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Common Jobs in a Medieval City
31–40 of 193 posts
Re: Common Jobs in a Medieval City
#326th to 10th place are interesting:
6 – Tailors
7 – Notaries
8 – Barbers
9 – Retailers
10 – Stonemasons
More notaries than barbers, retailers and stonemasons!
Re: Common Jobs in a Medieval City
#33Bypass broken ad-blocker detection: https://web.archive.org/web/20211128175917/https://www.medie...
Re: Common Jobs in a Medieval City
#34Striking that there were more shoemakers than tailors.
In tracing my family tree, I found a branch that went back to a small town in Scotland, and at least 3-4 generations back were shoemakers. When did my forefather leave the family trade? Circa 1850, when the Industrial Revolution apparently hit shoemaking hard.
He ended up keeper of a coffee shop in Glasgow, and his daughter was on a ship to Australia in 1891.
Re: Common Jobs in a Medieval City
#35Striking that there were more shoemakers than tailors.
Perhaps the ranking may be also influenced by reporting requirements.
According to the article, the shoemakers were organized in guilds, so possibly this would standardize the reporting to the city gov.
Re: Common Jobs in a Medieval City
#366th to 10th place are interesting: 6 – Tailors 7 – Notaries 8 – Barbers 9 – Retailers 10 – Stonemasons More notaries than barbers, retailers and stonemasons!
Likely not too surprising, given that most people were illiterate. Probably they also helped with letter writing/reading?
Re: Common Jobs in a Medieval City
#37Striking that there were more shoemakers than tailors.
4% of the workforce being shoemakers seems enormous. One person working full time making shoes for every fifty-ish adults? I don't know what the right comparison is today. According to [0], the fashion industry accounts for about 3% of world GDP. Perhaps shoes are a quarter of that? [0] https://fashinnovation.nyc/fashion-industry-statistics/
They were serving a lot of customers from outside the city who would occasionally visit to trade and shop.
Re: Common Jobs in a Medieval City
#38Striking that there were more shoemakers than tailors.
This statistic might also be a specialization for just this case/city. The author noted that Montpelier was known for shoes, which might mean people traveled there for shoes, or they were exported/bought by traveling merchants and sold elsewhere.
They may have been exported to the surrounding countryside too. The one thing that a farmer couldn't make for themselves.
Re: Common Jobs in a Medieval City
#39I'm surprised blacksmiths didn't cut to the top 10. Almost everyone would need some kind of metal tool(s) to do their job in medieval time.
Re: Common Jobs in a Medieval City
#40I'm surprised blacksmiths didn't cut to the top 10. Almost everyone would need some kind of metal tool(s) to do their job in medieval time.
Definitely a blacksmith in almost every city, but probably fewer blacksmiths per city than the other jobs. Metal tools are built to last, and are expensive, so it was probably often a low volume high cost kind of business where production could be covered by a minimal number of smiths.