Renaissance England was kind of a smelly place.
Up until Tudor times, public bathing was widespread. But due to the mistaken belief that bathing exposed the body to disease and may cause the Bubonic Plague, by the late 16th century, public bathing, and much of regular bathing for that matter, was no longer widely practiced in England.
Not only were the people odiferous, there was the way they had to get rid of human waste. It wasn’t so much that people weren’t bothered by the stench and mess, they just didn’t have the same quality of facilities available to them to get rid of their stuff.
A fun read about the interesting history of toilet paper, read Wiped: The Curious History of Toilet Paper.
Earth Closets and Cesspits
In this regard, country living, with more space, was far better. In the countryside and sometimes in urban private homes, privies, consisting of rows of seats over an earth closet or a cesspit, were used. They were often set in outside sheds, but sometimes in cellars.
But city living, especially in London, was another matter.
When the Roman’s ruled London, they put in a sewer system that emptied into the River Thames and its connected streams, it was no longer used by the medieval period.
Watch the documentary on the history of toilets The Toilet: An Unspoken History.
Public Toilets
There were also public toilets available like they are today. These were convenient for shoppers but also the lower classes in city areas would have to rely on these public toilets because they didn’t have the room for their own pits. These were often situated in bridges over rivers.
Chamber Pots
The urban middle and upper classes usually preferred chamber pots. If you had a chamber pot, it also most likely meant that you were wealthy enough to have someone empty it for you.
It was dangerous to go out into the streets at night so people who couldn’t afford a person who would empty it for them yet didn’t have the space to have their own facility to relieve themselves in their yard and didn’t want to sleep next to a pot full of human waste all night, would instead quickly deposit it out the window.
There is also the possibility that some tenants were just simply lazy too.
For additional reading on the history of toilets, check out The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet.
Flushing Toilets
Sir John Harrington, a godson of Queen Elizabeth I, introduced the first modern flushing toilet in Britain in 1596. It was installed in the Queen’s castle, but proved unpopular with the royals of the day, who preferred their accustomed chamber pot service. Flush toilet technology was not widely adopted until the mid-19th century.
So when you do enjoy the Renaissance Festival and need to visit the toilet facilities, now you know that using facilities such as Porta-Potties hasn’t changed all that much since Elizabethan England.
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