What Was Life Really Like For Medieval Peasant Women? | History Hit

[Music] I'm setting out to shatter our fictitious assumptions both old and modern about the Medieval World this time what sort of work did women do based on medieval records and looking beyond the oldest profession I'll be taking on the jobs and businesses of the real women recorded as working and apprenticing in the Middle Ages women in the workplace didn't just Emerge in the factories of the Industrial Revolution or even in the wartime economies Rosie the Riveter or as a part of the feminist revolution of the 1960s they've been around forever the medieval period is a

fascinating window into the true history of women and work [Music] what kind of position is a wife in when she comes in to hear her child screaming the cat at the filch and the dog at the High her loaf burning on the Hearth her calf suckling her pot boiling over and her husband complaining this is a passage from the Halle Medved or a letter on virginity a medieval English document that acts as a really handy list for the start of house work that women would be expected to do but all of these chores are chores

that they come in to do from somewhere else where's that somewhere else their jobs Medieval women Worked to get an idea of what kind of jobs were available for your average medieval woman 80% of whom would have belonged to the peasant class I've come to Little Woodham living history Village to Apprentice under the expert guidance of experimental archaeologist Caroline nicolay she's quickly got me dressing the part first up on our roster of professions for Medieval women is Dairy made you want to be a dairymaid you don't want to be a milkmaid okay Milkmaids you are

out in the field the majority of the day you are milking cows big animals usually surrounded but men working showing elbows very bad reputation whereas the dairy made has the softest hands because you always are very clean cleanest of white linens you can possibly get and you're always with cream so butter all these very nice natural fats oh and milk so Dairy ma is actually quite good and you can get really good Wages the statute of Cambridge in 1388 shows that the average wage for women laborers and dairy maids in England was 6 Shillings per

year that's about four Shillings less than their male counterparts but a wage nonetheless even if equality was unheard of and it was preferable to toiling in the fields so the milk mates milk the cows and when would you do that that about what time of day really early first thing in the morning you don't even get Breakfast you get dressed go out mil the cows okay come back in and let the milk run through various sves or cloths to make sure there's no animal hair or dust anything in the milk and you leave it to

set once that's done you will be able to separate the cream from the top of the milk and you get your milk under there so the milk you can use to make the cheese and the cream you can straight away use it to turn into butter making butter by hand is a surprisingly simple Process even for a total novice so that's nice and warm now right to make the butter you need to agitate the cream ooh yeah it feels like lotion or something like that it really does and you have such soft hands afterwards so

there you go look it's actually really getting very thick really quickly I can't believe this so we're kind of really getting it to come together in a nice thick paste and just imagine coming it off the field on a cold rainy day Like this and just slathering a nice bit of butter all over some fresh bread it's going to be amazing and you are seconds away from butter because but the buttermilk will come out and you will feel it oh my gosh no I can sort of feel a liid coming out of it now there's

the buttermilk I'm Blown Away by how even you know a desk girl like me was able to make butter this quickly you know with a good teacher as a peasant household it made sense to have a daughter who was a Good dairymaid even for a poorer family with just one cow you'd still have enough milk to make butter cream and even cheese for your home M that's really good butter but is really good mhm super creamy butter mhm I love it but if I wanted to bring in actual money I'd need to get more creative

a typical cash cottage industry was making cottage cheese so long as you could get your hands on some salt and some acid usually in the form of Homemade vinegar I prefer using cider vinegar or use crab apples to make ver juice because it has a nice light flavor cuz mold vinegar from the a is a bit that's a lot yeah we'll salt it and you need to overs salt the milk so to separate the cheese Cur from the way that we don't want the acid will do that so you can pour a bit of vinegar

give it a stir yeah I can see immediately it's just curdling right up just in the minute it hit look at that So you're done pretty much that's it really white CDs on one side and the kind of yellowy way on the other side I can see why this was a popular job for women with the right resources almost anyone could bake it so it was a real cottage industry that's why it's not uncommon for women Merchants to appear in medieval records especially business women often appearing as cheesemongers history hit is an award-winning streaming platform

built By history fans for history fans enjoy our Rich library of documentaries covering key events and locations of the medieval period history hits medieval offering features leading historians such as Dan Jones Elena yanega and Cat jman not only that but we have a rich library of audio documentaries covering every period of History through our network of podcasts sign up now for a free trial and Chronicle fans get 50% off their first 3 months just be sure to Use the code Chronicle at checkout what do we need to go from a cheese like this to something

that you would actually be able to sell at Market so once you have the cheese CS you would get a clean cloth and you would put them in a cheese mold and you press it so you add a weight on top of it you would leave it to mature to become a hard cheese if you are dairying properly you have so much milk to process every day so you have a constant work you get some cheese on the Shelf that are matured sell them at Market some just replace them they need to stay there for

a while and it just never ends wow but just during the dairy season so this is big business then you've got women who are looking after 18 some cows you've got staff who are in there looking after your cheese you've got staff who are milking you have real money that's kind of going around the place if you run a dairy business women yeah Really another highly skilled profession that Medieval women are frequently recorded as working in is professional baking either making the whole Lo from scratch or just providing a baking service in special bread ovens

