Another Day Another Dollar: 5 of the Worst Jobs of the 19th Century

In this entry you get to hear one of the rarest sounds to happen in Macabrepedia HQ, Matt knocking over his drink and ruining the carpet and furniture. Oh also, we discuss 5... kind of more like 6 or 7 of the worst, and somewhat obscure, jobs the poor could have in the 19th century. Including leech collecting, sewer hunters, chimney sweeps and more... Join us as we add another entry into our Macabrepedia.

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Ref:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8615000/dead-chimney-sweeps-parliament-warning/

https://victorianchildren.org/victorian-chimney-sweeps/#:~:text=Who%20were%20Victorian%20Chimney%20Sweeps%3F%20Chimney%20sweeps%20were,the%20only%20ways%20they%20could%20make%20a%20living. 

www.britannica.com/event/Victorian-era

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/503221/10-worst-jobs-victorian-era

London Labour and the London Poor, extra volume
 Mayhew, Henry, 1851
 Felonies on the River Thames

https://brompton.designmynight.com/6123830ad6a0d775761af7a9/the-sin-eater-lives-and-afterlives

https://archive.org/details/cu31924006488500/page/n14/mode/1up?view=theater

Transcript

Marissa: 0:00

Macabrepedia makes light of dark subject matter that may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Matthew: 0:17

At length, himself unsettling, he the pond stirred with his staff and fixedly did look upon the muddy waters which he can't, as if he had been reading in a book, and now a stranger's privilege I took and drawing to his side to him did say, this morning gives us promise of a glorious day. A gentle answer to the old man make, in courteous speech, which forth he slowly drew, and him with further words, I thus bespeak what occupation do you Mayor pursue? This is a loan some place for one like you. Era, he replied, A flash of mild surprise, broke from the sable orbs, in his yet vivid eyes. His words came feebly from a feeble chest, but each and solemn order followed each with something of a lofty utterance, dressed, choice, word, and measured phrase, above the reach of ordinary men. A stately speech, such as grave livers do in Scotland use religious men who give to God and man their dues. He told that to these waters, he had come to gather leeches, being old and poor employment hazardous and worrisome, and he had many hardships to endure. From pond to pond, he roamed from more to more housing with God's good help, by choice or chance, and in this way, he gained an honest maintenance. This is an excerpt from resolution and independence by William Wordsworth. Throughout history, it has often fallen upon the poor, destitute members of the lowest classes to take up the jobs that anyone with any other choice would shy away from the 1800s played host to some of the most deadly and often bizarre ways to scratch out a living. In this week's entry, we will highlight five of the worst jobs a person could have in the 19th century, from the disgusting to the soul damming we discussed pure finders, leech catchers mud larks chimney sweeps in centimeters. Join us as we add another entry into this, our Macabrepedia.

Marissa: 2:34

Hello, and welcome to Macabrepedia a marriage of true crime and the truly bizarre were your hosts, Matthew and Marissa. And again, I put your name first. Marissa and Matthew.

Matthew: 2:49

A few things before we start, one, and a piece of news that I recently stumbled upon that relates to our last entry on the John Hinckley Jr, the man who attempted to assassinate former President Reagan. As stated in our previous entry, Hinckley had been released from the psychiatric facility in 2016. And he was released into the care of his mother, but under regular psychiatric supervision, well, as of June 15 2020, do he will no longer be required to have said supervision. Just interesting that that happened to come up at the same time that we just released. Seems that actually have happened a couple of times, and some of our past entries were unrelated, the topic has also had some kind of weight to it from current events or whatever second piece of business already kind of touched on. Also, from the last episode, a correction has been submitted by one of our patrons. This time, it wasn't police related. It was a correction. And from last week's introduction, the correction being that I Matthew am not in fact, the lead host of Macabrepedia. And if anyone is it's actually Marissa. So there you go. Yeah, that's true. Go ahead and Marissa lead hostess into this week's episode, then.

