Life in the 1500's

[Pamela]

LIFE IN THE 1500'S

The 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 interesting 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. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting
married.

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
cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it
rained it became slippery

and sometimes the animals would slip and 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 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 (straw)
on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added
more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping
outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying
a "thresh hold."

(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)

In those old days, 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 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 wi th money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid
content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead
poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next
400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

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 the imbibers 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 coupl e of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink
and wait to see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a
"wake."

England is old and small and the local folks started running out
of places to 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, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the
inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So 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."

[Grave]

Thanks hun.

[Arc]

i learned more from this than i did in history :S

[Nex]

i learned more from this than i did in history :S

Ha ha true that.
I don't understand why they were only aloud to have yearly baths, its not as if water restrictions existed back then or were possibly that harsh. Thats just foul.
Still a good read, thanks Pam.

[fleaflickerx]

I r educamated!

[Obfuscate]

Ha ha true that.
I don't understand why they were only aloud to have yearly baths, its not as if water restrictions existed back then or were possibly that harsh. Thats just foul.
Still a good read, thanks Pam.

Preparing a bath was a laborious task before running water. Typically the famly had to go to the nearest well, lake, river, or stream and lug buckets of water back to the house. Seeing as how not everyone lived right next to a water source it could be quite a trek, and task, just to get the water. Add on the fact that this was well before any sort of industrialization and 99% of labor to produce goods was done by hand, and of course time consuming, there just wasn't enough time for a typical family to have baths more often.

Also, the idea of hygien was not what it is today and in some cases, if memory serves me right, there was the notion of being "to clean" at some points in time.

[Fuggle]

Time to be the buzzkill! Most of these are incorrect.

For example,

Bathing was not conducted this way in the 16th Century. There were public bathhouses, as few homes had the means to heat a substantial amount of water at one time. There is no literature stating that people bathed in the manner of man-of-house down to baby and the practical considerations of keeping that much water warm during such a ritual are not plausible.
Lastly, children of the 16th Century were bathed far more often than adults (see numerous works by J. Brundage, F. Braudel, M. Block, and many others) and anyone who has ever been charged with the care of an infant knows personally the obvious requirement to clean them daily. The notion that a mother of any century would lose her child in a bath of clouded, cold, and filthy water is laughable. The idea that this was part of a yearly infant cleansing ritual, as suggested above, is simply nonsense

Most peasant cottages did indeed have dirt floors. Some peasants lived in homes that sheltered animals as well as themselves.1 When livestock was enclosed in a peasant home, it was usually partitioned off in a separate room, sometimes at right angles to the family's living space. Yet animals could still occasionally find their way into the house proper. For this reason, an earthen floor was a practical choice.
However, there is no evidence that the term "dirt poor" was used in any context before the 20th century. One theory suggests that its origins lie in the Dust Bowl of 1930s Oklahoma, where drought and poverty combined to create some of the most horrific living conditions in American history; but direct evidence is lacking.
In castles, the ground floor might be beaten earth, stone or plaster, but upper stories almost invariably had wooden floors,2 and the same pattern likely held true in town dwellings. Straw was not needed to keep people from slipping on wet slate, but it was used as a floor covering on all surfaces to provide a modicum of warmth and cushioning. Reeds or rushes were sometimes supplemented with aromatic herbs like lavender, and the entire floor would usually be swept clean and strewn with fresh straw and herbs on a regular basis. Old straw was not simply left down when fresh straw was added.
If such were indeed the case, it might be logical to think of the little raised strip in a doorway as an item intended to "hold" in "thresh," except for one significant detail.
There's no such thing as "thresh."
The word "thresh" is a verb which, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, means "to separate seed" or "to strike repeatedly." It is not, and never has been, a noun used to designate floor rushes. The word "threshold," like "thresh," is Old English in origin and dates to before the twelfth century. Both OE words appear to relate to the movement of one's feet; thresh (OE threscan) meaning to stamp or trample3 and threshold (OE therscwold) being a place to step.4

There are plenty more, I just hate quoting.

[Pamela]

LMAO Fuggy!!I guess you really WERE bored these past few days you nabbed me on MSN! Geeze dude!! I mean...DAMN..I bet you spent more time on this post than you did on homework!! It is,however,a very interesting read.

[Money$hot]

A yearly bath you say...Sounds like a guy I work with just this mornin someone commented that they could smell him coming. Kinda reminds me of pigpen from charlie brown comics with the lingering b.o. cloud. I'm gonna leave him a christmas tree air freshener at work tonight. Mabye bath time will come early this yearlaugh:

[Pamela]

ROFLOL....~snicker~ Or one of the *Bath Sets* you can get at Walmart with the soap,sponges,lotions and body spray!

[Fuggle]

It actually took me like 2 minutes to get all that shit.

LOL you know there ARE drawbacks to beingTOO fast at some things...don't you? ~Pamela

[Krokan]

looooool i wanna live in that time!