Hi folks,

The following was emailed to me this morning and I thought it would be fun to post. I found it a fun and interesting read...


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Life in the 1500's

Maybe you shouldn't read this if you have a weak stomach. It's very interesting but it might spoil the rest of your day.


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 from the 1500's.

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good in 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 sons and other men had their bath in the same water. Finally, the women and then the female children - last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you cold lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw out the baby with the bath water."

Houses had thatched roofs - thick straw, piled high, with no wood undeneath. 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 the bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top provided some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor of the house was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying, "dirt por."

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread Thresh (straw) on the floor to 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 entrance way - 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 all over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there quite a while - hence the rhyme, "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Soetimes 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 sit around and "chew the fat."

Those with money had plates made with 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 tranchers were made from stale bread which was so old and hard that they could be used 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 wold 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 "uppercrust.

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 to 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 to the wrist of the "corpse", lead the string through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit 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...... (and whoever said that History was
boring?)

Should I say, "have a good day'?