4 ms·
My exact thought. Wooden floors — not even strong enough to bear the crowd — and the cesspool large enough to fit 60 people? That's not the place for king's acc
by ogurechny 4y ago
My exact thought. Wooden floors — not even strong enough to bear the crowd — and the cesspool large enough to fit 60 people? That's not the place for king's accommodation, even in time when everyone was used to the smell of the stables. If anything, the ammonia would corrode the hell out of any metallic objects in the building, like nails.
Without reading German links, I suppose that either some architect had had a bright idea that a giant 640 KP latrine should be enough for every occupation, and thus wouldn't ever need to be scooped, or that people were mostly crushed by rubble, and the adjacent common-sized latrine also broke.
Though in some periods latrines were used to make certain chemicals, and therefore the building could be seen as what we now call a chemical plant.
- ilovecurl 4y ago"Saltpeter" AKA potassium nitrate was indeed harvested from latrines and other places where animal dung was collected/deposited. It was a valuable commodity as a key component of gun powder. Although gun powder would not come into widespread use in Europe for 2-3 hundred years after this event occurred.
- tharkun__ 4y agoSince you mentioned not reading the German version I went and checked and it's got a bit more info, though not a lot. [...] im oberen Stockwerk der Dompropstei des Marienstiftes zu Rat, als der alte und wohl auch morsche Boden des zweiten Geschosses plötzlich unter der außergewöhnlichen Last der vielen Menschen zusammenbrach. Dabei stürzten die meisten Anwesenden in die Tiefe, wo auch der Boden des ersten Geschosses dem plötzlichen Aufprall dieser Last nicht standhielt, sodass die Herabstürzenden noch tiefer in eine darunter liegende Abtrittgrube fielen [...] andere wurden durch nachfallende Balken und Steine erschlagen oder verletzt. So this mentions that this building didn't just have a ground floor w/ the latrine below it but one storey above. It's that second storey which was old and rotten and collapsed and broke through the ground floor, which wasn't strong enough to hold sixty people plus the broken top floor crashing into it. Unlike the English version that just mentions people drowning in excrement, this also mentions further falling debris like joists and stone simply hitting and thus killing or at least injuring people. Btw, this is what this looks like today: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurter_Dom#/media/Datei:Erfurter_Dom_von_Oben_08.jpg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurter_Dom#/media/Datei:Erfu...
- jl6 4y agoSo is this a well-known part of popular lore in Germany? I can only imagine that if this had happened in England, every primary school pupil would know about it and there would be a toilet-themed gift shop on the site today.
- ogurechny 4y agoIt says it happened in the deanery of a different church in the fortress (nitpick: not surrounded by this fortress at that time). https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterskirche_(Erfurt) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterskirche_(Erfurt) Its auxiliary buildings are long gone, and even auxiliary buildings from later centuries are long gone, too, and the church itself was converted and rebuilt many times.