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Top 10 Worst Jobs our Ancestors Held

Having a bad workday? It could be worse. You could have lived in 17th- or 18th-century New France and held one of these occupations.  

 1.     Executioner (“le bourreau”)

Granted, being an executioner was better than being the one executed, but the advantages really ended there.  While he didn’t exactly work long, strenuous hours, being an executioner meant being an outcast.

In New France, he was often a man previously sentenced to death pardoned in exchange for his services. The occupation of executioner certainly wasn’t desirable, and most men who took on this job didn’t do so by choice. The executioner was at the very bottom of the social ladder, his job the most shameful of all. He and his family were looked down upon and often ridiculed in public. His residence was always away from the town centre—he and his family ostracized from society.  Learn more here.

2.     Leather Tanner (“le tanneur”)

Could you imagine doing a job that earned you the nickname "crotte de poule", or chicken dropping?

Tanning, a job that still exists today in developing countries, was considered a rather rancid trade. Historically, tanneries were relegated to the outskirts of town, usually amongst the poor. In other words, tanneries smelled absolutely horrible.

In New France, tanners worked mostly with sheepskin and cattle hides, which would be used for shoes, boots and harnesses. Work in the tanneries was hard. Handling heavy, water-soaked hides was exhausting. The odours from decomposing organic materials were so strong that nauseous workers sometimes vomited on the job. Others could not eat upon their return home. The risk of infection was high, and during hide finishing, the omnipresent leather dust caused respiratory problems. Learn more here.

3.     Chimney sweep (“le ramoneur” or “le savoyard")

Imagine being covered in soot from head to toe on a daily basis. That was the reality for the boys and men who were chimney sweeps in New France. They would normally enter the chimney from the bottom, climbing to the top and cleaning the soot from the walls as he clung on and slowly descended. He used a small scraper and a broom affixed with twigs, but mostly his bare hands and his clothing. The sweeper usually worked barefoot, allowing him to more easily find footholds along the chimney walls. Once he was finished, the sweeper was completely black from soot from head to foot, with only his eyes and teeth displaying white. Learn more here.  

4.     Rat Catcher (“le chasseur de rats" or "l’acheteur de rats")

Perhaps surprisingly, the rat catcher was actually a well-respected, and very important, position in society due to the dangers posed by vermin, like disease and epidemics. He had a difficult job, however, having to go into dirty and unsanitary places, and handling potentially disease-ridden or rabid rats and mice. In Québec, the first record we have of rat-catchers are from the 19th century, though they probably existed beforehand. They were known as “acheteurs de rats”, or rat buyers, who offered to rid someone of the vermin in their house or barn, and actually paid the homeowner a few cents to do so (what they actually did with these rats isn’t known!). Learn more here.     

5.     Housewife (“la mère de famille")

Didn’t expect to see housewives on this list? In today’s households composed of one to three children, it’s difficult for modern women to imagine having dozens of children and being constantly pregnant. To have a “blessure” (an “injury”), or miscarriage, was unfortunately very common in New France. On top of this, a mother usually had to face the untimely death of one or more of her children. On average, two out of five children died before the age of 15. Miscarriages and child mortality took a severe emotional toll. Housewives also feared the birth itself, which was extremely painful and could be life-threatening. Without modern medicine and care, about 1-2% of women died in the 60 days following childbirth.

After childbirth, the mother would be expected to resume her household duties as soon as possible. She had other children to take care of, animals and a garden to tend to, and had to help her husband with the farm work and harvests. Not to mention fetching water from the well, cooking, cleaning and sewing. This is the reason why the risk of maternal death was so high. Learn more here.     

6.     Coureur des bois / engagé ouest / voyageur

Probably the most physically demanding occupations on this list, the men who worked as coureurs des bois (which loosely translates to wood runners), engagés ouest (men who signed contracts to “go west”) and voyageurs were all involved in the fur trade, working on their own account or hired by another person or company.

They ventured into unsettled areas (the “woods”) to trade with indigenous peoples, exchanging various European items for furs. Fur trade in the interior necessitated long-distance transportation by canoe. Travel was dangerous and these men had a high mortality rate. They usually left Montreal in the spring, once the ice was clear. They could either paddle on the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers, which required many overland portages, or via the upper St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, passing Detroit en route to Michilimackinac or Green Bay. Although it had fewer portages, this way was more exposed to Iroquois attacks. These trips often lasted for months and covered thousands of kilometres. These men had to be extremely fit and strong, needing to paddle a heavy, loaded canoe up to twelve hours a day.

7.     Day labourer (“le journalier”)

The unfortunate fate of so many of our ancestors in New France was being a day labourer: a worker employed by the day, typically in the agricultural sector. He usually only worked during the summer months, for low wages, which meant that day labourers were among the poorest of the inhabitants of New France.

