@Jesse - Hygiene was very important for people in the Middle Ages. The belief that people only took yearly baths and walked around caked in dirt and grime is a myth. The fourteenth century writer, Magninius Mediolanesis, started writing "Regimen sanitatis" which detailed the importance of cleaning the entire body. In fact, he goes on to claim bathing could help stop certain illnesses and lists 40-50 ways bathing could improve your health.
A medical treatise was also compiled during this time called the "Secreta Secretorum" which went into detail on the benefits of bathing; though, it did say that excessive bathing led to weakness and becoming fat.
The wealthy would use private baths, which was a wooden tub with a tent-like structure over it. This gave them privacy as they bathed. The tub would be filled with hot water by household servants. Royalty loved having baths. Records show that King John, when travelling around his kingdom, would take a bathtub with him, and had a personal attendant named William who handled it. In 1351, King Edward III paid for taps with hot and cold water supplies in his palace at Westminister. Bathing was massive throughout all of Europe, not just Britain. In fact, the tradition is found to go all the way back to the Carloginians - Einhard says that Charlemagne himself loved to bathe, and would have his family and other nobility bathing in a large bath with him.
Wealthy monasteries often could pipe in water to fill baths. Though some monastic orders did have rules which suggest to us that they did only bathe four times a year, we're not sure if these were actual rules, or the minimum amount of times a monk should bathe throughout the year. However, we do know that Westminister Abbey employed a bath attendant who was paid a daily sum of two loaves of bread, as well as a stipend of £1 per year, which indicates that his services were used on a regular basis.
Even the common people had access to actual bathing facilities. The city of Paris had over 32 public bathhouses with hot water. In Southwark, a town opposite the Thames river from London, a person had access to 18 bathhouses, again, all with hot water. The bathhouses were often connected to a local bakery, so that the baths themselves could make use of the heat from the ovens to heat the water.
The book "Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity" by Virginia Smith explains that bath feasting was as common, by the fifteenth century, as people going out to restaurants in later centuries.
Some members of the Church did speak out against the idea of public bathhouses, but, in reality, the Church had little influence over many aspects of life in the Middle Ages. The Church attempted to forbid many practices which people enjoyed (dancing being one of them) but people carried on doing them. The Church was powerful, but not so powerful to as control the actions of every man and woman in all of Europe. In truth, public bathhouses went into a rapid delcine during the sixteenth century, most likely due to the puritanical groups who were enforcing their strict form of morality on everyone else. Since bathhouses were also locations to hire prostitutes during the Middle Ages, the spread of syphilis also helped to drive certain people away.
I agree with you that sanitation was bad. However, the idea that people were exceedingly dirty and had no concept of physical cleanliness is absurd. Countless images and records from the era tell us that people not only enjoyed bathing, but that it was very common and very social.
I'd also like to say that the lack of many hygeine products is partially false. You mention toilet paper not existing. Sure, it didn't exist in the form we know it, but most people used a sort of woolen item for this purpose, not leaves. The wealthy would use cloth, but it wouldn't be from the poor. People were not as downtrodden as we, in the modern world, like to believe. There was also soap, though, it didn't have much in the way of cleansing power when it first arrived. I believe there was also another type of cleaning product used for clothes, which was very potent stuff. People also knew how to use urine to create a decent cleaning product for washing clothes - this practice goes all the way back to Ancient Rome.
I have no doubt that some people were unclean back then (just as there are loads of unclean people around today), or so adherent to every edict of the Church that they went without bathing. However, this simply wasn't the case for most people.People were just as aware of their bodily odours back then as we are today. People liked to smell nice. There was no germ theory back then, but people were not complacent with living in filth. They knew that filth usually led to illness - even if a lot of this was based on how bad something smelled. In Britain, professions which created a lot of horrid smells were often forced, under law, to set up shop either outside the city, or in their own district - butchery, tanning, the use of woad to create blue dye. People didn't want to deal with that stuff. Usually, in larger cities, human waste would also be taken outside the city and dumped in a brook just beyond the walls. The streets were dirty, but they weren't caked in crap. There were also public toilets across the London bridge, well, small alcoves where you could defecate into the Thames. Common Privies were well, common, in large cities during this time. Yes, people did relieve themselves in alley's and against buildings and walls, just like people do today, but it was frowned upon. A lot of cities spent a fair amount of money constructing and maintaining public toilets, and even in trying to maintain pollution.
So, yeah. Medieval myths. People back then weren't that different from people today. I can supply sources if you like. Though, most of my info comes from my large book collection, college papers, and other written works. I do have two links on hand if you want to have a look at a website about these topics. You're not wrong about the Middle Ages being more unclean than today, but people weren't living like ignorant savages back then. Like I said, they lacked Germ Theory and a firm understanding of why hygiene was so important, but they did understand that bathing was important. They knew that filth usually stank and dirty water tasted foul, which usually led to sickness.
I do support your decision to not include actual toilets as we know them, though. Your resources are amazingly detailed and great for creating more grittier games. Though, one thing is bothering me about one of your
screenshots. Is that an American style mailbox just outside the building on the left? I can't wait for these new MV resources to be released.
