Yeah, I’m in Mexico right now and it’s so stressful just having to buy bottled water all the time and not being able to flush toilet paper…. Never mind being in medieval times
With the term, "shit end of the stick", it never dawned on me to even ponder why there would be shit on a stick in the first place. Very enlightening! LOL
when I was young we were so poor the children used to go outside poking dookies with branches because drinking being the common pastime some people swallowed valuables. Oh yeah there were dooks on the street from the poverty people didn't have indoor plumbing so thats where I thought that came from
@@JokersNtheOddball I think over time vernacular has changed and no one seems to know the original. I've heard both but "shit end" being the more common. Both seem to mean the same thing. I was just commenting that the term I had heard my whole life, "shit end of the stick" made sense when considering that era and the circumstances.
Luckily, there's AdBlockPlus, which blocks ALL ads from all You Tube videos (and from email inboxes, Yahoo pages, etc.) I haven't been bothered by a single ad on YT since getting ABP 2-3 years ago, so when I read people mentioning the nauseating ads in these vids, I have to chuckle, because it it SO easy to get rid of that trash once & for all with ABP!!! It's a FREE download, and SAFE too (no malware, etc.)
It boggles the mind that it didn't occur to them that living in your own filth is not conducive to health.. Even animals know you don't shit where you sleep..
What Bcubed72 says, this was not a problem in the country-side. It's instinctive to us and other animals to not want to be near our own feces, but when millions of people are stowed together in one place with no sewer system, avoiding your own or other people's feces becomes near impossible. They knew it was something about the 'filth' that made people sick, but they assumed it was the airborne smell, rather than the water.
That's why I always throw my camber pot contents out of the window with extra force. Get is as far away from the building as possible. Problem solved :D
I had to agree with the host when he said the old brick sewer was "beautiful." It was a marvel of engineering that still works today! How many daily working things have lasted that long? And the brickwork was amazing! You can't find brickwork like that ABOVE ground today!
Oh! I've been to Greenwich. The observatory and the naval museum. I'm very disappointed that I didn't know about the foot tunnel. Next trip I intend on visiting that and the steam engines, etc. Bazelgette is quite the hero in my book.
Not true, if you go by most engineering codes. Most specify different 'design life', from anywhere from 20 - 100 years. But it is great that they did overengineer it. They wouldn't have been able to analyse it to the extent that we would today.
It occurred to no one that perhaps they shouldn't be shitting in the same water they were drinking? Even in their ignorance this seems astonishing to me. It's even more difficult to understand when you realize that the Romans - and even older civilizations - had an effective sewage system thousands of years prior to this. I have a hard time stomaching the chlorine smell of city water, which is why I can't drink it out of the tap. I can just imagine what Thames water smelled like back then.
+Rob Robert How people thought back then and still today, scares the shit out of me. I often wonder how the fuck we're all still here. A bloody miracle if I ever saw one. It boils dowwn to the I don't give a fuck attitude that makes people and collectively, society, not thin about consequences.
Rob Robert India is still doing this today. The "untouchables" go around at night cleaning up the shit - but no one wants to admit they exist, and neither does the Indian cast system.
David James what sucks about it is that their role shouldn't even be needed. Some societies keep cruel practices because domination is more important to them than common sense.
I like the commercials because it's like a walk down memory lane, and when you first start watching it's like oh that looks like 80's t.v. N then you realize it was maybe late 90's early 2000's. So crazy how t.v. has changed and times have changed in such a short time!!
@@peachymeechie1844 Its got to be early 2000s back when Bradford and Bingley exploded out of being a nice caring building society into being a new exciting bank with all sorts of financial investments. then promptly rolled over and died in the banking crash of 2008.
Ha Ha, that's what I thought...obviously?? ( or not ) Toilet Duck goes UNDER the rim...and why would you flush it immediately afterwards when you've popped it in to kill germs...great presenter though !
Noeraldin Kabam haha I read the comments just to see if anyone would mention his ‘never cleaned a toilet before in his life’ skills. Hehe made me chuckle
Give the man a break, y'all! Most men don't know how to clean the sink or tub, much less a toilet. Schools would do good to offer classes on Proper cleaning to kill germs in the normal household. Much apologies, Pappy Reeves.