For a regular day’s work, the labourer could earn 30 to 40 sols. When hired for a short contract, he could earn between 12 and 15 livres. After purchasing bread from the baker, and paying for his monthly rent, the day labourer didn’t have much disposable income left over.  Learn more here.

8.     Limeburner (“le chaufournier”)

The limeburner’s job was a constant threat to his health. Mortar required for the construction of buildings was baked in a lime kiln at more than 800°C by the limeburner, a profession deemed extremely dangerous because of the toxic vapours like carbon monoxide released by the oven. This could easily make a worker drowsy or even paralyze them and then suffocate them. Once the baking was complete, the limeburner took the resulting hard cake of quicklime (calcium oxide) and added it to water. It would immediately react producing a shower of caustic specks of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide). Simply put, the limeburner was always enveloped by toxic fumes. Learn more here.

9.     Labourer/farmer (“le cultivateur” or "le laboureur")

Most of our ancestors were farmers, peasants who lived off the land. The techniques, tools and procedures they used were rudimentary. First and foremost, they cultivated the land to serve the needs of their family. Any meagre surpluses could be sold at the market. In the garden, the farmer and his wife grew vegetables and tobacco. Sometimes they had a few fruit trees. In the fields, wheat took up two thirds of the land while peas, barley and oats were planted in the rest. There was also space for animals and a wooded section.   

Once developed, the land met the family’s basic needs: food, clothing, a house and firewood for the winter, plus some excess to sell or barter with at the market. With 20 cultivated arpents, a couple would not have any surpluses. With 40, they would have a little, which was the case for most farming families. It was a simple life, but also a hard one involving manual labour from sunrise to sunset. Learn more here.    

10.  Log driver (“le draveur”)

[note: log driving started about 30 years after the end of the British Conquest, but its importance merits a place on this list)

The log driver’s job was to ensure that cut logs floated freely along the river. There were typically two groups of men per crew. The more experienced and nimble were in the jam or beat crew. When they spotted a jam, they tried to get to it quickly by running and jumping on the floating logs and dislodging the problem logs before a pileup or dam happened. The men on the jam crew needed to understand physics, be strong, and extreme agile. Needless to say, it was a very dangerous occupation, with many deaths by drowning occurring every year. Learn more here.

Sources:

• Pascale Girard, "Les métiers en Nouvelle-France", Semaine nationale de la Généalogie (2014); online article, Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie (http://www.semainegenealogie.com/extra/articles/182-les-metiers-en-nouvelle-france).

• Alain Laberge, “La famille en Nouvelle-France : mythes et réalités”, Cap-aux-Diamants, (39), 10–12, 1994, digitized by Érudit (https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/cd/1994-n39-cd1042227/8652ac.pdf).

• André Lachance, Délinquants, juges et bourreaux en Nouvelle-France (Montréal, Québec: Les Éditions Libre Expression, 2011).

• André Lachance, Vivre, aimer et mourir en Nouvelle-France; Juger et punir en Nouvelle-France: la vie quotidienne aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Montréal, Québec: Éditions Libre Expression, 2004).

• Claude Lemay, "Fonctions et métiers délaissés", l'Ancêtre, number 281, volume 34, winter 2008, and number 280, volume 34, winter 2007; electronic edition, Société généalogique de Québec (www.sgq.qc.ca/images/_SGQ/R_LAncetre_plus_libre/ENT-FONCTIONS-METIERS-DELAISSES.pdf).

• Jan Noel, Les femmes en Nouvelle-France (Ottawa: Société historique du Canada, 1998), Brochure historique n° 59, digitized by the Canadian Historical Association (https://cha-shc.ca/_uploads/5c38c4aa82776.pdf).

• Jeanne Pomerleau, Métiers ambulants d'autrefois (Montréal, Québec: Guérin, 1990).

• Jeanne Pomerleau, Arts et métiers de nos ancêtres : 1650-1950 (Montréal, Québec: Guérin, 1994).

• Marise Thivierge  and Nicole Thivierge,  "Leatherworking".  The Canadian Encyclopedia. Article published February 07, 2006; Last Edited December 06, 2016. Historica Canada, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/leatherworking.

• Tom Wien, "Coureurs des bois", The Canadian Encyclopedia (6 Feb 2006; modified 10 Sep 2018); electronic edition, Historica Canada (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/coureurs-de-bois)

• "Coureur de Bois: Courage and Canoes"; electronic edition, Internet Archive Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/20150312030118/http://www.canadiana.ca:80/hbc/stories/coureurs1_e.html) 

• "Tanneries", Ville de Québec, Online Heritage (https://www.ville.quebec.qc.ca/en/citoyens/patrimoine/quartiers/saint_roch/interet/tanneries.aspx).

• “Le sport extrême des anciens : la drave !”, Histoire forestière de l’Outaouais, http://www.histoireforestiereoutaouais.ca/c3/.

• “Les pauvres en Nouvelle-France”, Histoire du Québec (http://histoire-du-quebec.ca/les-pauvres-au-quebec/).