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 ?

"Scotland had very close links with France so maybe the tradition came from there?"

Haven't got a clue - the recess beds are big enough to lie down in, as long as you're not overly tall, lol. I've always assumed they were about saving space and heat TBH.

This is so fascinating - yes, the box beds must have helped with lung problems from the smoke we discussed earlier!

And it afforded some privacy to the occupants. After all, there were sometimes half a dozen people sleeping in one room.

Referring to previous page and mention of DDR Museum in Berlin: I have visited that museum and we're all supposed to ooh and aah over the spartan-ness of an East German home. But... it bore an uncanny resemblance to an English home - my English home - in the 1970s. In the 70s most people were not living amidst groovy decor - they had the sofas/curtains/carpets etc that had been bought when the parents had first set up home.

Similarly it makes me hrrrmph when any 80s film/programme imagines that everyone was either wearing a donkey jacket in the miner's strike or dressed as a New Romantic or quaffing champagne in the City. Just makes you wonder if virtually every image of a historical period is just a cliche. Perhaps if a peasant turned up from the 14thC he would have to indignantly point out that No, he wasn't in the Peasants Revolt and No, he was quite free of any plague, thank you very much.

Loving this thread.
I remember Ruth Goodman saying that when she stopped making one of the Farm programs, where she hadn't washed, she noticed how everyone else smelt of chemicals.

I heard it said that in the west we smell of gone off milk.
I spent about 2 weeks in Japan and didn't really have much milk at all.
When I came back I can confirm that we do all smell of gone off many milk.

Oh, yes, good point!

It always interests me how much beds were a place for gossip and so on, in earlier times. But I suppose they would be warm, and possibly quite private really.

I went round the DDR with a German boyfriend from West Germany - he was definitely experiencing memories of his own childhood home rather than Ostalgie. It was all a bit too modern for my childhood, as I come from a family which never throws anything out, and it tends to be Victorian and early 20th century museums where I remember growing up with stuff and probably still have it.

Back to the regnal number issue, there is no regnal number used in Scotland for the Queen as a matter of practice in deference to the fact that she is the first Elizabeth for Scotland (and for the UK as pointed out by Trills.)

There was a court case that ruled the number choice to be a matter of royal prerogative, as is the regnal name. It is expected that in the future the higher of the two numbers from English and Scottish monarchs will be used, if there is a discrepancy. It won't be an issue for Charles, assuming he chooses Charles as a name, but it will be for William, if he chooses William.

There is greater sensitivity to the issue with the rise of Scottish nationalism (Former First Minister Salmond has referred to the Queen, in her presence, as "our Queen of Scots.")

Yes, there's a box bed in Wuthering Heights, oak-panelled and built against the outer wall of a room so that it includes a window, and is like a mini-room inside a room with wooden doors you can shut. Lockwood spends his first night at the Heights in it, when the ghost of Catherine sticks her tiny, ice-cold child's hand in the window, and Heathcliff dies in it.

I heard it said that in the west we smell of gone off milk. I spent about 2 weeks in Japan and didn't really have much milk at all. When I came back I can confirm that we do all smell of gone off many milk.

We do smell of our diets - look at racist remarks about 'smelly' Indians and Pakistanis, when what's at issue is the ordinary body smell of people who eat differently to the people who would have only started encountering Asians close up en masse after Idi Amin and de-Asianisation sent many east African Asians to the UK. I'm vegetarian, and it's pretty obvious to me from someone's sweat and general smell whether they eat meat or not.

And it wasn't that long ago we thought people who ate garlic smelled weird.
The old lady who lived next door to my parents also told me an anecdote about dancing with some Spanish sailors and wondering what the peculiar smell was, and only discovering years later that it must have been garlic.

RhodaBull - I like the point you make about everything being 'of its time' in period dramas. I always notice the state of the transport. Horses, for example, are invariably well matched, well looked after and well-behaved (unless the story actually requires something else) when in fact horses often had to work when they were only just capable of doing so. The same thing happens with cars, they may have the right make and model, but why are they are rarely dirty ?

yes to the press bed in Wuthering Heights.

Press is an old word for cupboard. So a linen press was the cupboard you stored linen in.

Apparently (according to google) they are called press beds, recess beds, box beds, and they can be all types shapes and sizes.

