What questions do you have about stuff from History, or am I the only one?

[EverySongbirdSays]

Hi all, HQ here. We're moving this thread over to History Club now where Songbird will be starting a Part 2 thread for more History quizzical shenanigans

The main history thing I've been pondering for the last couple of days since the weather shifted is the history of clothes.

So... how did Early Man manage in the winter, how did they make clothes out of animal skin?

After that, I understand that clothes production as we know it today began with the industrial revolution.

But how did people manage for clothes you know before we had cotton or machinery

How/when did we realise you could knit wool to make a jumper?

I'm sorry if it's a bit of a stupid question

Has anyone got any stupid questions I might know the answer to ?

we only got double glazing last year, had central heating though, just never quite got round to the windows

My grandparents didn't have double glazing, central heating or an inside toilet, they died in 1993. I don't think my grandad ever had a hot bath, but gran had one twice a year at our house . Otherwise it was a wash at the kitchen sink, and a potty under the bed for night-time wees. About ten layers of blankets and quilts though, so it was a lot easier to go to the loo before bed, than risk needing to disentangle yourself from the bedding.

The Rhesus negative theory makes sense.

You can't publicly acknowledge the son of another man's wife as you can your unmarried mistress's

True. Also, Anne Boleyn may have had a hand in Henry not acknowledging them although Ives appears to think that rumours of them being Henry's may have been down to supporters of Catherine of Aragon. I suppose we'll never know for certain as we don't know how long Mary was Henry's mistress or even when William and Catherine were born.

wood - wouldn't that have precluded later live births?

Waves to cockblocks.

FWIW, I lived in a house with no central heating for a few years. Never again! It was bloody freezing.

I don't know enough (you are probably right) about the subject but I'm RN and had to have the dreaded injections. I

Ann Boleyn rhesus negative? She did only have one live birth though, didn't she, Elizabeth?

But also I'm rhesus negative and I think there is also something about not needing the injection if the baby is the same blood group as the mother, so maybe it doesn't preclude all live births, just those where the baby doesn't 'match'.

Not a medical person though, so I might have totally misunderstood what they told me!

Yeah, mine were all positive so the dreaded bum injection. First time I said didn't want anymore dc:( but no pain no gain:)

TheCountess - I was on another thread a while back about the royal family, and someone posted a photo of Prince Philip when he was young next to a photo of Prince Harry now. They looked almost identical. I thought it was 2 photos of the same person at first.

user147 mining was well established, but not that highly mechanised at that time.

Was Lettice naturally ginger, or only because it was fashionable to look like the Queen? Apparently, even male courtiers dyed their beards red!

Didn't Cromwell ban dancing

This is based almost entirely on a sketch I saw on Horrible Histories, so perhaps not the most reliable of sources, but I gather Cromwell and the puritans banning people celebrating Christmas didn't stop at banning dancing, Christmas carols, Christmassy food etc, but that Cromwell went as far as banning people from going to church on Christmas Day.
Which is quite extreme, given how important religion and attending church would have been to most people back then.

Actually speaking of blood etc. wasn't there a rumour that Queen Victoria might have been illegitimate because of all the haemophilia that was passed to her descendants?

Disclaimer: I'm not a dr, and it's a half remembered rumour from somewhere regarding the circumstances of her birth and claims to the throne.

No, I don't know about rhesus negative, I was asking.

I agree about Prince Harry looking like his grandfather - very much so.

Josephine - that's really interesting!

Was Lettice naturally ginger, or only because it was fashionable to look like the Queen

Good question. Actually, where did Henry VIII get his red hair? As far as I know, grandparents on his maternal side were blonde (Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville) and Henry VII has dark hair (but again, it's relying on old portraits).

Something that I've never been able to get my head round. If Anne Boleyn was innocent of the charges against her, why did she say 'It's too good for me. Jesu have mercy on my soul' - or something very similar - on being told that she would go into the Royal apartments on her arrival at the Tower?

I know that all her attendants were reporting on her and, if I recall, Kingston was a supporter of Catherine (and Mary) but yet no-one has ever disputed that it was said by her? The most that historians can manage is that she was in a state of shock at the time so saying some odd things was to be expected.

Even so, it's still a peculiar thing to come out with and something that troubles me. I'd very much welcome a reasonable explanation of it.

Red hair was prevalent in Henry VIII's bloodlines. He had Plantagenet blood from his descent from Edward III and there was red hair in that lineage. Also, the Tudor monarchs were descended from the Valois's of France (via Catherine, who was married to Henry V and then married Owen Tudor) and they might have had some red in there.
We don't really know what colour hair many of his ancestors had because portraits darken over time so Henry VII might have been lighter.

Interesting Sally

Didn't Catherine of Aragon also have red hair and also their daughter, Mary? Seemed to be a prevalence of gingers in those days

For anybody interested in childbirth pre-modern medicine, 'The Midwives Tale' by Laurel thatcher Ulrich is a fabulous read. It's a history book written around the diary of a midwife, Martha Ballard who worked in Maine in the 1800s (many references to weaving etc). Martha Ballard kept a record of all the births she attended, and made helpful notes about things like how many mothers she had lost in childbed (surprisingly few).
Martha Ballard book

This portrait of Henry VIII's mother seems to show red hair.

Not sure about Catherine of Aragon. She was the Spanish on both sides (Isabelle of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon) so I always assumed she was dark. However, there are contemporary portraits of what is thought to be here as a child, showing her as a red head. Mary is definitely painted as having red hair and she certainly looks like Henry's daughter.

Trills, thanks for that link.

I've been looking for

a book like that for yonks!

vicki, I don't think the army is anything like as elitist as it used to be. BIL went in as a squaddie and left after a few years, but one of his mates is now a full colonel.

Interesting picture of Elizabeth of York. I'm guessing that as she also had Plantagenet blood through her father, Edward IV then Henry could have got the red gene from both his mother and his father, which meant that all his children were red, especially if his wife/wives had it as well. Jane Seymour and Anne Boleyn both had Plantagenet blood too.

You don't have to have ginger hair to have the ginger gene (I have a ginger DC, but neither DH or I are red heads, for example). In a relatively contained gene pool (European nobility), it's not surprising that there was a large preponderance of red heads

Trills - sesame oil with rice flour and sugar (I think!) to make a paste that goes on top of the loaf. It's the oil that gives the taste, the sugar gives the glaze and the rice flour binds it together without flavour