Give him a break! He's only just learned to, "open that bloody window" post defecation. Regardless of the fact that she, who must be obeyed, nearly always conveniently forgets. Lady poo must smell nicer than man poo.
Love the inclusion of the ads. No, really. A hundred years from now when some poor student is dredging through the RU-vid archives, he or she or it is going to be absolutely amazed.
those sponsors trying to advertising food products just after a cesspool submerged graphical video scene , hahaha, probably hurt their brands. By associative thinking memory those who saw that will remember the sewer when coming across those brands at their local supermarket hahaha.
Well, I would be more worried about their amazement at how stupid people were to keep reinventing the wheel when it came to toy toys owing to cultural/religious dogma about the body and its functions. Rather than just sticking with the Roman idea they threw it all out and started over because the body is an affront to God.
Thank God for modern times. I do not long for " the good old days". Days of ignorance, inadequate hygiene practices, medical treatment, inequality in law and daily life...no thank you.
how the hell did people survive all this awfulness and filth. I've watched so many documentaries like this and wow...i don't know how people survived. Like for example, the fact that they were pumping dirty water into the homes and it was full of excrement and industrial waste..the water was filthy....not fit for drinking, washing, NOTHING. very bad times. That is why I DON"T get it WHNE people say, IT was better to live in the olden times, TIMES were simpler back then, MORE innocent etc. UM NO...filth of all sorts both in people and in their surroundings have EXISTED forever. I prefer our times more...
Ella Marie yep they even moan and groan if you mention protecting safe drinking water sources from dumping and call you a liberal hippy. and then that demographic is the first to deal with the effects of a coal company dumping it's waste in their drinking water. but these folks continue to elect politicians who pass legislation that allows that coal company to dump waste into the drinking supply... the ignorance never went away. there are too many idiots.
fact is, inside the human body is a sess pool. from bacteria to gases, we have way more contaminants going on inside us we expel through process of excretion than the environment normally produces. you catch many more diseases from the human body than you do a dirty toilet seat or "icky" stream you drink from. we are much more resilient than we are given credit for. inside out own bodies we are a chemical factory of contamination and why you should never handle dead bodies or cut into a body without some form of protection, one reason why you must be licensed to do this, it is a health hazard for those in the vicinity. not because someone has dirty sheets or a full chamber pot
This is both interesting and agonizing. Hearing how people were drinking filth almost made me sick. I’m so glad I was born during this century, this time and not so long ago. No wonder people didn’t live long then.
It's to my understanding , at Times , they had to Close Parliament Down due to the Stench Coming from the Thames , the Doc Should have been titled " Gross Encounters of the Turd Kind " . . . .
@ 3:45 I always thought that men walked on the outside of the sidewalk to protect their women from horses & carriages splashing water on them from the street...
Mishka Tvorzky that's what I thought too. It seems like shit flying out of a first or second story window would probably land on the woman first if she's walking on the building side of the sidewalk. Maybe the man protects the woman from being splashed by a horse and carriage and the woman protects the man from flying shit missiles? 😁🤣
Right. That makes no sense, that has to be wrong. Like you said, horse & carriage splashing would be much more common and like the reply said, if she’s walking the inside then she’s closest to the buildings and will get shite poured on her.
'Sanitation' get's thrown around a lot as one of the best improvements to public health and quality of life. That becomes a whole lot more meaningful when you realize before then shit was *everywhere* I can't imagine how bad everything must have smelled just in general. Filling your basement up with your own shit can't be pleasant
So many Englishmen have this man to thank for their existence. Many more would have died if it weren't for this man! And their descendants wouldn't have even been born.
Sanitation is one of the many areas where Socialism and State Planning beats Capitalism and Private Enterprise. Scientific Research is another one, regardless of what pharmaceutical companies argue.
