How Medieval People Actually Kept Clean

Dawn in London, 1390, and before you eat, you wash. Follow one day of keeping clean in medieval England: cold water, a comb and a bark toothbrush at dawn, the Great Conduit in Cheapside, washerwomen on the Thames stairs, the ewer at dinner, lawsuits over leaking privies, the steam baths called stews, a lord's bath full of herbs, and how Europe later gave up bathing. CHAPTERS 0:00 Dawn in London, 1390 0:48 Dawn — Cold Water and a Comb 2:33 Morning — Water 3:48 Mid-Morning — Washday 5:08 11 AM — Wash Before You Eat 6:38 2 PM — The Privy Problem 8:53 5 PM — The Stews 10:49 8 PM — A Bath at Home 12:44 Later — When Europe Stopped Bathing SOURCES H. T. Riley (ed. & tr.), Memorials of London and London Life (1868). https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-... H. M. Chew & W. Kellaway (eds.), London Assize of Nuisance 1301–1431 (London Record Society 10, 1973). https://www.british-history.ac.uk/lon... R. R. Sharpe (ed.), Calendar of Coroners Rolls of the City of London, 1300–1378 (1913). https://archive.org/details/calendaro... R. R. Sharpe (ed.), Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London, H, I and K (1907–1911). https://www.british-history.ac.uk/lon... V. Harding & L. Wright (eds.), London Bridge: Selected Accounts and Rentals, 1381–1538 (London Record Society 31, 1995). https://www.british-history.ac.uk/lon... J. Stow, A Survey of London (1603), ed. C. L. Kingsford (1908). https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-... F. J. Furnivall (ed.), Early English Meals and Manners / The Babees Book (EETS, 1868), incl. John Russell's Boke of Nurture and the Boke of Curtasye. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24790 The School of Salernum: Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum, English by Sir John Harington (1607), ed. F. R. Packard (1920). https://archive.org/details/schoolofs... R. Steele (ed.), Three Prose Versions of the Secreta Secretorum (EETS ES 74, 1898). https://archive.org/details/threepros... Aldobrandino of Siena, Le Régime du corps (1256), ed. L. Landouzy & R. Pépin (1911). https://archive.org/details/b24866854 É. Boileau, Livre des métiers (c. 1268), in G.-B. Depping (ed.), Règlemens sur les arts et métiers de Paris (1837); H. Géraud, Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel (1837). J. W. Clark (ed.), The Observances in Use at the Augustinian Priory of Barnwell (1897); E. M. Thompson (ed.), Customary of the Benedictine Monasteries of Saint Augustine, Canterbury, and Saint Peter, Westminster (1902–1904); J. T. Fowler (ed.), Rites of Durham (1903). Rule of St Benedict, tr. L. J. Doyle; The Ancren Riwle, ed. & tr. J. Morton (Camden Society, 1853). Le Ménagier de Paris (c. 1393), ed. J. Pichon (1846). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44070 A. Martin, Deutsches Badewesen in vergangenen Tagen (1906). https://archive.org/details/deutsches... Erasmus, Colloquies, 'Diversoria', tr. N. Bailey; A. Paré, De la peste (1568); L. Savot, L'architecture françoise (1624); A. Franklin, Les soins de toilette (1887). C. Rawcliffe, 'Less Mudslinging and More Facts', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 89 (2013); 'A marginal occupation? The medieval laundress and her work', Gender & History 21 (2009). London Museum: aquamanile C2337 and bone comb A3900. https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/colle... D. Jørgensen, 'City Sanitation Regulations in the Coventry Mayor's Proclamation of 1421', Arcadia 8 (2012). Made with AI: the pictures, the motion and the narration are AI-generated from the researched sources listed above. Where historians disagree, the video says so. Common Era: how ordinary people actually lived. A new episode every day. #history #medieval #commonera