Marissa: 4:12

Well, I'm gonna just defer to my subordinate. allow you to do that today.

Matthew: 4:17

Nice. Okay. Well, let's begin with the occupation politically introduced to us in the lines of our opening poem, The poem of resolution and independence by William Wordsworth. If you're going to have a last name like Wordsworth, you got to be a writer. You got to be got it. You're like, well, that's like naming, naming my kid Jeeves. You better clean something Butler. Anyways, the narrator is wandering through the Moors, and sees an old man with a stick standing knee deep in a pool of water. The old man is agitating the mud around his legs in an attempt to stir up leeches for he is a leech collector. And a leech collector was a person who collected leeches for medicinal purposes and in the problem is much, much, much longer. But you would it would have been, it would have been five minutes of just reading that poem in order to get to the leech part but anyways, so they would collect leeches for medical purposes. This was a long standing occupation. And when bloodletting was in its high leeches were in very high demand. Even today, leeches are still used in medical procedures. during the heyday of bloodletting, and humor balancing, which we've covered, at least, at least referenced a few times in previous entries, leeches were all the rage. As is often the case and medical needs caused a demand for those with the entrepreneurial spirit, and generally a few other options for financial gain to take up the call. The process for collecting, collecting the leeches was pretty simple, you find a more a pond, a shallow Creek, bog, etc. hike up your trousers or your skirt says the job was often undertaken by women and wade into the stagnant waters agitate the muck in wait for the leeches to swim over. Now. They are pretty proficient swimmer so you can't just snatch them up. A leech collector had to wait for them to latch on. They would wait for a bit, providing themselves as a tasty little snack. It was also better for a leech to take in a bit of blood before plucking them off and putting them in your leech poke or pan or whatever you have these pick up whatever you can throw a leech in it. And it's not like it's hard to keep a leech in a bucket. But bleach pans would be a good sponsor for us, Dr. Medicines leech pans. But anyways, once a leech has fed, they can last for months before needing to feed again. So having them have a little bit of something in their bellies before you try to sell them off was a good idea actually gave me more time to find it, find somebody. So the leech collector would gather up a handful of leeches and then sell them to local doctors and barber surgeons, again, barber surgeons, they've been discussed in our resurrection a century so go back and check that out. If you want to know more about barber surgeons, all you need to know basically is that they acted as kind of doctors like the red and white on the pole that you see associated with salons and barbers are is red for blood and white for bandages. They were stylists and health professionals during this time, so walking around and a bug and getting bit by leeches seems like some pretty easy money, right?

Marissa: 7:29

It does. Yeah,

Matthew: 7:30

leech leech baits don't hurt at all. I don't know if you've ever been a bit by leech? No, I think I've had like two or three. And you don't even notice them until a year like you just see a worm hanging off of your life. They

Marissa: 7:43

have some kind of antiseptic, something they do.

Matthew: 7:45

Yeah, very powerful one and also an anticoagulant for the blood to keep it flowing. So they don't hurt. And leeches are everywhere, very easy to find. Also, they they themselves generally don't really carry very many pathogens. If you get a pathogen from them. It's normally because they bit something else that was already infected.

Marissa: 8:04

So I was gonna say something about that. Hope the leech collector doesn't have a disease.

Matthew: 8:09

Oh, yeah. Before they pass it on to somebody else. Yeah, sure. But the brackish waters where they're waiting around, are often found teeming with bacteria, amoebas and other disease causing little nasties, which can get into the dozens of open wounds that a leech collector would have, after, you know, doing this for the day. You know, all these little leeches biting them and leaving these little, little circle marks all over them. The infections were a very common hazard, as well as anemia, from blood loss, as they're doing this for so long. Not like not like a handful of leeches are going to be are going to cause an issue but I mean, it goes out every day. If you're going out there constantly and doing that, eventually it kind of adds up. And while I was researching this, I found an article about rural communities who's drinking water and bathing water had leeches in them causing some of them who drank the water to ingest small leeches that would then feast on their organ blood Oh, Jesus, or crawl into their other orifices and latch on. So if you ever feel the need to see a close up picture of an in gorged leech sucking blood from a 70 year old woman's cervix, link in the show notes? No. Okay, well find it on your own. Now moving on to our second job on this list of five worst jobs of say the 1800s Victorian Age, whatever call what you want. Is the pure finder. Well, that sounds nice.

