Life in the 1500's

Steve

Senior Member
Was pointed to this and thought it was interesting...

A little of History - It's raining cats and dogs


Life in the 1500's

The 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 about the 1500's:

These are interesting...

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still
smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so 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 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 entranceway.
Hence the saying 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 "upper crust."

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock
the imbibers out for a couple of days. I'mbibers 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... Now, whoever said that History was boring ! ! !
 
Wow, that was pretty cool :wacko:. I guess I'll never complain again when my sorbet is a little too soft ...


PS: To be politically correct, that was a history of a small section of Europe. The majority of Americans are not primarily descendants from Europe anymore, only a plurality. So this is just one of many histories of the world's people. Most Americans have other histories.
 
Yea, I thought about checking it but didn't, I just thought it was interesting either way. Even if fake, somebody had a good way of writing it.
 
I know this is a Hoax but life back then was still much harder. If you could take only one thing from the modern era and you had to live in the 1500's, what would you take?
 
That's two things... ;) I agree with both though - Outhouse?? No thanks!

Terry

Outhouses are gross, but you have to marvel at the simplicity of being nomadic. Don't need to worry about cleaning things, how shiny the marble is, toilet paper, etc. Just dig a small hole and grab some moss. So much more sanitary. I'm not sure we advanced forward very far when we moved bathrooms indoors for rural folks. City folks, well, a public poo-park is not really the best of ideas. Just my 2 cents.
 
If you could take only one thing from the modern era and you had to live in the 1500's, what would you take?
running water & sewer
Here is a link that claims flush toilets existed in the 26th century B.C., much of the early knowledge was unfortunately not known to people in the west in the 1500's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flushing_toilet

You would still have your accumulated knowledge so you could always build a septic tank system. I would probably have to take my blood pressure medicine so I didn't have a heart attack or stroke right off the bat.
 
The only part that made me think twice about the accuracy or truthfulness of the post was:

England was small, and they were running out of places to bury the dead..... This was in the 1500's... Just how crowded was it back then?!?!

But again, a very interesting and entertaining read.
 
If you could take only one thing from the modern era and you had to live in the 1500's, what would you take?
running water & sewer

We need not look as far as the 1500's to see enormous progress. In many cases the running water part requires electricity. We tend to forget that as recently as the 1940's, more than half of farms in America still didn't have electrical power. The REA was responsible for fixing this, and as a byproduct, getting plumbing moved indoors for millions of people. Then, within a single lifetime, NASA put a couple solar-powered toy cars on Mars.

YMMV if you don't live in the USA or another "developed" country. When I was stationed in Turkey, I took a trip to the eastern provinces where the people lived just like they did in the 1500's and centuries prior. Heat one's hut by burning sheep dung. Running water consisted of running down to the central village well and lowering a bucket. Home security? Who cares. Nothing to secure.
 
YMMV if you don't live in the USA or another "developed" country. When I was stationed in Turkey, I took a trip to the eastern provinces where the people lived just like they did in the 1500's and centuries prior. Heat one's hut by burning sheep dung. Running water consisted of running down to the central village well and lowering a bucket. Home security? Who cares. Nothing to secure.

I lived in Italy in the 70's, where I lived you could not even drink the water, I was surprised considering what the ancient Romans had accomplished. It is amazing what some of the ancient cultures did in their time, I remember from when I lived in Greece being told that Crete had indoor flush toilets thousands of years ago. I have seen evidence that the ancient Greeks even did brain surgery. It is a shame so much knowledge was lost, who knows how much further advanced we might all be by now.
 
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