Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts

"This book presents a social and cultural history of 'dishonorable 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 'dishonorable' by virtue of their trades. This dishonor was either inherited, often through several generations, or it arose from ritual pollution whereby honorable citizens could become dishonorable by coming into casual contact with members of the outcast group." "The dishonorable milieu of the city of Augsburg from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century is reconstructed, to show the extent to which dishonor determined the life-chances and self-identity of dishonorable people."--Jacket.