Marissa: 9:48

It does sound nice, but what is it?

Matthew: 9:51

Well, sounds like it's gonna be a nice little breath breath of fresh air compared to the last the leech finder, but it's not At no point in the pure finders day would they likely want to be taking a deep breath? You see a pure finder spent their day picking up dog droppings, but not like a groundskeeper a street cleaner. New pure finder was a was a person who followed after dogs or if they had negotiated some kind of an agreement with like a kennel owner would gather up dog feces. According to some sources, I found this was a pretty good living. For some doing it a bit of inflation math, but figuring out an estimate in the warmer months of the year with longer days and the right conditions appear finder would be able to pull in the equivalent of about $400 per week

Marissa: 10:41

for what?

Matthew: 10:42

Well, for another industry,

Marissa: 10:45

the dog poop

Matthew: 10:46

and dog poop industry. We'll get to that in just a moment. But so they're paid by the bucket to bring feces to Tanner's

Marissa: 10:58

Oh, is this like a bleaching thing that the urine or No, they can't do it feces? What is it?

Matthew: 11:03

I'll tell you glad you asked. But, but we so they, first of all, these people are going around in the streets, and they're picking up refuse. And generally from dogs you can also use pigeon whatever. But and some of the more dishonest peer finders would also add a bit of crumbled plaster dust from buildings or masonry and to pick up because white poop was was a choice for this that was in the highest demand. And the demand for poop was created by the other job that we had just mentioned. Which also could have been in the top 10 or so for sure. Which was the tanner Why do Tanner Tanner's need? This is like a leather Tanner. Why would they need a literal shitload of dog excrement?

Marissa: 11:53

Why do they? Well, I'll

Matthew: 11:55

tell you I'm getting there. You already asked the question at the scrapped. So in the second half of the 18th century, Tanners began to use urine, and dog or pigeon feces in the tanning process. When the animal hide first arrives at the tannery, it would still have like chunks of fat and flesh and fat or have hair and stuff clinging to it. The Hide would then be soaked in urine, which would soften the hide and allow for the undesirable bits of flesh and hair to be scraped off of the tanners knife a little little easier. And after D herring, a slurry made from watered down animal dung would then be added smeared across the hide. And the enzymes would break down the collagen in the material, and it would soften it and this is a process called batting after a good cleaning. We assumed right? The leather could then be used for like gloves and shoes and stuff and it's actually it that people who are like going into these tanneries to buy their their leathers and stuff they would they would smell it and even lick it to see if they can still get like the aroma or the the tinge of of poop

Marissa: 13:09

interesting.

Matthew: 13:10

It was really a bad plosive lots of Pippa Pepe peeps peeps. VPP peeps, but yeah. But the tanners though, I mean, can you imagine working with vats of like nearly boiling hot urine and dog feces all day? Just stirring it into a slurry?

Marissa: 13:28

Um, you can get used to the smell, but I don't know about that.

Matthew: 13:31

Well, yeah, I mean, there's people who work at like paper mills and sewage treatment plants and stuff like that. Yeah, you do for sure. But still, I mean, yeah, day one or two off every you know, I mean, even even when you kind of go nose blind to it, you go nose blind to it, and until you get back to it, right. So like I used to work at like on like a dairy farm when when I was living in upstate New York, like a family farm kind of a thing. And yeah, well, I mean, my house also always kind of smells like like, we live next door to a couple of farms, which we did. But you walk into the barn and it's like, you get hit with that that smell but then almost immediately goes away because you just your body just acclimates to it. So anyways, it's pretty, pretty pretty rancid. But I you know that I like little to give little anecdotes and I love idioms and etymology. Have you have you ever heard the phrase to handle with kid gloves? I have heard that put your kid gloves on. Be very delicate

Marissa: 14:35

with whatever it is right right right.

