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Speaker 1: All right, did you ever stop to think about what

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Speaker 1: the world smelled like before factories, cars, and other mechanical

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Speaker 1: devices sort of took over our olifactory senses. Maybe like trees, flowers,

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Speaker 1: and baby animals. Yeah, think again. There's a reason everybody

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Speaker 1: wore perfume or carried flowers back in the day. I'm

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Speaker 1: Patty Steele. What in the hell is that smell? That's

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Speaker 1: next on the backstory. We're back with the backstory. Ah,

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Speaker 1: take a good deep breath of the cool autumn air.

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Speaker 1: What do you smell? Well, it sort of depends on

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Speaker 1: where you are. If you're in a city or suburb,

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Speaker 1: most likely the effluvia pulsing up your nostrils is tinged

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Speaker 1: with the smell of progress gasoline chemicals used in manufacturing

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Speaker 1: and cleaning supplies, along with some more pleasant things like

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Speaker 1: room or car air fresheners, or even natural substances like trees, plants,

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Speaker 1: and flowers. If you live in the countryside, you may

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Speaker 1: be inhaling the smell of the earth, woods, plants, and

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Speaker 1: of course animals. But here's the thing. Before the Industrial Revolution,

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Speaker 1: when factories began spewing out smoke mixed with tangy, cold dust,

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Speaker 1: there was a whole lot of stuff to smell. It

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Speaker 1: was just mostly organic animals, unwashed bodies, and decaying food.

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Speaker 1: It was pretty pungent and mostly pretty rank. Stop and

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Speaker 1: think about it. In New York City in the late

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Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, there were at least one hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: thousand horses all right, now, let's do the math. Each

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Speaker 1: horse produced about twenty two pounds of manure every day

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Speaker 1: and dropped it onto the streets for the most part,

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Speaker 1: meaning almost three and a half million pounds of this

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Speaker 1: stuff clogging dusty or muddy roads again every day. Street

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Speaker 1: cleaners couldn't begin to keep up with it, and which

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Speaker 1: frequently find empty lots to dump it in. And there

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Speaker 1: were reports of areas with six story tall mountains of manure.

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Speaker 1: And that doesn't include the forty thousand gallons of horsepeed

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Speaker 1: that went with it every day. In London, it got

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Speaker 1: so bad the papers called it the Great horse manure

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Speaker 1: Crisis of eighteen ninety four. I mean, there were actually

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Speaker 1: guys who made a living off of standing on street

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Speaker 1: corners and offering for a fee to run ahead of

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Speaker 1: you and shovel the horse stuff out of the way

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Speaker 1: to clear a path. If you were out walking, it

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Speaker 1: wasn't pleasant. In the rain, the unpaved streets were a

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Speaker 1: muddy river that wasn't just good old earth type mud,

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Speaker 1: and in dry weather it all turned to dust. The

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Speaker 1: choked pedestrians and coated the outside of buildings by sticking

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Speaker 1: to them. Yikes. So there's that, but there's more. In

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Speaker 1: the era before modern plumbing, e also had human waste

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Speaker 1: flowing through the gutters and into the streets and into

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Speaker 1: rivers and other waterways. It pulled in cesspits or was

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Speaker 1: collected in what were called night soil buckets that often

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Speaker 1: was used in the garden as fertilizer. On top of that,

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Speaker 1: you had butchers and fishmongers dumping blood and other leftover

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Speaker 1: parts into the street. Those businesses, along with the tanning

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Speaker 1: of hides for leather, which made use of urine mixed

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Speaker 1: with lime, were called the offensive trades due to the

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Speaker 1: terribly offensive smells they produced, and as you can imagine,

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Speaker 1: all of this was especially nasty in the summer heat.

