The Worst Jobs In History by Tony Robinson

From The Week of August 29, 2010

The history we read in books, the history we watch on television, the history handed down to us through legend, necessarily focuses on the big events and the giants who shaped them. But even history has an underbelly and Mr. Robinson has taken it upon himself to shine a light on the forgotten souls who collectively, day in and day out, did as much to define our lives and our history as the heroes and villains we love and loath.

After a day spent fighting, just how did a knight get his armor clean? Could the poorest of the poor really find wealth in human sewage? Just how foul is the job of a tanner anyway? With equal parts amazement and disgust, Mr. Robinson takes us through a history of British employment, from the time of Christ through to recent memory. While describing some jobs you could not pay modern man $100,000 a year to perform, he illuminates just how brutal and painful life was for the 99 percent of those who did not live lives of privilege. As foul as these occupations are, and there are many I now wish I could forget, they shine an overdue light on the desperation of the masses who performed them, people who had no option but to pinch their noses shut and do what needed doing, all in hopes of a few precious coins with which to buy life's basic necessities.

There's a wonderful, dark, British humor about Mr. Robinson's chronicle which kept me laughing even as I wished at times to die, but there's an underlying sadness here which I imagine was not intentional. Merely attempting to conceive of how hard life must have been for so many... Only to realize that we've done virtually nothing to remember them, to honor them... When I imagine the torrent of words each year that are squandered on the uplifting of men like Churchill and the decrying of men like Hitler, and when I compare this incalculable number with the dearth of words devoted to the drudges who made their wars possible, their lives possible, it leaves me wondering just how distorted our priorities are. In any event, this is excellent and hilarious work, but please do make sure you have a sickbag handy. You may need it. (4/5 Stars)