Matthew: 14:37

Also lyrics from rushes great grace under pressure. Put your kid gloves on.

Marissa: 14:43

I'll take your word on it.

Matthew: 14:45

And you'll learn the lesson that it's cool to be so tough. Whatever. Anyway. So to handle with kid gloves yet that's exactly what it means. It means to take care and be gentle. kid gloves or, or soft leather gloves made From kids.

Marissa: 15:02

They don't think that's quite true. It is

Matthew: 15:04

it is. But this time we're not talking about human children. We're talking about baby goats, which are kids, which, in my opinion on, it's still pretty rough, right? But what episode of Macabrepedia would feel complete if we don't discuss human child injury? So let's move on to chimney sweeps.

Marissa: 15:25

Yeah. Chim chiminey chim chiminey chim chim tree

Matthew: 15:30

sweep is as lucky as lucky can be.

Marissa: 15:33

Wait, hold on. Are you gonna say that anyway,

Matthew: 15:35

you did it, as long as that child is lucky enough to not be able to fit into a chimney. And the age before central heating, people use wood and coal to heat their homes and over time, so it would obviously Bill Bill build up on the chimney walls. This could cause structural damages, it also closes up the flue lead which causes less overall efficiency and also poses a bit of a fire hazard. A number of great fires that have been caused because of lack of chimney maintenance. So in order to maintain, we'll call it safety and efficiency. Periodically, those chimneys need to need a good scrubbing enter the chimney sweep. These were primarily men and young boys who would climb to rooftops take long handled poles with a ring of course bristles on them. Kind of like as like a like kind of flare out to the sides. And presumably to the point where it makes it so that they should be able to touch all the walls are like you know, huge, huge bristle brushes, they would brush the interior of the chimney. Obviously, this kicks up a bunch of soot and dust and that could kick into the sweeps lungs, and cause future health issues. And a job naturally involves if you're going to be on rooftops and stuff, the risk of falling from lethal heights, these were obviously dangerous to all sweeps. But particularly those for the skinny little boys. Between the ages of three and 10, three, three years old, they would be lowered down into the chimney headfirst to scrub the areas and the brush that the brushes couldn't reach with the long poles. Or they would climb up from the inside, they would use these brushes and also these like dangerous chemicals to kind of break it down while dangling generally upside down or while wedged into these dark little caverns, right. This would often leave to obviously like the least of their issues, which is like burning eyes and abrasions that could possibly get infected. But it would also cause like bone and joint damage from being sent into these cramped places. They were only wide enough that they were barely wide enough for them to fully inhale when they're when they're shoved in there. I mean, you got to think of like a, a hole. This this chimney flue that a three year old child's going to get into if that's a pretty tight spot, right. So they and they would have to like wedge themselves in kind of like holding themselves up with their knees pressed against one wall and their back against the other with just like a damp cloth tied over their nose and mouth and they were called the climbing boys. And they would you know, like I said sometimes they would enter from like the bottom of the chimney climbing up scrubbing their way, with only their own muscle muscles and pressure to keep them from just sliding down the walls. And if they got stuck, it was often only possible to rescue them if someone was able to Sledgehammer through the wall and into the chimney and then pull them free from that. This was not often an option though, in multiple cases of children wedging themselves into the flu, where they would suffocate and die while awaiting unlikely rescue led to the chimney sweep act of 1834 that stated that children under the age of 18 could not be used as sweeps. This only carried a minor fine if they found out that you did and most people would just pay that fine, because until you got chi you would just state that the child was an apprentice. Yeah. And that's that they're just you know, they're just following you around to learn the ropes.

