
which you're gonna make me do.
What is it? The worst job on the ship.
It's not just pulling. It's not sweating. It's a punishment.
The job is called 'being the liar'.
Liar, as in pants on fire? Yeah.
Every Monday morning, the first person to tell a lie
would be named and shamed,
and they would then have the job of being the swabber's mate.
And what were they swabbing?
They were swabbing the outside of the ship.
They were swabbing the dirtiest parts of the ship.
In particular, they were swabbing the toilet area out here on the beak head.
This is down here... Come and have a look at this.
Right down there.
And you want me to go and clear that up?
Oh, yes.
Now, how the heck do I get down there? There's no ladder or anything.
We're gonna put you in the bosun's chair,
and we're gonna lower you over the side, we're gonna take you right down there,
and I'm gonna pass you the bucket and the swabs.
You're to do the job.
You're so looking forward to this, aren't you?!
I'm glad you're doing it.
Right, lads, come on. Rig us up.
The captain had his own privy.
Everyone else had to negotiate this obstacle course to go to the heads.
Clinging onto a rope and aiming between the slats
can't have been easy in a force eight gale.
Right.
And we know that many of the British sailors during the assault on the Armada
also had to cope with food poisoning.
Oh, I haven't got my bucket and...
...swab, have I?
This 'Golden Hind' is a replica of the Tudor version.
And this is replica too.
Although, to be frank, it still makes you feel sick.
The great advantage of being at sea is you wouldn't have needed to do this job,
because this toilet facility's entirely self-cleaning in heavy weather.
Yeah.
Right.
Now do I have to get out on here?
Yep, right out there.
Charming.
Did they understand about hygiene? Yes, they did.
The Tudors already understood that disease was caused by dirt.
Yeah? And they didn't like bad smells.
So they cleaned the ship every day with salt water.
If there was any suspicion of illness on board,
they would scrub the decks down with vinegar
and then they would fumigate the place
with charcoal braziers and frankincense.
Why were these blokes called swabbers?
They were called swabbers
because what you've got in your hand is a bundle of cloths, or swabs.
Can't see any toilet paper. No such thing.
They used bits of rope's end and any other old rags they could find.
Must have been painful.
I tell you what, I'm surprised anyone... of them ever told a lie.
Probably not twice.
Yeah.
This is just foul.
(Sighs)
That's a lousy job.
And at the end of a voyage, if a sailor survived the dirt, disease and back strain,
he could be dumped onshore with no pay.
The tough job of the work force at sea didn't come with a pension scheme.
But in the 17th and 18th century, people paid good money
to see death-defying aerial stunts,
and sailors were uniquely qualified to apply,
with their head for heights and physical strength.
It's my next worst job,
and it's the forerunner of the high-wire act - the flying man.
But did they actually fly?
Well, I'm just about to find out.
What did the flying men actually do?
Well, Tony, they slid down ropes, rather like this one,
but attached to very high buildings,
sometimes three or four times the height of this.
For instance, in 1546, at the coronation procession of King Edward VI,
a native of Aragon - his name isn't known -
slid down from the steeple of old St Paul's Cathedral.
Who were the people who did this?
Not an awful lot is known about them.
There was one case of a Mr Cadman, who fell off, unfortunately, in 1740,
in his descent from Shrewsbury Parish Church,
and was killed because the rope broke.
And this is the rope I've got to slide down?
I'm afraid so.
Oh, great.
All you had to do was glide headfirst down a single rope.
A sailor-turned-flying man could earn a year's wages, about £40,
from one successful stunt.
But it was crucial that others shared his expertise.
Slack ropes could, and did, spell death.
I don't have much of a head for heights,
so whizzing down a rope from a 30-metre tower
definitely makes this a worst job for me.
A real flying man would step out onto the rope from the tower.
What I have to do, though, because of compulsory safety measures,
is to be winched into place, hop on the rope and then slide down.
Is that about it?
That's it. Try and swing your leg over. Try and get it up and over the rope.
What sounds like a doddle is actually complicated by the safety line.
Oh, God! It's funny, you get... You get so...
All the tops of your shoulders are really, really, really weak.
(Groans)
MAN: Almost there.
You know, I'm not gonna be able to do it. I'm so...
I'm so mad. It's partly because this rope is so wet.
Partly 'cause, I think, I'm very cold, and partly 'cause I'm fairly scared!
