How Filthy Were Medieval People?

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

History Hit

Society, History, Education, Sex, Scandal

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2026

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If there's one sure way to irritate an historian of the Medieval period, it's to ask why the people of the Middle Ages didn't wash.

In this episode, we did just that with Dr Eleanor Janega. Kate and Eleanor get into whether there really was poo everywhere, how the Victorians ruined the Medieval reputation, and what they were actually up to at the public baths.

Eleanor co-hosts our sister podcast Gone Medieval and is the author of 'The Once And Future Sex'.

This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.

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All music from Epidemic Sounds.

Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are back listening to Betwitster Sheets once again.
0:06.2	Hello. Welcome back. Make some room at the back. And I have to tell you all, once again, whether you're new or not.
0:14.0	This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way covering arranged old subjects and you should be an adult too.
0:20.6	Oh my God. Do we feel safer? I feel safer. Right, let's crack on.
0:28.4	Ah, the fresh scent of medieval streets. Wood smoke, tanneries, stagnant water, animal entrails,
0:36.9	rotting food scraps, poo, chicken poo, human poo.
0:40.6	There's just so much poo.
0:42.4	That's what we think of when we think of the medieval period, isn't it?
0:45.3	Oh, be honest, it is.
0:47.1	We think of them all just walking around, covered in mud, living in a ditch with poo on their head.
0:53.4	But is that true? Of course that's not true. That's
0:55.8	absolutely untrue. But how often did they wash? What did they wash with? How did they treat their
1:02.9	skin and their hair and their teeth? These are important questions because if anyone has a
1:08.0	reputation for smelling bad, it's the medieval people, and that's not fair.
1:12.5	We've been doing them dirty for far too long.
1:42.5	Music Hello and welcome back to Petwigs the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister.
1:49.2	The widespread misconception that medieval people were really dirty is a proper bug bear for some historians.
1:53.4	And one such historian is the marvellous Eleanor Janager,
1:59.5	who is joining us today to get to the bottom of just how dirty people were in the Middle Ages.
2:02.1	Were they really covered in fleas?
2:04.4	Did they really throw their waist out of windows onto unsuspecting passers-by?
2:06.8	Well, I'm ready to find out if you are.
	...

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