As far back as the16th century, tanneries used human urine to tan animal skins, so extremely poor families used to all pee in a pot, which was then once a day, taken and sold to the local tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were referred to as"Piss Poor"
But worse than that....were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot......it was said that they "didn't have a pot to piss in" and were considered to be 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 a bit, brides would carry a bouquet of fragrant flowers to hide any body odour.
Hence the custom today of a bride carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with water heated on a stove or a fire in the yard. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the older sons and men in the household. Then it was the turn of the women, children and 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!"
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 around the 15-1600s:
Houses had thatched roofs of thick straw piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats, dogs and other small animals, 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 to afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor of the poor houses was just 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 threshold/thresh-hold..
Back in the early 17th century, 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 the lead to leach into the food, causing lead poisoning death. This apparently 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. If you were someone of independent means, you were said to be 'Upper Crust'.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the drinkers 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.
In England, cemeteries were normally old and small. So when local folk started running out of places to bury people, they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, approx 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside lid 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 be employed to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell.
Hence,, someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.
In Victorian Britain, the lowest form of accommodation was access to a shed, where for one penny a night, you could fall off to sleep bent over a rope.
This was the usual resting place for drunken sailors who had spent their money drinking all day.
It is thought (Sussie Dent from channel 4’s Countdown) that this is where the term ‘hangover/hungover’ came from as these sailors were hung over all night.
My dads favourite piece of cockney rhyming slang, was the wrongful definition of the origins of the word 'Kettle' for a watch.
Most people believe it comes from Kettle and Gotch, the watch makers… but it actually comes from the term Kettle and Hob which isn’t really rhyming slang for the watch so to speak, but for the Fob on the other end of the chain.
Dad explained to me as a small child that it actually isn’t cockney at all, it comes from the fact that in olden days, families used to hang their kettles on a chain over their fires.
When wearing a fob watches and chain became fashionable in the early 17th century, many poorer ‘gentlemen’ couldn’t afford a watch or a jewelled fob….and so just rested a chain across the pockets of their waistcoat.
Their friends would then joke "what you got on the end of that chain…a kettle?".
Now, whoever said History was boring?
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