Can you let me down, lads?
On 5 October 1732, a flying man fell off a slack rope
tied to the tower of Greenwich Church.
He was dead the next day.
Give us a hand.
Ah, I'm so angry.
I am so bloody angry! Why?
'Cause I couldn't get that flipping knee over!
I bet you I could do it... do it here.
Give us a shove up, will you?
I bet you I could...
Look.
Everybody, this is the action... Oh!
...that I'm supposed to be doing.
You keep this leg down. I know how to do it.
You keep this leg down, that leg's tucked along, and you slide along like... this.
One of the things that made this so hard this time -
it's been pouring with rain all day, and it's just so... wet.
But still, I should have been able to get my knee...
Just think what it might have been like in the 16th century,
or even in the 19th, when they didn't have nylon ropes like this,
but they would have just had hemp hawser-laid ropes.
It's pretty lousy in the 21 st century.
It's a pride thing, isn't it? I so wanted to do that.
MAN: Fire!
The Georgian navy was a golden age for Britain at sea.
It was a time when legends were born, from Nelson at Trafalgar
to Captain Bligh and the mutiny on the 'Bounty'.
But there was no romance to life on board.
Gun crews could be blown apart, powder monkeys fetched and scurried,
top men went higher than they'd ever gone before,
and swabbers still swabbed.
No-one was immune.
(CANNON FIRES)
Even officers had a tough time, particularly the very junior ones,
who could be as young as 11 or 12.
These were little boys from well-to-do homes.
It was their first time at sea. They were queasy. They were nervous.
And they had to cope with a motley crew of men
who were bigger and tougher and older than they were.
Welcome to the horrible world of the snotties - the midshipmen.
In their smart uniform, they must have made their mums proud,
but for me, it's the horrifying plunging of a child into a brutal man's world
that makes midshipman a worst job.
These boys, who may never have seen the sea,
had no idea what they were signing on for.
"I had anticipated an elegant house with guns at the windows,"
wrote a midshipman called Frederick Chaumier in 1806.
"But the shrill whistle squeaked,
"the voice of the bosun and his mates rattled like thunder in my ears,
"the decks were dirty and slippery, the smells, abominable."
Tedious job. It is, isn't it?
Working in shifts day and night,
the tiny midshipman had the hourly job
of measuring the speed of the ship.
There we go. Let's see how you get on with that this time.
So I let it out to the first knot.
Yes.
So if you hold the spindle... with one hand.
That's it. So, it's gonna run absolutely freely.
OK.
But, obviously, you don't try and pull it off.
The ship has got to let it take it itself to get an accurate gauge of the speed.
One hundred, two hundred, three...
And 28. There we go.
They counted actual knots on a rope as it floated away over a set period,
hence the nautical speed of knots.
We can say that's about 0.8.
One...
...two...
God, if you were 11, trying to pull this in,
you'd have a job, wouldn't you?
Yeah. Quite heavy, isn't it?
Three.
Four. Four.
There's five.
Six.
Seven. (Laughs)
Here it comes.
That was seven, and the 0.8 we had, and you're knackered, aren't you?
7.8, yeah.
No. Fit as a fiddle, mate.
Yeah.
Oh, dear, oh, dear.
Perhaps a young 11 - or 12-year-old boy hauling on that,
and it could be the middle of the night in the dead of winter.
He's freezing cold.
You've got a nice pair of gloves on, I noticed.
He probably skinned his fingers raw just pulling that one in.
But even if he'd been up all night, the exhausted midshipman
had to join the captain and officers at midday
for my least favourite part of the job.
From sextant readings at noon, you had to calculate your latitude.
What do we do?
I'd rather be swabbing than spending my life doing hard sums,
but this was a key part of officer training.
DAVID: You with me? TONY: Yep.
I thought you were.
The only way to be promoted to lieutenant was to pass an exam
to show you could do all the maths.
Failure could ruin your life.
12-year-old Billy Culmer failed his exam in 1757.
33 years later, he was still a midshipman,
a laughing-stock on minimal pay.
Right, I know how many knots we're doing,
and after about half an hour of intellectual struggle,
I've worked out what our latitude is.
But all that tells me is that we're somewhere in the world
along this line here.
In order to work out our position, I need our longitude.
And if you think it was a song and dance getting the latitude,
wait until you see what we've got to cope with to get the longitude.