Sitting up in bed - I remember a programme about this (all coming back to me now we are talking about beds!) The early beds had string(?) tied across in a grid, like a net. The rope doesn't hold very tight, and so the mattress naturally slumps between the head and foot. This meant th enormal position for sleeping was half upright as your bum slumped in the dip.
The pictures of box beds though suggest that the head end was piled high with pillows propping you up.

Beds were very communal, you shared beds with family and strangers. I once lived in Ware, in Herts and it is famous for the largest bed, it was the bed (as in the only one) in the Inn. Everyone piled in and slept together.

When I lived in Indonesia, some local friends lived in quite a poor area of the city. In their house, there were 4 rooms, a tiny room at the front, with a few chairs, this is where you received visitors. Then 2 bedrooms one behind the other. The bedrooms were the same size as a double bed, so the house was basically 2 box beds one behind the other. Then at the back a kitchen. They slept, all women in one room, and all the men in the other. The family was 3 generations and included a newly wed young couple, who then produced a baby. I could never work out how they managed to have sex in the crowded house!

'I'm sure I've even seen one in a castle, but I'm stuffed if I can remember where.'

Blair Castle. I saw one in there.

' I could never work out how they managed to have sex in the crowded house!'

If it was anything like Tudor England, there were probably places couples sneaked off to for a quiet shag. In the countryside obviously there were the woods, but in the towns, church porches were a popular location!

(Book recommendation - Locating Privacy In Tudor England, by Lena Cowan Orlin.)

Conference

I was told a story once, by an elderly friend, of seeing horses delivering coal wagons in winter on a steeply sloping city street with cobbles. They were slipping on the ice and smashing their front legs.

People forget that nearly all of the large city buildings from previous centuries were once heated by coal in winter. Actually getting the stuff into the grates must have been an endeavour and a half.

Talking of regnal names, it was mentioned on TV last week (was it on HIGNFY?) that Charles may well use George as his regnal name in tribute to his grandfather George VI who, of course, was called Albert. George was his fourth name, just like it is Charles'.

Church porches, graveyards, hedges ...!

I also think people were much more ok with being overheard. The arguments around Arthur and Katherine of Aragon make it fairly clear that people expected to be having sex (or not) with others in earshot/proximity.

'I also think people were much more ok with being overheard.'

Similar to the original Iron Age Village tv series, back in the 70s, when several families were all living in a big roundhouse together, the interviewer delicately asked them about sex and got the answer that there was plenty of visual privacy because it was so dark, but no aural privacy....

Also makes me think of the line in the evidence against Katherine Howard, that there had been lots of 'puffings and blowings' heard in the bedroom she shared with the other girls and where men visited at night.

Plenty of dwelling places also had no doors. There might be a curtain of sorts, but that's it. Even stairs were a bit lost to England after the Romans left for a while. It was ladders to get up to an upper floor and recessed beds.

I heard it said that in the west we smell of gone off milk. I spent about 2 weeks in Japan and didn't really have much milk at all. When I came back I can confirm that we do all smell of gone off many milk.

Yes I work with people from India and that's what they have said that we smell of dairy and sometimes gone off milk.

"Horses, for example, are invariably well matched, well looked after and well-behaved (unless the story actually requires something else) when in fact horses often had to work when they were only just capable of doing so."

In fairness, while yes, they had to work no matter what, till they dropped - literally.

They were on the whole though well looked after, because they were expensive and vital.

Certain ones would match as well, carriage horses were matching, big companies using them for haulage liked them to match.

Behaviour is different, that's like any animal or child on tv, they only misbehave when it's a plot point, lol.

They're always the wrong kind of horse though, you never get the big hero riding a much more suitable for the time and area native type pony...probably because it's not as impressive looking as a big warm blood.

Can you imagine the complaints the tv people would get if they showed a broken-down old horse struggling to pull a wagon?

On a completely different issue, something that has always bothered me a little about evolution is why humans have such terrible teeth! They come through before babies really need them for mastication, they hurt when they break the gum, they hurt like nothing else (except perhaps ear ache) when they are rotten, and we only get two sets to last our whole life.

I don't think that any other mammal has such painful teeth?

Surely a tetchy teething child would have been a liability way back when? Or did they have better pain remedies that we don't have now? (Laudanum, opium type stuff?)

that's one thing I like about Poldark- the characters ride cobs! Well, apart from the ladies who are mounted on much more 'quality' horses.