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Grody Garderobes and Murky Moats: Medieval Castle Bathroom Technology · Privycast

0:01
>> Speaker A: It's kind of like keeping up with the Joneses, but in this case, it's kind
0:04
of like keeping up with Charles the fat and Lewis the stammer.
0:07
But settle down, gents. Settle down. The size of your
0:10
rampart doesn't matter.
0:14
Uh, welcome back to privy. Privy is
0:17
a podcast about bathrooms
0:20
recorded from my home bathroom.
0:22
I'm your host, hunter hoover, and I love
0:25
bathrooms. Um, this week,
0:29
I, uh, was speaking to the
0:31
magnificent Michael wall, um,
0:34
former guest on the show, uh, and
0:38
if I have anything to do with it, future guest, uh,
0:40
but I was talking to him. I
0:43
regularly run into Michael at the end of my
0:46
workday at the school, kind of beginning of his work day at the
0:48
school. And recently,
0:51
Michael has just been enjoying ride
0:54
after ride on the floor scrubber. It's really
0:56
great. And he threatened to run me down.
0:59
He would never do it, but I obviously got
1:02
out of the way. Um, but
1:05
after this choice Michael occasion
1:08
interaction here, um, my other budy, Josh,
1:11
and I are standing there, and we're talking to Michael, and Michael
1:14
informs that he's just baffled. And Michael just says,
1:17
you know, I'm always just baffled
1:20
by the amount of. Just the
1:22
sheer density and the amount of
1:25
actual fecal content that some of
1:28
these kids produce.
1:30
>> Speaker B: And there's never any toilet paper.
1:31
>> Speaker A: That's the thing.
1:32
>> Speaker B: Michael noted that there's next to no.
1:35
>> Speaker A: Toilet paper in the bowl. And
1:38
it only leaves you to believe that these people are
1:41
just producing just such
1:44
girthsome logs that it wipes for
1:46
them like they come pre wiped.
1:50
Uh, but it's just the
1:52
turds that are clogging the toilet, he notes.
1:57
I also want to note, while we're speaking about,
2:00
uh, know, the guy has been playing
2:03
what many people would argue would be too much of the new Harry
2:06
Potter game. Now, uh, though I myself do
2:09
enjoy Harry Potter, I haven't dipped my toe.
2:12
>> Speaker B: Into this new Vidgy game, and this.
2:14
>> Speaker A: Is not a podcast where we're going.
2:16
>> Speaker B: To advertise or talk about it, but.
2:18
>> Speaker A: Um, in short, I haven't played it because I don't have a machine to play
2:21
it on. And I'm highly unmotivated
2:24
to spend hundreds of dollars at this point to get
2:27
said machine. Uh, and so my son
2:30
and I have been enjoying, like, a seven, eight year old video
2:33
game at this point, Breath of the wild, in
2:35
anticipation of the new Legend of Zelda
2:38
game coming out, hopefully this year. But
2:41
if video games track records for
2:44
releasing when they say has anything to.
2:46
>> Speaker B: Say about it, it won't be this year.
2:48
>> Speaker A: Uh, maybe next year. It'd be nice to have
2:51
it for.
2:52
>> Speaker B: The holidays, though, this year. That'd be pretty rad.
2:54
>> Speaker A: But, yeah, he's been playing a lot of the Harry
2:57
Potter game and something.
2:59
>> Speaker B: That'S been on my know, he
3:02
told.
3:03
>> Speaker A: Me you can explore all the parts of the. Like, you
3:06
can really just get just.
3:08
>> Speaker B: Sully deep into this Hogwarts
3:10
castle. And it's made me wonder a
3:13
couple things.
3:15
>> Speaker A: The first is,
3:18
and it's on my mind more often than it probably should
3:20
be, is how the people
3:23
in the world of Harry Potter deal with their waste.
3:26
Like, do they have a magical solution?
3:29
>> Speaker B: Now, we know they have pipes because.
3:31
>> Speaker A: In book two, in the Chamber of Secrets.
3:33
>> Speaker B: Time to nerd. Welcome to the privy
3:36
book club here.