Marissa: 19:26

What a terrible way to die.

Matthew: 19:29

Oh, yeah. And according to the Sun dot the sun.co.uk There are rumors that the parliament building that there have chimneys that still hold skeletal remains of young climbing boys. I don't know if that's just like a ghost story or whatever. But there was like renovations happening that they were like, Hmm, I could find some stuff. We didn't mean to find that interesting. But these are stories of climbing boys. There are stories of climbing boys going into chimneys of like some large industrial facilities like kitchens and such and falling Behind her being confused with the cleaning schedule would lead them to being in the incorrect chimney as workers started stoves or whatever for the day and the boys would be trapped in rising heat and choking smoke unable to do anything. And being in the wrong chimney would also mean that no one even knew that you could be in danger because they're standing at the other chimney waiting for you to come up. Yeah, so a lot of kids died that way too. Since we're on the top I get children anyways, let's discuss mud larks and sewer hunters, bone collectors stuff like that. Kind of lumping them all together if you look at the MIP set separated in some of the some articles or whatever if you're looking at it, but they're all basically the same thing. Just the location being different, but mud larks were, were are there still still think people who call mud banks and tide pools during low tide. For Victorian Londoners this would be done along the Thames, which is the longest river in England. Second in the UK, I guess. The poor and Young would scour riverbanks while the tide was out. And they would be picking up like scraps of basically anything that they could possibly sell or and even resorting to stealing chunks of coal or copper or even like cutting ropes, from river barges, and moored ships. The Thames was where the sewers and the streets of London at the time would just flow out into so this is carrying refuse dead cats dogs, occasionally, maybe some human corpses. Also some dropped coins, maybe even some lost jewelry, some trinkets and amongst mostly trash, though, think of this as like beach coming, but in a sewage runoff. Gotcha. So the dangers were here, at least for the mud larks they would come from like getting stuck when the tide is coming in, or being like swept away or something along those lines, they could also be getting infected with all sorts of pathogens, and if they were caught, and an item that was claimed by another, basically meaning that they stole it. Well, that could result in being shipped off to Australia for like seven years. This was Australia being oppressed. People did that. Yeah. And and this was like, if you look at what there was, there was a news article that I read where these kids had stolen, like 22 pounds of rope, and they sell it for like pennies per pound. Which is not much like even within like taking into inflation and stuff. It's just a couple of bucks, basically for this rope. And then they were caught, and they were sentenced to be sent to Australia, or it's called like transporting. They were transported to Australia for seven years, which is crazy. And they were like 14 years old. And they just, you stole a rope. And you're gonna sell it for pennies. And now you're gonna go into the Outback. And Australia wasn't cool at this time. It's cool. Now, at that time,

Marissa: 23:07

it was just it was a big prison on juris animals.

Matthew: 23:10

still dangerous.

Marissa: 23:12

Yeah, I mean, I actually recently read something about somebody was reading they do treasure hunts in the riverbed never read but you know on the shores of the river, they'll just see what they can find. And yeah, I think it's the

Matthew: 23:25

same thing as like calming a beach with like a metal detector it's just at this time it was just gross. I mean people still do it now it's just not I mean they're not climbing on the boats and and stuff and reasonably in stealing shit. Yeah, again presumably you're right but like the at this time this was their This was their their living this was how the kids helped their their parents pay for stuff you know? And they'd go around and they pick up these little trinkets and shit and and yeah, like I said, this is this is something that is still viable now it's just it's just having a metal detector now and going around but it still happens even you can watch videos of it happening now. I mean, it's not it's not I don't think it's illegal or anything. It's just like it's just walking the beach picking shit up.

Marissa: 24:06

I might be making this up but I think you have to have a permit.

