How clean and healthy were medieval towns?

Answer 1

Medieval people believed that cleanliness was next to godliness, and they believed that bad (foul smelling) air was an important disease vector. They were pretty clean. The manor house would probably be the cleanest house on the manor.

There are a lot of people who go on about how the Middle Ages were dirty and smelly. I have not seen this in original sources. The thing people love to site, which talks about straw being thrown down over messes, and being allowed to pile up over months or years, seems to have originated in a letter of the early 16th century, after the Middle Ages ended, from Erasmus to a friend, in which he describes English inns. I think the point was to be comic and make a compare between the inns and badly kept stables.

Answer 2

1st AnswerNo. Very dirty. Garbage was thrown out of windows, in the rivers, and onto streets. It was a stinky dirty time. 2nd AnswerWe know that medieval people were very religious, believed that the way a person cared for his body was an indication of how that person cared for his soul. The result was that medieval people are known to have been very clean. And indeed, the writings of the period of Charlemagne talk of soap making as an honorable trade.

Medicine of the time attributed many diseases to foul air, and foul smells in the air. The result is that many medieval people were very interested in keeping rubbish out of the streets. They may have been tolerant of the pigs who ate some of the trash, but pigs in those days did not smell the way modern livestock do because their waste was not allowed to undergo stinky anaerobic decay. The stinky anaerobic decay is something medieval people probably would not have tolerated.

Medieval people did not know about germs or viruses or disease vectors such as rats and fleas. They permitted unsanitary conditions that would appall modern people because they just did not know. But a village was regarded as very lowly if it was stinky and filled with garbage, and so were the people in it.

3rd Answer: I think the author of the second answer is on the correct track. While standards of hygiene and pubic cleanliness were not up to modern standards, the common idea that garbage and sewage were casually thrown into the streets or that people where dirty and smelly are simply not true. We have many cases where surviving documents from towns and cities contains ordinances about keeping streets clear of trash a debris. Some towns and cities even had regular trash cart services. Bodily wastes were deposited into latrines or cesspits, which were periodically emptied and carted out of the city for use as fertilizer.

Contrary to popular belief people did bathe and clean themselves as well. Clothing was regularly washed. We know from tax rolls there were professional laundresses. Writings on etiquette and manners stressed the importance of washing the hands, face, and mouth every day. Bathing was associated with physical pleasure and seen as an enjoyable activity. The estate and tax documents of the wealthy included vessels for bathing. Larger towns and cities had public bath houses. There is art of the period that shows people bathing, often socially, and even being served meals while in the bath. Bathing was associated with sexuality as well, and the guild regulations of Paris require those operating a bathhouse to keep prostitutes from the premises. Considering the general positive associations with cleanliness (pleasure, sexuality, social acceptance) it seems likely that even those who did not have the opportunity to practice full immersion bathing regularly would have at least cleaned themselves with warm water on a regular basis.