Spending this afternoon imagining the simplicity of life 300 years ago…

[Gwendimarco]

Around 1700ish, pre industrial revolution.
Life would not be easy of course. Childbirth and infant mortality, no rights for women or the poor, work was hard and physical for many.

Life was hard, for sure.

But it was also simpler.

Imagine knowing (or at least expecting) that your grandchildren’s work and way of life would probably be much the same as your grandfather and great grandfather’s.

Imagine never really knowing many people or hearing much news beyond your own village.

Visiting another village could be a day’s travel, if not more. Letters would be delivered by boys on horseback - the Royal Mail isn’t invented yet.

You know where everything in your house was grown or made, and probably the person who grew or made it.

Most people are illiterate, entertainment is stories and theatre with your local community.

Spirituality and religion are how you and everyone around you unquestioningly (for the most part) navigate the trials and tribulations of daily life.

I couldn’t live that life now, accustomed as I am to the 21st century. But I do think wistfully of the slower pace and simplicity.

I think that's the basis of the Amish. Maybe go to Pennsylvania.

Good chance you wouldn't be here to think about it. Even assuming you survived infanthood life expectancy was about 37 years. Ah, the simplicity! Life, work and death. very simple.

Imagine knowing that there is a 1 in 3 chance that your child won’t live to age 5.

I’m happy to put up with a lot of complications if it means my kids will live to adulthood.

You clearly have a poor grasp of history. And I mean that seriously. Life has never been simple, unquestioning, or slower. Just different.

I will happily admit that I am no historian!
Educate me?

Like I say, I don’t deny that life was harsher in many ways.

It would be OK if you were well off but not a good time if you were poor.

I’d hate it.

Witch hunts
Infant mortality
1 in 3. chance of dying in childbirth
No effective medications and rampant infections/viruses
Public Executions
No education for most

No thanks.

Infant mortality poverty .hunger doesn't sound a great way of life children sent to work unless you were landowners or gentry life would have been tough and miserable imo.

We like to think of history as slow or timeless, but it's always changing. Off the top of my head, the 1700s saw the first newspapers, the last witchcraft trial and the seven-year war. Here's a handy timeline:

https://britain-magazine.telegraph.co.uk/carousel/a-timeline-of-18th-century-britain/

We only think of it as "slow" because it predates the industrial revolution which was arguably the second biggest change in human history (the agraian revolution was the first, allowing for city states).

I like the fact we have birth control, antibiotics and pain relief, that women have rights instead of being chattel and we can get clean water from a tap instead of a well. Unless you were very wealthy, most of your existence would have been grouped around the same set of household tasks each day.

No contraception women constantly pregnant because they couldn't say no or were religious so "going forth and multiplying " was the way of life no thank you!

Imagine living without pain relief and chocolate. Nope!

I understood that life expectancy figures in those times were skewed by infant and child mortality dragging the the average age of death right down, and that if you lived beyond 15 you may well survive into your 60s.

I will caveat that I am not by any means an expert.

No indoor, plumbing, disease, so many other things…

i’m quite old-fashioned in the way I do things, like 1990s old fashion, I am in my very early 40s, but I certainly wouldn’t want to go back to 300 years.

Most of that sounds unutterably miserable, especially:
Imagine knowing (or at least expecting) that your grandchildren’s work and way of life would probably be much the same as your grandfather and great grandfather’s.
Imagine, indeed, that your children had no chance of social mobility or bettering themselves, for those among the poor, who were the vast majority of society.

The life expectancy thing doesn't mean that adults were likely to die around that age.
It's skewed because of the higher levels of infant and childhood death.

If you survived childhood then it's likely you'd have lived to a much more normal age, in today's terms.

I don't think I'd have done very well.

For a start I might not even be here, as I needed oxygen and incubator support when I was born.

Then I guess I would have been stuck with my abusive XP since he was the father of my first child. Would have ended up with more children with him I suppose. I think societal norms probably stopped him from being violent to me in 2007, but in the absence of those, who knows.

Thinking about the children I do have - 1 in 3 not making it to age 5, well that makes sense, DS2 needed oxygen and incubator at birth as well so might have been like me. DS3 has been on steroids and antibiotics for various chest related infections. DS2 and 3 have got themselves into no end of hair raising almost-accidents which were basically avoided due to modern safety precautions.

Also I really like my washing machine and fridge-freezer

I think our forebears were pretty impressive. Imagine bringing up a family on what you could grow in the garden, plus maybe slaughter a cow for food through the winter. Knowledgevrequired of food storage, keeping animals alive in the freezing winter. Could you store enough hay/ grain/ etc Would there be enough left for the spring/summer before you harvested that year’s crops - they were amazing.

Imagine, indeed, that your children had no chance of social mobility or bettering themselves, for those among the poor, who were the vast majority of society.

Also this, and if you look back at accounts of the time, people tended to believe that they were basically inherently worth less than the wealthy landowners, (and vice versa) that God had chosen some people to be rich and some people to be poor for some unknown divine reason. So you'd have that sense of not even considering the idea of social mobility because it was unfathomable.

But most people’s lives weren’t “slower paced” - the majority of people worked the majority of the hours in the day just to stay alive. Even as just one example, far less time was spent leisurely relaxing in front of the fire doing not very much than was spent collecting the wood for fire and lighting it and keeping it ablaze. Life for anyone other than the wealthiest was absolutely non-stop most of the time.

In the 18th century "old" people would be as those aged 50 or older. Less than one-fifth of people lived beyond 50 years and the age was associated with infirmity and what we would see as age-related illnesses.
Suicide was quite common in "older" people because of the fear of having to enter workhouses too.

So no, it wasn't likely you'd have lived to a "normal" age in today's terms.

Yep sounds dreadful

Not simple dreadful

It would be hideous. Winters would be cold and bleak. Food would be boring, think how much variety we have in our diets, food from all over the world available every day. 1700s would there even have been tomatoes? The fear of your harvest going to shit. You’d starve. What happens if you’re ill? Injured? Your family is destitute and then you all die.

I don't know what was 'simple' about the sheer bloody hard graft of keeping alive & keeping your children alive. Life without antibiotics, or scans (no idea what was going on inside your body until you were dead?!) & no anaesthetic or modern dentistry.No welfare state, at the mercy of changes in politics, religion, no vote, irrational legal system, capital punishment or transportation for petty crime, dictatorial landlords who could evict you whenever they felt like it. And nonsense that people didn't know what was going on beyond their village. People travelled a lot & knew an amazing amount about the world. No legal concept of rape in marriage, limited property ownership for women so survival depended on marriage, the terror of losing your 'reputation' if you were a woman (but not a man of course). Women married off miles away, kids miles away in service with hardly any time off.....

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/articles/howhaslifeexpectancychangedovertime/2015-09-09

Life expectancy at birth is not a useful way to measure how long surviving adults might live.

Imagine never really knowing many people or hearing much news beyond your own village.

This one is also total nonsense.