Henry Ford's right hand man had uneven steps in his home as a defense mechanism. he fell down them and died while drunk (apparently this is urban legend)
I think they did that in castles, because it's generally pretty hard to build castles. If the enemy is inside the walls you are practically done anyway.
I enjoy the idea that some shitass mason hated whatever king hired him, built all the stairs as quickly and poorly as possible, and then to save his ass later had to be all "oh hmm yes the stairs? That's a feature actually" and somehow it winds up catching on
every time the story comes back up it takes me ages to figure out who I was talking about again. I can never remember the name, but he was featured in an episode of last podcast on the left
You are talking about Henry Bennett. This is a myth though. While he did have stairs like that, he died in a care home after years of declining health. His actual cause of death wasn't announced, but it was likely because he had been in rapid decline for years and just before going into the care home, had a stroke.
Most areas in the US have that as a building code violation for the safety issue of it. Usually, there's a "first" when any regulation regarding inherent safety is created.
