The Royal Easement

Henry VII used a closestool for his toilet. He had a servant called the Groom of the Stool, whose job it was to wipe the royal butt. Queen Elizabeth (Henry’s daughter) took her own close stools along with her when she traveled around the countryside. Included in her traveling entourage was a close carriage – a portable bathroom.

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN ATTENTION, GENTLEMEN

WHEN OUT WALKING WITH A LADY, the gentleman THE EARL OF OXFORD ONCE MADE was expected to walk on the side closest to the street, A LOW BOW TO THE QUEEN AND, IN which would mean that he would be the one doused DOING SO, LET GO A LOUD FART. HE if someone dumped their chamber pot from one of WAS SO ASHAMED HE LEFT THE those jutting-out, upper-story windows. He would COUNTRY FOR SEVEN YEARS. WHEN also be the one more likely to be drenched in filth by FINALLY RETURNED, THE QUEEN a passing carriage. WELCOMED HIM BACK AND THEN Meanwhile, most ladies carried parasols. Even SAID, “MY LORD, I HAD FORGOT THE on cloudy days. It doesn’t take much imagination to FART.” figure out why this was a good idea.

COFFEE? TEA? CHOCOLATE? NOT YET. Look out People in China have been drinking tea for about five thousand years. But tea did not arrive in England until the mid-1600s. Below Coffee appeared in Constantinople (which today is called Istanbul) in the 1400s, it was considered probably from Arabia, and coffeehouses became popular in London and Paris good manners to during the 1600s. warn people on the street below before Cocoa beans arrived in Spain and Portugal in 1544, as gifts from the Mayan dumping the people. But chocolate was a drink reserved for royalty. The Spanish kept their contents of one’s chocolate source a secret for nearly a century. In fact, in 1657 some English chamber pot out the pirates searching for gold aboard a Spanish ship mistook the cocoa beans for window. the cry sheep droppings and burned the highly valuable cargo. The first “chocolate gardes i’eau! in house” Arrived in London in1657. french means “ watch out for the So people didn’t have many options when it came to beverages. Milk was full of water! and may have disease-causing germs in the day before refrigeration and pasteurization (the been mispronounced process of heating milk to a high enough temperature to kill many of the “gardy-loo.” the germs). Without water, milk, coffee, tea, or hot chocolate to drink, it english word “loo” makes sense that so many people opted for alcohol. may or may not have evolved from this expression.

Excerpts from POOP HAPPENED! A HISTORY FROM THE BOTTOM

UP by Sarah Albee Queen Elizabeth, who reigned during the height of the Renaissance, declared that she took a bath once a month, whether she needed to or not. Her cousin and rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, bathed daily in elderberry wine, which she believed improved the look of her skin. But her beauty regimen was suspended when Elizabeth had her executed. Some English aristocrats washed their faces with their own urine to achieve a smooth complexion.

FASHIONS OF THE TIME: DOES THIS MAKE MY BUTT LOOK BIG?

Originating in Spain in the mid –to-late 1500s, a new fashion appeared for well-to-do women: the farthingale. (It would reappear in a somewhat different shape during the next century.) A farthingale was a stiff contraption, usually a series of hoops made of wood, wire, iron, or whalebone. Its function was to extent the skirt out at right angles from the body-sometimes to a width of four feet. The skirt had to be carefully pinned a long the sides and down to the edges of the farthingale, a process that could take hours. In addition to being walking pincushions, wearers became a menace to pedestrians and coffee-table knickknacks; one king tried to have farthingales banned. It’s hard to fathom how a woman could manage to pee while wearing one of these. If she tried to lift up her skirts to sit down on a close stool; she risked jabbing herself in multiple places only to encounter the stiff barricade of her farthingale. How in the world did a woman manage to pull down under drawers beneath all that hardware? The answer is she didn’t, as women usually didn’t wear underwear beneath their skirts and linen under smocks. Most women just peed standing up.

