Hygiene

Hygiene By: Padmini

In medieval history, the time between the 900’s and the 1500’s is called the **Middle Ages.** People during that time were very dirty. It was really hard for peasants to keep clean. The streets were really dirty, people didn’t bathe often and there were a lot of germs and diseases.

People
During the Middle Ages, it was really hard to keep clean, especially for peasants. People cleaned their teeth with twigs or wiped them with a cloth! They did not have toothbrushes or tooth paste! When people came back from work, candle wax, gravy and wine was spilled all over their clothes! Peasants washed their clothes rarely. Before putting their clothes away in wooden chests, they used to brush and shake the clothes, then lay them in the sun. Next, they used to sprinkle it with nice smelling herbs and then put them away in wooden chests.

Homes and Streets
Medieval streets and homes were really dirty. People used to dump garbage and human waste on the streets without warning! It smelled so much that people would hold a bunch of flowers under their nose when they went out! Rats were running around in houses, streets and castles. People were used to flea bites and finding lice on their body and bugs in their food!

Bathing
People didn’t bathe often. There was no running water for people to use! Daily, servants or pages brought their lords hot water in basins to wash up every morning. In a castle, there was only one sink for each floor. Peasants used to bathe once in a month or once in two months! The water was really dirty to use for bathing. The whole family used the same water to take a bathe. Only the man of the house was privileged to clean water. During the 1200’s, most towns had public bathhouses so people didn’t take baths at home. Wooden tubes with water used to be heated from fire in the Great Hallbath for baths. If the weather was good, people put the tub in the garden. To clean themselves, they rubbed ivory or wooden sticks on their skin. The soap that they used was made at home. To make their bath smell nice, they sprinkled nice smelling herbs in the bath water. Now, we still sprinkle herbs in the water in spas.

Back then the toilets in castles were called garderobes (regular people used a chamber pot). People also used the

as wardrobes because they thought the smell would keep the bugs away which ate their clothes. They were built in high in a tower. The toilet was just a plank of wood with a hole in the middle. The human waste went

down a chute and into a pit. The pit wasn’t cleaned often. After cleaning the pit, people used to throw the waste on the street without warning! So pedestrians had to always be on lookout! For toilet paper, people used hay or wood sticks!

After getting all this information and writing it, I realized how dirty the people were during the Middle Ages. I would never want to live during that time!

Information Sources
McGovern, Ann. If You Lived in The Days of The Knights [|www.replacements.com/webquote/RCRCHAR.h] [|pub2.exeter.gov.uk/timetrail/generic/object_d...] https://www.medieval-life.net/bathing