Life in the 1500's

Here are some facts about the 1500s

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in
May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were
starting to smell, 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 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 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 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
entrance-way. Hence: 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: “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 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 the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. 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.

Who said history was boring?