The freedom of a medieval town was a matter of personal status; the life lived within it was by most modern standards highly regulated and even claustrophobic. The town walls defined a world of perpetual shade--a constricted maze of narrow, winding streets broken only occasionally by the open spaces of a churchyard or market. Because space within the walls was scarce and expensive, houses tended to be narrow, deep, and high, with upper stories that often overhung the street below until they nearly touched their neighbors. Light and ventilation were usually poor, and privacy nonexistent. Much of the intensity of town life came from everyone knowing everyone else's business.

Crowding, together with the virtual absence of sanitary facilities, account for the extreme susceptibility of urban populations to epidemic disease. Regulations were established against dumping human waste into the streets, but piling it in courtyards, sometimes in close proximity to wells, was common. Travelers could smell a town long before it came into view. Town councils made valiant, if usually futile, efforts to keep the streets clean and to ensure the purity of the water supply. In the absence of a germ theory, this usually meant prohibitions on washing wool in the public fountains or orders restricting tanneries to locations downstream if not necessarily downwind. Death rates predictably exceeded birth rates in almost every European city.

Other regulations tried to preserve order as well as public health. Virtually every occupation had to be licensed. Business hours and practices were narrowly defined in the hope of protecting the consumer and reducing conflict between trades. Market women were the object of special scrutiny because their activities often threatened the prerogatives of the guilds. Standards of quality, enforced by official inspections, were laid down for the cloth industry and the victualing trades. The age and condition of meat or fish, the often dubious contents of sausages, and the conditions under which perishables of all kinds were prepared and sold were concerns, as was the integrity of weights and measures. Efforts were made to prevent the adulteration of grain or flour by adding sand or other substances to increase its weight. Every aspect of the operation of taverns, inns, wineshops, and bathhouses was minutely regulated. City ordinances and court records are a rich catalog of ingenious frauds and entrepreneurial excess.

After disease, the other great curse of medieval towns was fire. Fire companies were organized and regulations were proposed to prevent the most hazardous practices, but the combination of wood or wood frame construction and gross overcrowding could still turn ordinary kitchen mishaps into holocausts that threatened the entire community. . .

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