3:37
>> Speaker A: Uh, we're going to talk about the pipes in Harry Potter. Harry Potter's
3:40
pipe. Uh, but we know they have
3:43
indoor plumbing.
3:44
>> Speaker B: And we hear there is flushing the.
3:46
>> Speaker A: Toilets in the scenes with moaning Myrtle and how she spends
3:49
her time in the
3:52
like. We know that they have plumbing,
3:55
so they are not relying on
3:57
magical means for removing their waste, much like they do
4:00
for electricity, rather than using the muggle.
4:07
Know why it sort of got
4:10
me, like, did
4:13
Dumbledore update those bathrooms? Because to my
4:16
knowledge, I was pretty.
4:17
>> Speaker B: Sure they didn't have flush toilets back.
4:19
>> Speaker A: Then, like, when the castle would have been built.
4:22
I'm pretty confident they didn't have flush.
4:24
>> Speaker B: Toilets, so they would have updated it.
4:26
>> Speaker A: And so my question to anyone who is playing.
4:30
>> Speaker B: This new Harry Potter game.
4:32
>> Speaker A: Is, what's the toilet? You first.
4:35
>> Speaker B: Number one, can you explore the bathrooms?
4:38
>> Speaker A: And number two, what is the toilet situation
4:41
like? Does it look like it is modern
4:43
toilets? And are we just accepting that
4:46
we have some data? And what's interesting is
4:49
the data we have is somewhat
4:52
weird. Again, we know they have pipes,
4:55
but when the castle was built, that would
4:57
not have probably been the
5:00
thing that they would have used.
5:02
>> Speaker B: So I decided to verify, like,
5:05
okay.
5:05
>> Speaker A: So if you built a big old castle back in
5:09
the olden times, long time ago, in a
5:12
galaxy not so far away,
5:16
what would those bathrooms look like?
5:18
>> Speaker B: And that googling and the
5:21
resulting rabbit.
5:22
>> Speaker A: Hole eventually became this episode.
5:25
Because this week on privy,
5:28
we're going to be talking about medieval plumbing.
5:31
Specifically as that medieval plumbing
5:34
relates to castles. The
5:37
term castle derives from too
5:39
many words. There are too many
5:42
to count.
5:43
>> Speaker B: It comes from so many.
5:44
>> Speaker A: But they essentially all boil down to the idea of a
5:47
fortified place. Now, when you're looking for a
5:50
place to drop a stack, you're going to want a fortified place.
5:53
You don't want somebody sneaking up on.
5:55
>> Speaker B: You, uh, and catching you
5:58
unawares while.
6:00
>> Speaker A: You'Re trying to do your business. I mean, I think I've shared the story
6:03
on here. Um, if not, this is an
6:06
informal hunter's anecdotes, and if I have, you can disregard
6:08
my previous comment, but about how many
6:11
of us living in the dorms at Corbin
6:14
University. I'm going to start
6:16
tacking Corbin University onto a
6:19
lot of the nonsense that I do. Um, I'm sure that they'll
6:22
love to have their dorms and their
6:25
whole thing associated with what we're doing here, but,
6:27
um, in the dorms of cormode
6:30
university, there was many of us who regularly would
6:33
not lock the stalls. And that way, when there
6:36
was a newcomer to the bathroom, you can chow,
6:39
knock that stall door wide open, and then
6:42
you're face to face with your intruder. Like, there's no
6:44
sneaking up on that. But they all boil. The term
6:47
castle all derives from words
6:50
that essentially mean, like, a fortified place.
6:53
As a result, the term has led
6:56
many to believe that castles were built
6:59
and used primarily as military
7:01
fortification. Now, while this is often the
7:04
case, think about
7:07
all of the very good. Think about, like, clash royale.
7:10
You get your little castle built in the center of your little thing.
7:13
Or, uh, not clash royale. Clash of clans. The
7:16
teens are loving it right now,
7:18
but it's often the
7:21
case that castles were there for military
7:24
fortification. But, uh, they
7:27
are likely much more than that.
7:32
Oh, that's crisp.
7:37
Oh, man, that orange vanilla Seltzer
7:39
is just hitting real strong.
7:42
Castles were designed to be fortified, usually as a
7:45
residence of a lord or.
7:46
>> Speaker B: Other nobility, such as a king, a.
7:49
>> Speaker A: Prince, or one of those
7:51
things, you know,
7:53
nobilities. The
7:56
carolingian empire. I'm sure I butchered
7:59
the formal term of that. But the carolingian
8:01
empire, which would expand greatly under the leadership
8:04
of Charlemagne, headed into the time
8:07
of expansion during the early days of the Holy Roman
8:10
Empire, which, as one of my college
8:13
professors so rightfully pointed out, was anything but
8:15
holy, not technically roman, and without the presence
8:18
of an emperor. Not an empire. But I
8:21
digress. Charlemagne,
8:23
which. Remember, in our previous episode,
8:26
Charlie Mang, um, died. At
8:29
which point, a guy named Louis the pious.
8:32
>> Speaker B: Louis the pious, either way, took
8:35
over.
8:36
>> Speaker A: I bet that guy was a real treat to have at parties.
8:39
Like, uh, Lewis might have been pretty pious,
8:42
but he sucked at keeping a handle on his kingdom, let me
8:45
tell you. I mean, forgive me, empire, because he's not
8:48
a king. He had three sons, which, could you.
8:50
>> Speaker B: Imagine, like, who's coming to the party?
8:53
>> Speaker A: Oh, Louis the pious is on the list. Well, there goes all
8:56
that fun times. Um, but
8:59
Louis the pious had three sons, speaking of not
9:02
being able to manage your empire.
9:05
And these three sons would fight over the whole kingdom,
9:08
the whole thing. Um, after they ousted
9:11
their dad, which wouldn't be death until
9:14
843, when his kids came to an agreement at the Treaty
9:17
of Verdun. Then there was a guy named
9:20
Charles the Bald, after whose reign
9:23
they began to be attacked by Vikings. Old bald
9:26
Charlie getting really roached and
9:29
poached by the Vikings out here. Uh,
9:32
really getting it, getting the works by the
9:34
Vikings, old bald Charlie
9:37
died, and his son, Lewis the
9:40
stammerer took over. These names don't
9:43
seem real sometimes. I'm not going to lie. They seem
9:46
like weird NPC names in Skyrim or
9:49
like dungeons and dragons. It's like
9:51
Lewis the stammer. I wonder why they'd called him
9:54
that. I bet he was pretty eloquent.
9:57
Two other wild names, while we're on the topic. Ah, are Charles the
10:00
fat, poor bloke. I hope that he was,
10:03
like a really skinny guy. And
10:06
bozo of Vienna. So good.
10:09
So good. It sounds like the three Stooges,
10:12
Louis, Charles and Bozo. By
10:15
the 18 hundreds, the empire was divided.
10:18
Individual lords and princes would take up
10:21
defending their own territories. And
10:24
when you're trying to fortify a position and
10:26
need a place to live.
10:28
>> Speaker B: Within that position that is also close.
10:31
>> Speaker A: To where you're in control of, you have
10:34
the makings of a castle. In fact, you
10:37
probably made yourself a castle. Castles at this
10:40
time in the 18 hundreds started to pop
10:42
up all over Europe. At first, they were made
10:45
of wood and dirt. Later they used
10:48
cut stones, uh, to further fortify
10:51
these settlements. Now, when
10:54
you get a bunch of lords and things
10:57
in an area all trying to defend their
11:00
land, you get into what kind of becomes
11:02
a case of my castle's bigger pissing
11:05
match. It became
11:08
kind of a sign of
11:11
prosperity and wealth to have the
11:13
biggest, most fortified castle in
11:16
the, um. Know,
11:19
it's kind of like keeping up with the Joneses, but in this case, it's
11:22
kind of like keeping up with Charles the fat and Lewis the
11:25
stammer. But settle down, gents, settle down. The
11:28
size of your rampart doesn't matter. But
11:31
they still did this. And
11:33
castles, as a result, began
11:36
popping up all over Europe.
