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 were taken in 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 all started slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed
in
the
entry way -- hence, a "thresh hold."
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 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 out 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."