This is interesting.

Strange and Interesting History lesson....
something to break up your
day, 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: 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 odor. 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 dogs,
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 really 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 the floor to help
keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept
adding more thresh
until when you opened the door it would all start
slipping outside. A piece
of wood was placed in the entranceway - hence, a
thresh hold."

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 the
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
a high acid content
caused some of the lead to leach onto the food,
causing lead poisoning and
death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for
the next 400 years or
so, tomatoes were considered poisonous. Most people
did not have pewter
plates, but had trenchers, a piece of wood with the
middle scooped out like
a bowl. Often trenchers were made from stale bread
which was so old and hard
that they could be used for quite some time.
Trenchers were never washed and
a lot of times worms and mold got into the wood and
old bread. After eating
off wormy, moldy trenchers, one would get "trench
mouth."

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 "upper crust."

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The
combination would sometimes
knock them 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 thought
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
"dead ringer." And that's
the truth...(and whoever said that History was
boring?)