The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Life in the 1500s 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 odour. 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 and then all the other sons and men and 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 with 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, squirrels etc) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip of the roof. Hence the saying, "It is raining cats and dogs!" There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house because of the thatched roof and this posed a real problem in the bedroom, where bugs and other droppings could mess up a nice clean house. Hence a bed had high bed posts with a sheet hang over it to afford some protection. That is how canopy beds came about, and no doubt the saying, "Don't let the bed bugs bite!" The floors were dirt with only the wealthy having something other than dirt on their floors. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor!" Actually the wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to keep their footing and as winter wore on, they spread more fresh straw until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed at the entrance. Hence the saying "thresh hold!" In those 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 would obtain pork which made them feel quite special. Visitors would come over and they would hang up the bacon to show it off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon". They would cut off a little to share with the 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 into 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 the guests got the top, "upper crust!" Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock a person 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 the local folks started running out of place 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, one out of 25 coffins were found to have the scratch marks on the inside that indicated people had been buried alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse that lead through the coffin and up through the ground and tied to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night, (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell and thus someone would be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer". SoÉ what do you think of that??? Thanks J. J. for the e-mail!