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Speaker 1: But for folks out in the countryside there was a

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Speaker 1: trade off. Sure, they had boatloads of manure from cows, horses, pigs, sheep,

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Speaker 1: chickens and other animals, and there were animal carcasses to

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Speaker 1: deal with. But in spring and summer, the air was

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Speaker 1: scented by trees in bloom, clover and pine forests. In autumn, apples,

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Speaker 1: root vegetables and fermenting fruit perfumed the air, along with

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Speaker 1: the smell from wood fire. So not as bad for

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Speaker 1: rural types. Right, But here's another treat for nasal passages

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Speaker 1: that impacted folks everywhere. Before deodorant came along, a lot

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Speaker 1: of people only bathed once a week at most. In fact,

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Speaker 1: going way back, bathing more than a few times a

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Speaker 1: year was considered unhealthy by Europeans beginning in the mid

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Speaker 1: fourteenth century. Why they were terrified by the Black Death,

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Speaker 1: the plague which killed as much as fifty percent of

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Speaker 1: the population of Europe in those days. They thought water

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Speaker 1: carried disease, and that warm water would open their pores

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Speaker 1: and allow disease to get into their body. They believed

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Speaker 1: illnesses also spread through air. They called that miasma. A

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Speaker 1: lot of folks felt that the body's natural oils and

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Speaker 1: dirt could actually work to protect us. I guess if

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Speaker 1: you're terrified of an uncontrollable pandemic ending in a painful death.

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Speaker 1: You'll pretty much try anything. They did, however, enjoy the

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Speaker 1: occasional sponge or cat bath, tiny bit of water and

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Speaker 1: a washcloth rubbed on a few spots. Now, interestingly, there

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Speaker 1: are a number of celebrities today who don't believe in

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Speaker 1: bathing much and are into cat baths of a sort.

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Speaker 1: Case in Point Ashton Kutcher, Emilakunis, Jake Gillenhall, Brad Pitt,

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Speaker 1: Rob Pattinson. But again, pre twentieth century, not much in

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Speaker 1: the way of soap or deodorant for most people, so

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Speaker 1: in order to stand being within smell distance of one another,

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Speaker 1: they loaded up on scented oils, perfume, and grooming water

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Speaker 1: aka toilet water toilet water. That all began thousands of

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Speaker 1: years earlier in Egypt, as well as in Greece and Rome,

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Speaker 1: where they oiled their skin and then scraped the dirt

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Speaker 1: and residue off with a metal tool called a stridel.

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Speaker 1: Beyond that, folks often wore wool, which can really hang

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Speaker 1: onto scents, both good and bad. In order to mask

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Speaker 1: the smells around you and emanating from you, you would

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Speaker 1: use scented oils, herbal sachets, and handkerchiefs drenched in perfume,

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Speaker 1: at least if you could afford those pricey things. In addition,

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Speaker 1: people planted gardens near windows to combat bad smells coming in,

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Speaker 1: including roses, jasmine, and lilac, as well as greenery. And

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Speaker 1: did you ever wonder why so many people, including a

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Speaker 1: lot of men, used to wear flowers bootineers for the guys,

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Speaker 1: and corsages or even a small bouquet called a nosegay

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Speaker 1: for women. If you were outside in that intense stench,

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Speaker 1: or in a room filled with folks partying while dancing

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Speaker 1: and sweating, you could just clutch your little bunch of

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Speaker 1: flowers to your nose for smell relief from the funk. Now,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, a lot of folks were probably

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Speaker 1: a little bit nose blind, as they say, and what

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Speaker 1: would be horrifying to us in our chemically sanitized world

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Speaker 1: just didn't bother them nearly as much, if at all.

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Speaker 1: It was a part of life and maybe even unnoticeable

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Speaker 1: to a lot of folks. These days were tested with

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Speaker 1: everything smelling clean, from houses and workplaces to our bodies

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Speaker 1: and even our dogs. Billions of dollars are spent on

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Speaker 1: perfuming everything makes you wonder how folks who lived a

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Speaker 1: few centuries ago would process the smell of today's world.

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Speaker 1: I hope you like the Backstory with Patty Steele. Please

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Speaker 1: leave a review. I would love it if you'd subscribe

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Speaker 1: or follow for free to get new episodes delivered automatically.

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Speaker 1: Also feel free to dm me if you have a

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Speaker 1: story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty

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Speaker 1: Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.

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Speaker 1: The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis

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Speaker 1: Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser.

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Speaker 1: Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday

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Speaker 1: and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with

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Speaker 1: comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty

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Speaker 1: Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening

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Speaker 1: to the back Story with Patty Steele. The pieces of

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Speaker 1: history you didn't know you needed to know.