Tudor and Stuart

The Woad Dyer
Woad dyers were highly skilled craftsmen, but enjoying their profits was difficult, because no one wanted to come anywhere near them. It wasn’t their permanently blue-stained hands that put people off, but the dreadful stink - a bit like rotting boiled cabbage mixed with sewage - which hung around them wherever they went. Woad was the plant used to dye wool blue, a colour much in demand at this time, but the process was messy and smelly and the by-products were noxious and difficult to dispose of. The rest of society despised woad dyers; Queen Elizabeth decreed that no woad should be dyed within five miles of her royal person!

The Violin String Maker
Vegetarians definitely need not apply for this job. The violin string maker needed a strong stomach as he turned the lower intestines from a sheep into strings fit for a Stradivarius. Pet lovers will be pleased to hear that it was sheep and not catgut that was actually used. The violin string maker sliced open the sheep’s stomach, being careful not to damage the precious intestines. The fatty tissue, blood vessels and bile were removed and the intestines cleaned. The thicker bits went off to make sausage skins and the thinner ends were twisted together and dried to make strings. The whole job was skilful but tedious and very messy.

The Gong Farmer
The gong farmer was the Tudor equivalent of a modern mobile toilet attendant. It was his job to empty the privies (a row of holes in a wooden plank over a tank) of private households. Once the farmer’s vat was full of ‘gong’ (dung), he carted it outside the city walls. The job was so unsavoury that gong farmers were only allowed to work during the night and were forced to live together in designated areas. When tobacco arrived in this country most gong farmers became heavy smokers to mask the gut-wrenching pong of the gong!

Searchers of the Dead
It sounds like the title of a bad horror movie, so imagine what the job description was like! Searchers of the dead sought out plague victims. Once they were identified, the house would be boarded up and the rest of the family quarantined. If you spent your time visiting plague-ridden households, chances were you’d catch it yourself, so the job wasn’t a sought-after position. Searchers of the dead were mostly older women, destitute but with enough medical knowledge to spot plague victims. The pay wasn’t great at the best of times, about four pence per body, but prices plummeted during the Great Plague, because the authorities couldn’t afford to pay for the hundreds of people dying everyday.

The Executioner
Wearing a hood or mask didn’t fool anyone - the Executioner was a well-known and despised man. He had to deal with rioting crowds, as well as the blood and gore involved with beheadings - and it was even his job to parboil victims’ heads and put them on stakes. It’s no wonder that many executioners eventually committed suicide.