Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts

This book presents a social and cultural history of ''dishonourable people'' (unehrliche Leute), an outcast group in early modern Germany. Executioners, skinners, grave-diggers, shepherds, barber-surgeons, millers, linen-weavers, sow-gelders, latrine-cleaners, and bailiffs were among the ''dishonourable'' by virtue of their trades. This dishonour was either hereditary, often through several genera...