Matthew: 24:10

Maybe any of our any of our mudlark listeners, do you have a permit to go scooping around in the in the Thames. But yeah, so in London labour and London poor 1851. by Henry Mayhew, he provides a the narrative of the mudlark where in this he tells the story of an interview with a 13 year old mudlark and the boy tells his story and the stories of other monarchs who occasionally work together to gather up goods that fall off of ships. air quote, that fell off a truck, you know, or swimming along the size of these these barges at night to catch pieces of copper and coal that fall overboard or how they would like gather chunks of fat that had been thrown out. I find like the ships cooks into the disk into the water and they would like pick that up and then take it to sell at the Marine stores. This is, so you have these big barges just to kind of put it into perspective that they're doing like repairs and stuff while they're docked, right. So like pieces fall off, and like pieces of metal like fall into the water and stuff like that. You also have these big coal barges that are coming in. And then people are shoveling the coal off of the barges and moving it onto the dock and then pieces fall off. And then these kids like dive into the water and try to snag it without being caught effectively because that bet is stealing, right. But the narrative that described a lot of these behaviors was, like I said, London labor and the London poor a narrative of the mudlark. And it's clearly not written to capture the boy who's doing the interview, in in his words, but it kind of aims to illustrate his situation. For example, it's long, so I'm not going to read the whole thing to you. But just to kind of give you an example of the way that it's written. This is from the story that the boy is supposedly telling, and thinking of a 13 year old, poor, Irish cockney kid. Speaking like, Well, I'm not going to do the accent. I was born in County Kerry in Ireland in the year 1847. and am now about 13 years of age. My father was a policeman, and then lived on a lard Nope. And then lived on a farm in the service of a farmer. But now works at loading ships in the London docks. I have three brothers and one sister, two of my brothers are older than I. One of them is about 16 and the other about 18 years of age. My eldest brother is a seaman on board, a screw ship, now on a voyage to Hamburg, and the other is a seaman. Now on his way to Naples, my younger brother you saw beside me at the Riverside. And my sister is only five years of age. And she was born in London, the rest of my family were all born in Ireland. That sounds like an Irish cockney, right? I mean, my accent aside just the sentence structure. Yeah, I don't I don't believe it's precisely capturing the rhythm of his of his speech, but you get

Marissa: 27:17

it right quite mature for a 13 year old.

Matthew: 27:20

And the year of our Lord 1847 was the time of my birth. So mud larks. They, you know, we kind of touched on it, they still exist. It's a hobby. Now. It's not a I mean, I'm sure you might find something. I mean, there's a lot of history floating down the Thames. I'm sure

Marissa: 27:36

I looked it up. It's actually like a form of archaeology, I believe in some regards. But you do have to have a permit

Matthew: 27:42

right on the floor for that exact reason. Really, like I said, there's a lot of history flowing down there, so it makes sense. And then like I said earlier, sewer sewer hunters. Same idea, except put them in the sewer there. They are essentially the same practice. They just did it a little closer to the source rather than waiting for it to hit the Thames. They would just crawl through the drainage system, braving Road, rodent baits and the occasional interested onlooker, viewing them through the lattice of street grates above. Of course, they had their own issues besides just being attacked by rats, but they also would be in trouble with through like tidal changes and sudden flooding. This claimed a number of sewer hunters, which led to the practice eventually becoming illegal, you're not allowed to just crawl through the sewers of London picking up scraps. And finally, number five, also, these are not in any particular order. This isn't like leech collectors is worse than or is the worst of the worst. And this is all just a random sampling. I mean, we could we could do a ton of episodes on on terrible jobs, particularly we even put that into one of our other episodes. We're about to do an episode that I deliberately didn't put into here because coal mining was a tough job. But number five still a terrible job and some dangerous Yeah, it's a it's a great job.

