Life in the 1500s

The next time you wash your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just right, consider how things were in the really olden days — back 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 beginning again to have noxious body odor, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide that odor. The custom of carrying a bouquet of flowers at a wedding remains today.

Baths consisted of a large wooden tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of being the first to enter the clean water, followed by his sons, in order, then the women, and finally the children. Last of all were the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could easily lose an infant in the tub. From that we derived the ancient admonition, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

In the 1500s houses had thatched roofs with thick straw piled high, with no wooden support underneath. It was the only place animals could get warm, so all the cats and other small animals such as mice and bugs, lived in the straw on the roof. When it rained the roof got slippery and sometimes the animals would slide off roof. That experience gave us the saying, it's raining cats and dogs.

With a straw roof, there was little to stop unwanted things from falling into the house. This posed a great problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could dirty a nice clean bed. To deal with this problem, the ancients added large posts to the corners of each bed and hung sheets over the top of the posts which gave them some protection. That's how four poster beds became fashionable

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt covering the floor. That's what's meant by dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors that became slippery during foul weather, so they spread thresh, otherwise known as straw, on the floor to help keep a firm footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh to the floor until, when they opened the door, the straw began blowing outside. A piece of wood was fastened to the floor at the entrance which we now call a thresh hold.