Erfurt Latrine Disaster
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Without reading German links, I suppose that either some architect had had a bright idea that a giant 640 KP latrine should be enough for every occupation, and thus wouldn't ever need to be scooped, or that people were mostly crushed by rubble, and the adjacent common-sized latrine also broke.
Though in some periods latrines were used to make certain chemicals, and therefore the building could be seen as what we now call a chemical plant.
[...] im oberen Stockwerk der Dompropstei des Marienstiftes zu Rat, als der alte und wohl auch morsche Boden des zweiten Geschosses plötzlich unter der außergewöhnlichen Last der vielen Menschen zusammenbrach. Dabei stürzten die meisten Anwesenden in die Tiefe, wo auch der Boden des ersten Geschosses dem plötzlichen Aufprall dieser Last nicht standhielt, sodass die Herabstürzenden noch tiefer in eine darunter liegende Abtrittgrube fielen [...] andere wurden durch nachfallende Balken und Steine erschlagen oder verletzt.
Btw, this is what this looks like today: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurter_Dom#/media/Datei:Erfu...
Its auxiliary buildings are long gone, and even auxiliary buildings from later centuries are long gone, too, and the church itself was converted and rebuilt many times.
The Chronicle of Reinhardsbrunn, at least, does make specific mention that the nobles fell into a cesspit (cloaca) and died miserably by suffocating in the filth (sceno suffocati miserabiliter interierunt).
To fill a floor to a depth enough to "drown" would require several years of collecting, which means it would be well decayed and much closer to soil than sewage.
But it sounds too improbable to have happened.
> A feud between Landgrave Louis III of Thuringia and Archbishop Conrad of Mainz, which had existed since the defeat of Henry the Lion, intensified to the point that King Henry VI was forced to intervene while he was traveling through the region during a military campaign against Poland. Henry decided to call a diet in Erfurt, where he was staying, to mediate the situation between the two and invited a number of other figures to the negotiations.
Likely most were knocked unconscious by the fall (that's gonna be anywhere from 15-30 feet) and then drowned.
I cannot stop imagining this event from his perspective and wondering what words might have been spoken just before the collapse.
I am so sorry to do this, but: What a shitty way to go.
Seriously, though, the though of drowning is terrifying to me when it's clear, fresh water, but drowning in a literal cesspool sounds much worse. I don't know if the poor souls who died in this incident noticed the difference. But it sounds really terrifying. Also, the poor people who had to recover the bodies for a proper burial.
With 900+ years of distance it's easy to chuckle at it, but if you try to put yourself into these people's shoes, it's not funny. OTOH, there were so many awful things going on back then, I wonder if this one really stuck out to anyone but the victims' relatives.
Do the history books tell if there was a sufficiently anal investigation and whether they ever got to the bottom of it?
They did exist, but weren’t generally used as they weren’t very strong (wrought iron is.. well, not steel) and had to be made by hand