History Series / WorstJobsInHistory

** Discussing the construction of Britian's lighthouses:

** "Bufferlasses" charged with buffing cutlery would end up getting the cleansing mixture of dirt and oil splattered all over their hands and faces, sometimes to the point of getting their skin impregnated with it - making it impossible to remove. Also, they stood a very good chance of getting dermatitis.

* CrapsackWorld: Just about every era explored tends to be defined by backbreaking labor and ruthless exploitation - either by the upper classes or by criminal elements. Jobs are often defined by filth, disease, disfiguration, low pay, terrible working conditions, thankless busywork, ludicrously disproportionate punishments for failure, the possibility of a horrible death, and in some cases, suicidal depression. Even the more glamorous eras and occupations are replete with suffering.

* DarkestHour: The very ''Worst'' jobs of the episode, reserved for the very end of each episode and concerning only the most boring, humiliating, dangerous or just plain revolting out of all the already terrible jobs reviewed: Tony's least favourite out of all of these was the Tanner - for ''very'' good reason.

** Because women couldn't be musicians, castration was necessary to have vocalists with high voices - and the results were so good that people ''cheered for the use of the procedure to continue''. Unfortunately, not only were these poor boys unable to lead normal lives, they also ran the risk of disfiguration due to the lack of hormones and infection -- and said infections also ran the risk of ''killing'' the young castrati, too.

* KnowEmWhenToFoldEm: During his investigation of the job of "Fighting Woman", Tony is told that the final bout will involve real swords. Having acquired enough bumps and bruises in the last two rounds, Tony draws the line at swordplay and literally throws in the towel.

* CaptainObvious:
** Played for laughs in the Industrial Age Episode: with a boiler's engine jacket about to explode, the air full of smoke and alarm bells clanging, Tony can only shout "I THINK WE'VE PUT ENOUGH COAL IN!"

->'''Tony:''' [[AskAStupidQuestion Did it hurt?]]
->'''Dr Peter Giles:''' (''stifling laughter'') I think it ''did.''

** Briant and May matchgirls glowed as a result of the white phosphorous they used to make the matchsticks. More unpleasantly, they suffered from an industrial disease called Phossy Jaw that caused their teeth and jawbones to decay as a result of accidental ingestion of the phosphorous, leaving them treated like lepers.

* CrapsaccharineWorld: The Georgian Era, an age of confidence and innovation in which the knowledge of human body was expanded, James Watt kickstarted the Industrial revolution, fine art enjoyed a renaissance under Turner and Constable, Opera became widespread and hugely popular, and tea was introduced to British society. Behind the scenes, a lot of this success was based on crime, corruption and suffering: anatomists learned a lot of their knowledge from corpses stolen by the body-snatchers, the industrial innovations quickly gave way to hellish factories run by expendable child-laborers, artists exploited working-class women for use in their masterpieces, the greatest voices in Opera could only be created through a barbaric process of castration... and because of the exorbitant tax on imported items, most of the tea was illegal contraband brought in by smugglers.

** Because women couldn't be musicians, castration was necessary to have vocalists with high voices - and the results were so good that people ''cheered for the use of the procedure to continue.'' Unfortunately, not only were these poor boys unable to lead normal lives, they also ran the risk of disfiguration due to the lack of hormones and infection - and said infections also ran the risk of ''killing'' the young castrati, too.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: The TropeNamer is featured. Petards were essentially Stuart-era hand grenades, except they weren't thrown but rather delivered in person. Because they were so unpredictable, it was not uncommon for soldiers to be blown up while trying to deploy them, hence the expression.

** While playing the part of a Guillemot Egg Collector and making a very perilous climb down a cliff, an unexpected stumble makes Tony yell "Oh shite!"

** When asked about where the Saltepetre Men went to collect their product, Robert Smith is very frank in explaining that the best sources would have been large concentrations of "feces, urine- shit, basically."

** Tony, during the Castrati segment, asking if the procedure hurt.

** Because women couldn't be musicians, castration was necessary to have vocalists with high voices - and the results were so good that people ''cheered for the use of the procedure to continue.'' Unfortunately, not only were these poor boys unable to lead normal lives, they also ran the risk of disfiguration due to the lack of hormones and infection.

%%* CrapsackWorld: Everything, really.

* DarkestHour: The very ''Worst'' jobs of the episode, reserved for the very end of each episode and concerning only the most boring, humiliating, dangerous or just plain revolting out of all the already terrible jobs reviewed: Tony's least favourite out of all of these was the Tanner- for ''very'' good reason.

** Because women couldn't be musicians, castration was necessary to have vocalists with high voices- and the results were so good that people ''cheered for the use of the procedure to continue.'' Unfortunately, not only were these poor boys unable to lead normal lives, they also ran the risk of disfiguration due to the lack of hormones and infection.

