Leather Tanners

Our guide told us a story about how the leather guilde in Brussels needed something to help them with their leathermaking process. It turned out that a substance found in urine worked great. People were paid for their urine, but eventually, people started diluting it so they could sell more of it (which was bad for the leathermaking process). So the leathermakers needed to hire people to taste the urine first to make sure it wasn't diluted. Because those testers were often very poor, we got the expression "piss poor" for the two groups of people.Read more