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Archiver > WARWICK > 1999-05 > 0925828753


From: "Dorothy M. Paul" <>
Subject: [ARMSTRONG-L] FW: Interesting Stuff (long)
Date: Tue, 04 May 1999 09:39:13 -0500


This is long (sorry) but I couldn't decide how/where to split it up. I DO
NOT KNOW THE AUTHOR... I thought that Warwick-L group would be interested,
especially as they start off with Ann Hathaway.... Any comments would be
welcome. I must admit that some of it does seem a bit off.....
Thanks, Dorothy

>-----Original Message-----
>Return-Path: <>
>Resent-Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 05:46:46 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "William Armstrong" <>
>Old-To: <>
>Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 05:56:27 -0700
>
>>
>>> 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 still 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 wakeup. 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".
>
>
My genealogy page: http://www.nd.edu/~dpaul/gene.htm
Michigan-Berrien Co, AREA: MORLEY, CARROLL, WHEATON, GLOVER, SLATER,
COLEMAN, MOORE, DOLPH, ARMSTRONG, GEORGE

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