Life in the 1500's.

[Navy6064]

Life in the 1500's-----

Anne Hathaway was the wife of William Shakespeare. She
married at the age of 26. This is really unusual for the
time. Most people married young, like at the age of 11 or
12. Life was not as romantic as we may picture it. Here
are some examples:

Anne Hathaway's home was a 3 bedroom house with a small
parlor, which was seldom used (only for company), kitchen,
and no bathroom. Mother and Father shared a bedroom. Anne
had a queen sized bed, but did not sleep alone. She also
had 2 other sisters and they shared the bed also with 6
servant girls. (This is before she married.)
They didn't sleep like we do (lengthwise) but all laid on
the bed crosswise.
At least they had a bed. The other bedroom was shared by
her 6 brothers and 30 field workers. They didn't have a
bed. Everyone just wrapped up in their blanket and slept
on the floor. They had no indoor heating so all the extra
bodies kept them warm.

They were also small people, the men only grew to be
about 5'6" and the women were 4'8". So in their house they
had 27 people.

Most people got married in June. Why? They took their
yearly bath in May, so they were still smelling pretty good
by June, although they were starting to smell, so the brides
would carry a bouquet of flowers to hide their b.o.

The yearly bath was just a big tub that they would fill with
hot water. The man of the house would get 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 pretty thick. Thus, the saying,
"Don't throw the baby out with the bath water." It was so
dirty you could actually lose someone in it.

I'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of
thatch roofs, well that's all they were. Thick straw, piled
high, with no wood underneath. They were the only place for
the little animals to get warm. So all the pets: dogs, cats
and other small animals: mice, rats, bugs, all lived in
the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes
the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the
saying, "It's raining cats and dogs." Since there was nothing
to stop things from falling into the house they would just
try to clean up a lot. But this posed a real problem in the
bedroom where bugs and other droppings from animals could
really mess up your nice clean bed, so they found if they
would make beds with big posts and hang a sheet over the top
it would prevent that problem. That's where those beautiful,
big 4 post beds with canopies came from. When you came into
the house you would notice most times that the floor was
dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt,
that's where the saying "dirt poor" came from.

The wealthy would have slate floors. That was fine but in the
winter they would get slippery when they got wet. So they
started to spread thresh on the floor to help keep their
footing. As the winter wore on they would just keep adding
it and adding it until when you opened the door it would all
start slipping outside. So they put a piece of wood at the
entry way, a "threshhold".

In the kitchen they would cook over the fire, they had a
fireplace in the kitchen/parlor, that was seldom used and
sometimes in the master bedroom. They had a big kettle that
always hung over the fire and every day they would light the
fire and start adding things to the pot.
Mostly they ate vegetables, they didn't get much meat. They
would eat the stew for dinner then leave the leftovers in the
pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day.
Sometimes the stew would have food in it that had been in
there for a month! Thus the rhyme: peas porridge hot, peas
porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes they could get a hold of some pork. They really
felt special when that happened and when company came over
they even had a rack in the parlor where they would bring
out some bacon and hang it to show it off. That was a sign
of wealth and that a man "could really bring home the bacon."
They would cut off a little to share with guests and they
would all sit around and "chew the fat."

If you had money your plates were made out of pewter.
Sometimes some of their food had a high acid content and
some of the lead would leach out into the food. They really
noticed it happened with tomatoes. So they stopped eating
tomatoes, for 400 years. Most people didn't have pewter
plates though, they all had trenchers which was a piece of
wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. They never
washed their boards and a lot of times worms would get into
the wood. After eating off the trencher with worms they
would get "trench mouth."

If you were going traveling and wanted to stay at an inn they
usually provided the bed but not the board. The bread was
divided according to status. The workers would get the burnt
bottom of the loaf, the family would get the middle and guests
would get the top, or the "upper crust".

They also had lead cups and when they would drink their
ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out
for a couple of days. They would be walking along the road and
here would be someone knocked out and they thought they were
dead. So they would pick them up and take them home and get
them ready to bury. They noticed sometimes if they were too
slow about it, the person would wake up. Also, maybe not
all of the people they were burying were dead. So they would
lay them out on the kitchen table for a couple of days, the
family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see
if they would wake up. That's where the custom of holding a
"wake" came from.

Since England is so old and small they started running out
of places to bury people. So they started digging up some
coffins and would take their bones to a house and re-use the
grave. They started opening these coffins and found some had
scratch marks on the inside. One out of 25 coffins were that
way and they realized they had still been burying people alive.
So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and 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 to listen for the bell. That is how the saying
"graveyard shift" was made. If the bell would ring they would
know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead
ringer".
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Anyone who has read this far no doubts suspects that most of
this is folk etemology rather than fact...but it's amusing what
some people will believe, isn't it?