IT ISN’T THAT BAD

You could say that the world is dominated by vain, power-hungry and selfishly crooked people, utterly indifferent to the appalling poverty suffered by hundreds of millions; and no one could touch you – legally at least – for saying that.

Sadly, the people of some countries do have to tolerate such dysfunctionality, with little better on offer. But, fortunately, with a vast majority of the occupants of Planet Earth in 2023 being basically decent people, the outcome is such that nearly every part of the planet is considerably better today than even the most civilised society of 500 - 600 years ago. Up until 2020 when the world was struck by the COVID-19 pandemic, soon to be followed by the unforgivable ruthlessness of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world was looking good, even allowing for the decades so damaged by world wars and religious extremism.

Purposes

The country I choose for comparison purposes, going back that half-millennium to the 1550s, is England. It was an era when musicians dazzled with the composition of six-part harmony Choral pieces and 1553 was when my school, King Edward’s School, Birmingham, was founded, later becoming so property-wealthy that we never paid a cent for our education there; nor a penny either! But that era is also known as the Terrible Tudors and I give below some of the examples of human challenges, ignorance and criminality that will fascinate all readers but also shock the tender-hearted; though I’ll leave out the really upsetting bits. It shows us that human society of the 21st century is a very substantial improvement on that. Life in Tudor England was hard and you had to be tough and lucky to survive. Average life expectancy was 35 years. There was a very high infant mortality rate; around one in seven babies died before their first birthday, with the life of a woman hugely at risk during childbirth.

Today, we say ‘life begins at 40’! In those days that’s when it had ended, or, if lucky, you had now entered ‘old age’. A person who reached 70 years was viewed as a freak, and paraded as such. Tudor England was rife with contagious diseases; regular epidemics of dysentery, tuberculosis and influenza swept through the country. Although these diseases killed huge numbers of both rich and poor, the malnourished masses were far more vulnerable.

Crazy

Medical practices were primitive and mostly crazy. In today’s world only an idiot walks down the centre of a street. But in Tudor times you had to, not least to avoid domestic sewage thrown from almost every upper window. Water supplies were badly contaminated, so people drank ale (beer). Yes, if you were lucky enough to have a school to attend, you had beer with your lunch! The rich drank wine, mostly imported, but some from vineyards in southern England. Two questions from that – the first: Was everybody drunk in those days? Unfortunately, there are no WhatsApp videos still available to check that out (lol). But there are records of skilled stonemasons, employed by the church, getting as many as 15 pints of beer (that’s the equivalent of 7 x 750 cc bottles) during each day as part of their remuneration. And that was just during working hours! It’s surprising that those beautiful old churches are still standing. The second question is: Why don’t we have vineyards in Eswatini? Or olive orchards, as wine loses its appeal in Europe.

If you were lucky enough to attend a school, you wrote with a feather. That sounds incredible but in fact the technique – sharpening the end of the feather to produce the quill pen – was still used as the writing implement as much as 300 years later. Today we have stylish pens for writing but are rapidly forgetting how to use them. In the 1500s, young students would have large distances to walk to and from school, almost always in the dark and often victims of assault. Formal security arrangements were non-existent, there being no police force till the 1800s. On the other hand, you could be executed for stealing just a few coins. Up to 11 pence you faced jail; 12 pence and above you faced execution. In 1528, Humphrey Lisle, from Newcastle on Tyne, was one of a gang being sentenced to death, one by one, for a lot more than the theft of 12 pence.

Disappointed

The gang had been brutal. The crowd in court was shocked and disappointed that the judge spared Humphrey the death penalty. He did so because the lad was 12 years old! There was so much that was different, mostly a lot worse and occasionally better than today. You could be executed for practising Catholicism. Today there is religious freedom in most countries of the world. The rich nobles of earlier times had been a law unto themselves, bribing judges and juries. The Tudors put a stop to that. On the literature side, there was William Shakespeare, a rather good playwright who, it is reported, wrote primarily to entertain; and used, for that purpose, expletives that today are fascinating. Try calling the red traffic light jumpers, ‘You bolting hutch of beastliness!’ But avoid retaliating to the city wheel-clampers with ‘Thou greasy tallow-catch’.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: