City life was a real killer
Living in the countryside was tough during the Middle Ages. The ‘Little Ice Age’ meant that crops routinely failed, and people literally starved to death. Understandably, people began heading to towns or cities. From the 14th century onwards, Europe’s cities began to boom. Most were founded where people tended to meet naturally, either at a crossroads or by a river or lake. Alternatively, cities started to spring up around cathedrals. But life here was not much easier, especially for everyday folk. Indeed, as many historians of the period have noted, town or city life for a poor person in the Medieval era was “nasty, brutal and short“.
It goes without saying that cities were amazingly unsanitary. Rivers and streams were used for both sewage and for drinking water. Disease was rife and, since houses and makeshift dwellings were packed together inside the city limits, spread rapidly. Moreover, since few people knew about matters relating to health and hygiene, little was done to keep rivers clean. And, as if dysentery and typhoid weren’t bad enough, these cramped conditions meant that the Black Death, or plague, spread rapidly through Europe’s cities, decimating their populations.
But still, people stayed, preferring city life to the brutal existence of living and starving in the countryside. Certainly, they didn’t stay for the nightlife. Yes, there were taverns, dens of drunkenness, with prostitutes ready to take any spare coins you might have. But going out to the local pub was a huge risk. Almost all cities in the Middle Ages imposed nightly curfews, a time when people were expected to be in their homes. If you went out after that, then you ran the risk of being robbed or murdered, with no police out on the streets to protect you.
That said, there were some upsides. Many cities had private bath-houses for their citizens. And there were opportunities to make a living, including for women. In fact, it was in the cities where women started moving away from domestic work into trades. Often, if a man died his wife would carry on his trade. Or some just started out on their own, becoming hatmakers, weavers or even brewing beer. It wasn’t quite living the American Dream, but, at a time when peasants in the countryside were starving or living with the very real threat of rape or violence, cities offered safety in numbers and perhaps even the chance to earn a bit of money.