An episode of the 2011 BBC TV documentary Filthy Cities describes the streets of London in the 1300s. They were ankle-deep in a putrid mix of wet mud, rotten fish, garbage, entrails, and animal dung. People dumped their own buckets of faeces and urine into the street or simply sloshed it out the window.
What did a medieval city smell like?
Medieval cities likely smelled like a combination of baking bread, roasting meat, human excrement, urine, rotting animal entrails, smoke from woodfires — there were no chimneys so houses were filled with smoke which likely seeped out of them into the streets — along with sweat, human grime, rancid and putrid dairy
What would you smell in medieval times?
Odors, including those of incense, spices, cooking, and refuse, were both ubiquitous and meaningful in central and late medieval Western Europe. The significance of the sense of smell is evident in scholastic Latin texts, most of which are untranslated and unedited by modern scholars.
What did Victorian England smell like?
By the middle of the Victorian era, bergamot and lemon oil had surpassed Eau de Cologne to become the most popular fragrance for women. According to Goodman: “Bergamot and lemon oil, sometimes employed separately but more often used in combination, was the signature smell of the middle years of the century.
What would you smell in Victorian London?
Hot, overcrowded, with little running water or sanitation, the sheer stink of unwashed bodies, tobacco smoke, horses and garbage would have been horrendous. But worse still was the smell which came from the river Thames. There was no effective plumbing in London until the 1860s.
What are the smells of London?
There’s a heady aroma of car exhaust fumes, fuel and dust overpowering Londoners’ nostrils (perhaps unsurprisingly). But not far behind, the smell of the natural world – flowers, plants, trees and grass – is enveloping our noses.
Was ancient Rome smelly?
The ancient Romans lived in smelly cities. We know this from archaeological evidence found at the best-preserved sites of Roman Italy — Pompeii, Herculaneum, Ostia and Rome — as well as from contemporary literary references. When I say smelly, I mean eye-wateringly, pungently smelly. Even the entertainment reeked.
Did medieval people use deodorant?
No. They bathed regularly, and soap was ubiquitous.
What was hygiene like in the Middle Ages?
In the Middle Ages, the peasants were reliant on water provided from wells that dotted the landscape. They practiced cleaning their hands before eating and washing themselves a couple of times per week, or more often if the need arose to rid themselves of smell.
What did Churchill smell like?
Winston Churchill: Creed Tabarome
The British Bulldog smelled of cigars and brandy, but he also smelled of Creed Tabarome, his go-to cologne. The scent starts off citrusy with bergamot and tangerine, fades to ginger, and then to a subtle sandalwood, ambergris, tobacco, and leather scent.
What does Queen Elizabeth smell like?
Queen Elizabeth II – the internet says she wore either White Rose by Floris, or L’Heure Bleue by Guerlain. Maybe she wore both, who says you have to stick with one scent? These seem likely choices; a green/sweet floral and a powdery heliotrope, both with a respectable lineage.
What did the great stink smell like?
This contamination could take the form of the odour of rotting corpses or sewage, but also rotting vegetation, or the exhaled breath of someone already diseased. Miasma was believed by most to be the vector of transmission of cholera, which was on the rise in 19th-century Europe.
How often did people bathe in the Middle Ages?
Typically speaking, people bathed once a week during the Middle Ages. Private baths were extremely rare – basically nobody had them – but public bathhouses were actually quite common. People who didn’t have that or who couldn’t afford to use one, still lived near a river.
Why were medieval castles smelly?
Though medieval people didn’t know about germs, they believed bad smells caused illness. Pongs were strongest in early castles like Rochester, where the poo fell into a cesspit under the keep, and the stink rose up through the rooms.
Did peasants shower?
So yes, medieval people, even regular old peasants were pretty clean types of people. In fact, they were so clean that for them bathing constituted a leisure activity. So the average person would likely wash daily at home, but once a week or so they would treat themselves to a bath at the communal bath house.
What was hygiene like in the Victorian era?
Showers were not yet en vogue and everyone bathed to keep clean. Poorer families would have boiled water on the stove then added it along with cool water to a wooden or metal tub, usually in the kitchen area, when it was time for a deep scrub down.
What is the vintage smell?
The source of the remaining compounds that made up that vintage smell were environmental contaminants like car exhaust, gasoline, dry cleaning solvents, food and perfume or, as the team at P & G put it, “the odor molecule peaks form a record of the odors” that the garments were exposed to over its life.
What is the UK’s Favourite smell?
The top four favourite scents all stem from food and drink, with the Sunday morning saviour of sizzling bacon taking the crown for 50% of responders. The sweet treat of a cake baking in the oven also takes its place in the top 10, with 34%.
Why was Victorian England so smelly?
For centuries the River Thames had been used as a dumping ground for the capital’s waste and as the population grew, so did the problem. The hot summer of 1858 elevated the stench to an unbearable level and resulted in an episode known as ‘The Great Stink’.
What is the Queen’s Favourite scent?
The scent rumoured to be the Queen’s long-standing go-to is White Rose, a fresh and floral scent that’s signature to the Floris London name. The brand took to Instagram back in May to share the release of the new fragrance.
What is the smelliest city in UK?
Stoke-on-Trent is the worst place for odour complaints: According to Freedom of Information requests to each town and city, Stoke-on-Trent received the most complaints about nasty smells in 2021, with 860 (or 335.1 complaints per 100,000 people).