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Here are some facts about living in 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, 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 (straw) 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 entranceway--hence, a "threshold."
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 the stew had
food in it that had been there for quite a while-hence the rhyme: "Peas
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 bread which was so old
and hard that they could be used 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 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 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."
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