so that's what we're going to use today otherwise you would have to make your dough and bring it to the oven to the baker so you make the dough they do the baking and you pay them to do that so if you want to save money you can bake on your fire But you'd better not be caught because you're avoiding taxis basically oh bread and dairy products were Staples in every household your literal bread and butter so it makes sense that during the Middle Ages this was serious business Baker skills were introduced to protect the

interests of members and to regulate controls governing the price and weight of bread and it could land you in some pretty hot water if you got things wrong or tried to cheat the System as happened to a crafty London pair called Alice de brighten and Lucy de Pickering they were both Bakers who were running bit of a sneaky ruse and what they would do is when someone brought in their loaf to be baked someone from their house hid underneath the table and they made a secret hole inside the table and they would pinch off little

bits of everybody's bread loaf they would then combine all those bits of dough to make Other loaves which they would then offer for sale they get caught doing this and there's a huge outcry a bunch of men are caught as well they're put in the stalks and the women are both sent to new gate jail until all of the tables can be destroyed so this seems like Kind of a Funny Story and well frankly it is but they're literally stealing the bread out of their neighbors mouths when they do this it's incredibly dishonorable and basically

they get in huge trouble for It cuz you know when someone is doing a bunch of manual labor like this they expect to get the food at the end [Music] well I noticed that our fire is dying down a little bit here do we need to build that back up it basically is the end of the cooking day so you would have to leave it to die down exactly like that and use this a curfew a cover fire it come from K so curfews to stop the Sparks going up The chimney because of course everything

is made of thatch and as houses are usually very close together the whole neighborhood might just go up in flames you would rake all your Embers put that on and hope that tomorrow morning when you remove it you have some nice lovely red Embers so you can sell your fire again managing a bread oven was a skilled business with a Perpetual risk of the Flames getting out of hand remember the Great Fire of London Famously began with a blaze starting at a Baker's in the night so we've got our bread butter and cheese but I

think I'm going to need something to wash it all down with my favorite drink beer brewing with was frequently a female profession most women would make their own ale at home but in the professional World it remained largely feminized work as well and Ale houses and breweries were often run by women known as a wives now this isn't women's work that was as Accessible as being a dairy made a brewer with her own large-scale Brewery was probably one of the wealthier peasants in fact it was so lucrative that even members of the nobility sometimes got

involved and it was another industry that was heavily regulated with serious punishments for those who made a mistake or tried to skimp on ingredients and like most professions in the Middle Ages it was hot and sweaty business that wasn't Without its risks if you dig into the records you can find evidence of women involved in accidents as well such as lady Juliana deos her Brewing business was profitable enough to employ several female assistants two of her Brewing Maids were carrying malt to put in a huge vat of boiling water in order to make commercial beer

one of them slipped and fell into the boiling water the huge vat that they had been using to carry The Malt in fell on top of her they Managed to pull her out but she was scalded to death and she died really shortly thereafter so while this seems kind of cute and a nice thing to do it's also important to keep in mind that this is really dangerous we're dealing with huge quantities of boiling water you're dealing with really heavy things so women are doing really dangerous work all the time [Music] and that's pretty much

it so all the Grain and all the the bits that you don't want in any case in your beer are now in the cloth and a lot of the multi is left over in there perfect Next Step I'm going to put that over the fire leave it to boil and if you had some that's the point you would actually add some flavorings to it GS flowers or he elderberries when it's in season I don't like hops I live in the late medieval England before hops becomes really a thing and it's really really bitter we Also

see in the late medieval period as a part of this people writing pamphlets against the evils of adding hops to beer they say it's a foreign and Continental practice and that it leads to devilry ooh devilry when that will have boiled or will be boiling we bring it back put it in another clean wooden tub and leave it to cool down We'll add some bone some yeast from a previous batch of Ale and we'll leave it there just covered to Begin to ferment and as soon as it starts in the EAS right you leave them

open so the fermentation produces gas it comes out uh after say a couple of days you can put the little tap on it but leave it open and after another day maybe two depending on the time of the year normally you have fermented so it means that the yeast will have eaten all the sugars from the Mt and turn them into alcohol you then have ale you're fine well I don't want to wait but I Suppose for ale it's worth it it [Music] is as we move away from the countryside and into towns and cities

we have plenty of records showing that Urban Medieval women worked as everything from Carpenters to painters goldsmiths and blacksmiths but here in the city there are fewer women producing food and textiles not for a lack of skill but because they weren't allowed to join the men only guilds and apprenticeships Despite this women were often allowed to practice if it meant continuing the work of an elderly or deceased husband or father this loophole enabled many women to gain a foothold in lucrative occupations we know a very successful tradeswoman worked here at gry frier church in London

as a specialist stonemason carrying on the family business one particularly interesting medieval craftswoman was Domina Agnes Ramsey she was the daughter of the Master Craftsman William Ramsey and it makes sense that she becomes a Master Mason herself upon his death in 1349 what isn't quite so common as learning at your father's feet is the level that Agnes was able to maintain she is contracted by none other but Queen Isabella herself to make the funerary tomb for Edward II here at Great friers in London the cost of this contract was 100 an absolutely vast sum of

