“I heard Versailles was just as bad or even worse. People would perform bodily functions anywhere in the palace.”
Just like San Francisco...
Too much information!
I will read this after lunch.
I saw a series from the UK about worst jobs in Tudor England. The Groom of the Stool made the list. That courtier would clean the Royal arse after a #2.
...attended to by a high-ranking courtier known as the Groom of the Stool
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Not sure I’d want that on my resume.
I remember taking a tour of a castle in either Belgium or western Germany while I was assigned to US Army Europe. One of the items on the tour was the privy/toilet on one of the upper floors. It was a narrow room with several holes in the wooden planks, like an old fashioned outhouse. One’s droppings fell into the space between the inner and outer walls of the castle.
My Grandmother did not have a Great Hall of Easement, but she did have a small hall of easement, a two holer called the out house. Out of her hearing, we called it the shit house, but excepting the difference in size, it must have been very similar to Hampton Court’s edifice.
Indoor plumbing with an indoor toilet, came to MaMa’s house in the early 60’s, so my generation was the last to experience the real thing.
usueless scatology
This is much of the reason why life expectancy used to be so short
Gong scourers of sorts still exist in Haiti, where gangs of men empty privy vaults and cart the waste away. This despite the millions supposedly lavished on Haiti by the Clinton Foundation.
Ya know, my job doesn't look so bad after reading this.
Been there l, back in my early teens. The place did indeed smell as though people just peed anywhere and everywhere.
During the reign of Louis XIV, Versailles noblemen urinated openly against the courtyard walls in full view of other members of the court looking down from the balustrades above. The whole palace was said to stink strongly of urine and body odor. Bathing with water was thought to be unhealthy, and neither the king nor the court ever did.
Every American today lives immeasurably more comfortably than Louis the Sun King did in the 17th century.
Ancient Romans cities had much better sanitation.
I guess this is where the custom of allowing your ENEMIES to spend the night in your tent rather than kick them out before turning in.
The ‘reasoning’ being that if you kick him/her out, they will sneak up to your tent and pee inside it.
If they remained in, they would do like everyone else, raise the tent and pee outside.