* FailureHero: The Riding Officers. They were ''supposed'' to police the English coasts and prevent smuggling, but thanks to a limited workforce and a lack of any fast means of communication between officers, they weren't all that effective. Worse still, because they worked alone and were usually armed with only a cutlass and a pistol, they usually ended up being horribly brutalized by the smugglers, if not killed outright; even if the riding officers managed to conduct an arrest, the smugglers would have been able to escape conviction very easily thanks to sympathizers among the local juries. To add insult to injury, the officers recieved about the same wage as a farm labourer.

** Shepherds had to castrate male lambs. One of the few instances when the attacker is suffering almost as much as the victim: in order to prevent infections from dirty fingers, the testicles would have to be drawn out ''with the shepard's mouth.''

** Purple colored dye was created by mixing fermented crushed shellfish. As you can imagine, the smell is horrific.
** A similar process is made to make blue colored dye, using fermented woad and the smell is just as bad. In fact, the process was so smelly that Queen Elizabeth I banned woad dyers from living in cities.

* SelfDeprecation: In the Elizabethan segment on acting and the perils therein, Tony reminisces about being a child actor back in the late 1950s and then calls his [[IHatePastMe past self]] a "total tosser".

* PurpleIsPowerful: Purple colored dye was created by mixing fermented crushed shellfish. As you can imagine, the smell is horrific.

* AllForNothing: Poor James Thornhill spent so many months painting the interior of the Saint Paul's Cathedral's dome, believing it will be the British version Sistine Chapel. But by the time he was finished, the Rococo fashion was all the rage and people considered his work old-fashioned and drab.

* {{Corpsing}}: While playing a lob-lolly boy, Tony helps remove a musket ball from a wounded sailor's back. The doctor removes it and hands it to Tony, who drops it and scrambles around for it on the floor causing the actor playing the sailor to break up laughing.
* CrapsackWorld: Everything, really.

* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: A lot of jobs involved the deaths of innocent animals with one of them being a cat and dog killer during the Black Plague. The parishes of London believed that these animals carried diseases so they hired people to kill them and gave them a pence for every carcass, making them well on their way of earning the national average wage of a shilling a day. Mind you, they didn't use humane methods. They used pretty much anything they got their hands on such as knives, logs, clubs and hammers. And the worst part was this only made things worse as cats and dogs were exactly the kind of animals that could have kept the rat population down since the Plague was carried by the fleas on rats. So all those poor cats and dogs died in vain.

* AllForNothing: Poor James Thornhill spent so many months painting the interior of the Saint Paul's Cathedral's dome, believing it will be the next Sistine Chapel. But by the time he was finished, the Rococo fashion was all the rage and people considered his work old-fashioned and drabby.

* AllForNothing: Poor James Thornhill spent so many months painting the interior of the Saint Paul's Cathedral's dome, believing it will be the next Sistine Chapel. But by the time he was finished, the Rococo fashion was all the rage and many people considered his work old-fashioned and drabby.

** Working as an asphalt spreader was guaranteed to result in burnt feet.

* {{Squick}}: What did you expect from a show that centers around jobs that involve blood, guts, urine and feces? But keep in mind, without these gross jobs, history as we know it wouldn't have happened.
** Making a house in the Dark Ages involves horse dung and straw.
** Fulling involves the cleansing of cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and to make it thicker. And how does it work? By marching up and down for hours in a vat full of stale urine, a rich source of ammonia.
** The gong farmers were sewer workers whose only tools were a bucket and a shovel. And keep in mind, the diet of rich British folk mostly consisted of meat, so expect a lot of blockages. And sometimes, they died due to the methane gases.
** The violin string making sounds simple, right? Wrong. It involves disemboweling a sheep, then removing the feces from the intestines, then braiding the intestines to make the violin strings.
** The tanner makes leather using a process that involves urine and liquid feces. Tony even mentions that it is without a doubt the worst job he can ever think of.

* ChronicPetKiller: If you were an animal lover, you would never want the job of being a cat and dog killer during the Black Plague. The parishes of London believed that these animals carried diseases so they hired people to kill them and give them a pence for every carcass. Mind you, they didn't use humane methods. They used logs, knives, clubs, hammers and pretty much anything they got their hands on. And the worst part was this only made things worse as cats and dogs were exactly the kind of animals that could have kept the rat population down since the Plague was carried by the fleas on rats. So all those poor cats and dogs died in vain.

** The gong farmers were sewer workers whose only tools were a bucket and a shovel. And keep in mind, the diet of rich British folk mostly consisted of meat, so expect a lot of blockages. And sometimes, the

** Fulling involves the cleansing of cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and to make it thicker. And how does it work? By marching up and down in a vat for hours in stale human urine, a rich source of ammonia.