What's the worst job in history?

The Most Unpleasant Jobs in History

Throughout history, some jobs were so grim they’d make even the most resilient among us shudder. Long before modern labor laws or safety standards, people took on roles out of necessity—no matter how foul or dangerous.

Fullers cleaned and thickened woolen cloth by stomping on it in urine-filled vats. Yes, urine. It was a key ingredient in the textile process, and the job reeked—literally. Meanwhile, leather tanners worked with animal hides soaked in excrement and toxic chemicals, enduring stench and health risks daily.

Then there were the gong farmers, a term that sounds comical but masked a brutal reality. These individuals dug out human waste from cesspits at night, often working in near-darkness to avoid public scorn. The smell clung to them, making social life nearly impossible.

Plague buriers had an even darker duty. During outbreaks, they hauled away the dead—sometimes hundreds a day—piling bodies into mass graves. With no effective protection, many caught the disease themselves. Rat-catchers, though slightly less morbid, dealt with vermin that spread disease, often using crude tools and enduring bites and filth.

Executioners faced a different kind of burden. Though sometimes paid well, they were social outcasts, feared and shunned. Their role in ending lives made them both powerful and isolated.

Leech collectors waded into muddy ponds, using their own legs as bait to attract bloodsucking creatures—enduring bites just to sell them to apothecaries. And then there was the sin-eater, a figure from rural folklore who, for a small fee, would consume a symbolic meal over a coffin, believed to take on the sins of the dead and free their soul.

These jobs remind us how far working conditions have come—and how much we owe to those who endured the worst of them.