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.

Ive heard and read its haunted but ive only heard one thing.
Overactive imaginations of children evacuated here in the 2nd world war say otherwise but ive ( dog as a witness! 😆) only heard and felt a galloping horse in the fog ( that wasnt there ).
Slightly disappointed TBH.

When you write about how you would know where everything was made in your house. You would have had a mattress if lucky on a bed frame, a candlestick or two and a cooking pot, a plate and a knife, maybe a chair and table or stool or two. one set of clothes and maybe one set for best if you were better off.

We went to a wedding yesterday in a lovely hotel made from converted farm buildings, originally built in 1720. Still had all the beams and flagstone floors in places. We had the wedding breakfast in what had obviously been animal styes. It was quite weird wondering what it was like when pigs were kept in them. DH relayed how his great, great, great Farmer Grandfather died falling off a haystack in the 1800’s, we have his death certificate, he was 69.

Life was horrendous back then especially if a woman.

Visit old cemeteries and see rows of children all from the same family buried in quick succession.

As some historian once put it, life for the masses was ‘nasty, brutish and short’. IIRC he was referring to the Middle Ages, but I doubt it had improved very much for ordinary people 3 or 4 hundred years later.

I maintain that a life free from international news, ultra processed foods and pollution remains appealing.

Yes, but if you REALLY wanted to, you could do that now. Go somewhere remote and live off-grid, or at least low-tech. The fact that you don’t shows that you don't really want to. Whereas the hardships and difficulties in 1700 were unavoidable if you were poor, and many even if you weren't! The point is that you have the choice of largely avoiding those things about 21st century life that you're complaining about. So why don't you?

I heard this too on a podcast the other day - about life expectancy

I think of Anne Hatherway in Les Miserables any time I think about the 1800s. Such profound sadness and destitution

No paracetamol never mind epidurals
no heating
no electricity for light

no nice warm bubble baths

minus ten in winter - good luck

It's concerning that someone is wistful of a 'simple' life that came with absolutely no rights for women as all they did was churn out child after child and hoped at least a few survived.

No thank you. I appreciate women's rights, modern medicine, safe baby formula etc far too much to be wistful of a frankly awful time in history for women.

Well DS1 and I would have died in childbirth as I needed an EMCS due to him choking on his cord
Then DS2 wouldn't have been conceived as I would be dead.
So, I don't share the wistfulness

This.

You must have some spectacular rose tinted specs to be wistful for a time with no modern medicine, 6-10 people living in a small terraced house and the only toilet in the shed at the bottom of the garden

People would have been happy, of course they would. Yes they had to contend with all the terrible things listed but they loved, married, had longed for children, feasted/partied when they had the option, went to the pub, visited country fair, had entertainment - wrestling, boxing, cockfighting for example, had friendships and social networks.

But it is highly unlikely that you, transported back in time would be able to enjoy it as much when you are used to modern life - all the things people have listed in this thread would raise the head before long and you would be want to be back in 2023.

I agree with the poster who said that the thing to do would be to slow down your life, have a go at things like making jam or whatever but with the back up of modern medicine, a stove, internet to check your recipes etc.

I would be dead so I guess it would be simpler in that way 🙄

I knew someone who did his PhD on attitudes to the past in England and one of his many interesting findings was that the more you engaged in history related activities the less likely you were to want to actually live in the past.
This chimes with me as a reenactor. We often get visitors coming round saying wistfully how they wished they lived in the olden days and I’ll be thinking ‘I’m perfectly happy with a sanitised reproduction thank you very much’ 😂

I maintain that a life free from international news, ultra processed foods and pollution remains appealing.

Not to mention no broken washing machines, blocked vacuums, worn out iPhones and dusty lawnmowers. And flickering lightbulbs. Actually I do see what you're saying. I'm wistful about those things sometimes. It doesn't make you stupid, ignorant or naive, and it doesn't always have to be critiqued literally!