11:39
The castles also, again, served as a
11:42
symbol of wealth and power. They would be built into
11:45
a hillside, a rocky cleft and other
11:47
outcroppings. Now,
11:50
these castles that were built, they have a number
11:53
of significant features. They have a lot of features.
11:56
Many include a bailey, a
11:58
keep. A bailey is like a location
12:01
in the castle, not a person named Bailey, although
12:04
maybe they did have people named Bailey inside the castle.
12:07
Who am I to say? The
12:10
gatehouse, the battlements, the great hall, you know,
12:13
classic castle stuff.
12:16
But none of
12:18
this helps our purposes.
12:22
It doesn't help us understand
12:25
the bathroom situation in these
12:27
castles. Like, at
12:30
the end of the day, Charles, you know, Charles the fat's taking a
12:33
big fat,
12:37
like, where did he do it? Where did fat
12:40
Charles drop his fat Charles?
12:43
While the most common bathroom feature of this
12:46
period, as we have discussed in.
12:48
>> Speaker B: A number of episodes, is you poop.
12:50
>> Speaker A: Or pee into a pot, and then.
12:52
>> Speaker B: That is carried outside your dwelling place
12:54
to a set location.
12:56
>> Speaker A: And, um, know,
13:00
you go macho man, randy flambage into
13:03
the piss pot, and that is carried outside of
13:06
the living quarters and dumped, usually rinsed,
13:09
hopefully rinsed and dumped out, often
13:12
into the streets, um, where the lowly
13:14
citizens would have to walk through
13:17
it. But if you're trying to
13:20
shut yourself up in a fortified place, like
13:23
a castle, you may not have the
13:26
luxury of taking it outside the castle walls.
13:29
>> Speaker B: To dump whenever you need.
13:30
>> Speaker A: I mean, I'm sure they did that
13:34
for some time. Like, well, I'll just take it outside the walls and dump
13:37
it. But interestingly enough,
13:40
many castles were built along
13:43
a river or other depression that would later be
13:46
filled with water. Now, while you could
13:49
just dump your skeet in the street, they would often
13:52
dig out moats and other previous
13:55
castles that were not located near enough to water, would
13:58
dig out these depressions in
14:01
the ground so as to be filled with water. Thus,
14:04
like creating your own river. These
14:06
nearby, um, water sources, also
14:09
known as moats, served
14:12
as added defense. You couldn't sneak in on the
14:15
sides. Now, but you know what they don't tell you about these
14:18
moats. At the end of the day,
14:22
moats were essentially sewer
14:24
systems for the castle and its
14:27
occupants. If you were tasked with
14:30
emptying the
14:32
pot outside the gates, or in
14:35
many cases over the edge of the wall,
14:38
you would be very likely to dump that
14:41
pot into the moat which lies
14:43
below. Now, if that sounds like a
14:46
toilet, you aren't totally wrong.
14:48
Um, this system of dumping it
14:51
overboard.
14:52
>> Speaker B: Didn'T last long, because many castles were.
14:55
>> Speaker A: Fitted with a feature called
14:57
a garter robe. A
15:00
garter robe is essentially a hole that you would
15:03
poop into or through that would carry the
15:06
waste out of the castle and down the moat. The most
15:09
rudimentary of these garter robes would just be a simple
15:12
hole in the wall that you press your beefy Haynes
15:14
up to and let fly.
15:17
The more intricate systems would have a seat
15:21
with a carved, essentially
15:23
piping. It was more just carved hole.
15:28
>> Speaker B: That.
15:28
>> Speaker A: The matter that you expelled would travel down,
15:31
often carried by water, you would pour down it.
15:34
Now,
15:37
if that sounds a little bit like a toilet, you
15:40
aren't totally wrong. Um,
15:42
they didn't have running water. It just kind of
15:45
emptied out into the open air, often directly into the
15:48
moat or onto the hillside, where the
15:51
logs would accumulate and roll down into the moat via
15:54
gravity. What a beautiful system.