money in the medieval period we know that she was Also working at churches all over London because we have lots of records of all of her business dealings and this makes a lot of sense because London had lots of Need for Masons there's plenty of monasteries churches that always need building we know that Agnes dies in about 1399 because that's when the paper trail dries up no more contracts no more record of Agnes probably no more Agnes now I absolutely love the story of Agnes but I want to know more about medieval Masonry so to

do that I'm visiting the most important religious site in medieval England Canterbury Cathedral canterberry Cathedral has seen plenty of changes over the centuries but the church you see today is nearly all built in the Middle Ages the team that preserves it use many of the skills perfected by their medieval predecessors and Jen Jordan follows in the tradition of female Masons how many Masons do you have Working now at the Cathedral we have a team of about 14 at the minute including apprentices so 14 Masons just in this particular shop and that's only for Canterbury Cathedral

right yeah we're employed directly by the dean and chapter of Canterbury Cathedral so we are in-house Masons and the fact that you're a woman you're a Mason and you've come up through the apprenticeship system that's not at all unusual even from a historical context is it all Across the cathedrals they've um we've all all had a fair share of female Masons I'm glad to say wherever possible medieval methods are still used from traditional paper templates to tools this is a handmade Cathedral and now it's time for me to make my mark one good strong hit

and then draw it back okay all [Applause] right no it's good to watch someone fail At this completely just to see what a good Mason you are don't let my father who's a carpenter see this he's going to be ashamed of me okay look at the here's your like really neat straight line and then here's my just completely off track I think yeah I'm going to need another three years at least in the workshop there are some ancient pieces waiting for repair as well as newly created stonework ready to be put in place this Is

a final and that's an apex Stone got this nice high medieval really pointed Arch which is what I like to see I like a little bit of Gothic in my stone work what kind of stone is it exactly this is a French Limestone Lao the original Stone on the building is cstone a really beautiful stone but we have limited resources of that so we've had to use a similar Stone but I love that though because it reminds us that stone actually is a finite resource especially When you're using it to make huge buildings like canterberry

can Stone came from Normandy in northern France famous for its own castle and churches the stone was much used in England after the Norman Conquest detailed pieces like this will be raised up into canterbury's vating it's great to think that a female Mason's work will again rest high above the congregation helping to preserve This Magnificent [Music] Cathedral it's tempting to think that if a job was more physical then perhaps women wouldn't be involved but I've discovered that skilled and backbreaking work from the field to the dairy to the stone Mason's yard was undertaken by men

and women regardless of the physical strain a great example of this is in the records of another celebrated building the Tower of London documents reveal women working here in one of the Toughest medieval professions Tracy Borman is the tower's Chief curator she knows exactly what this busy Fortress was like 700 years ago it was a bustling Place really a miniature town there were houses pubs forges there was a weapon store there was even a zoo here in the tower so there have been all sorts of Trades here people who sold food wine people who made

things the Royal Armory was here so the weapons Factory really for the Country but also the Royal Mint making the nation's coinage we know that Katherine of berry um in the 1300s she ran a forge here she ran it actually after her husband had passed away and on behalf of her son who went to fight at the Battle of ccie in 1346 in the following Century the 1400s there was a a woman called Margaret mus who was also a blacksmith here at the tower so it's fascinating this sort of hints at POS academic word right

this Idea of cature if you're a busy man like a blacksmith you're spending all day in the Forge you're not just going to get married because you love someone even though you know that's a perfectly fine reason to do so but you want someone who's going to be helping out right of course you do you want an equal partner really someone who's going to help out not just be the sort of beautiful wife uh at home cooking meals it's going to be a Business Partnership as well as a Sort of Love marriage if you're lucky

really I think women such as Katherine and Margaret really were the tip of the iceberg there were probably hundreds of women working here at the tower in professions not usually associated with women handson quite hard manual labor but the records don't tell us this so we only have these few tantalizing glimpses and that's the challenge for historians interested in medieval Society so often women are only hinted At in the records finding out details about the lives of Medieval women isn't just a challenge when studying the working classes there isn't that much written about women at

the top of the tree either so for example Matilda of Flanders she was the wife of William the Conqueror who built the Tower of London originally the records of her are so scarce you have to piece together these little threads to get a sense of what the queen herself was doing so imagine The challenge when it comes to women who are doing things like you know working in a forge or lowly manual labor it's so much harder it just goes to show that there are women everywhere doing incredibly important really interesting things but you just

have to squint so much harder to see it yeah they're there if you look hard enough but I think what we're seeing is just a fraction of the real picture I can't help but wonder what Work must have been like for the female Tower of London blacksmiths Katherine of Barry and Margaret merch so using the same equipment and tools available to a 15th century blacksmith I'm back with our Jill of all trades Caroline how about we make a knife to help spread that butter we made earlier the first thing is getting some metal it has

a bit of an angle but we'll make a blade on one side and the rest will be an all metal handle and the First thing first hitting it up in the fire that's not enough so what we'll do is we'll basically hmer a point on one side right you see how it cools down really yeah really fast yeah we'll put it back in the fire and you can carry on with that straight away I think I might have found my medieval vocation as a lady blacksmith assistant and keep hitting and I'm moving the mle [Music]

