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David Cordell
This was in a genealogy publication; reproduced with approval of the author.
Lifestyles in the Seventeenth Century
19 Jul 2024
Warning: You might want to hold your nose before reading this.
We all have read history books about the brave and noble heroes who helped shape today's world. Hearty explorers, brave immigrants, exemplary church-goers and the like did indeed create today's modern world. Yet these same history books rarely describe the everyday world of those heroes and heroines. Sometimes their lives were not all fame and glory. In fact, their lives were often repulsive by today's standards. I thought I would focus for a bit on everyday life in the 1600s in Europe, in England, and in the newly-created colonies in North America.
In fact, knowledge was a scarce commodity in the seventeenth century. It is difficult for us to comprehend just how ignorant people were. Most Europeans knew nothing about geography and didn't know or care what happened on the other side of the horizon. The majority of people never traveled more than five miles from their place of birth although there were a few more adventurous soles in those days.
Only a small number of people could read or write or even count beyond one hundred. Even the kings of the seventeenth century were mostly illiterate. Most common citizens could not tell the time of day, and only a few could read a calendar. Most of our ancestors of those times did not know what year it was, much less when their own birthdays occurred. You will notice that official documents of the day usually refer to a person as being "about 45 years old," for example. The reason is that few people knew their exact age. Birthdays went unnoticed by a population that could not read a calendar.
Symbols were used to identify status and trades in the days before many people could read or write: eminent people had coats of arms to identify themselves, especially in battle, where it was important that they didn't get skewered in mistake for someone else. Tradesmen had more-or-less standardized signs; the barber/surgeon's red-and-white striped pole, for example, identified his calling. Pawn shops (very common in those days) displayed three spheres suspended from a bar. A tailor shop/clothier often had a wooden scissors and large needle carved in a wood panel for a sign.
The same people knew nothing about almost everything. They had no idea how their bodies worked - why they breathed, urinated or defecated, felt hungry or sick, or had a temperature. No one understood why they gasped for oxygen after heavy exercise. In fact, no one knew what oxygen was, not even the most learned men of the time.
People lived a cold, hungry, and uncomfortable existence. Central heating was unknown, even amongst the wealthy. Kings, queens, and members of the nobility lived in cold, drafty, stone castles. The peasants lived in equally cold and drafty huts.
Filth lay all around, and disease lurked in the hovels that most people called home. In cities such as London and Paris, raw sewage ran in the streets. Chamber pots were emptied into the streets in front of homes and shops or in the side alleys. There were no sewers. Horses were everywhere, as was horse manure. One can only imagine the aromas on a hot summer day.
For just one example, read the Wikipedia entry about “The Great Stink” in the summer of 1858 in London at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink. Keep in mind that 1858 wasn’t all that long ago; things were much worse in earlier years.
Wealthy individuals carried handkerchiefs drenched with perfume to hold to their noses when the aromas were especially bad. Common folks could not afford such luxuries as perfume or even handkerchiefs.
Along with all of this came a large population of flies, rodents, and other disease-carrying pests. Clean water was unheard of in the cities and wasn't all that common even in the countryside. Most people drank tea or beer as their preferred beverage as both were much safer than the available water of the time. With the high germ count and lack of sanitation, it is a wonder that anyone survived, especially as no one at the time knew what a germ count was.
Ever since the Romans had departed from Britain centuries before, people rarely washed themselves. The churches considered it un-Christian to bathe. Eventually, Christians were prohibited from bathing naked and, overall, the church began to not approve of “excessive” indulgence in the habit of bathing.
Queen Elizabeth I was ahead of her time in that she had a flush toilet installed, and she wrote in 1598 that she even bathed once a month, whether she needed it or not. The vast majority of commoners washed up very rarely. This was due both to a widespread fear of catching the Black Plague in public baths and to a general shortage of wood for heating water throughout most of Europe at the time. Members of the upper classes tended to cut down their full body bathing habits down to around a few times per year, striking a balance between risk of acquiring a disease from the bath versus body stench.
Most citizens, especially the men, never bathed. During this time, people tended to restrict their hygienic arrangements to just washing hands, parts of the face, and rinsing their mouths. Washing one’s entire face was thought to be dangerous as it was believed to cause catarrh (an excessive build-up of thick phlegm or mucus) and weaken the eyesight, so even this was infrequent.
Many never bathed at all. The majority of the population just stank to high heaven. Actually, there was a practical reason for this: by the Renaissance, Europe's water supply had become contaminated with sewage, and bathing could expose one to disease. Perhaps it was safer to not bathe.
Many people did wash their faces and hands frequently but rarely washed their entire bodies. Most only owned one set of clothes, and they ate in those clothes, slept in them, and labored in them for months without washing or changing the garments.
