I’ve been researching the fourteenth century. It’s tough going. As Barbara Tuchman describes it in her book A Distant Mirror, the fourteenth century was a “violent, bewildered, tormented, suffering and disintegrating age.” Besides wars, corruption, Church schisms, economic unrest, indifferent governments, and famines, there was also the most lethal disaster of recorded history—the Black Death of 1348 – 50.
But today’s blog is about noise and dirt. Specifically how noisy and dirty fourteenth century city streets were. Take Paris, for example.
The main streets of Paris were paved and “just wide enough to accommodate two carts or carriages.” That’s not very wide. All it took was one mule-drawn cart with baskets hanging off either side meeting a carriage going the other way to jam everything up—and those were the main streets. The rest of the streets were unpaved and full of filth—in bad neighborhoods there was a gutter running down the center of the street that often got clogged, and a pile of human waste outside every door. People were supposed to carry it away and dump it in appointed locations, but most people didn’t bother.
Because hardly anyone could read, and because there weren’t any house numbers to mark address points, shop owners advertised their wares by huge signs hung on long poles, which added to the street congestion. A tooth puller’s shop had a tooth “the size of an armchair.” A glove maker displayed a gargantuan glove “with each finger big enough to hold a baby.” (158)
So think about the noise made by the clatter of horse hooves, the rattling signs swinging back and forth, the calling of peddlars, and the cries of public criers.
The public criers rang bells multiple times a day and made announcements at crossroads and city squares. They announced “official decrees, taxes, fairs and ceremonies, houses for sale, missing children, marriages, funerals, births, and baptisms.” (159)