Marissa: 29:03

It's a great job and it's well paying, but it's dangerous. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: 29:07

Well, that's not that's not doing the top

Marissa: 29:11

six. Yeah, go ahead and do

Matthew: 29:12

an A list of five and here's number five. This one is not on the list because it's inherently dangerous, at least to the the mortal vessel, but to the immortal soul, and occasionally, to neighbors and social interactions. Where the other jobs on this list were disgusting and dangerous in their own right, possibly leading to injury and death. Number five brings eternal damnation to the table. Literally, the table. Of course, I am speaking of the sin eater. The Sin Eater was a person who is paid to dine from the body of a recently deceased and in doing so take on the sins of that person's life, allowing them to go unburdened into the afterlife. Now this is not eating the body specifically, but instead of using the corpse as a table, or at least like the head of the chest, the practice is believed to be a combination of teachings and traditions from the Christian Bible. Jesus being that he took on the sins of the others. And then you got the whole communion eating bread Baba Baba BA. And this was most commonly practiced in Wales, at least with the earliest documented count being in John Aubrey his collection of folklore and traditions, called remains of gentleman gentle ism. And he describes the ritual as follows. An old customer at funerals was to hire poor people who were to take upon them all the sins of the party deceased. One of them I remember lived in a cottage on Rose highway, he was a long, lean, ugly, lamentable rascal. The manna was that when the corpse was brought out of the house, and laid on the bear, a loaf of bread was brought out and delivered to the senator over the corpse, and also a maaser bowl of maple full of beer, which he was to drink up and six pence in money in consideration whereof he took upon ipso facto all the sins of the defunct and freed him or her from walking after they were dead.

Marissa: 31:26

So who eats the senator sins?

Matthew: 31:30

Hopefully somebody but the tradition, the tradition continued for a long time with having accounts all the way till 1906 But they kind of the senators kind of, I feel like a lot of times turned into kind of like pariahs, you know, like, that's the sin eater. Yeah, sure. Right. But really, if you're smart, you just you just have a line of senators to keep eating since but the last senator was Richard months low. A farmer who was actually like a volunteer he volunteered bit to eat the sins of his neighbors of Shropshire. He wasn't somebody who needed the money or anything like that, but he was just like taking on all of his neighbor's sins. Hopefully someone returned his favor as that's a lot of sin

Marissa: 32:20

if he's the last one either. Right? Well,

Matthew: 32:23

maybe I can rekindle the practice could be a lucrative career change. And if done right, you know, we can kind of do it like the rune Lords like a chain where all the sins just keep passing along the line until the souls of the earth are cleansed and there is but one to bear the sins of all mankind until the end of it all. There might be a story there I don't know. Anyways, thank you as always for joining Oh, what is that sound? Is that music I hear? Is that why? Well, you know what that amazingly well produced and catchy song that must be interrupting me right now is and may be available as a ringtone soon. Do we not have a song yet? No. Okay, well, boop boop, boop boop. That's a placeholder for now. It's time for this week's mock up minute. also brought to you by actually know what you want to read the McCobb minute. Sure. And today's it's time for today's McCobb minute all right, I know since the first time I said leech collector and anemia your mind has been stuck on one question. How many leeches would it take to kill an adult human? How many? I will answer this. But first, here are some more fun beach related facts as presented by Marissa,

Marissa: 33:52

are there only three bullet points? No. I only have three bullet points.

Matthew: 33:56

I know well, there's a there's a way that God dammit shit, where take care of

Marissa: 34:02

leeches move like inchworms. When they're not swimming. They have two mouths one on each end and instead of wriggling like a snake, they bite with their front mouth, and then they bite up there. They bring up their

Matthew: 34:13

mouth.

Marissa: 34:16

Their butt mouth,

Matthew: 34:17

read it as written.

Marissa: 34:21

They bring up their butt mouth which grabs hold, then releasing and repeating the leech goes moves along going as to mouth over and over again.

