The DISGUSTING Truth About Hygiene in Tudor England

In the 1520s, a visiting scholar wrote that the floors of English houses were covered in rushes that hid twenty years of spittle, vomit, spilled beer and dog's urine. So were the Tudors as filthy as their reputation? Strangely, no. They cared a great deal about being clean. They just didn't trust water to do it. This episode follows Tudor hygiene from the morning wash to the night soil cart: the clean linen shirt that did the work of a bath, the laundresses who risked their lives at the river, the eighty-two nit combs on the Mary Rose, Henry the Eighth's twenty-eight-seat toilet, a queen's black teeth, and the Cambridge students who could be flogged for going swimming. It's built from what the Tudors themselves wrote and left behind: Erasmus's letters and manners book, the Eltham Ordinances, Paul Hentzner's travel diary, Thomas Tusser's list of strewing herbs, and coroners' inquests into ordinary women who drowned doing the washing. ⏳ CHAPTERS 0:00 Twenty Years Underfoot 2:32 The Shirt That Did the Washing 6:41 Rules for a Clean Face 10:40 The Women at the River 14:30 Eighty-Two Nit Combs 19:00 Sweet Herbs on a Dirty Floor 23:03 A Toilet for Twenty-Eight 27:00 The Queen's Black Teeth 30:51 Forbidden to Swim 34:55 So, Were the Tudors Dirty?