World's Worst Jobs

History remembers kings, inventors and generals. It rarely remembers the people who did the truly awful jobs.

World’s Worst Jobs is a journey through the most dangerous, disgusting, degrading and downright miserable occupations ever inflicted upon the working population.

Meet the miners who descended into poisonous darkness, the labourers who handled human waste, the workers slowly poisoned by mercury, lead and arsenic, the men sent into plague-stricken streets to collect the dead, and the unfortunate souls who earned their living among corpses, carcasses, sewage, explosives, toxic chemicals and industrial machinery that could kill without warning.

From ancient civilisations to the factories, mines and cities of the Industrial Age, this A–Z guide reveals what these extraordinary jobs actually involved, who performed them, what they were paid, the dangers they faced—and why anyone was desperate, unfortunate or powerless enough to do them.

Sometimes horrifying. Frequently astonishing. Occasionally almost unbelievable.

But these were real jobs.

And somebody had to do them.

WORLD’S WORST JOBS

An unforgettable tour of the working lives history would rather forget.