The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (71 page)

56
. Dawson,
Plenti & Grase
, p. 139, quoting Thomas Cogan.

57
. Thirsk,
Food
, pp. 25, 50.

58
. Dawson,
Plenti & Grase
, p. 216.

59
.
Port & Trade
.

60
. Doran,
Exhibition
, p. 98.

61
. Herridge,
Inventories
, p. 491.

62
. Doran,
Exhibition
, p. 98.

63
. Quoted in Dawson,
Plenti & Grase
, p. 155.

64
. Evan Jones, ‘The Economics behind the illicit wine trade in Elizabethan Bristol’; downloaded from
http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/History/Maritime/Sources/2008sfpmallet.pdf
.

65
. Platter,
Travels
, pp. 158–9.

66
. Magno, p. 146.

67
. Harrison,
Description
, chapter vi.

68
. Magno, p. 146.

69
. Andrew Boorde,
The First Booke of Common Knowledge
(1547).

10. Hygiene, Illness and Medicine

1
. Carew,
Survey
, f. 68a.

2
. Traister,
Notorious
, p. 119.

3
. Pepys records defecating twice in the chimney of a strange house in the 1660s. Quoted in Andrew Wear, ‘Personal Hygiene’, in W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds),
Companion Encyclopaedia of the History of Medicine
(London, 2 vols, 1993), ii, pp. 1283–1308, at p. 1301.

4
. Quoted in Traister,
Notorious
, p. 159.

5
. Alain Corbin, in
The Foul and the Fragrant
(Leamington Spa, 1986), says that the eighteenth century sees a ‘lowering of olfactory tolerance’. See Jenner, ‘Smell’, p. 338.

6
. Schneider, ‘Colors’, p. 112.

7
. Harington,
Ajax
, p. 84; Wright,
Clean
, pp. 71–3.

8
. Orlin, ‘Disputes’, pp. 350–1.

9
. Hoskins,
Exeter
, p. 61.

10
. Jenner, ‘Smell’, p. 340.

11
. Dawson,
Plenti & Grase
, p. 265.

12
. Pelling,
CL
, p. 82, quoting
Tudor Economic Documents
, ii, pp. 317–8.

13
. Bullein,
Government
, quoted in Smith,
Clean
, p. 209.

14
. Furnivall,
Babees Book
, p. 256.

15
. Furnivall,
Babees Book
, p. 246, quoting Boorde,
Dyetary
.

16
. William Vaughan’s ‘Fifteen Directions for Health’ (1602) in Furnivall,
Babees Book
, pp. 249–50.

17
. This idea is the main thrust of the early chapters of Vigarello,
Concepts
.

18
. Smith,
Clean
, p. 190.

19
. Smith,
Clean
, pp. 189–90 (Whitehall); Wright,
Clean
, p. 75 (Windsor).

20
.
Eliz. Home
, pp. 77–8.

21
. Information mentioned in a BBC article and personally communicated by Dr Steven Gunn of Merton College, Oxford, to whom the author is most grateful.

22
. Bullein,
Government
, f. 22v.

23
. Anon., A
Description of a New Kinde of Artificial Bathes lately invented
(c. 1600). From the collections of the Society of Antiquaries.

24
. R. I. W. Evans, ‘Dentistry’, in
Before the Mast
, pp. 544–62 at p. 554. This is from the
Mary Rose
sailors’ skeletons: it is possible sailors had a higher degree of tooth loss than the general population, as scurvy results in a softening of the gums. However, they would have had a low-sugar diet compared to many people on land, so I suspect their teeth are representative of, or better than, the sugar-loving population in Elizabeth’s reign.

25
. Scott,
EOaW
, p. 12 (quoting Hentzner); Wright,
Clean
, p. 245; Arnold,
Wardrobe
, p. 10.

26
.
Eliz. Home
, p. 17 (for manufacture of toothpicks); Arnold,
Wardrobe
, p. 111.

27
. Boorde,
Breviary
, f. xvii.

28
. Wright,
Clean
, p. 245.

29
. John Partridge,
The Treasurie of Commodious Conceites
(1584), cap. 63.

30
. Vaughan, ‘Fifteen directions’, in Furnivall,
Babee’s Book
, p. 250.

31
. Crissie Freeth, ‘Ancient history of trips to the dentist’,
British Archaeology
(April 1999), pp. 8–9 at p. 9.

32
. Boorde,
Breviary
, f. 28r.

33
.
CUH
, p. 51; Wrigley & Schofield, p. 337. According to the latter (Appendix 2.4), between August 1558 and May 1559 there were 180,766 burials. This equates to an annual crude burial rate of 216,919 at a time when the population had shrunk to less than three million due to the influenza of the previous year, roughly 72 per 1,000. The number of deaths in 1558 is given as 166,387 (53 per 1,000)
and in 1559 as 141,282 (47 per 1,000). The total, more than 307,000, is roughly twice the ‘normal’ total for two years, suggesting that influenza (and any other periodic killer diseases, such as plague) killed about 150,000–160,000 in these years. A normal year was twenty-five deaths per 1,000 at this time (Cressy,
BMD
, p. 380). 1569 – a year chosen as representative of ‘normal’ – experienced a death rate of 23.25 per thousand.

34
. The generally accepted figure for 1918–19 is 228,000 deaths, at a time when the population was forty-three million.

35
. Mortimer,
D&D
, p. 33.

