This was printed in Nov/Dec issue of - Bay Area Genealogical
Society (BAGS) GEMS (WI). No author or source was given but it was
too good not to share. Every one of us had ancestry living at that
time and even if they were not in England, they probably faced
similar situations. Gives you something to think about. "If they
could see us now". Rita - Oconto County WIGenWeb Coordinator
HISTORY LESSON
Here are some facts about the 1500's:
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 odor.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the
house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then the sons and
the other men, then the women,
and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water
was so dirty that 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 and cats and other small animals, (bugs, rats, and mice)
lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometime
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 in the house. This
posed a real problem in the bed room 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 bed 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 he entry way-hence, a "threshold".
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
stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight
and add to these to 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 would obtain pork, which made them feel quite
special. When a visitor 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 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 into the floor, causing
lead poisoning and death. 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 some time. Trenchers were never washed and a
lot of times worms and mold got into the wood and old bread. After
eating off wormy moldy trenchers, one would get "trench mouth".
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottoms
of the loaf, the family got the middle and the quests 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, they started running out of places to bury
people.
So they would dig up the coffins and take the bones to the "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 that they had been
burying people alive.
So they tied a string to the wrist of the corpse, lead it through
the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone
would sit 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."