history is not boring

[sawbones]

Subject: 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 facts about the 1500s:

These are interesting...

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. 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
the 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,
"Peasporridge 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 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 whisky. 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 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
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."

And that's the truth... Now, whoever said that History was boring ! ! !

[timmy]

Good one! I did want to add a couple of things: I know that in Poland, some of the dirt floors in houses had a really hard sort of dirt that when packed down, would be like concrete, and they could be swept like any other hard surface. In New Mexico, where the ground is often adobe clay, the ranchers would save the blood of slaughtered animals and pour it on the floor. I have seen and stood on such floors, and they are literally like a poured concrete slab: you could mop and scrub them or whatever.

I don't know if all dirt floors were like these -- probably not. I understand that the floors would be strewn with straw and people would throw food scraps on the floor, and that the straw would be changed once or twice a year, whether it needed it or not. It is no wonder that there were so many outbreaks of bubonic plague!

Also, in European cities, the sewers amounted to water running down the middle of the streets. Contents of chamber pots were dumped out onto the streets from upper floor windows, so the streets were literally open running sewers, and it is no wonder that there were so many cholera and typhoid epidemics. Also, that's why the sewers of Paris were such an innovation.

At the turn of the 19th Century to the 20th, I've read about the vast tonnage of horse manure that was produced daily in New York City. The spread of disease by flies and what-have-you would have been tremendous. To this day, municipalities along the Hudson and down the Jersey shore will open their sewer systems into the waters when it rains hard, because they don't have separate storm and sanitary sewer systems. So after storms on the Jersey shore, it is common for the beaches to be closed until the level of fecal coliforms drops from, perhaps, 800 per milliliter to the required < 200 per milliliter.

Also, here in the USA, there are regulations about how much rodent dung and insect parts can be allowed in food like flour and other such foods.

For the middle ages, the noted historian William Manchester wrote the book A World Lit Only By Fire. There is, unfortunately, nothing of importance in this book about how life was in India during those days. From what I can gather from the Portuguese accounts of Vijayanagara, life was much more advanced with regards to cleanliness there compared to European cities. From what I can gather from Nilakanta Sastri's A History of South India, ancient Roman and Greek traders did not consider the culture in the ports they traded in to be inferior to their own.

I confess that your list of things here and others like them has always made me feel squeamish about all of these Medieval-based movies and books that are in vogue, like the Harry Potter stuff and the Lord of the Rings kinds of stories. All I can imagine is people ducking when someone throws their refuse from upper stories along the street while scratching their lice and fleas, and taking baths once a year. Ugh! Those "good old days" weren't much compared to today, much less our imaginations.

Thanks for sharing!

[mundaire]

Now don't forget to read - http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/1500.asp

[BJL]

Good old days indeed.

Being both a trained historian and someone involved with waste management, I love this stuff. Harappa and Mohenjodaro both have what appear to be underground sewers/drains, so do many parts of ancient Rome. It always interests me how so much technology literally died out in the ancient world and was completely forgotten during the Middle Ages. Conversely, its also interesting to study how ancient technology, science and knowledge were "rediscovered" in places where they had been preserved.

Good stuff all the same.

On a side note, I'll do my own part in living without technology over the weekend, going camping.

[timmy]

BJL:

When I was a little kid, an aunt and uncle had a large book with plenty of pictures. This book had a lot of photos of archeological work in Mohenjo Daro. I was pretty fascinated by it then and here, many years later, it is still of great interest. You are so right about the ancient world and rediscovery. We were taught in school that so many of these advances came to the West from Europe's contact with the Muslim world during these times. What wasn't taught is that many of these advances Europe received from the Muslim world had come from the Subcontinent.

Mundaire:

Good one on the urban legends thing. On the bathing practice, here are some other things I've noted: One of the common practices in the religions that Christianity replaced in the West were different kinds of ceremonial baths. It became common in the West to associate bathing with non-Christian belief.

Somewhere along the line, Europeans seem to have developed a great fear of catching a "chill." Europeans bundled up in long woolen underclothes with heavy woolen outergarments in hot places of the world seems pretty common. For instance, I cannot imagine being a US Army soldier wearing a full "union suit" (underwear) with heavy wool tunics and all, trudging about in the hot plains of the West during the summer.

[Sakobav]

Great write up -- wake and graveyard LOL

Cheers

[BJL]

BJL:

When I was a little kid, an aunt and uncle had a large book with plenty of pictures. This book had a lot of photos of archeological work in Mohenjo Daro. I was pretty fascinated by it then and here, many years later, it is still of great interest. You are so right about the ancient world and rediscovery. We were taught in school that so many of these advances came to the West from Europe's contact with the Muslim world during these times. What wasn't taught is that many of these advances Europe received from the Muslim world had come from the Subcontinent.

Timmy,
That is indeed very true. A lot of classical European science and philosophy was preserved and expanded upon by the Arabs. This was reintroduced via trade and further through crusaders returning from the Middle East. There is a book called Kitab al-I'tibar, an autobiography of a Syrian warrior and diplomat named Usama Ibn Munqidh, born during the First Crusade. It gives an amazing insight into the mixing, mingling and social interactions between the Crusaders and the Arabs both during times of peace and war. It shows how old knowledge got reintroduced to the Europeans. Also a great contemporary commentary of the times.

Best,
BJL