You Are the Worker: Trying 8 of History’s Worst Jobs

Protect yourself from Identity Theft - https://secure.money.com/pr/q7deb8a3aaff You try eight of history's worst jobs, from a Roman urine laundry to a 1920s radium watch factory. The clean one follows you home. What's the catch? Groom of the Stool, plague searcher, leech gatherer, pure finder, tosher, match girl and the Radium Girls: every job pays, and every one hides a cost. The "you" in this video is you, trying on each job. The workers, places and cases are real, from Pompeii's fullers to the Radium Girls. Chapters 0:00 The Hidden Cost of a Glowing Dial 0:49 The Unseen Labor Behind Ancient Luxury 2:34 The Political Power of the Royal Toilet 7:19 The Pure Finder: London's Scavenger Economy 11:04 The Radium Girls and the Fight for Justice 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES: ▸ Lip, dip, paint: "The Radium Girls," Science Museum Group. Brushes pointed between the lips; zinc sulphide and radium paint; about $20 a week, top 5% of female earners. https://blog.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/the-radium-girls/ ▸ The Pompeii laundry: "Fullonica of Stephanus, I.6.7," Pompeii Online. A converted house with three rinsing vats and five treading stalls; urine used as a degreaser. https://www.pompeionline.net/en/buildings-and-places/regio-i/fullonica-of-stephanus-i-6-7 ▸ The urine tax: Suetonius, Life of Vespasian 23 (Rolfe translation, LacusCurtius). Vespasian holds a coin from his urine tax to Titus's nose. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Vespasian*.html ▸ The searchers: "Silent Voices in History: The Searchers of the Dead" by Lindsey Fitzharris. Elderly parish women who reported causes of death for the Bills of Mortality, and John Graunt's 1662 doubts about them. https://drlindseyfitzharris.com/silent-voices-in-history-the-searchers-of-the-dead/ ▸ The leech trade: "Spanish-French leech trade and its consequences" by Damian Copena and Maria Gomez-Martin (2024, Medical History 68: 42-59). France used tens of millions of leeches a year at the height of the boom. https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2024.5 ▸ Pure finders and toshers: Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 2 (1851), Tufts Digital Library. Dog dung ("pure") sold to tanners; sewer-hunters with poles, lanterns and tides. https://dl.tufts.edu/teiviewer/parent/rv043431c/chapter/c6s3 https://dl.tufts.edu/teiviewer/parent/rv043431c/chapter/c6s7 ▸ The matchgirls: "The 1888 matchgirls' strike," The National Archives (UK). White phosphorus, Besant's article, the walkout at Bryant and May, and the concessions won. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/stories/1888-matchgirls-strike/ ▸ The settlement: "The Radium Girls at the National Archives," US National Archives. The June 8, 1928 agreement: a lump sum, $600 a year and medical costs, with no admission of liability. https://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2018/01/04/the-radium-girls-at-the-national-archives ──────────────────── PEOPLE, PLACES & EVENTS IN THIS VIDEO: ▸ Pompeii and the Fullonica of Stephanus: A Roman town buried in 79 AD, and a laundry workshop preserved inside it. Your first job, and your legs are the washing machine. ▸ Vespasian and Titus: Roman emperor and his son, as told by the historian Suetonius. Their argument: does money smell? ▸ Henry VIII, Henry Norris and Anne Boleyn: The king, his Groom of the Stool, and the queen Norris was accused with in 1536. Great access, until it wasn't. ▸ The Great Plague and the Bills of Mortality: London's 1665 epidemic, and the weekly death counts the searchers fed. Someone had to write the first word in the column. ▸ Henry Mayhew: Victorian journalist who interviewed London's street workers. Most of what's known about pure finders and toshers comes from him. ▸ Bryant and May and Annie Besant: The East London match factory, and the activist whose 1888 article attacked its conditions. The workers stopped the line. ▸ White Phosphorus Matches Prohibition Act 1908: The British law that banned white phosphorus in matches from 1910. Twenty-two years after the strike. ▸ Orange, New Jersey: Home of the US Radium Corporation, where the dial painters worked. ▸ Amelia Maggia: A dial painter who died in 1922, one of the first deaths. She was 25. ▸ Grace Fryer, Katherine Schaub, Edna Hussman, Quinta McDonald, Albina Larice: The five women who sued in 1927 and settled in 1928. Five people, not one symbol. ──────────────────── 🔔 Subscribe - https://www.youtube.com/@StickTory?sub_confirmation=1 Disclaimer: This video is educational entertainment. It dramatizes real historical practices through a second-person character, and some scenes depict historical violence, punishment and hardship for educational context. It is not an endorsement of any of it. Historical sources sometimes disagree, and where they do, we follow the sources listed above. Nothing in this video is professional, legal or medical advice. #WorstJobsInHistory #RadiumGirls #MatchgirlsStrike #StickTory #HistoryAnimated