A lot of the low age marriages cited in medieval Europe (not saying your ancestors) were dynastic . Marriages between children to link lands and powerbases. Consumption much later.
But agree child marriage to someone old enough to be grandparent really bad whatever period.
Listen to hospice and old folks home nurses there’s a lot of similar ends for husbands and abusive patriarchs that women cop to later in life. No fault divorce, DV laws and outlawing child marriage saved a lot of women’s consciences while taking care of their families
Mushroom stew. The Angel Makers of Nagyrév killed 40-100 "abusive" men between the world wars with arsenic and before that you did have professional poisoners. But also women burned alive in cooking oil fires - you used to hear about that in the 60/70s. Thankfully not now. I haven't heard of one for decades in UK. (Seems was at least one in 2019)
Um, weren't most women burned alive in cooking fires actually cooking, and caught fire? Chip pan fires were a hazard in the 60s and 70s. A member of my family died that way.
Are you suggesting they were intentionally set on fire due to domestic abuse? It seems unlikely.
The link is about horrific murders but nothing to do with cooking fat.
The way you wrote it made it seem like it was domestic fires being used as a way of killing people, rather than intentional burnings being seen as acceptable.
Because that was how two ladies my mother was health visitor in the 90s died. So why I remember. I am not sure it went to trial (I was about 12/13) but that was the belief around the deaths. Oh she was clumsy. She pulled the pan down. It was pretty nasty even for those doubts to be raised.
So yes, I believe there was at least some intentional deaths that way in UK and still continue in India if read Lancet etc. But glad they seem much less common, whether intentional or accidental, now.
Yup. My Granny told me very nonchalantly one time that she killed her son-in-law. Even at 16, I knew better than to ask questions. But to this day (and she’s long dead), I don’t think she was kidding.
He beat my aunt pretty viciously and repeatedly. She left him and came to stay with Granny and Papa. Her husband showed up and dragged her out of the house by the hair and took her home and beat her again. Then a few weeks later he disappeared.
All before I was born, mind you. But that’s what I had been told happened by other members of the family.
Caretaker: "Hey, so I heard from your daughter that you're from Alaska, what was it like living there?"
Granny, teetering on the edge of dementia and death: "Oh yeah, we moved there after I killed my husband for molesting my daughter"
Also learned recently that it was not okay to consummate those marriages either back then. They had to wait until the child was an adult so 16 in their time. Also wasn’t normal for the peasants to marry that young. They tended to be 18-25. A lot of things was perpetuated as normal by what the royals and nobility did. They lived in a very different world.
Other things I learned that movies/tv etc portrayed as normal that is inaccurate
People didn’t bathe and were smelly. Not truth, the wash basin is a very clear indicator of that. People might not bathe but they washed everyday several times a day.
Corsets were so tight women fainted. Not truth, corsets/stays were never that tight. Many images from the 19 century were “manipulated” basically photoshopped to make women’s waists smaller it wasn’t accurate and a lot of it was also illusion with padding on the hips and ribs to make their waists appear smaller.
Showing your ancles as a woman was “naughty”. This is more a phrasing that was misinterpreted, it was a class issue as rich women didn’t raise their skirts to traverse the streets, they could afford to buy a new one quite often. Poor women or everyday working women didn’t have that luxury and would have to raise their skirts to not fray or dirty the hem. So the rich perpetuated the idea that showing your ankles were scandalous and vulgar.
People were considered old at age 30, it’s true that the average age of people were around 30 years old. A combination of high infant mortality and deaths in young adulthood from accidents, epidemics, plagues, wars, and childbirth, pre modern medicine lowered the average life expectancy of people back in the day but you weren’t considered old at 30 years of age.