perfect yes so you see you have a mark there you have a little neck so that will be your blade and then your handle will carry on there then we'll cut it off okay that's it on your C it's starting to look like a knife but now we need to forge The Cutting Edge I have it at an angle and you can hit just on the edge all right and we St there we' got a knife yeah you've got a Knife so it might not be fit for the king of England but I'd like to

think I've done the medieval craft and trade women of the Middle Ages proud well I am absolutely knackered and you might think that the idea of a career woman coming in at the end of the day from a busy job is a modern one but nothing could be further from the truth Medieval women were absolutely workers whether you're the dairy made who's churning up cheese or the important businesswoman who owns That Dairy you had a job that you were doing all day and at the same time when you sat down to eat every single thing

on your table was either made by you or another woman in your employment so while I am about to tuck in and really enjoy the fruits of my labors at the back of my head I also realize I have to to do it all again tomorrow Caroline come on let's talk in I think we've shown that whether you're making some extra cheese on the Side as a Dairy Maid or chiseling out a successful career for yourself as a stonemason there was no profession too tough for Medieval women despite misconceptions over what was considered women's work

I hope I've proved that during this period no matter how arduous the profession there were always women ready and willing to take on the job according to the medieval chronicler Gregory of Monmouth this is where Britain started it was founded by Brutus a Trojan who following the Trojan defeat in the Trojan War gets on a ship and sails here defeats the race of giants then living in Britain and builds his Palace on this exact spot so if this is the founding myth about the London Community generally what are the actual medieval London communities and where

do we learn more about [Music] them our first stop is here at the London Wall because there's literally no better way to define who is a member of the community of London by whether or not you're inside this wall or outside of it the wall itself was actually built by the Romans when London was londinium and it was built from the second to the 3rd Century BC after they leave londonium London itself actually collapses and the settlement is moved sort of outside of London and outside of the walls but the Walls still are used for

important fortification purposes we do know that when battles would take place the Anglo-Saxons would come inside the walls and use them for defensive purposes still in 886 when London is reestablished by Alfred the Great what he does is moves the Anglo and settlements from outside of the walls back in and rebuilds the initial Roman walls as a symbol to say London is back Again walls actually have a series of functions though yes sometimes they're protective uh London's extensive walls protected from armies down on the river the wall protects from Pirates which believe it or not

attack multiple times throughout the medieval and Roman periods but they also have some purposes for taxation so say you want to bring your goods to Market in London one of the largest cities in Europe the wall means that you have to bring all of your Goods through Gates and there it can be checked by members of the City Guards to see what you're bringing in and to make sure that you are paying an appropriate tax in order to put these things on sale for all intents and purposes now this is the middle of the city

but for medieval London you're right at the edge of things and what that means is you're kind of at the edge of what the the city can offer you as well often times you would see that poor neighborhoods are More distributed towards the outward end of things whereas the Richer bits are right in the middle of town where things can be a little bit safer and a little bit better guarded one of the interesting things about the medieval wall and the fact that it's built off of the Roman one is it shows us a really

medieval idea of what makes things important for medieval people Roman things were always considered to be better and a kind of position of Authority so when Alfred decided to move London again onto the old londinium and reestablish the old walls one of the things he's saying is that this is a big important city once again this is the sort of place where people rule from and one of the reasons that you do that and one of the ways that you do that is by trying to connect yourself to a Roman Heritage and to a Roman

history so when Alfred the Great does that he saying London is back it's important again when You have the Normans take over after 1066 when the first things they do is take these walls and rebuild them back again even bigger than before they add seven new gates and 13 new ones along the river everybody knows who's in charge and what London's doing we're here outside the temple which is actually a really good example of how communities work within London and how their fortunes can change very Suddenly at the temple as the name Suggests was actually

set up because of the Knights Templar who were a crusading order that were initially established at Jerusalem and they kind of worked as a bodyguard service more or less in the medieval period for most Christians in the medieval period your number one goal is to someday go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem because Jerusalem is a dangerous place it's in hostile territory you're going to want to have some bodyguards while you do that and That's what the Knights Templar have to offer so they're in incredibly popular order and it's something that people really like to donate to

they give lots of money if you want to prove that you're holy one of the things that you do is you say I'm going to make sure that the bodyguards are going to be there when I eventually do my trip to Jerusalem so the Knights Templar are all across Europe but here in London they have their own Temple named after the Temple of Solomon that's in Jerusalem which is where their home order technically is so they have that church in there but they also control all of this Prime real estate in the middle of London

this is all well and good until 1312 by then the Knights Templar have become so incredibly rich and Powerful that they're starting to annoy the church and they're starting to annoy Kings in France the king notices how much land and power the knight's Templar Has and sees an opportunity so he accuses the Knights Templar of heresy and says that they've been worshiping the devil seeing this means that there's an opportunity for him to then take all of the property of the knight's Templar and make it his own this is a very popular idea so by