36
. Dobson,
Contours
, pp. 288, 493.

37
. Slack,
Impact
, p. 174, estimates that 658,000 died over the period 1570–1670, or roughly 6,580 per year. If every year was equal, this would mean the forty-five years of Elizabeth’s reign saw 296,100 deaths. There were some terrible plague years in this reign, 1563 being referred to as a great plague of London. Slack notes that major epidemics in Bristol became rarer after 1604, and in Devon they decreased in intensity over the period, while in Essex they increased (p. 192). However, there were more plague years per decade in the provinces in Elizabeth’s reign.

38
. Slack,
Impact
, p. 128. The population of Norwich after the influx of foreign refugees, and prior to the plague, was about 17,000.

39
. Dyer,
Crisis
, p. 93.

40
. Slack,
Impact
, p. 120.

41
. Slack,
Impact
, pp. 85, 87, 90, 313.

42
. Slack,
Impact
, pp. 84, 97, 120, 151;
True bill
(1603).

43
. The figures for 1578 and 1593 are from Slack,
Impact
, p. 151. Those for 1563 and 1582 are from anon,
The Number of all those that hath dyed in the Citie of London & the liberties of the same …
(1582). The 1603 figures are from
True bill
(1603); these include the figures for the city of Westminster and other parishes near London. The figures for the city alone are 35,267 total dead, of whom the plague killed 29,402.

44
. Slack,
Impact
, p. 11.

45
. Traister,
Notorious
, p. 46.

46
. Nicholas Bownd,
Medicines for the Plague
(1604), quoted in Slack,
Impact
, p. 22.

47
. Mortimer,
D&D
, pp. 197–8.

48
. Andrew Wear, ‘Caring for the sick poor in St Bartholomew’s Exchange, 1580–1676’, in R. Porter and W. Bynum (eds),
Living and Dying in London
(Supplement to
Medical History
xi, 1991), pp. 41–60; Mortimer,
D&D
, p. 153; Pelling,
CL
, pp. 195–6.

49
. Mortimer,
D&D
, pp. 154–6, 170.

50
. The account of Thomas Smallbone is in Mortimer,
Probate
, pp. 70–2. It actually dates from a little after Elizabeth’s reign, September 1608, but it may be considered representative of sealed households elsewhere at an earlier date.

51
. Slack,
Impact
, p. 79. The last line states that ‘This he did, because he was a strong man and heavier than his said nephew and another wench were able to bury.’ John Dawson and the wench, a maidservant, also died and were buried near the house.

52
.
Morbus Gallicus
, p. 1.

53
. Edward Shorter,
A History of Women’s Bodies
(1983), p. 98.

54
. Dawson,
Jewel
(1587), p. 23v.

55
. Dawson,
Jewel
(1587), p. 40v.

56
. Dawson,
Jewel
(1587), p. 50r–v.

57
. Mortimer,
D&D
, pp. 160–1.

58
. Partridge,
Treasure
, n.p.

59
. For the increase in Elizabeth’s reign, it is
worth noting that the diocese of Exeter granted 1.3 licences per year in 1568–97 and 2.8 in 1610–27: Mortimer, ‘Licensing’, p. 51. Exeter had just eight freemen apothecaries in this reign, and fifteen were granted their freedom in 1604–46. Similar changes are to be noted in other dioceses surveyed by Haggis (Wellcome Trust: MSS 5343–7: A. W. G. Haggis, typescript lists of medical licentiates). Arthur J. Willis (ed.),
Canterbury Licences (General) 1568–1646
(Phillimore, 1972), notes two licences granted in the 1570s, five in the 1580s, fifteen in the 1590s and twenty in the period 1600–3. The minimum of two thousand for the country is estimated from (1) 500 in London in 1600 (as noted by Pelling, ‘Practitioners’); (2) the ratio of one licentiate per 8,000 population for Devon and Cornwall in the generation 1568–97; (3) the finding that there was at least one unlicensed practitioner for every licensed one, even in Kent (where many practitioners were licensed); (4) the much greater number of provincial practitioners clustered in the south-east; and (5) the number of provincial apothecaries. With regard to (2), the Devon and Cornwall ratio may be taken to be representative of the country, as most areas had a higher ratio of practitioners to population than this (Mortimer,
D&D
, pp. 42–4). With a population outside London of 3.9 million, there were at least five hundred licensed and five hundred unlicensed practitioners in the country. As the counties in the south-east seem to have had by 1620 a ratio of practitioners to population of 1:400, there must have been considerably more than five hundred extra practitioners in these south-eastern communities. In 1620 Canterbury diocese alone (with a population of about 80,000) had 190 practitioners – 170 more than suggested by the one licensed and one unlicensed practitioner per 8,000 population as noted for the country as a whole. As the population of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Essex was well in excess of 500,000 in 1570, the number of extra practitioners in the south-east outside London was (
) × 500,000 = 1,125. The real total for the kingdom, including all the empirics and apothecaries, was probably between three and four thousand.

60
. Pelling, ‘Practitioners’, p. 188.

61
. Mortimer,
D&D
, pp. 61–3. In 2009 there were 246,181 names on the UK List of Registered Medical Practitioners for a population of 61.7 million.

62
. Pelling, ‘Practitioners’, p. 172.

63
. Pelling, ‘Practitioners’, p. 174. In addition older men with sufficient experience could join by paying a fee.