Animal cruelty, black teeth, toxic water and something called pottage ruled the day in
the time of Elizabeth I; that's 1558 to 1603, which are the years of her reign for all you
history nerds.
Here are some very weird customs and lifestyles that the people of the age of Elizabeth had
to live with.
1.
Black Teeth Were The Hottest Trend Of The Day.
Royal Elizabethans including Queen Elizabeth I, loved their sweets just like we do today;
but back then only the wealthy could afford sugar and sugary sweets.
Sugar had to be imported from the West and East Indies which made it inaccessible to
everyone but that didn't stop this weird trend.
Not just for eating desserts, the Tudors employed sugar for a variety of purposes, including
salad dressing, fruit preservation, and even some medicinal treatments.
Imagine eating all that sugar in a time when dental hygiene wasn't on the top of anyone's
list; so as you might have guessed people's teeth were turning black from decay until
they finally fell out of their mouths.
We can thank the Queen for leading the way to a very weird custom.
History tells us that Queen Elizabeth I brushed her teeth with honey, of all things; and then
once sugar poured in from the Indies trade,, she switched to brushing her teeth with a
paste made from pure sugar.
This of course, led to lots of decaying teeth which she never had pulled.
Rather she lived with the pain of blackened teeth rather than go to a dentist, who she
considered to be nothing but evil barbarians.
Over time her black teeth would fall out of their own accord.
So much so, that it is said that she had lost so many teeth due to her sugary brushing habits
that foreign ambassadors claimed she was hard to understand.
And just like today, people back then followed the trends and mimicked their higher ups on
the social ladder so, you guessed it, black teeth became all the rage.
People actually took to blackening their teeth with coal to make it look like they could
afford the finer things in life, just like the queen and the rich aristocrats of the
Elizabethan times.
2.
Bear Baiting Made For Good Sport.
During the late 16th century into the 17th century in England, a popular spectator sport
took place in what were called Bear Gardens.
People would amass to watch bears, dogs, bulls, chimps and other creatures fight to the death.
The shows took place in the seamy Bankside district of London where there were several
of these so-called bear arenas.
“There,” wrote one 1639 visitor, “you may hear the shouting of men, the barking
of dogs, the growling of the bears, and the bellowing of the bulls, mixed in a wild but
natural harmony.”
The most popular was bear-baiting.
In this brutal event, a bear would be led into a pit and then chained to a stake by
its leg or neck.
As spectators cheered and placed bets, a pack of dogs comprised of bulldogs and mastiffs
would be unleashed into the arena to attack the bear causing as much torment and suffering
to the poor chained animal as possible.
During the course of the event, the bears would kill several dogs while the dogs bit
and tore at the bears legs and torso until the blood flowed and the bear reached exhaustion.
But, you can bet they didn't stop there.
The bears were pulled out of the arena and nursed back to some semblance of strength
until the next bout.
The bears were afterall, a valuable commodity so they were never killed in the course of
the ghastly sport, but instead, were thrust back into the arena again and again with some
bears becoming even minor celebrities with such nicknames as “Harry Hunks” and “Blind
Bess.”
Another famous bear, the great “Sackerson,” was even referenced by name in Shakespeare’s
play The Merry Wives of Windsor.
3.
Blood Letting Ruled The Day.
Another weird and horrible practice having to do with blood was known as blood letting.
Only this time it was not bears and other animals involved but people from all walks
of life endured this horrible custom.
The Elizabethan era was a nasty time of poor sanitation, bad hygiene and animal infestations.
Two particular diseases ran rampant through Britain and even ravaged all of Europe.
They were the bubonic plague and typhoid fever.
Major cities like London and Paris became veritable breeding grounds for these diseases
where the streets served as sewers, and vermin ran freely through the towns, infecting people
along the way.
Blood letting was an ancient practice that goes back in history to the time of the ancient
Greeks and Egyptians, roughly 3000 years ago.
Considered one of medicine’s oldest practices, bloodletting is thought to have originated
in ancient Egypt spreading into Greece and then making its way into Europe.
Based in the belief that all illnesses stemmed from an over abundance or imbalance of blood
in relation to other bodily fluids; this is one horrifying custom that was long lived.
By the time of the Elizabethan era, it was standard medical practice for various conditions
from the plague and smallpox to epilepsy and gout.
Practitioners typically nicked veins or arteries in the forearm or neck, sometimes using a
special tool featuring a fixed blade and sometimes just a piece of sharpened wood.
Whatever they could get their hands on to bleed the patient, sometimes even to the point
of death by bleeding out.
Added to this macabre practice was the use of leeches for blood letting as well.
It's just too gruesome to go into here but just know that to be sick in the Elizabethan
ere was a nasty business to be sure.
4.
Everyone Drank Up To Be Merry.
You might think that the Elizabethans were all alcoholics from all of the alcohol they
downed in a day but they had good reason to drink.
Instead of risking a life-threatening illness from all the impurities in the local water
supplies, Elizabethans of all classes most often drank alcohol rather than water.
(Who wouldn't given what we now know about the treatments for any illnesses of the day.)
Drinking water was avoided by most people as it was rarely ever clean and tasteless.
Elizabethans were aware that water harbored disease (typhoid, cholera, and dysentery)
and for this reason drank beer or ale made from malted barley, water, and added spices.
Beer from hops was the cheapest drink because, having a higher alcohol content, it could
be stored longer than any of the others; and it was affordable for the masses, but the
wealthy aristocrats had their share of this substitute for water as well.
Ale was so light in alcohol it was drunk even by children and conversely it was also strengthened,
sometimes by as much as four times the norm, for those who REALLY didn't want to drink
the water.
Those who could afford it drank wine imported from Continental Europe but whatever their
choice of alcohol, the Elizabethans had a merry good time.
5.
Sex Was Really Weird ( by today's standards, at least)..
Sex outside of marriage or for any purpose but conception, was forbidden during the Elizabethan
era.
So was anything but heterosexual relations.
For royals and aristocrats, that meant sex was only for producing an heir or two; for
the common people, it meant having lots of children to labor for the household either
at home or when put out to work.
Lots of children was the norm in those days due to the high infant mortality rate of the
period yet, oddly, any kind of pleasurable sex was so taboo that laws and rules defined
when it could, and could not, happen.
These rules surrounding when couples could and could not have sex during the Tudor period
were pretty much dictated by the church, of course.
People had to time their sex encounters around certain days and holidays of the year.
They were forbidden to have sex during Lent, Advent, Feast Days, Fast Days, Easter Week
and Sundays which makes sense since these were religious holydays but then some how
it was decided no sex on Wednesdays and Saturdays either, go figure.
Not only that but women were restricted to having sex according to bodily functions such
as menstruation, pregnancy, birthing and breast feeding.
Sounds like that didn't leave many days in a year to partake of the natural pleasures.
If that wasn't enough weirdness, the church also dictated the positions that were allowed
during coitus.
Missionary style was the number one position in their book of rules.
Anything else and threats of having a deformed child were tossed about.
One good thing the church did think up was to dictate that women were required to have
an orgasm any time two people went at it.
Something about believing that both the man and woman were equally needed to produce seed
in order for a child to be created, led them to advocate for the female orgasam.
Kind of contrary to the idea that sex was never for pleasure and only for duty but hey!
this is one instance where male control of women's bodies fell in favor of the woman.
6.
Being Poor Was A Crime.
Much of the population of Europe lived in poverty in the ELizabethan era, and while
the wealthy were supposed to either give money or food to the poor to help out their fellow
man, well, that rarely happened.
In fact, being poor was considered a crime against the crown.
Instead of being assisted by those who were better off, someone came up with the bright
idea of a workhouse (or what was called the poorhouse in Scotland) for the so-called idle
poor.
When I was growing up in a working class family in the US, my parents often referred to the
poorhouse as a place nobody wanted to end up in, and with good reason.
Going to the poorhouse in Elizabethan times meant submitting to a life of long work days,
mediocre meals, horrendous sanitation, stern masters, separation from the rest of your
family, inadequate medical care and a high likelihood you wouldn’t see your freedom
again.
Workhouses were dark, dismal places, and down right heartbreaking places to end up.
Much like prisons are supposed to deter criminalism poorhouses were set up to deter pauperism.
Being poor was deemed a crime and people were sentenced to a workhouse if found guilty of
being one of the "idle poor, meaning they were deemed able to work but pronounced just
plain too lazy to work.
And it wasn't bad enough that the sentencing to a workhouse was for both men and women,
it included children as well.
Many factors led to the entry of children into the workhouse.
An able-bodied man had to bring his entire family with him when he entered the workhouse.
Once inside, the family was divided with each member going to a different area.
Sometimes a child under the age of seven could stay with its mother in the workhouse's female
quarters and even sleep in her bed, which seems like a good thing, but that didn't last
long.
Children that were over that age (or when they grew past that age), were often subjected
to work in nearby factories whose owner's contributed funds to work houses just for
the child labor they provided.
Other children who ended up in the workhouse included 'orphans, or deserted children, or
illegitimate children, or children of the mentally ill and developmentally disabled,
or of cripples, or of felons.
Workhouses and poorhouses that were invented in London during Elizabethan era were something
to shudder at.
And the practice of condemning the poor and destitute to the harshness and stigma of workhouses
not only spread across all of Britain into Europe and across oceans to other countries
including the U S. and Australia, but continued on into the early 20th century when they were
finally abolished.
7.
The Poor Ate Pottage.
Elizabethans regularly consumed fish.
This was because Queen Elizabeth I decreed a law making it mandatory to eat fish on Wednesdays,
Fridays and Saturdays.
Disobeying it could land one in jail for up to 3 months.
This law didn't really serve the poor.
Not being able to afford buying fish at a market as the middle and wealthy classes did,
the poor were forced to catch fish from nearby water ways to stay in compliance with the
law.
The lower classes consumed fish and any other meat only on special occasions and mainly
ate cheese, bread, and a meal called "pottage," which was a vegetable soup thickened with
oats.
It was the wealthy aristocrats and the royal household that had the most vegetables and
meat.
In fact, the wealthy consumed meat in such large quantities that they frequently complained
of stomach problems.
They probably would have been better off if they had eaten some pottage now and then.
Hey, thanks for watching and be sure to leave me a comment to let me know if you would like
more videos on what life was like in the Elizabethan age!