Dirty, squalid, infested, smelly, murderous, plague ridden! Just a few instances that come to mind! Dirty. Nobody washed, ever. Water was occasionally used to feed animals, that's all. Everybody stank, and, in a closed up theatre, such as the Blackfriars Indoor! Blimey!, Squalid. Houses were built literally touching each other. Refuse was thrown out of upper floor windows, and, if you were walking underneath, unlucky! Infested. Rats abounded, due to the large activity on the River Thames, shipping from all around the world regularly docked at the deep water Pool of London, unshipping goods so exotic as to carry their own kind of vermin and disease, unknown and untreatable to many a Londoner. Smelly. Rotten and rotting carcasses from butcher's yards, offal and detritis from tanneries, would sometimes clog the narrow alleyways between the closely built houses, making the stench unbearable! Murderous! Shakespeare himself often consulted two known murderers, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Johnson, Johnson escaped the noose by pleading cause of clergy and demonstating his ability to speak in Latin and Greek, nevertheless, he was branded on the thumb with a "T", suggesting that, should he re-offend, he would hang at Tyburn!