@@jus2cute09 well, they thought it was a step up from shitting in your backyard and pissing the hearth fire out at night. They were wrong but I guess that sponge was handy and more comfortable than leaves and grass. Just the thought of it makes me want to vomit. So we have shit, piss and then underground systems running through graveyards. Holy shit! Literally.
"Thomas Crapper, Ltd."??? I'm seeing things; I must be seeing things. That's it, I'm hallucinating. There CANNOT be a "Thomas Crapper, Ltd." in a sane World...
@Lady Jupiter Yes, I'm sure he was; I was only attempting to make a joke. I think most people who happened to read it understood that. Have a nice day.
Amazing how ancient Roman design right down to the waterproof cement is heralded as innovative; seems there are numerous ruins of ancient water works all over UK. Thanks for posting
Theres a very good chapter in the book "Dreams of Iron and Steel" by Deborah Cadbury about the building of the London Sewer system, including letters from poor citizens pleading for help to their MPs.
I loved the British adds but the best ones for me were the MasterCard and Disney ones! I'm an Alaskan in the USA so it was cool to see those. I also recall Lelo and stitch in the theater!😊
"Sewage is not a subject we discuss very much" No kidding. Throughout this whole documentary, my gag reflect hasn't calmed down. I'll never know how I managed to watch this through the end. Ugh!
16 days! the upper classes were finally effected and then they finally did something and frickin' fast! all i can say is - i am very glad i was born into a 'clean' era!
8:20 I was not expecting an insurance commercial starring Hugh Laurie. It's always interesting almost to the point of nostalgic how British media still used red and orange lighting when filming indoors. A filming technique that had already been done away with in American media by the end of the 90s, still largely used in the UK for another 10 years until 2008-2009.
@@johnrobinsoniii4028 There some thought that he actually commited suicide with poison rather than be exposed as a homosexual by a letter that was going to be sent to the tsar. The cholera, allegedly caught by drinking contaminated water in a restaurant, was a cover-up. Qui sa?
For sure haha.. No girlfriend or wife would be cool with pissing directly in the fireplace. My wife gets angry if I piss standing up even. She says the droplets splash up unto the commode seat haha. I tell her I sit down but it feels too effeminate so I just spray it w water and that's that - what she doesn't know wont kill her lol.
David James Aww but he's in love besides just like he says what she don't know won't hurt her. My hub sits when he pees just by choice my dad does that at his home but not at mine but he's never not aimed wrong cause he's anal. He is a better maid than a woman he likes things pristine my mother the same why they've been married 48 years come this Nov. He'd drive you more nuts than any woman lol.
Paige Cat I had to replace 3 enamel coated seats in my new construction home. My wife and daughter must have splattered up under the seat causing it to yellow. I ended up purchasing more expensive solid resin seats that would not have this problem. Seems men piss splatter on top of the seat, and women splatter under it. Does this happen? or just in my house?
OMFG I wasn't expecting such a treat of having the old school adverts too!! Normally they're cut out of these RU-vid vids lol! It's like stepping into the past!!
This was probably aired around 2002, judging from the Lilo and stitch advert. I actually remember some of those adverts, I must have watched a lot of TV when I was 13. edit: confirmed the beauty and the beast one say's 2002.
Absolutely enlightening! I have more respect for civil engineering now. Medical doctors had no clue about what decimated the population with disease, and even if they did, they couldn't fix it. It's about time to do a new documentary.
Romans , like modern Italians , were obsessed with cleanliness. Modern Italians are among the people's most obsessed with cleanliness--at least among Europeans and Americans. OH, btw,, I am not of Italian heritage , so I do not have a dog in this fight.
+jan christian Frodahl I lived in England from 1984-1989 and I don't remember having Channel 5. I remember having BBC1, BBC2, ITV, and Channel 4. I'm even thinking that Channel 4 started up after I moved there. Someone help me! Am I losing my mind? BTW-I wouldn't trade my time in England for all the tea in China, as my mother always says. She is English and grew up during WWII and insists she had the best childhood ever. I wish I was rich enough to have a house here in Colorado, as well as one in the UK. Oh, well. N'mind, aye, me duck.
my guess is that the channel in question came about in 2005 or so ,or did the uk get switched to digital tv at another time. we were forced in america to abandon our analog sets in 05
As a Land surveyor I could only imagine the undertaking of the survey work and as builts done as work progressed. These lines were so long they had to I'm sure take the curvature of the earth into play. Absolutely astounding. All probably done with chains, levels and plumb bobs.