15:57
Like, you're approaching the castle, and you just kind of see
16:00
these little turds just kind of fall from the
16:03
side of the castle, fall from the edge of these little
16:06
outcroppings down into the moat. Sploosh
16:09
below. Originally,
16:12
garter, uh, robes were used as storerooms for
16:15
valuables. It comes from the french word
16:17
for wardrobe. What's
16:20
unfortunate is the same word is used in castles to
16:23
describe the waste moving turd depository system
16:26
described previously. Could you imagine
16:29
some king danes himself to bring
16:32
himself to visit? Some cometor
16:34
asks where their garter robe is, and they take him to a
16:37
storage room, and he just drops a royal because
16:40
he's a king deuce in the corner of their
16:43
closet, like, bad King Charles,
16:46
like, now you have a little pile of Charles
16:49
in the storage room. We
16:51
got to rename one. We don't have to, because we don't
16:54
have to worry about this system. Uh, you know,
16:57
it's an unfortunate thing that these. I wonder if that ever
17:00
happened in these castles.
17:03
The garter robes would be, again,
17:06
of, uh, varying types. Some
17:09
looked kind of like a toilet with a rudimentary stone seat
17:12
or a wooden platform with a hole in it.
17:14
>> Speaker B: That you'd make your deposits into. That's best
17:16
case scenario.
17:18
>> Speaker A: But you have to imagine, like, a stone seat. How
17:20
cold would that be?
17:21
>> Speaker B: Like, these castles weren't heated,
17:24
and Europe.
17:25
>> Speaker A: Isn'T like, the warmest place in the world all year
17:28
round. Like, you're putting bare beef
17:30
on ICE cold stones, flipping cold and hard.
17:35
If you're going with the wood option,
17:39
I fear the same thing we've discussed in the past
17:42
about getting splinters in your butt.
17:46
That's the seated option. But there's another option that's a lot more
17:49
like what people would describe as a glory hole.
17:51
>> Speaker B: You just press your butt up to.
17:52
>> Speaker A: The hole and let her rip right out the side of the castle
17:55
down to the murky moat.
17:58
It makes you wonder,
18:01
how many times do you think these castles got
18:04
sieged and my dude has just got
18:07
his butt pressed up to the garter robe.
18:09
>> Speaker B: Hole, just letting it fly.
18:11
>> Speaker A: And he's like, come on, they're attacking
18:14
the wall. And he's like, outside of the wall.
18:17
>> Speaker B: Is just, this dude's like, plop, plop, plop coming
18:20
down. And depending on how far that
18:23
drop.
18:23
>> Speaker A: Is to the moat below,
18:26
man, you had to have varying degrees of
18:29
sound on that hit.
18:33
You ever stand on a bridge, especially one where
18:36
you can't necessarily see what's down below, and you
18:39
just toss stuff off, and you listen for the
18:42
sound of the kerplunky? Imagine
18:45
that. But it's your turds
18:48
hitting the poop a.
18:51
It's a gravity impacted plop.
18:56
There's a variety of garter robes in
18:59
Germany. They have a thing called a dansker, which
19:02
is like a garter robe, but it's in a tower.
19:05
Um, so they had the
19:07
intelligence and the
19:10
wherewithal to build their
19:12
dookie tower separate from
19:15
the side of a building. They had the
19:18
wherewithal to build theirs. Um, in a tower
19:21
that's like, on the other side of a bridge, which often
19:24
travels over the river, remote. And it
19:26
separates and gets the left
19:29
deposits further away from the water sources of the
19:32
castle. It's a little bit smarter.
19:35
The moat often would
19:37
carry
19:40
the ingredients necessary
19:43
for cholera and other diseases.
19:46
Note the
19:49
health problems and conditions of the time.
19:52
It's the murky moat.
19:55
You're just trying to live your life in the
19:57
kingdom as a king. Me
20:01
in your castle.
20:05
You hit up ye oldie
20:08
taco bell,
20:12
and it's hitting you at 02:00 a.m. You got to hit the
20:15
garter robe, and Big Doug
20:17
hasn't finished carving out your stone seat. So you got to press
20:20
beefy ham up against the wall of the thing and just let
20:23
fly out the hole down into the
20:26
murky moat below, where
20:29
likely so many enemies and so many
20:32
traders have been tossed.
