People's Health: Early Modern 1500-1750

What did wealthy people eat?

• beef, veal, mutton, lamb, pork, chicken, goose, rabbit, pigeon and a range of small birds. Fish was an important part of the diet too as the religious custom of eating fish on Friday

• small quantities of salad leaves, vegetables and fruit

What did people drink and why?

Wine, ale, beer and mead because they knew water could make them sick.

What was imported from Asia and America?

Peppers, pumpkins, chillies, tomatoes and potatoes all appeared on the tables of the wealthy. New drinks like hot chocolate, tea and coffee became popular, all sweetened with sugar imported from Britain's slave plantations

What was the diet of poorer people?

bread and vegetables with eggs, cheese, fish or meat as occasional treats. Pottage (a thick vegetable soup)

Why did the poor have trouble with getting food?

• A labourer's daily wage was barely enough to feed his family

• When bad weather ruined the harvest, the price of grain rocketed and labouring families struggled to buy bread. If there was a run of bad harvests, people could starve to death.

What evidence do we have of famine?

The 1623 register of burials from the village of Greystoke, Cumbria. Widespread famine like the one which occurred in 1623-24 was rare in early modern England, but hunger which weakened people's resistance to disease was common.

Where did people get their food from?

People in towns bought their food from shops, markets and street sellers

What was a problem with how food was stored?

In an age before freezers and plastic packaging, food did not stay fresh for very long, and the chances of food poisoning were high

How was coal used and how did it affect people’s health?

• Coal was unpopular because it gave off a foul smell when burnt, but when the price of coal dropped in the seventeenth century more people began to burn it on their fires

• Urban craftsmen also burnt coal in their ovens, forges and furnaces.

• The dust, soot and smoke from chimneys in early modern towns contributed to respiratory diseases.

What animals filled the streets and what hazards did these animals cause?

• Cattle, sheep and geese were herded through the streets to be sold or slaughtered

• Horse- drawn carts blocked the way and sometimes injured or killed small children

• The many loose dogs were a particular problem as their excrement contains parasites that could be spread to humans

• They could not control the rats and mice which flourished in early modern towns.

What were the streets like?

• Often streets were just beaten earth or gravel

• Which turned to dust in summer and to mud as soon as it rained

• Main streets were sometimes paved with stone or cobbled, but paved streets were often covered in animal dung

• people's clothes and shoes were often very dirty after walking in the street

What was housing like?

• oak- framed houses

• From the seventeenth century, these were gradually replaced by houses built from stone or brick

• often just one room wide and three storeys tall. Some had overhanging 'jetties' on the top storey to provide more space

• Poor families squashed into cellars and upper storeys, and sharing beds was common

• often draughty and damp- leads to respiratory diseases

Why did people not wash themselves with water?

1. If you lived near a river or pond you could always take a quick cold dip, but bathing inside was only possible if you had a bathtub, servants, a reliable water supply, enough firewood and plenty of time.

2. Soap made from the leftover animal fat of candle makers could be used for washing clothes, but it was not suitable for use on the skin. Only the rich could afford soap made from olive oil.

3. The water would often be dirty and many people believed that water could infect them through the pores in their skin.

For these reasons, cleaning the body was often a dry process, using a brush or linen cloth to rub the skin and dislodge any lice.

How did people in the countryside obtain water?

In the countryside, people could carry clean water from wells, springs or streams

How did people in towns get water?

1. Paying for water to be piped to your house- In some towns, companies constructed pipes made from elm or lead in order to bring water from distant springs. In 1609, for example, Hugh Middleton built a 'New River' which brought spring water 38 miles from the countryside outside London to a reservoir in Islington from which 30,000 houses in the city could be supplied

2. Collecting water from a conduit

3. Buying water from a water seller

Why did people drink small (weak) beer

However people obtained their water in early modern towns, it must have tasted terrible and would have been unsafe to drink

How much rubbish was produced in Early Modern England?

People in early modern England produced a lot less rubbish than we do with all our modern packaging.

Where did people put their household waste

• Town-dwellers could put household waste - food, paper, sweepings, dirty rushes from the floor and ash from the fire - outside their house in a basket or tub.

• Once or twice a week, it was collected by 'scavengers' (sometimes called 'rakers') who sold urban waste to market gardeners outside the towns

• If you forgot to put out your waste you could always tip it on one of the common dunghills that were found outside the gates of early modern towns.

What did Sir John Harrington create in 1596?

• The first flushing water closet- this required drainage and a lot a water

• Water closets were not widely used in the early modern period, although some wealthier people began to have them fitted in the eighteenth century.

What did most people use to go to the toilet?

Most people, used a privy built over a cesspit in their garden, yard or sometimes inside the house

What was the problem with cesspits?

Cesspits sometimes leaked, causing problems for neighbours

How were cesspits emptied?

• Every year or two a cesspit would need to be emptied. This unpleasant task was done by the scavengers, usually at night.

• Emptying a cesspit was an expensive job which often required barrels of excrement to be carried through the house.

• Poorer people sometimes emptied their own cesspits, creating dunghills in back yards and alleys.

What did Henry VIII issue a proclamation for In 1518?

Isolation

Why did Henry VIII’s proclamation in 1518 state?

• Bundles of straw must be hung from the window of an infected house for 40 days

• If an infected person leaves their house they should carry a white stick so people know to avoid them

What were mayors and aldermen expected to do when plague struck?

