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From: Terri Lee Wolfe <>
Subject: [DANIEL-L] Life in the 1500's-----
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 15:06:37 -0500


I thought some of you might be interested in this from the Daniel
rootsweb.BETH THURMAN
>Resent-Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 21:04:03 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "Teresa Beech" <>
>Subject: [DANIEL-L] Life in the 1500's-----
>To:
>Author unknown.
>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 living.
>
>Most people got married in June. Why? They took their yearly bath in
>May, so they were till 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.
>
>Like I said, they took their yearly bath in May, but it 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 poster 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 "thresh hold".
>
>
>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,
>that 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 realized 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".
>
>
>

Monticello, AR
367-2701

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