I wanted to share it with all of you, but before I posted it, I thought I’d make sure it was accurate - I mean I thought the Victorian age is in the 1800′s to early 1900′s. That confirmation turned into hours of investigation. It’s true, history is not boring!

The email I received was called “Facts about the Victorian Age”. There was a ton of people who received and disputed this letter!  A lot of people got the exact same letter entitled “Facts about the 1500′s” and here is an example.

Facts about the 1500′s.
by Halvor Moorshead

For the last couple of years an item has been circulating around the Internet about so-called Facts about the 1500s (sometimes 1600s). A quick search using the search-engine Google pointed to over 400 websites that were carrying this piece. Interesting reading. The problem is that most of it is completely invented. The original author is not credited in any of the versions we have seen. Here we present the original version and our attempt to correct the errors. (The truth will be written in italics.)

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.
There is no evidence that June was a popular month to get married until the last 100 years. Flowers have been associated with weddings since the earliest times, probably as symbol of fertility.

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.”
This explanation makes no sense when you consider the expression and its meaning. Additionally bathing was so rare that there were no bathing tubs.

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.”
The phrase “raining cats and dogs” had nothing to do with animals living in thatched roofs
A believable explanation is given in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: mythology associated the cat with rain and the dog with wind.

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.  Canopy beds may have originated as a means of keeping out flying insects but if you think about it, people rich enough to afford a canopy bed a huge investment in the 1500s would also be living in homes with proper ceilings.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying “dirt poor.”
Probably correct except that the expression is American and from centuries later.

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.”
The term threshold predates the 12th century according to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. And isn’t wet straw at least as slippery as wet slate?

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.”
The phrase “peas porridge in the pot nine days old” had nothing to do with life in the 1500s. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, this chant was not used before 1762.

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.”
We couldn’t find a convincing explanation for chew the fat. One was that it was of US Civil War origin, another that it was from Cockney Rhyming Slang meaning “have a chat” and rhyming slang came was not known until after WWI.

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.
It is true that tomatoes were thought to be poisonous until about 1830, however tomatoes were extremely rare in Europe in the 1500s and in any case are not acidic enough to affect pewter.

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.”
The expression trench mouth was first used during WWI.

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.”
This one may be true; the term upper crust does predate the 1500s.

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.”
A wake refers to what the visitors do, not what you expect the corpse to do! In this context a wake means a watch or a vigil. It originated from an all-night watch kept in church before certain holy days. It later became associated with fairs and revelries held at such times. Some towns in the north of England still observe local holidays called wakes. (Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable).

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 re-opening 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”.
Saved by the bell is a boxing term dating from the 1930s and dead ringer is from horse racing about 1890 and refers to a horse or somebody who looks virtually identical to someone else.

And that’s the truth, whoever said that history was boring!
History is not boring and the real explanations are just as interesting and not hard to find either!

This article originally appeared in our February/March 2002 issue.

I am surprised that I believed this email, hook line and sinker! It’s like I wanted to believe the stories! It’s fun hearing how it made it’s way around the US over the years~ I wonder how many others believed it! I am always amazed at the Power of the Written Word! Have you ever believed something like this?

Our Strong and Powerful Women’s Club was for us, the beginning of living in the Now!

Tell me how your journey of awareness began.  Do you feel happier life living in the Now?

I was good at what I did. I knew the material, I had the attention of the crowd. I educated the boys in the Juvenile Detention Center about the devastating effects of domestic violence. I talked about the cause, the pain that both the victims and perpetuators were feeling, and set goals for the boys.

My goal was to help them get out of the cycle of abusive behavior and heal from the abuse they’d experienced. I knew full well that most of these boys were abused and abusive.
 
Jeanne called me to her office after the class, to debrief. She asked me how I felt about the class. Of course I told her I thought it went well. The boys continued to pay attention, right until the end. I was sure they must have gotten information at least in their ears, it would take many more times (if ever) until it became a part of their lives.