1312 the pope officially abolishes the order of the Knights Templar and the land is seen more or less as up for grabs by rulers but also by other Religious orders technically all of the land of the Knights Templar is supposed to move over to another crusading order the knights hospitaler who do more or less the same thing but with slightly more emphasis on the hospital thing and a little less on the nights the king at the time Edward II not a huge fan of passing it on to the hospitallers he instead decides that this land

is a prime opportunity for his friends to get a hold of some really good real estate At cut down rates the knights Hospital are they're not a fan of the king's idea and they begin to actually Sue to get the land back this goes on for about 25 years and at that point in time the land inside the temple is broken into two bits you have the consecrated ground of the inner Temple which goes to the hospitallers and the unconsecrated ground of the middle Temple which continues to be leased through the king to his friends

a few years later in 1347 Eventually the Knights hospitaler win their legal cases and all of the land comes under their own control but by this point the legal cases have been going on for so long it does them no good they haven't been using it they haven't been able to use it so they begin to lease these same properties out themselves for a tidy sum to various Guilds of lawyers and this is exactly what the temple is used for today it's where we keep lots of our ins of court And there are various groups

of lawyers who have amazing and impressive houses like this where they do their own work sometimes you have lawyers that stay within there so so this has been going on since the medieval period it's been a place where lawyers have been but technically for a while it was controlled by religious houses with the abolition of the monasteries under Henry VII Henry VII keeps the lawyers but cuts out the middleman of any church and he Begins to take rents from the lawyers but since that period we've always had lawyers within the temple and even though it's

got a name that's specifically religious it's got a Heritage that's specifically about one order of people it's actually changed hands multiple times and the meaning has changed as well as we'll see with all communities in London their fortunes can rise and fall sometimes you're up sometimes you're down sometimes your Knights sometimes your lawyers these things can change very quickly depending on who's in power and what people need from you and a lot of times depending on whether or not there's money on the line if you're wondering why you need so much room for lawyers over

at the temple it's because of this the Royal courts of Justice technically our first written records referring to the medieval Law Courts come from 1589 but we know that it certainly existed before that you Know because of all the lawyers so why are there so many lawyers in London it's because legal code specifically in the medieval period is most usually tied with the personage of the king and the King has his Center here in London so if you get into a legal predicament odds are in the medieval period you've got an issue with the King

You've got an issue with Royal law you're going to have to come to the Royal courts of justice but who can come to the Royal courts of Justice not everybody not everyone technically comes under the legal jurisdiction of the crown if you live in the countryside which 80% of the European population does in the medieval period you're not actually going to be under the Crown's jurisdiction most of the time you'll be under the jurisdiction of your local Lord so you know a count or a Duke something like that if you live in London you're almost

guaranteed to be underneath the Jurisdiction of the crown however because London itself is controlled as a Royal City your taxes go to the crown your taxes go to the city and you're under a specific Royal legal code so londoners are here at the court extremely wealthy people are here at the court so say you're one of those Dukes or counts and you've got a problem with another duke or count and you want to take it to court you're taking it to Royal Court say that you are one of the Specific groups in the city like

the Jewish population you have specific Royal law protections that say that you are only subject to the Royal laws so it doesn't matter where you get in trouble in England you're going to have to come to the Royal courts of Justice here in London and so here is where specifically laws are made that affect the rest of the country provided that the king is involved but more specifically they're about laws that affect different Communities within London that affects Merchants that affect guilds that affect Traders so not every single English person is going to want need

understand or actually be allowed to use the Royal courts of Justice it's specifically more of a London thing for [Music] londoners so Dan we have already been by the temple yeah we've already been by the Royal courts of Justice uh now we're here at the Old Bailey how do these Things connect to each other so this is the Central Court in London Central criminal courses it's proper Tittle everyone always calls it the Old Bailey because it's on Old Bailey this is where you know some of the most infamous and famous cases in history have been

tried and I think one of the things that's really interesting about this building is you know you look at the statute of Justice at the top of it and it's the Pinnacle and of the way that I legal System has developed but actually it was Newgate Prison um and the El B is built on the sze of Newgate Prison which by all accounts was a pretty awful prison a lot of public executions took place here and the last public execution in the UK happened here in I think 1868 it was we look at it now

and it all Everything feels very ordered and very reasonable but for a long time it's been a really um quite controversial Place say you're Londoner yeah there's something going on You have to get involved with the legal system are you more likely to be here or are you more likely to end up over at the Royal court of justice so it depends what you've done is the answer to that inevitably um if you've stabbed someone or murdered someone you're much more likely to end up here to give it some context you know if I set

small claims against someone you're not you're very unlikely to end up in in the world courts of Justice you're much more Likely to end up in a small County Court of which there are many many around the country um and also in in in London so one of the things I find interesting about medieval law is that even though you know we're talking about this exciting sexy stuff that happens here which is like crimes against people that's not what the majority of medieval law is really is it no it isn't really I mean one of

the most important things in English law and one of the key tenants Of it that has always been protected hugely is property and the idea of property ownership and the punishments that are doled out if you breach that ownership and take something which isn't yours and nowadays what we would consider to be pretty horrific um and quite brutal um but obviously imprisonment was one of the was one of the key ones and people would end up in in a prison like Newgate Prison for that so what kind of crimes are we talking About that get