AT LONG LAST: A ROYAL FLUSH FASHIONS OF THE TIMES: CODPIECES Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603), Henry VIII’s daughter, was on the throne and Shakespeare was busily writing plays when Sir John Harington, who happened to be a godson of the Perhaps on of the biggest queen, published a pamphlet entitled The Metamorphosis of Ajax. It’s not clear what fashion don’t in history was “Ajax” refers to; possibly it’s a pun on the Elizabethan word for the toilet-“a jakes.” In worn by Renaissance men of the pamphlet, he drew up a plan for how a flush toilet could be constructed. The queen the late 1400s to the mid- was offended, and Sir John was banished from court. Eventually, though, he was invited 1500s, the codpiece. The back. codpiece is a padded crotch covering. It was necessary That was full of dumb puns and potty humor, but nevertheless, his invention was built because the hose men wore left and installed in the palace. In fact, two toilets were built. One was used by the queen a gap at the top. To cover herself and the other by Sir John. And they worked! Sort of. the gap, a codpiece was

Sir John’s toilet was built a hundred years after Da Vinci’s toilet designs, and the two buttoned or tied on. It was events comprise the sum total of Renaissance plumbing milestones. A hundred more often elaborately decorated and years would go by before anyone tried to improve on Harington’s design. bizarrely shaped. It could be unfastened to allow the wearer to urinate. Some men had Eat, Drink And Be Wary pockets sewn into their codpieces and stored hankies, Water was often stored in lead tanks inside people’s homes. Not surprisingly, it tasted awful. So people rarely spare change and snuff in drank water to quench their thirst. This practice turned them. out to be prudent, since in addition to tasting bad, most water was also contaminated with sewage. People used Eventually “trunk hose” came water for boiling meats and for making fermented drinks into fashion, which were like ale, beer, or wine. (Fermentation is a natural chemical balloony pants ending at process that involves using yeast to convert sugar into midthigh that covered up the alcohol and carbon dioxide, which accounts for the fizz of crotch. But many men still many fermented drinks.) Fermented drinks were much wore codpieces outside their healthier choice because the fermentation process killed m trunk hose. Codpieces finally any of the germs presented in water. went out of style by the end Water tasted bad all over Europe. In Italy and France, people drank wine. In Germany and England, they of the 1500s when men started drank ale or beer. Ale varied in strength but was usually wearing breeches. made from water, malted barley, herbs and spices. Everyone drank alcoholic beverages, including Hygiene Heroes small children, Although the strength of theses beverages Most people during the Renaissance still believed that diseases varied-wine was often watered down, and beer was often, were caused by bad air or evil spirits. It’s hard to fathom how but not always, low in alcohol-every man, woman, and doctors didn’t notice a connection between bad sanitation and child averaged a gallon of ale or wine per day, and they disease, particularly when confronted with disease victims who sloshed down flagons of the stuff at breakfast, lunch, and were matted with dirt and crawling with bugs. But one French dinner. Remember, too, that people were smaller than doctor did put deux and deux together. Ambroise Pare (1510- they are today. The average peasant man in 1500 stood 1590) firmly believed that washing hands before examining a about five feet tall and weighed 135 pouounds. A patient might be a good way to reduced infection. Tragically, mondeern-day sixth grader could probably Barber see ofer r Surgeon his few people listened to him. head. So this much drink must have resulted in a For peoplecontinuous living the stsat middlee of Ages, intoxication, barber ranging surgeons form were mild more to than just people who cut hair. They know how to set bones, perform simple operations,quite impaired. and pull out teeth, although patients had an unfortunate tendency to die from shock or infection. One man might pop in for a shave and to have his teeth cleaned (by scraping the. Another might need a rotten tooth “drawn” out of this mouth. Another feeling a bit under the weather, might request to have some blood drawn, out of is mouth. Another, feeling a bit under the weather, might request to have some blood drawn, which meant slicing open one of the man’s veins with a not-very-clean knife. The barber surgeon caught the blood in a special basin and then bound up the wound. Barber surgeons were also called upon to perform operations to remove kidney stones or even to amputate arms and legs from time to time. (Sensible customers knew enough to drink a great deal of brandy before arriving, since anesthesia hadn’t been invented yet.) The patient had a fighting chance at survival if the barber surgeon managed to remove the stone or the limb quickly, and if his instruments were reasonably clean. To advertise their bloodletting skills, barber and surgeon simply pitched it into the street. Eventually, barber surgeons would advertise their shops with a red and white striped pole, which represented the blood and the bandages from surgery.