The safety of Britain's shipping
depended on captains knowing where they were.
One in five of all deaths at sea were from shipwreck.
Accurate longitude, or east-west position,
wasn't reliable until the beginning of the 19th century.
To measure how far you are from Greenwich Mean Time,
you need a really accurate clock.
And this was only possible when the genius John Harrison
created his famous ship's chronometer.
We may know about the first clock designers,
but I bet you're not aware of the contribution made by my next worst job -
the extraordinarily tedious task of fusee chain making.
The fusee chain was vital to the accuracy of the new clock.
It released the energy of the mechanism to the hands at an even pace.
An essential component, but one so small and fiddly
that making them was a full-time worst job.
And who was the person who made the fusee chain?
The fusee chain, in this instance,
was probably made by workhouse people or children in workhouses.
Which is rather sad. How old?
Oh, they started about 9 to about 11, and they were mostly girls.
They had good dexterity skills. They could handle small components.
Here's a little chain here.
And this is the size that they would make for small deck watches. Navigation again.
What was their day like?
They would start and probably do, ooh,
from first sunlight, really, to right down to sunset.
And they would do a complete day and 70-hour week,
and they would have two hours a day for a bit of going out for fresh air
and 20 minutes for education.
That's got to be the worst job in watch-making.
It was pretty bad, yes. So how do you do it?
Well, I've got one here.
And this particular one is a chronometer chain.
Yeah. And this is making the old-fashioned way.
These are the raw materials - sheet steel, softened, ready for hardening,
and wire, ready to go in.
We're going to stamp out the link.
There you go. OK.
Tap that out. Just gently does it.
Bit more. That's it. Lovely.
Clear off the thing, and then we just push the link out,
which is in there, look, in the press.
There we go. Hey! I made this.
How many of these do you reckon
one of these workhouse girls would have made a day?
Well, we know one lady did 150,000 in a year.
So we're talking of chains, millions.
Right. There you go.
OK. Now, steady as she goes.
If you rest the pin on the table, it acts as a sort of lock. That's it.
Cut. I'm gonna go and get my glasses.
Oh! I can see it. It's got holes in.
Right.
That is... slightly easier.
OK.
Oh! It's gone. It's gone.
If I was one of those little girls, I'd probably get whipped for that, wouldn't I?
I'm afraid you would have done, in those days, yes.
When you touch the head of the wire, it doesn't flip it up on one side.
(Leslie laughs)
Oh, triumph. Oh, great triumph.
Da-da! OK.
If you use the tweezer and put either side to the actual point and push down,
and then you lock on.
Push down with the tweezers onto the... You close the tweezers.
Oh... Does that matter?
No, it doesn't really matter. We can soon straighten it up.
OK, now, it won't actually stay on very well.
You've got a little bit too much metal showing. So we need to file it down.
There we... Whoop, whoop. Steady as she goes.
Right. Have we got a file? We have that, there.
After stamping out the minuscule links,
you have to begin the eye-bending task of putting them together.
Can see why you'd have needed natural light.
Trying to do this in artificial light would be virtually impossible.
I think I'm just about done here, don't you?
So if you snip off on the other side.
Go. Good click. It'll go.
Oh, gosh! It's just gone flying off all over the place.
Oh, that is rubbish. That is complete rubbish.
There's about quarter-of-an-inch of metal sticking up out of this.
That will keep the nation's ships on course, that will.
It would take me about a month to make that.
So would you like to do some more to this?
Only another... Another few hours.
149,999 and I've done my year's worth. Yes.
For me, fusee chain makers really were the unsung heroes of longitude.
Look at that.
Of course, what we'll do now...
(People laugh) The entire crew are laughing at me.
The 19th century brought the industrial revolution to the sea.
With steam and steel, a new form of luxury transport was born -
the massive liner.
In these floating hotels, the idle rich could swan across the globe in style.
But none of this would have been possible
without the workers who suffered in the deafening roar and wilting heat
of the boiler room below deck.
They were the stokers.
And it was a job so unpopular
that it was forced on penniless workers from the colonies,
whose contribution is only now being reviewed by historians.
It's a heck of a big boiler, isn't it?
Yes.
Would they really have been that size on board a ship?
They would have been that size,
but you would have had four instead of just the two that there are here now.
Roger, what do you have to do to keep one of these boilers going?