you sent to Newgate kind of more specifically so it could really be anything I mean you know if you stole a pig that's the kind of thing that could end up with you uh being in there but one of the things I've always been really interested in is um criminalization of debt and that's quite an interesting um topic which we don't perceive now and we all have credit cards and we all have you know mortgages and everything else and unfortunately People get into trouble and that has become civil and is now seen as very much

a civil thing but back in the medieval period and and after that that could you end you you know could result in you being put in prison um for really quite long periods of time for you to be unable to pay you know to pay debts back um which I think is a really interesting concept very much about you know how easy we are about debt now and relaxed that we are about it but in those days It really wasn't as simple as that so people who are getting in trouble for things like debt um

what are we talking about in terms of like who's legally culpable are these all adults like when does the conception of kind of an adult begin from a medieval standpoint the early modern period is the first time when people start to begin to see children in a different way to adults and begin to dress them in a different way and treat them legally in a Different way debtors and people who have been arrested for property offenses and everything else who ends up in prison they children I mean what we would now describe as children who

are being um you know found guilty of crimes and and and locked away effectively so the people who are getting in trouble for debt is it always what you and I would consider to be you know poor people or who is actually getting into this sort of trouble no it's not I mean You know regularly it not regularly but it does happen where it's you know Aristocrats and and Nobles are also put in prison for debt related issues your experience is very different depending on whether you're wealth or not wealthy you know if you're wealthy

you can afford better foods you can get better rooms you can have a nicer experience and you can bring servants with you and they will look after you if you're poor you effectively be thrown into a room And sort of left to get on with it um which is is not is not great I mean when you when we're talking about detis prisons they would often have to buy their own food which of course if you don't have any money and you can't afford you know and you're in there because you're in debt you just

end up getting into more dirts so this awful cycle where they're never going to escape um so yeah really tricky so the reasons why you end up in jail here or At court here are completely different from the reasons why you end up in court over at the Royal courts of Justice yeah no they they are very different and they work in a very different way um and they always have which is it's the interesting POS yeah yeah yeah eely place is one of my favorite places in the city of London because technically it's not

in the city of London it's in Cambridge here as the name indicates uh e play is owned and Under the jurisdiction of the bishop of elely the bishop of elely had his palace here in elely place so if he needed to attend to legal matters meet with the King for any reason he could come and stay in his palace here because it's under the jurisdiction of the bishop of elely this church here one of the few medieval churches left in the city of London is technically named after an Elie based saint St Etha The church

here is specifically named after her to Spread the cult in London itself St was very famous in the medieval period for growing the best strawberries in London and there's still a Strawberry Fair here every August the reason why this legality is interesting other than just you know Pub trivia is say that you've broken a law you're on the run from a posi you know you're going to be cornered soon if you're running through London you get yourself to elely place come and duck into the pub technically The posi has no legal jurisdiction here you can

sit back and relax and sink a couple without them being able to do anything we're moving on now from the Old Bailey we've been to the Royal courts of justice but the thing about the way that punishment Works in medieval London is it's not always tied to actual courts right yeah that's that's right I mean one of the things that happens a lot um is of course executions and you know Places of execution that's obviously um you know really big topic of of interest and we're actually walking now towards one of the big ones which

was Smithfield and it's where example you know William wace was executed there and you know a lot of common criminals are executed there as well it's you know a real real hot spot for it so you say common criminals what are people doing that gets them executed as opposed to put in jail so it's what we would probably call Um the more serious crimes um nowadays so things like you know Murder um some crimes that we wouldn't necessarily imagine things like coun fetting you know that was a real problem and has been a problem in

medieval period and into um the early modern period and it's one of the reasons why coins have ridges around the the side of them so that you can't shave a bit off and theness of coins it's an incredibly important place in the medieval period But you could almost be forgiven for not knowing that because when you come around the corner the first thing you see is the giant Victorian Meat Market absolutely you know obviously it would have been fields which of course is why it's called Smithfield um almost impossible to really imagine it to be

honest but there is a reason that you come to somewhere like smithfields to do your execution right as opposed to doing it down the road at the jail yeah Absolutely I mean one of the things that Mark Smithfield out is it's a real um display and it's a real active um place to be able to make a very clear statement um what you have to imagine is there's no regular police force um the chances have been caught when you commit a crime are lower um so when they do catch someone they want to really make

a big thing out of it and you know they're popular I mean one of the reasons why it's done here is because there is Enough room this is this was then outside of the city walls and there's enough room to do them cuz you know thousands of people turn up on you know it's a really big day out there's um you know lots of fast food it's it's like going to the football doesn't but the thing about Smithfield or smooth field it's called in the medieval period is this big place of you know public execution

but it's also a literal meat market right yes yeah is literally the Meat market so the cattle are driven in you a lot of them are are kills and coals actually here mhm obviously not anymore but they they were um and um you know it it is described in a lot of um accounts has been a really noisy um brutal dirty disgusting place effectively um which I guess is one of the reasons why it then becomes suitable for for executions um to have the space to do it so you have a lot of dead animals

