A terrible thing happened in Germany in the summer of 1184.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What happened during the Erfurt Latrine Disaster?
Yeah. But suffice to say, these rooms were disgusting and smelly. The ammonia could get so bad, sometimes they would hang their clothes near there because they thought they may be right about this, that ammonia could kill mite.
Yeah, just the smell.
Yeah, so hang your clothes up near there. And what would happen if you look at the outside of a castle, a lot of times these restrooms were projected outward from the wall itself a little bit. There was a hole in the bottom, and the waste just dropped out of that.
Just trickled down the sides of the castle, the walls of it. And I guess it depends on how far the alcove was projected off of the castle walls. But I would guess without these tubes that later evolved to kind of deposit it more cleanly toward the ground, especially in a wind, that waste would just kind of trickle down the castle walls, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Yeah, and it would go maybe just be washed away to whatever water is nearby. If you were unlucky, you might have a moat full of that. You did mention tubes. Eventually, in places like France, they would actually have plumbing piping on the outside of the walls to make it just a little neater.
But then they found out, hey, people can climb up these pipes to gain access to the castle, so those aren't good.
Yeah, in 1203, there was a siege of Chateau Gallard, and the invaders actually climbed up the sewage pipes into the castle to gain access in. Do you know how badly you want to get into a place to climb up a medieval waste pipe through the latrine?
Well, the waste is at least on the inside of the pipe.
Right. I think that you had to climb up the inside of the pipe to get into the castle.
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