Well, it's quite an art, Tony.
It's maintaining an even fire bed and shovelling in the coal.
So am I gonna get all my stuff dirty? Oh, you will indeed.
You better change into some suitable working gear.
Boiler suit? Yeah, OK.
You can have the little one, Cliff.
Right, so what do you do? Got it.
ROGER: Well, we'll open the furnace.
Yeah.
Phew! Blimey! It's hot, isn't it? It is.
And you bring this bar back. Yep.
Now, what am I doing?
You're raking the fire bars, and you're removing any obnoxious clinker.
Yeah, bring it out onto the floor, Tony. OK.
TONY: Blimey.
Were they able to protect themselves from being burnt at all?
Well, the good old guys used to make themselves hessian hoods,
which they'd put over their head and protect their faces.
Can you hold this for me?
Where's the eyes? Oh, here they are.
It would just burn, wouldn't it?
Well, they used to soak them in water. They'd dunk them in the bucket.
Like this?
TONY: There we are.
That is better. It is better. It may look ridiculous, but, actually, it does work.
If you'd like to go and prepare the other furnace for coal?
You'll probably need to level it off with the fire-irons.
So I've got to rake that, then.
Just rake the bars to remove the ash.
OK.
Who were the people who did this work, Cliff?
Well, a lot of them were Somalis and people from sort of the ex-colonies,
places like Calcutta,
where a lot of the shipping companies had their headquarters.
So why were they doing it?
Because, basically, very few British people wanted to work below decks.
How hot do you reckon it would have got?
Well, in the Red Sea, it got up to 160 at times.
TONY: But it would have been just as bad for Africans and Asians
as it would have been for people from Britain, presumably.
It was, but it was taken that they were better adapted at that time
to work in those sort of conditions.
And sometimes they wore a leather apron as well,
because that could splatter, and sometimes it would even explode
because of the temperature difference.
I'm not surprised they had to wear these things. It really is boiling in here.
Yes. And we know that they did wear these?
Oh, yes, there are diagrams of them wearing them,
and kids were sort of told that if they misbehaved,
the gunier-man, which is you,
would come up and grab hold of them and take 'em away.
Like the boogieman? Yes, yes.
I am the gunier-man!
The stokers didn't just need brute force.
The furnaces had to be carefully balanced, or they could explode.
Accidents were common.
In 1859, five stokers lost their lives
when Brunel's 'Great Eastern' blew an engine jacket
on her maiden voyage.
Watch the safety valve, guys. I think that it's just about to blow.
(BELL CLANGS)
(HISSING)
I think we put enough coal in!
In spite of advancing technology,
working at sea remained extremely dangerous.
20,000 sailors died in shipwrecks between 1793 and 1815.
Loss of life could always be ignored, but lost cargo, never.
As the British Empire grew and trade burgeoned,
the huge loss of revenue became unacceptable
to merchants and industrialists.
The daring solution was a new system of lighthouses,
perched on top of the very rocks that caused the wrecks -
a major engineering challenge.
And construction required a suicidal worst job - the lighthouse builder.
Nowhere was theirjob harder than this place - Wolf Rock -
a handkerchief of land at the entrance to the English Channel.
You might think that the ambition of building a 30-metre tower
out of 2-tonne blocks of granite
when the waves reach 35 metres
is quite bonkers.
And you'd be right.
The granite for Wolf Rock was loaded here at Penzance.
We decided to follow the lighthouse builders' course
to see what they had to face.
Anyway, that was the plan.
MAN: OK, action.
How did you start to build a lighthouse?
Mad, like, you know...
Can we stop for a minute? We're drowning here! Just cut for one sec.
OK, cut. There you have...
The wave will go right over them... Sorry. Whoa! Hang on.
And after all that, we never even got close.
Our skipper made us turn back two miles from the Wolf.
But that's just like the lighthouse builders.
They were paid by the day, but they only managed to get to work
about 80 days a year.
The sea really fools you, doesn't it? Looks as flat as a mill pond.
But if you...
...look at those rocks down there, you can see it's really swirling around.
Yeah, well, that was the whole problem with anything like that.
If you wanted to put a structure on it, you had to watch out for the sea,
'cause it holds no mercy.
Where's our lighthouse?
Just out on the horizon, behind the rock.
I'd been thinking that our skipper had been a bit chicken.
But this is the Wolf from nine miles away.