you got a lot of dead people but Because it's outside of the city walls it sort of allows you space to do the Less Pleasant things that keep a city mov moving yeah exactly it's a real exhibition space in some ways a lot of the stuff which keeps the city moving in terms of Crime and Punishment and in terms of physically feeding the city happens around here um which is obviously not what you see today which is quite interesting but it's not all blood and Guts at smithfields people come for fun things like tournaments or

fairs and they also come for miracles here we are in the corner of field Market at one of the few remaining medieval churches in London St Bartholomew the greater known colloquially now as St Barts it was founded in 1123 by a man named Riri Riri very well connected at court he was somebody over at St Paul's he's a very important guy He's got a lot of money he's religious and important he goes on pilgrimage not to Jerusalem but to Rome and while he's in Rome he catches a very bad fever and he's on death store

so like any good religious man of the time he prays to God and says you know God if uh you bring me through this illness when I get back to London I'm going to establish a church um and lo and behold reiri recovers and off he goes on the way back to London on his way back he has a Vision from St Bartholomew who tells him God didn't save you I saved you and so when you get back to London you're naming a church after me he does this and the result is St Bartholomew's and

interestingly at St Bartholomew's Miracles begin to occur specifically on St Bart's Feast Day in August but over and over again you have people come who say that they've been spontaneously cured and it starts to get a reputation and more people start to come and more People start to come and the augustinian Friars who stay at St Barts eventually end up having to found a hospital to care for all of the sick people who come along so if you come to St Barts maybe you'll get a miracle worst case scenario you have a bunch of monks

who have good medical training look after you for free it's a bit of a win-win and a great way to have your healthare needs taken care of in medieval [Music] London this is Guild Hall never the Guild Hall always Guild Hall and interestingly we don't actually know where that name comes from our best guess is that it comes from Guild in Anglo-Saxon meaning gold and that this is where taxation used to take place in medieval London we also know that this was a very important place for the office of the mayor and it's one of

the most unique things about London in general in the medieval period it has a Mayor and it has a mayor specifically because the King has allowed that to happen so London is a weird kind of anomaly they pay taxes to the king they're under the jurisdiction of the king but they have their own municipal government that they themselves are allowed to vote in this is really uncommon in the medieval period and most cities wouldn't necessarily have their own government that they get to elect in any way shape or form instead they're Either under the jurisdiction

of the king himself or their local noblemen and this is one of the things that makes London such an interesting Community because to a certain extent it is self-governing even more confusingly The Guild or tax would be coming from guilds some of the most powerful associations within London themselves guilds can kind of be thought about as sort of like a medieval Trade union so the Mercers or cloth makers Would get together and they would say in order to be able to sell cloth in London you have to be a member of this particular Guild this

is a way of regulating quality you know that if you're getting London gilded cloth it's always going to be of high quality because these people have to answer to their Guild about it but it's also kind of an extortion racket because it means that there's no way in unless the guild says that you're allowed in at any rate These people become fabulously wealthy they're the sort of person who gets elected mayor and they're the people who are paying taxes at Guild Hall while what we see here is a 15th century building it was built on

top of the Roman Coliseum that was initially here when this was londinium so this is again another great example of how londoners enjoy taking Roman things and rebuilding to associate themselves with it and make sure that everyone Understands how important a particular place [Music] is you might be wondering why we are on such a distinctly not medieval looking Street in order to talk about medieval London and that's because it's sort of the point this is the old jewelry and it used to be the Center for Jewish life in London the only thing that we have

left of it anymore is this plaque up there the Jewish history in England is a super Interesting one we know that there were Jews living in the country kind of in the 6th century and we know this because of laws prohibiting Christians from having dinner with Jews the Jewish Community greatly expands however after the Norman Conquest when the Jewish community in Ruan was invited over along with William the Conqueror the Jewish Community was invited to London to do one specific service especially lend money this is because for medieval People lending money at interest was considered

a sin for Christians it was sinful to lend money to Christians and for Jewish people it was sinful to lend money to other Jewish people but Jewish people had a Proviso where they were allowed to lend money to Christians especially and this is very useful so the sin of usury or lending at interest did not count for them the Jewish Community was invited in expressly to provide these financial services and in Fact they had a royal law that said that they could do this this is called the Jewish Charter the Jewish Charter did two things

first it made sure that there would be the financial Capital available to make London a new Financial Center under the new Norman rulers secondly it established that the King was the only person who got to tax the Jewish population a population that is making all their money through financials means that there is a lot more tax coming Through as a part of this Jewish people were also only subject to Royal law exclusively no matter where you were even if you weren't in the city of London you would always go to a Royal Court if you

got in trouble this was seen as a win-win by everyone other than the people who were borrowing extensively from Jewish people eventually over the centuries resentment towards the Jewish population began to build up Jewish people would be accused Of what is called blood lival essentially anytime a Christian Child showed up dead Jewish people would have been accused of murdering them of course it was all nonsense but it was also linked to the fact that Christians really resented Jewish people because of the debts they owed to them of course this was not the fault of Jewish

