Next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water
temp isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be...
Here are some facts about the 1500's. Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath
in May and were still smelling pretty good by June. However, they
were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to
hide the body odour. 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 pet dogs, cats and other small animals: mice, rats & 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
is 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 would all start slipping outside. A
piece of wood was placed in the entryway, hence..... "threshold". 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 mostly ate 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 in there for a 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 and 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. Trenchers were never
washed and a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off
wormy trenchers, one would get... "trenchmouth". 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 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 running out of places to
bury people. So, they would dig up coffins and would take their
bones to a 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 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 (the "graveyard
shift") to listen for the bell, thus, someone could be... "saved by
the bell," or was considered a "dead ringer."