Those waves are at least 10 metres high and would have swamped us.
How did they start to build one of these things?
Well, it was quite a... quite a problem.
They had to land, first of all.
They'd have used that flat section on the right-hand side of the rock,
landed on there.
TONY: Is this about the same size, then? PHIL: Roughly, yes.
It was a bit lower than that, but near enough the same, yes.
They blow the top off, and then they have to put stakes in all the way round,
for safety reasons, tie ropes on them,
and then employ a man who was called a crow
to shout out when there was a dangerous wave coming in.
What did he shout out?
He'd have shouted out something like, "Watch out, men, there's a wave coming!
"Down tools!"
He'd have said something like that.
That would seem to be an appropriate shout, wouldn't it, if a wave was coming.
We haven't got casualty figures for the Wolf,
but at Bell Rock, men were crushed by cranes and rocks, boats capsized,
and one builder, Charles Henderson, was simply washed into the sea.
The only thing that stopped the building going the same way
was a unique design.
Each block had a double mortice on it - a vertically and horizontal mortice on it -
and each one interlocked, rather like a LEGO in a way.
And once the lighthouse was completed,
it was said that it was just like a solid block of granite.
The success of the Victorian lighthouse builders
was bad news for another worst job -
the island lighthouse keeper.
He was a volunteer desert island castaway
who needed huge mental reserves.
When you lived on a lighthouse, how did you cope?
The worst part of the job was the psychological side.
I was one of the lucky ones, and I saw it through,
because I always said, "There's always another day,"
and I always knew that my maker was up there to guide me through.
There was something... a certain religious aspect, I found,
with being off on a lighthouse like the Wolf.
Weren't there times when you thought
all that solitude would drive you nutty, though?
No, because I have so many interests.
Reading books, modelling. I used to... Like, say...
Well, Surprise peas was one of the items I used to eat a lot,
and I used to use the packets from them and make model buildings from them.
And that kept you sane? Yeah, that kept me sane, yes. Mmm.
Victorian lighthouse keepers worked in pairs.
When their supplies ran out, they had to live on fish from the sea.
If one died or was injured, his mate had to work 24-hour days for weeks,
until he was relieved.
The work was sheer heavy slog.
Whoo.
Daily window cleaning may sound easy,
but perched on a ladder in a force nine gale trying to cling onto the handholds
is a perilous business.
And then there were the stairs.
(BELL RINGS)
If you've ever lived in a block of flats when the lift's broken,
you'll know the drill.
The light was turned by clockwork.
Every hour, day and night, a bell would ring...
(BELL RINGS)
...and the keeper would have to trudge up to wind it again.
It was a devastating mixture of boredom and aerobics workout.
(BELL RINGS)
But apart from giant calves and going stir-crazy,
the lighthouse keeper was safe and clean.
Others weren't so fortunate.
Our maritime history was about empire-building and trade,
but it was also about feeding the nation.
The women may have managed to avoid the rigours of fishing at sea,
but when their menfolk came back home after days and nights
of exhausting, back-breaking work,
an especially smelly worst job became the women's responsibility.
But despite the dangers of being a fisherman,
for me it was the gut girls who had the worst bit of keeping the nation in kippers.
What could be worse than being a gut girl,
faced with the unending task of removing the innards of up to 20,000 fish a day?
WOMAN: The oil that comes out of these is a very, very smelly oil,
and if you go anywhere where there's people that hasn't come in contact with it,
they smell it right away.
The stench must have been unbelievable.
The gut girls were paid per fish, so they worked incredibly quickly -
up to one a second.
The fish were packed in ice, so hands were numb and frozen.
When they cut themselves, they hardly noticed.
TONY: Can I have another fish?
You can. This must...
This must have been really boring
for the women who had to do it all day, every day.
Well, it's like everything. You get used to it.
How did they get through the day? Oh, they used to gossip.
What'd they talk about?
Women having affairs with other men.
You're joking. No, I'm not.
Each others' houses like rabbits.
Did they use to use the guts for anything?
Sometimes they used to make fish manure with it.
Used to be put away into a factory,
and fish manure used to be made with it.
My dad used to put that on the garden. Yeah, that's right, yeah.
The gut girls were eventually replaced by machines.
Amazingly, they couldn't gut fish any faster than the girls,
but they didn't need a lunch break.