people who were literally only allowed to be here if they were lending money so they were in a tight spot unfortunately over Time this resentment built up to such a level that there were multiple pgms against Jews which would mean that people would come in and literally burn down their synagogues burn down their houses and take their things in London in particular this built up until 1272 when the Great synagogue here was itself abolished Jewish people were told well you have to stop lending money but this led to a question if they were legally obliged

to lend money and could now no Longer lend money what were they supposed to do eventually in 1290 this led to the Edict of the expulsion of the Jews and they were all asked to leave England this made England and London in particular an anomaly in medieval Europe every other major Financial Capital would have a thriving Jewish population who was providing Financial Services England and London stood alone in making sure that they no longer had a Jewish population that could do that So this is another sad story about the rise and Falls of particular communities

within London and it's another story about how communities can completely be discarded once they are no longer useful to the individuals who ask them to be here in the first place and in particular the reason why Jewish people in London fell out of favor was being too good at their own jobs eventually the King was in more debt to Jewish people than he was making in taxes from Jewish people and at that point they're asked to leave it's another opportunity for us to ask how communities work who's a part of a community how do they

serve it and how do we delineate between those two [Music] things we're here in souk which is technically not a part of medieval London in order to talk about a community of people that was considered absolutely Indispensable for medieval London who served medieval London but by their very definition were not allowed to be in medieval London I am talking about the Winchester geese otherwise known as the sex workers of Souther sex work occupies a really nuanced position in the medieval world because it's considered to be absolutely necessary for the functioning of a good Society St

Thomas aquinus has referred to sex work as the Cesspool that keeps The Palace of God clean so what that indicates is that while it's certainly something that is considered necessary it's not generally considered to be allowable and sex work in any major city had to usually take place somewhere not in the middle of it CU it's no one's favorite feature so sometimes that would mean that you needed to do sex work up against the city walls just outside of the city walls or here in London across the river in Sther sex work in this instance

is not what we would call specifically decriminalized but it's legal so there's a right way to do it there's a wrong way to do it there's a right place to do it there's a wrong place to do it so in London you need to be here in sther but you also need to be wearing specific clothing also called a hood of Ray which is kind of headdress that we know was made out of black and white striped cloth so basically as soon as someone Sees you they can identify that you're a sex worker and and

you definitely have to be doing your sex work here in what is kind of like a pleasure District so some of the things that go on in Souther are certainly sex work but there's also the Souther stews which are just up on the river and that's where people go to bathe for pleasure contrary to popular opinion bathing huge in the medieval period they absolutely love it they see it as going to the spa and that's where You get your bathing done but everyone's kind of hot everyone's kind of naked and wet and that lends itself

to kind of sexy thoughts and the sex workers are here to kind of take advantage of that [Music] so what happens if you are one of the hundreds of women who's required to do sex work in the city of London well if you do it legally and you do it right it doesn't have the same kind of stigma that it has today so say you work as a Sex worker and you're tired of it you're a little bit over it you want to do something else what you do is you go to your local priest

and you say bless me Father for I've sinned I've been working as a sex worker he'll say no worries my child welcome back to the fold your Penance is that you have to get married and start a family and then that's it you're out but what happens if you don't make that 180 well unfortunately you might end up when you die in somewhere Like this it's a very beautiful spot but this is the crossbones graveyard it's unhallowed ground where all of the unrepentant sex workers were buried because they died outside of communion with the Catholic

church so if you die in a state of sin you have to be buried here instead of a regular churchyard or graveyard sadly along with the sex workers there's also a number of children who are buried here there's a very high infant mortality rate and very High child mortality rate in the medieval period And if your child as a sex worker dies then they're considered slightly sinful as well and they are often buried in the same place that their mothers ended up so as I said before one of the colloquial terms for four sex workers

were the Winchester geese where' they get that name well this is a nice little business opportunity for those who are ready to exploit it and one of the Primary people who was interested in exploiting it traditionally was the bishop of Winchester much like the bishop of elely having land in London the bishop of Winchester owns almost the entire South Bank of the river here in Souther and this is a place where again all the stews are people come to take baths people come to sex workers he sees this as a nice business opportunity so he

rents out the land to various sex workers and he gets to recoup the money From that and his soul and conscience are completely clear this is something that is completely acceptable within a Catholic context but it's also massively hypocritical he's recouping all of the money that all these women are making but if they're dying in that profession they're dying outside of his care and they're buried here away from it [Music] so this is another example of a medieval Community who are considered absolutely indispensable completely necessary for urban life and when they are financially expedient and

it's making money for someone else but the second it becomes theologically difficult they can be disposed of without it ever troubling your own conscience medieval London is a community but within that Community there are several separate other communities that have their own parts to Play whether they're legal religious pleasure centered or financial and each one of those communities fortunes can rise and fall depending on their use to the other individuals within that same community so when we're talking about medieval London we're definitely talking about one city but we're talking about several communities within that as

well in other words we can think of medieval London like one beautiful tapestry lots of individual interrelated threads come Together with their own important influences to create one contiguous and beautiful hole [Music] [Music]