This week, we continue with "Life in the 1500s." These "facts" seem like they could be true, but are they really? Anyhow, it's interesting reading.
Sometimes families 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 mode 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 coupe of days and the family would gather around to 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 take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, a few 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 (hence the term "the graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered "a dead ringer."
