Dear Listers
Had this e-mail sent to me.
Thought this might be of interest to you.
Subject: Life in England in the 1500's
Next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water
temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used
to be....
Here are some facts about the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath
in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting
to smell so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house
had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men,
then the women and finally the children-last of all the babies. By then
the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it-hence the
saying,
"Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw, piled high, with no wood
underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all
the dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, and bugs lived in
the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals
would slip and fall off the roof-hence the saying "It's raining cats and
dogs."
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This
posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could
really mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet
hung
over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came
into existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt,
hence the saying "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get
slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh on the floor
to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding
more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping
outside.
A piece of wood was placed in the entry way-hence, a "thresh hold."
They cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over
the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They
ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew
for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start
over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there
for quite a while-hence the rhyme, "peas porridge hot, peas porridge
cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."
Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite
special.
When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It
was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon." They would
cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the
fat."
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid
content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead
poisoning anddeath. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next
400
years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Most people did not have pewter plates, but had trenchers, a piece
of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Often trenchers were made
from stale paysan bread which was so old and hard that they could use
them for quite some time. Trenchers were never washed and a lot of times
worms
and
mould got into the wood and old bread. After eating off wormy mouldy
trenchers, one would get "trench mouth." Bread was divided according
to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the
middle, and guests got the top, or "upper crust."
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would
sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the
road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were
laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would
gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake
up-hence the custom of holding a "wake."
England is old and small and they started out running out of placesto
bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones
to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, one
out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they
realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they
would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin
and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit
out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the
bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a
"dead
ringer."
George Toth
Stockport
Cheshire
UK