The Accidental Expats » An Interesting History

An Interesting History

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 1500s:

They used to
use urine to tan animal skins, so families
used to all pee in
a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold
to the tannery…….if you had to
do this to survive you were ”Piss Poor”
But worse than that were the really poor
folk who couldn’t
even afford to buy a pot………..they
“didnt have a pot to
piss in” and were the lowest of the low.

Most people
got married in June because they took
their yearly bath in
May, and they still smelled pretty good
by June. However, since they were
starting to smell . .. 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 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.
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
entrance-way. Hence: 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 the upper crust.

Lead cups were
used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would
sometimes knock the imbibers 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 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 deadringer…