The reason I ask, is that in the 20+ years I've been flying as a commercial pilot, never once have I had to compensate for any curvature.....this goes for the hundreds of other pilots I've talked to over the years....so it'd be interesting to see what formula you need to use in the construction industry to compensate for this non existent "curvature"
@@tiarnan76 i cant give you the answer a surveyor would, but i work in civil engineering so have to talk to surveyors, use lots of survey data and also have done a bit of flying so ill try and be the middle man. You probably havnt had to account for curvature because its already done for you. As a pilot you are interested in where you are, where you want to be and how high you are, and your height is essentially determined by gravity. Straight down until you hit something. Surveyors requirements are somewhat different. Co-ordinate systems that you use and accurate maps have it taken into account. If you talk to a surveyor, a good one will be able to tell you some pretty amazing stuff. Its surprising how on top of it they are. Remember that co-ordinate systems have 2 components. a 'grid' system and a height datum. A large country might even have its grid system divided up into sections because the accuracy would be lost due to curvature if you try to place it all on the same grid. These are known as 'map projections' and there may be various systems of projections. There are methods to determine heights. Datums are established points, often from an averaged and decided sea level at a certain point in the country for example. Or you might have a site datum decided at the beginning of the project. From what i remember, GPS receivers use an 'ellipsoid' reference for height datum, from that there is a geoid model that has a relationship to the ellipsoid, and then you can relate that to the national datum for example. There are extremely comprehensive books on this if you want to hurt your brain. conversions of co-ordinate systems require moving a 'map' so to speak in x, y, and z planes because there will be a rotational component. Every so often national grids and datums need to be updated because of tectonic plate shift. So the grid numbers are usually accompanied by a date. eg MGN50 D94 or MGN20 (map grid national zone 50 date 1994) would be a typical name. All of this results in surveyors being able to identify pretty amazing things. Working on australian mines i have surveyors that can come back and tell me that the datum points have moved 40mm because of underground mining and they correct for it. Now imagine you want to plot out a long system of straight piping connected by pits at 100m intervals that goes for 3000kms. You start at ground level. You need to have a fall on the pipe of 0.5%. over that distance in theory if you plotted the heights off the same datum you started with, you will be 'higher' than you should be due to curvature. It does in fact exist. So long story long, its complicated. but since your comment was slightly condescending so... Go talk to a surveyor.
Loved this documentary. I can’t believe how advanced the victorians became and how they invented so many things yet they hadn’t figured out how to manage their own waste to the point of literally drinking shit and couldn’t work out why they were getting sick!
They still think that if you drink from the Ganges you'll be healed of all your diseases. Well if you survive the drink you'll be immune to almost anything, so in a way it's kinda true. LMAO! Disgusting!!
Nancy Campbell Gibson who ever made that turd should be proud. Not only did it (unlike many others) stay formed in the sewer, but it made it to tv in 2002 and RU-vid 14 years later where it is being discussed.
This is the same race of people, who sent prisoners to Australia as punishment... yep, to a place of golden beaches and abundant sunshine ... and fresh water.... that will teach them! ----- LOL OH yeah... temperature rose to 20C?....what?? - that is a mild Autumn day in Australia.. Good grief.
Great show. Now I know why my people left England. (just kidding) in 1790 for Wells Maine. This is scarier than Halloween. Love the cute ads actually especially the tiger with dentures. I am super fascinated by epidemics. My grandmother was born in Waco Texas but escaped to San Fransisco and became a doctor in the 1930s so I grew up with wonderful morbid fascinating stories but epidemiology is so engaging.
I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like back in them days! All those Poor people ! Bless there hearts ! It really makes me feel blessed and thankful to all the things we have today.. You dont even give it a second thought until you watch history .