Matthew: 34:31

Which read as written

Marissa: 34:33

as humans, you gotta be careful with not only delicious have two mouths. They have 32 brains 10 stomachs and 18 testicles. But that's not all. Leeches have both male and female reproductive organs. Leeches line themselves up head to feet or frontal mouth to back in mouth and trade sperm packets. Most leeches also have green blood as their blood protein is clear. or croyland and not hemoglobin like in mammals. So you heard it here first there Vulcans apparently, since we are on the topic of hemoglobin. The average adult weighing 150 to 180 pounds should have about 1.5 gallons or five ish liters of blood in their body, a human will be in a danger zone from blood loss after losing 40% of their blood. They'd likely be unconscious by this point, however, so a little loose math here, the average medical leech can drain up to 15 milliliters of blood in a feeding, which can take up to 40 minutes. So if the average adult has somewhere around five liters of blood, it would take around 300 to 400 Leeches to kill an adult. Although leeches also have one of the strongest anticoagulants, which they would have pumped into use, so this anticoagulant will keep the blood flowing like water up to 10 minutes after the leech has been removed. Of course, those numbers are for the types of leeches used in medicine. There are over 700 species of leeches, and they're all over the world. If the Amazonian leech was to get a hold of you, well, he made urine just drain out with just a few of their buddies joining in, you see Amazonian leeches can grow up to 18 inches or 45 centimeters long, and will siphon out your blood with their 10 centimeter long for buscas. That's kind of scary. Yet another thing to worry about,

Matthew: 36:25

that you need to worry about. If we go to the Amazon long leeches, I'm pretty sure you're gonna see that some bits coming. But anyways, that will do it for us today. Thank you all for listening. I hope you're all doing well. And I know that there are a lot of stressful and terrible things happening currently in the news, particularly in the US and not particularly I guess, all over the place. But seems like the US is having to

Marissa: 36:55

be having a moment

Matthew: 36:56

and we're having Yeah, we're having we're having a we're having an American moment. You know how we do but it's, it's, it's yeah, anyways, we're not gonna we'll really dig down into that or anything. But we were also not going to not acknowledge that there's a lot of bad things happening right that right now, and hopefully, you know, shows like this, and others take your mind off of some of the more taxing and stressful things that are happening around the world,

Marissa: 37:23

and maybe called Macabrepedia. But we do try to, you know,

Matthew: 37:26

we might we make light of dark subject matters. But anyways, that will do it for us today. Thank you, as always, to all of our patrons, and all of our listeners, if you would like to become a patron, go over to Patreon slash Macabrepedia. And you can join over there for $5 you get a couple of fun little podcast, pod cast light. Things episodes.

Marissa: 37:56

Yeah, no, we have a couple of sort of bonus more personality driven episodes on there now and an assortment of other things also.

Matthew: 38:04

Yeah, and you know, we'll toss you a couple of stickers if you if you sign up. But we really do appreciate the the support. I mean, it is it is always greatly appreciated when when somebody is willing to financially back of your creative endeavors. That's pretty awesome. But it's not not required. What is required is for you to share this podcast with every person that even looks at you. If you if you need a sticker for that, hit me up, I'll send you a sticker and you can wear it on your forehead, stick it on your car, whatever you need. And,

Marissa: 38:38

yeah, we have some new stickers in so

Matthew: 38:41

Yes, pretty much same as the old stickers but the bigger, right? If you're not a Patreon, or if you're not on Patreon. Yeah, you don't know necessarily what we're talking about. But follow us on Twitter, and Facebook at Macabrepedia. And maybe you can get a catch a glimpse of them stickers,

Marissa: 38:59

indeed, and also on Instagram at Macabrepediapod. And of course you can email us at macabrepediapod@gmail.com

Matthew: 39:08

and I'm so bad at business. I'm like, we don't really sell stickers. But if he doesn't, if you just send me send me a message I'll just mail you a sticker. But anyways, thank you as always, and join us next week as we add another entry into this our Macabrepedia