Life in the 1500’s

By Kevin Waller

June 25, 2001

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 b.o.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of nice, clean water. Then all the other sons and men took their baths. After that, the women bathed and finally the children took their baths. Last of all, the babies bathed. By then the water was so dirty you could lose someone in it; hence the saying, "Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water."

Houses had thatched roofs, which had thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the pets and other small animals---mice, rats, and 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. So they found out that if they made beds with big posts and hung a sheet over the top, the problem was solved; hence those beautiful big four-poster beds with canopies.

The floors were dirt floors. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors which could get slippery when wet. So they spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when they opened the door, the thresh would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed at the way; hence the word "threshold."

They cooked in the kitchen in 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 didn’t get much meat. They ate the stew for dinner, leaving the leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been in it for a month. Hence the rhyme, "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes they could get pork. They really felt special when that happened. When company came, they brought out some bacon hung it to show it off. It was a sign of wealth and that a man "could bring home the bacon." They cut off a little to share with their guests and they all sat around "chewed the fat."

Those who had money used pewter plates. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food. This happened most often with tomatoes. So they stopped eating tomatoes for 400 years.

Most people didn’t have pewter plates, but they had trenchers---a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trenchers were never washed, so a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off wormy trenchers, they got "trench mouth."

They divided the bread according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and the guests got the top or the "upper crust."

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination sometimes knocked them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road took them dead and prepared 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 the people on the table would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake."

England is an old and small country, so after a while, they started running out of places to bury people. So they dug up coffins and took the bones to a house and reused the graves. In opening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized that 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 the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence on the "graveyard shift," they would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer."