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Facts about the 1500s. True or Not?
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 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 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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