This is the guts of about 60 fish, which in the old days
would have taken one fish gutter about a minute to do.
Imagine how many guts you'd have had by the end of an entire day.
Of course this is a lousy job.
It stinks of fish guts here and it's cold and it's all slimy,
but I can imagine that if you're doing this day after day
with a group of women like Margaret,
it could be quite a laugh.
So if working elbow-deep in fish guts isn't the very worst job in maritime history,
what is?
Stoking was hard work,
but didn't have the eye-straining tedium of the fusee maker.
It's gone! It's gone!
Sailors risked their necks, but could make a fortune as flying men.
And even the frightening childhood of the midshipman
offered the chance of promotion.
No, for me, the very worst job of all is completely counterintuitive.
Imagine if there was a raging storm out there, a wrecking storm.
What's the worst thing you could possibly do?
Row straight out into it.
And yet that's exactly what my very worst job is all about.
It's the job of lifeboat man, or, indeed, lifeboat woman,
'cause we all remember Grace Darling, don't we,
who rowed out into the storm with her dad
in order to rescue the drowning sailors.
And there are still Grace Darlings even today
doing exactly the same voluntary job, aren't there, Tamsin?
Indeed there are.
How did they use to rescue people in years gone by?
They literally got in the boat and rowed out, often into the teeth of a storm,
because that's what would have caused the original problem,
and went out there and hauled them into the boat and rowed them back again.
So, what do you want me to do? We're going to go to sea.
So we're gonna get you dressed up in Victorian kit, gonna put you in the boat,
give you an oar, we're gonna row out and hopefully we're gonna rescue someone.
Right, where do I start?
I'm not being rude when I say I'd like you to go home.
What do you mean? Well, I want you to start at home.
Because that's where you'd be.
Any volunteer lifeboat man would be going about his business
when the alarm was raised,
and he'd have to get running from there.
OK, let me know when you need me. No problem.
The bizarre thing is,
even though I know this is just an exercise, a demonstration...
...after a while, just the wait starts to wind you up.
They've given me this to... to wear.
This... bizarre floatation jacket thing.
Authentic, apparently, from Victorian times.
This waterproof jacket.
The old sou'wester. Gonna look good in that.
Must be about an hour and a quarter now, I think.
(KNOCK ON DOOR)
Here we go.
I wasn't expecting this bit.
Where do I go?
If you sit on that cushion there, Tony,
and, then, this is your oar, Tony, where my hand is.
This oar here. I can't see!
Tony, this is your oar.
OK, let's go. OK, pull away! This one here, Tony.
Whoa-ho!
This job was risky.
435 crew members have died in rescues over the years.
It's funny - even though it's just a demo, there is that hit of adrenalin, isn't there?
Course there is.
Because we know we've got to get him out of the water.
The job was never worse than in 1861,
when the Whitby lifeboat crew paid the ultimate price.
On 9 February, they made four separate launches in a gale.
After rowing for hours in mountainous seas
and saving the crews of four ships,
the lifeboat men were exhausted.
Then another schooner ran aground.
The crew set out again.
As they approached the stricken vessel,
the lifeboat was capsized by two freak waves.
Only lifeboat man Henry Freeman survived.
It was his first day on the lifeboat.
And now imagine what it was like with cold hands, cold face, wet clothes.
But there was one coxswain in the Victorian times
who described the cold on his face like a dog gnawing at his features.
TONY: Where is he?
There he is! I can see him. Whoa! My oar's gone.
We've got to bounce him down three times.
Hold on, Dave. We've got you.
To avoid breaking ribs, you have to drag the victim in backwards.
It's a dead weight and needs great strength.
I think you're alright now, ain't you?
Go! One...
Two...
I found this job difficult on a sea as flat as a millpond.
In pitch black in a real storm,
it must have been impossible once, let alone coming out again and again.
Henry Freeman went on to serve for 40 years.
Britain hasn't been invaded for the best part of 900 years.
And surely that must be in part due to the really awful jobs
that our sailors and volunteer rescuers have done over the centuries.
Next time, I'll be back on terra firma,
where the ground may be firmer, but the jobs are just as terrible.
Awful joke, isn't it? I hope that doesn't stay in.
There's no rest for the wicked out in the country when you sell red for a living,
turn white keeping church spires in good nick.
Am I nearly there?
Or get black and blue washing sheep the old way.
Ouch! It trod on my foot!