Gong Farmers: When Cleaning Cesspits Was a High-Paying Death Trap

In medieval England, someone had to clean out the cesspits, latrines, and privies where human waste accumulated for years. These men were called "gong farmers" or "night soil men," and they had one of history's most dangerous and disgusting jobs - yet they were paid more than skilled craftsmen because almost no one else would do it. They worked only at night (daylight work was illegal due to the unbearable smell), shoveled human excrement from castle and city cesspits, and risked drowning in waste or suffocating from toxic methane gas with every job.

The work was brutal and often deadly. Gong farmers would descend into cesspits - some as deep as 20 feet - filled with years of accumulated human waste, often in the dark with only candles for light. The me ...