Take action such as:

• Shutting up infected houses

• Corporations had pesthouses where they kept the infected

• 1550s- Aldermen in York appoint watchmen on the Ouse bridge to stop the movement of the infected and searchers buried the bodies of the dead, clean infected houses and collect money from each parish in the city to provide food for infected houses.

When were the plague orders of The Privy council of Elizabeth I issued?

1578- Printing of the Plague Orders Issued by The Privy Council of Elizabeth I

Who enforced the plague orders?

Aldermen and The Justices Of the Peace

What were the plague orders of 1578? (Remember 3)

Justices and aldermen should meet once every three weeks during epidemics.

They should appoint 'viewers' or 'searchers' of the dead in each parish who would report on how the infection developed.

The aldermen should collect money to support the sick in their town.

Special prayers should be said in church.

Streets and alleys should be thoroughly cleaned. Barrels of tar should be burned in the streets. No dogs, cats or tame pigeons should be allowed on the streets.

The clothes and bedding of plague victims should be burned.

Funerals should take place at dusk to reduce the number of people attending.

Infected houses in towns should be completely shut up for at least six weeks, with all members of the family, sick or healthy, still inside. Watchmen should be appointed to enforce this order.

What did the Plague act of 1604 do?

• Extended help to sick families

• Allowed towns to collect money from parishes within 5 miles and the whole country if necessary

• A plague victim who left isolation would be severely punished, they could be hanged and a healthy person mingling with others could be whipped.

What policy was implemented in most towns by the seventeenth century?

Isolating and providing food for the sick in isolation

What else did towns do to prevent the spread of plague by 1604?

Build more pesthouses

What did Cambridge do in 1665

• They had people show a certificate of health to allow them into the town.

• Stray cats and dogs were killed

• Searchers hired

How many bodies were there in churchyards and plague pits by December 1666 in Cambridge?

920

What rules did York’s aldermen enforce in the 1500s?

• Pigs had to be kept in a sty

• Household waste could not be put out for the Scavengers until 7pm

• If you cesspit was overflowing you could pay a scavenger to clean it for you

• Anyone who made a dunghill in their yard had to pay a fine

• People fined for throwing urine and excrement onto the street at night

• People could not build their privies over the Queen’s Dike

• All householders had to clean up the street in front of their property 2 times a week

• Nobody could block gutters

Why did local authorities improve the centres of their towns after 1670?

To cope with the growing number of people, carriages and carts

How were the centres of towns improved?

• Large terraced houses where wealthy people lived

• Streets paved with stone

• Oil-burning street lamps

How and why did poorer neighbourhoods contrast with richer neighbourhoods?

• Poor neighbourhoods were unpaved and unlit

• People still had to etch water from a conduit or water cart

What did a huge growth in the number of alehouses lead to?

Excessive drinking

When did town councils and justices make it illegal to sell drinks without a license?

In the 1550s

Why did alcohol become a big problem after 1660?

Because many poor people started drinking spirits rather than ale or beer. This was a particular issue in London where many 'dram shops' opened, selling cheap spirits such as brandy and gin

Why did the government ban imports of gin from Holland and what happened as a result of this?

To encourage distillers in England

Gin became incredibly cheap and there was a huge increase in gin drinking by London’s poor

What was the Gin Act of 1729 and was it effective?

Gin distillers had to pay a tax of five shillings on each gallon of gin they produced and gin sellers had to buy an annual licence costing £20. The new law had little effect - it was impossible to enforce the 1729 Gin Act because there were so many small gin shops.

What was the Gin Act of 1736 and how effective was it?

• Licenses went up to £50

• Tax went up to 20 shillings

• Act could not be enforced as it was easy to hide what you did from authorities

What was the 1743 Gin Act?

Restricted the sale of gin to alehouses which already sold ale, beer and wine. Gin consumption still continued to increase

How many gallons of gin were Londoners consuming a year by 1750?

11 million

What was the Gin Act of 1751?

Anyone caught selling gin illegally was imprisoned and whipped for a second offence. A third offence could result in transportation. Gin drinking was hugely reduced.

What diseases were caused high mortality rates in Early Modern Britian?

• Typhus: spread by lice

• Dysentery, typhoid and diarrhoea: Disease in digestive tract usually from infected food or water

• Syphilis: A sexually transmitted disease

• Diphtheria, measles and scarlet fever: Diseases that attacked children under 5

• Influenza

• Smallpox

Why was the Great Plague terrifying?

• It happened frequently, with major outbreaks every twenty years

• Victims died within 5 days

• Flourished in summer

What were some of the symptoms of the Great Plague?

• Heart and kidneys failed and victims became delirious

• Body temperature rose to 40 degrees c

• Headaches, vomiting, thirst, pain and buboes

What was the most common area for the Great Plague to be?

Mainly in towns with rats

What did people think the Great Plague was caused by?

• God

• Miasma

• Starts and comets

• Astrology

When did the plague never return to England after?

1667

Who were plague doctors?

• Their beaks had sweet smelling herbs and spices to protect them from miasma

• Their clothing was waxed so fleas couldn’t jump on

• They used a staff to examine people

What were some local responses to the Great Plague?

• People prayed and fasted

• Wealthy people ran away while the poor stayed

• People still continued to believe miasma was the cause and so did things like carry sweet smelling flowers or burn barrels of tar

• People were very wary to visit the sick in any way

• The plague divided communities

What happened to the number of death to the Great Plague in summer months?

The number of deaths increased rapidly

What percentage of a community could die from the Great Plague?

10%

What areas of towns were affected most by plague?

The poorest areas

How high could the Death rate be in the population due to the Great Plague?

A third or more of the population