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Notes about this site
WERE THESE REALLY THE
"GOOD OL' DAYS"
(And of course, we know this is all true)
('Cause we found it on the internet *G*)
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 (pre-marriage) home was a 3 bedroom house with a small parlor, which
was seldom used (only for company), a 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
with 6 servant girls.
They didn't sleep, like we do length-wise, but all laid on the bed cross-wise.
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 helped keep them warm.
They had 47 people living in their house.
They were generally small people, the men only grew to be about 5'6'' and the
women were 4'8''.
Most people got married in June. Why?
They took their yearly bath in May, so they still smelled pretty good by
June, although they were beginning to smell, so the brides would carry a
bouquet of flowers to hide their body ordor.
The yearly bath was not in a bathtub, 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, followed by 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.
You've heard of thatch roofs? 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, which'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 until, when you opened the door, it would all start
slipping outside. They put a piece of wood at the entryway, a "thresh
hold".
Some people had a fireplace in the parlor
and, occasionally, you would find one in the master
bedroom. In the kitchen was a fireplace and there was a big kettle that
always hung over the fire. Everyday 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, 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 piece of pork. They really felt special
when that happened and when company came over they had a place 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. Some of
their food had a high acid content and some of the lead would leach out
into the food. They really noticed it with tomatoes. So they
stopped eating tomatoes, for 200 years.
Most people didn't have pewter plates though, they all had trenchers.
A "trencher" was a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. They
never washed their boards and 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 room 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 to drink their ale or whiskey. The combination would
sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone would be walking
along the road and find someone knocked out and would think
they were dead. They would pick them up and take them home and get
them ready for burial. However, they realized not all of the people they were about to
bury 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 to 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
the wrist of the "supposedly deceased" 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"
came about. If the bell would ring they would know the "deceased" was actually alive. That person was "saved by the bell".
Facinating, isn't it?
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