Then the blast hit. Jeanne said, “It looked to me like you were flirting with the boys.” I couldn’t believe it! I wouldn’t do that! I was 25 years old! These boys were still in high school! I was a happily married woman, with 3 children! I would never even think about such a thing!

That is the truth! I would never have consciously thought of such a thing! As we talked about it, I couldn’t deny it! The way I commanded a crowd of hormonal boys was to keep their attention through my mannerisms, my jokes, my smiles and an occasional wink. As I felt the discomfort washing over me, sitting in the office with my boss, I was so embarrassed!

I felt so guilty! I couldn’t help it, I started to cry! (Later, I learned that is another coping strategy). I had been so proud of myself, teaching these boys things that I was sure they had never heard before, (another thing that I learned, they knew too much and how to hide it!)

This consciousness, this awareness of what I’m doing, being able to be honest with myself, has allowed me to live in peace and happiness! I am continually growing, mastering my observing skills! I am honestly learning, as Katie Freiling said, it’s all about ‘Witnessing Consciousness’. This is reality! Yes!

When I graduated high school, I decided it was time to be honest.  I committed to myself and to God, to tell the truth.  The (true) story I tell my children to teach them about being honest happened in college:  I had an appointment to see a church leader after a public meeting.  We were planning to meet in the foyer as soon as the meeting ended.  I totally forgot, and went straight home.  It wasn’t until the next day, when I saw him that I remembered!  My first and usual reaction was, “I looked everywhere for you!  I waited for about 15 minutes, then decided I’d just catch up with you at church.”  Remembering my commitment to be honest, I said, I’m sorry, I forgot.”  His response was, “Don’t worry, Linda, I saw you leave!”

  Can you imagine?

When developing the habit of telling the truth, I learned there are ways to be honest and not to not hurt people’s feelings at the same time. “I like the color of your dress, it matches your eyes”, Instead of the lie, “I love that dress!”

While in College~
I was a volunteer as a group therapist at Central Utah Sexual Abuse Treatment Program. I started to observe people who were, and were not honest with themselves. I spent a lot of time listening and reading about honesty. I learned what it means to be honest.

When I became 100% honest with myself

I remember I got a C on a report about my life experiences regarding my parent’s divorce – I explained that my parents just didn’t match, they were married right out of high school and they did what so many people do – they were physically attracted to each other, mistook that for love, and got married. They raised two children, and in the process, realized they have different goals and desires for life. They were responsible enough to wait until my brother and I were grown, before they separated. Dad, who wanted to retire to his home town in Michigan, and Mom, who wanted to live a life of travel and adventure set out to live their dream lives. They remarried their match. Now I have two step-parents who are perfect! As I wrote a very nice paper, my teacher saw that I wasn’t being honest with myself. Perhaps I wasn’t. But, about their divorce, I was.

Rationalizations:

The 100% honesty thing came in small increments. As a young adult, I would admit, really admit when I was choosing to do something that was against what I believed in. For example, I didn’t want to be addicted to any thing. Even in high school, I didn’t drink alcohol or smoke, my addiction was food, junk food. I wanted to be totally free of all addictions. I wanted to have complete control of myself. When I would eat the cookies after telling myself I wouldn’t, I chose not to rationalize by saying that there is nothing wrong with sugar. Of course, it is heavily debated. The vast majority of people, at least in my life, think that the only problem with sugar is that when people eat sweets, they feel full enough that they don’t eat the “healthy” foods that they need. It makes an easy rationalization to keep eating the junk food. For years I would continue to eat large quantities of cookies and candy. I didn’t have weight issues, so it was easy to eat too much! I ate the junk, but I always knew I was making the wrong choice. When talking about it with my friends and family, they wouldn’t admit that it was wrong. Even when looking at the research, they wouldn’t admit it. I knew what I was doing, and I’d admit it. My husband would say, why is it so important for you to admit it, you’re still eating the cookies. I believe that being honest about it is the first step in overcoming.
It wasn’t until 15 years later that I over came the addiction. That’s another story. The story is the proof that it can be done! We can overcome our additction to food!