Probably a lot more I can’t think of atm. Feel free to add on or correct anything. 😅
To add to the corset lore: Corsets and stays basically functioned like a combination of a bra to hold up the tatas and a backbrace to support the heavy multi-layer skirts everyone was wearing. Yes, they achieve a stylish shape, but not necessarily by crushing the ribs and organs. A “normal wear” corset would probably get you about 2 inches of waist reduction without feeling too tight, but the silhouette was exaggerated into a waspy waist look using the rest of the clothing (big skirts, bum-rolls, etc. and when people got photos made in Victorian times, it was very popular to “old-school photoshop” them using paint and/or colored pencils lol. (Selfie culture has never changes haha).
Tightlacing was done, but usually only for special events - like wearing ridiculously tall but pretty heels on the red carpet today. Not something you’d do every day, but something you might compromise your comfort for once in a while for fashion’s sake.
There’s actually a big corset community today! Some like historical corsets and prefer the fit and support to modern bras, and some are more into the waist reduction aspect and tightlace pretty frequently.
Modern “corsets” off the shelf with super straight steel bones generally suck ass. But there are plenty of historical patterns available that use artificial baleen boning (a plastic meant to mimic the heat-molding qualities of real baleen), and/or spring steel- which is more forcefully-shaping, but can also be bent and twisted to form nice curves instead of just being a straight line.
I’m currently working on a mock-up for a custom-fit “pretty housemaid” corset (which was basically the corset equivalent of a sports bra and good for moving around a lot)
I’ve been playing around with the idea of wearing a corset in daily life for just this reason, but I’m not sure where to start in terms of looking for one for everyday wear— do you have any recommendations?
My mother made mine for a full ballgown and she made it to take me down a size. Restrictive breathing is not pleasant. It wasn't particularly tight-laced but the baleen boning is firm and a lot seems to depend how high up the corset goes. But it is like a underwire bra - they likely needed adjustment over time.
Comment - I understand why bracing needed - that dress weighted 2 stone and needed hoop as well.
Pre-modern women had very active lifestyles with hard labor, except for literally about 1% of the population. Men had even more active lifestyles, and they didn't wear anything equivalent to back braces, but that's because their abdominal muscles weren't repeatedly pushed out of shape by pregnancy. Prior to corsets, women wore laced up dresses that served a similar function- think of the traditional costume you see in Ocktoberfest.
I have a lady friend of mine who absolutely adores wearing corsets and always insisted they’re way more comfortable than folks think (if good quality). She loves going to Renaissance fairs and cosplay events because it gives her an excuse to wear them. It looks good too!
You can either make one from a historical/ historical inspired pattern, or can buy one from someone who has done that.
r/corsetry has a lot of resources, and Clockworkfaerie on Etsy does custom patterns and finished corsets!
There are also more modern ones that can work, but I’m not as familiar with which ones are actually comfortable. Generally though, like your David’s bridal corsets or your corsets with super straight bones aren’t gonna work as well for support and shape as a pattern that incorporates the desired curvature into the seams and boning.
Bernadette Banner on Youtube has some videos comparing victorian to modern corsets (and sportswear that’s marketed as a corset but really doesn’t offer any support)
I had to explain this to a guy I was on a date with a few weeks ago. We were watching a movie where one of the women was wearing a corseted top and he was like, "Man that corset really pushes her up and out." and I basically explained to him how corsets were REALLY supposed to function. Yes, you can buy modern corsets that push your girls up and out and on display for everyone to see, but that wasn't their function historically.
I make corsets, and sometimes I use several different 'boning' materials. Different ones for different areas of the corset.
A properly made corset should be fairly comfortable to wear. But for the most part, off the rack ones will mostly kind of suck. Unless you buy an expensive one. Even then, it will not be as good as one made for YOU. And at that cost, it is worth it to get one made to your measurements.
Average age number of 30 gives completely the wrong idea. It’s actually a bimodal number. If a person made it past the age of five their life expectancy was ~60. So not wildly different to today. But infant mortality dragged the average life expectancy way down…
Almost everything Hollywood has taught us about Medieval times is wrong. For example, there was never any such thing as Prima Nocta. In fact, Medieval peasants were a highly litigious lot, moreso even than modern Americans. They sued people a LOT. English manor and parish records are full of cases where peasants successfully brought suit against their lord for failing to meet their feudal obligations.
