The Worst Jobs In History

This week Tony Robinson continues his examination of The Worst Jobs In History with a close look at the worst rural jobs and remembers those who risked their necks to maintain the heart of rural life, shifted excrement to produce enduring images of the countryside and saved souls in the villages by eating bread.

The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century brought mass production and mechanisation to jobs that previously had been done by hand and as Britain became a technological and economic powerhouse she produced two-thirds of the world's coal and over half the world's iron. It made the nation rich, but for thousands of people working like ants in the factories, it was a new and mind-numbing form of poverty.