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 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 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 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 sliding outside. A
piece of wood was placed in the entryway, 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 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 awhile - 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 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 quite 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 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 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, 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.”
see also
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