Ooo, how did you get into reenacting? I've always kind of liked the idea but no idea how people get into it. And no I wouldn't live in the past for a million dollars! I still maintain people born in the past were happy but they hadn't experienced modern mod cons! There do seem to be a lot of people in America who like to cosplay pioneer life (but without the actual hardships)

If I were lucky I would have been incarcerated in a mental asylum and people would have come to laugh and point.

No. Now may be shit but it is better. Much better.

Watch Tales from the Green Valley on YouTube. Same team that did Victorian Farm etc, but 17th century. It's fascinating.

Also OP, could you incorporate some more simplicity in your modern life? Reduce screen time, get an allotment, try dressmaking?

Yes re the dangers of pregnancy /childbirth. If you lived in a biggish village around 1600 at least one or more of your friends (similar to you, of childbearing age, would die). Even so, some pretty alarming pain-killing drugs WERE available. See the 'Sophorific Sponge' but for heavens sake DO NO try this at home: https://pubs.asahq.org/anesthesiology/article/93/1/265/491/The-Ancestors-of-Inhalational-Anesthesia-The

No re life expectancy - as previous posters have said, if you survived childhood and childbirth, you had a pretty decent chance of living until 60 or 70 or even more. (The biggest killer of pre 50s women was childbirth; similar age men died from accidents, on farms or building sites or similar, or in war).

No, as others have said, about ignorance of the wider world. People travelled long distances to and from markets, which were 'hubs' of info from really long distance travellers/merchants/pilgrims/adventurers/beggars etc. Also rich estate owners - middle ages and beyond - moved from one castle to another, sometimes for military purposes, but mostly so that the insanitary place that they had just left could be cleaned and aired and made (relatively) hygienic again. News travelled with them.

Having said all that, what astounds me and fills me with tremendous respect for past people are the immensely sophisticated intellectual/spiritual/ inner worlds that they created and relied on. They did not whinge or complain about the death or destruction that surounded them. Instead (in numerous early belief systems) they created a rationale for appalling circumstances that also incorporated a belief in individual worth and dignity plus the hope of a future better world. They refused to believe that they were just meaningless dots swirling around in some cosmic game. That was brave.

Some people might have been happy, some were incredibly productive, but many lived with a lot of sadness & pain. A lot of people had untreated mental illness at a time of horrible attitudes to mental illness. Women were considered unfit to take a full part in society because they were thought to be emotionally unstable (hysteria).The devastating pain of losing children (often over & over again), loss of a spouse or other close relative. Children losing at leadt one parent & having to live with step parents, etc Fairy stories & traditional ballads give some insight into the psychological pain of people in the past, as well as their resilience & ability to overcome it with humour.

No re life expectancy - as previous posters have said, if you survived childhood and childbirth, you had a pretty decent chance of living until 60 or 70 or even more. (The biggest killer of pre 50s women was childbirth; similar age men died from accidents, on farms or building sites or similar, or in war)

It's quite sobering to walk around old cemeteries where people who died even 100-150 years ago were buried. Many many children and young adults.

OP, I can't imagine how you seem to be unaware of all this. We learned about all this at school, including visits to local industrial museums where we learned that if we'd been 10 in the 1800s, we'd have been working there and a Victorian schoolroom museum that we visited when there was a chickenpox epidemic going round our school, so a few people were missing. The 'Victorian schoolmistress' did a great job staying in character, talking about how she hoped they'd make it, as in her world, quite a few would die due to the disease.

My great great grandfather carried out the 1841 census for his village, which meant he was unusual in that he could read and write.

Reading it is grim. Everyone in the village was related because there was little chance for people to travel further to meet someone. Mortality rates were high. My great great grandmother had 17 children, one every 18 months.

Can you imagine? Horrendous!

It’s really concerning to me that several posters who are evidently literate and have internet access are referencing, as ways of thinking about the actual past, Poldark (a cosy Sunday night tv adaptation of novels that were anything but social realist and were written 200 years after the period in which they are set) and ‘Anne Hatherway in Les Mis’.

Take me back to the eighties!! That would be perfect! Well for me.

OP your post - if you were in the room with me right now I would throw something at you as punishment for being so daft.