20:34
And as you do, your enemy approaches on the
20:37
roadside, and they see the deposit
20:40
come out the side of the castle and
20:42
plummet. And your enemy thinks to
20:45
themselves, while we know what they're doing, it paints
20:48
quite a bit different of a picture of these
20:50
moats. They were not swimming pools, unless,
20:53
of course, the castle was built along a running river.
20:55
>> Speaker B: Like, if it's on a running piece.
20:57
>> Speaker A: Of running water, that's a different story.
21:00
But if you had a stagnant moat with
21:03
standing water, there would
21:06
definitely be something extra floating around in that
21:09
swamp. Like, that is not a body of water
21:12
that you want to get messed up in mixed up in
21:15
garter robes and moats.
21:18
It's one of my personal hopes that I am able
21:21
to use a garter robe one day. Um,
21:24
who knows? It's hard to say.
21:28
Either way, it really changes the look of those Disney castles
21:30
and the huh huh. Like, you have that
21:33
pristine moat that's always crystal clear. I'm
21:36
pretty confident it wasn't that crystal clear.
21:39
With that, we were approaching the end of
21:42
another episode of privy. Thank you for joining us.
21:45
I hope that you enjoyed, uh, this discussion.
21:48
I want to take a moment and just remember,
21:50
take time to be thankful. Uh, let's all be thankful.
21:53
That one, for the most part, we don't have to worry
21:56
about getting splinters in our backside.
21:59
Second, when we have to poop, we have
22:02
indoor plumbing to carry it away. We don't have to put our butt up
22:05
to a hole in the wall and let it fly. And
22:08
thus out the thing. Imagine
22:11
those holes got pretty randy. Like, there's not a
22:14
lot of aiming that happens when you are pooping in such a
22:17
way. And so let's all be thankful that
22:20
we aren't on that system anymore here
22:23
at privy. We'd love to hear from you. Send, uh, us an
22:25
email,
22:26
privycast@gmail.com. Leave, uh,
22:29
us Episode suggestions, comments,
22:32
concerns. If you want to be on the show and have some stories
22:35
to tell, let us know. We would love to hear from you. Uh,
22:37
we'll try to answer you back on that. Also,
22:40
follow us on social media. We're at Privycast. We've
22:43
got all the social medias now. We're trying to keep
22:46
those active as we can, struggling with discord.
22:49
Join us on the discord, privycast. Uh, and
22:52
if you need an invite, feel free to message the show through another
22:55
means, and we'll get you at it. Over there, uh,
22:57
we're sharing some stories, sharing some images, those
23:00
type things. I want to remind you
23:03
that you can leave a rating or review. The five
23:06
star options are preferred.
23:07
>> Speaker B: But more importantly, um, when you leave.
23:10
>> Speaker A: A rating or review, we will be.
23:12
>> Speaker B: Donating $1 to the wounded warriors project.
23:14
>> Speaker A: For every rating left. Uh, if you leave a typed
23:17
review on Apple podcasts, um, we will
23:20
be bumping that up to a couple of bucks there. So,
23:23
um, yeah, send those ratings our way. Get some
23:26
ratings out there. Even if you're one of those people that's like, oh, man,
23:29
I never rate a podcast. I don't want to take the time. It takes, like 30
23:32
seconds. Just do it. And we would love to add
23:34
to February's donation. So, uh, go do
23:37
that. And, uh, it takes about 30 seconds
23:40
less if you're using Spotify. And, uh,
23:43
yeah, it's just a reminder that, uh, the free
23:45
world wasn't always free. As always, we
23:48
would like to thank Kevin McLeod and Pottington
23:51
bear for the use of music here in privy. Thank you
23:54
so much, Kevin and Pottington. This has been
23:57
another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for joining
24:00
us. Keep pooping in the free world.
24:03
Don't forget to wash your butthole. And now,
24:06
as always, don't forget to
24:09
flush our
24:17
>> Speaker B: channel.