As to toilets, I'll leave that to your imagination. In any case, flush toilets simply did not exist in the Seventeenth Century. Unlike the common myth, flush toilets were not invented by Thomas Crapper. Instead, The flushing toilet actually was invented by John Harrington in 1596. However, flushing toilets did not become popular until after Crapper set himself up as a sanitary engineer, with his own brass foundry and workshops, in 1861. In the 1880s, Prince Edward (later Edward VII) purchased his country seat of Sandringham House in Norfolk and asked Thomas Crapper & Co. to supply the plumbing, including thirty lavatories with cedarwood seats and enclosures, thus giving Crapper his first Royal Warrant. Britons then started to take notice of this new-fangled flush toilet. In the United States, the first flushable toilet was installed in the White House was installed in 1825 but very few Americans knew about it. In the 1850s, the wealthy Davis family of Natchez, Mississippi, installed something few other Americans possessed: indoor hot-and-cold running water and an indoor toilet.
Of course, dental care was unknown, and most adults had rotten teeth or no teeth at all. Many Europeans who could afford spices chewed cloves in order to mask the smell of decaying teeth. Most people, however, could not afford the luxury of cloves.
Underarm deodorants had not yet been invented. Indeed, nobody ever thought there was a need for such deodorants.
Think of the dirtiest-looking and most unkempt characters you have ever seen in a movie depicting seventeenth century England or North America. The reality is that most people looked like that or worse. Yes, that includes your ancestors and mine.
While modern movies all depict Europe's royalty as living in spotlessly clean castles and attending elegant balls with obviously well-scrubbed courtesans, history suggests a different scene. In fact, even the royals did not bathe regularly. Perfumes drowned the stench of a courtier's lady. Hair was often uncombed; a powdered wig covered it in any case.
Rush Floors Made People Vulnerable To Infection And Disease
The homes of the working classes in medieval times were mostly dirt, although hard packed from years of use. Wealthier citizens had floors made of wood while royalty mostly had stone floors. In most homes, rushes (reed-like plants such as cat-tails) and threshes (straw) were used to cover the floors. That's where we got the modern word threshold, meaning a doorsill that help keep the threshes inside the room rather than escaping outdoors.
We might think the frequent replacement of rushes or threshes would keep the room sanitary. However, Erasmus, a Medieval Catholic scholar, wrote this first-hand description of rushes: “Rushes [are] occasionally renewed, but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left undisturbed, sometimes for twenty years, harbouring expectoration, vomiting, the leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps of fish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned.”
Refrigeration obviously was unknown, and Louis Pasteur had not yet educated the world about the dangers of germs. Nobody knew what a germ was. Most food was handled in a manner that would be offensive today. Spices were used to kill the smell and flavor of decaying meat – which was then eaten as a matter of course.
One experience that has been heavily studied is the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620, eventually landing in what is now called Plymouth. The ship was like a floating slum. The crowded living conditions, the meager diet, never being able to bathe or stay dry, and having to wear the same wet, cold clothes for two months all undermined the health of the Pilgrims. Most of the passengers were coughing and sick. The Mayflower was built as a cargo ship, not as a passenger ship with proper accommodations. The Pilgrims simply huddled on deck or in the holds below, often sleeping with the pigs, goats, and poultry on board for warmth. There were no beds. Temperatures in the North Atlantic in November and December drove most of them inside, into the crowded holds, where people and livestock crowded together for warmth. Below decks, any person over five feet tall would be unable to stand up straight. The maximum possible space for each person would have been slightly less than than today’s size of a standard single bed.
The air in the crowded quarters must have been nauseating at best and usually simply staggering. The passengers were never warm and dry.
The Pilgrims thought it was dangerous to wash their bodies and did not change clothes or bathe during the 66-day journey aboard the Mayflower. And, at the time, many people thought that too much fresh air was bad for you.
On the long voyage the filthy smell probably was incredible. There were rats and cockroaches on board. The flour and ship's biscuits went moldy and produced weevils and maggots. Some ate their biscuits only when it was dark, so that they need not see the bugs in their food. There was no bathroom - only buckets. They had no privacy. The tossing and rolling of the ship in rough water made most seasick, adding to the stench. Seawater kept their clothing and blankets wet through the entire voyage. Temperatures probably were in the thirties to fifties (Fahrenheit) in the North Atlantic at that time of year. Try to imagine living in the same cold, wet, dirty clothes in those constant unheated conditions for more than two months.
Upon arrival in the New World, the Pilgrims' first houses were built of wattle (a mixture of straw and mud) and clay. These hovels had floors of dirt or mud and were heated only by a small and often smoky fire. Nobody had a stove. Given the privations of the late autumn voyage and the lack of food while living in those cold and filthy shanties, it is not surprising that half the Pilgrims succumbed to disease the first winter.
Surprisingly, the North American natives were much cleaner in their living habits. They bathed regularly when the weather allowed. Unfortunately, Squanto’s efforts to get the settlers to bathe met with little success.
If truth be told, today's "living villages" at Plimoth Plantation, Colonial Williamsburg, and elsewhere are not historically accurate when it comes to hygiene. For one thing, these tourist attractions could never find re-enactors who would work in such conditions. Next, the local board of health would shut the exhibits down before the first tourist was allowed to enter!
Yes, our ancestors were hearty explorers and brave immigrants. In fact, they perhaps were heartier than we can realize. Of course, the lack of sanitation also contributed to the high rate on infant mortality. Only the strongest could survive in those conditions.
Reviewing the personal hygiene of the times may be an unpleasant subject, but such studies do increase our awareness and admiration for those who endured. We also can better appreciate the modern world in which we now live.
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