life in the 1500s

LIFE 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 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 "thresh hold."

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
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 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."