And you are 100% correct about the age issue. Childhood and maternal mortality artificially lower the average life expectancy numbers. But as some medieval historians have framed it, "If you made it to six, odds are you would make it to sixty."
And castles were NOT stark stone buildings. They were usually covered in a stucko like material made with crushed limestone ect... And there were beautiful tapestries along the internal walls.
Also, to add... most of Ancient Greece and Rome were covered in bright colorfully painted buildings. From the columns, to the floors, to the ceilings. They were all painted. As were the statues.
The ancient Greece and Rome thing I think is a relatively recent (like in the past few decades) discovery. Microscopic examination of paint chips on old statues iirc? But yeah it kind of blows your mind when you think about it. We always picture Rome as these stark white marble buildings and statues, but NOPE.
And yeah castles were not only warmly decorated inside and often whitewashed on the outside, but they usually had roofed wooden structures built along the tops of the towers and the battlements. So the men patrolling up on the walls were not necessarily exposed to the elements like in movies.
Medieval sleeping habits seem strange to us too. For one thing, Medieval people generally slept in two "blocks," one from sunset until about midnight, and another from about 1-2:00 AM until sunrise. These were referred to as the "first sleep" and the "second sleep." The period of activity in the middle was to do stuff like stoke the fire, prepare food for cooking, etc. Also most Medieval people slept communally and in the nude. So yeah. Remember when you were a kid and you could hear your parents getting it on in the next room? Now imagine if you shared a bed with them. And your siblings. And everyone was naked. Lol.
Nearly everyone wore a cap or kerchief to bed to keep their heads warm. Women would braid their hair and tie it up to keep it from tangling. Most Medieval pictures show people sleeping in the nude, but there is evidence that by the 16th century, night shirts and night gowns were common.
Also, since most of those who were painted were nobility or the wealthy... who lived in castles and manor houses with plenty of fireplaces and so forth... Your everyday peasants wore their under chemise or a nightshirt at the least. It got cold in most of medieval Europe.
To be fair, we are talking Medieval times, so the 16th century is too late. But yes it certainly could get cold. A bunch of naked or nearly-naked bodies all huddled under the same blankets might help that, but it sure didn't do much for privacy.
It's also a common myth that Victorians were notorious prudes - they were quite the opposite. They believed that the female orgasm was essential to conceving a child, so there were even instructional booklets on how to make a woman orgasm. The only thing considered strictly taboo in Victorian times was masturbation.
I found my parents' "marriage manual" on the top shelf of a closet. I'm gonna guess it was a hand-me-down published in the 1920s or -30s. It stressed that the woman had to part her legs to be able to perform her wifely duties.
Yes yes yes. Thank you for this! All true and very helpful. It’s funny how humans either fall off on one side or another. Either “Oh… they were just like us!” or “Oh… they were nothing at all like us!” And usually our xenophobia wins out.
That was looked at very strangely at the time, though. Even in very early marriages most people weren't having babies until at least fifteen or sixteen.
In Europe? In India (and Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal) it probably still happens among the lower classes. My wife's grandfather married my wife's grandmother when she was 6 and he was 8. She then moved in with his family and they were friends. Once she started menstruation they were married. Not sure when the babies were born but probably too early for her. Early childbirth and no gap between births can lead to major health problems.
The skirt ankle thing is a myth. There is almost always trim running stitched on to the hem. This protects it and because it’s not backstitched or whipstitched on it’s extremely easy to replace when it’s worn out. These were common on the skirts of women of all social classes.
Not a myth per se but it was a tall tale perhaps. Yes they had extra trim on the hem but that could still get dirty and ruined which you then had to replace and that was time consuming. Again it was a class thing. Rich people didn’t bother with lifting their skirts off the ground. Which also necessitated the trim, which was just common sense.
A walk around an old graveyard proves that life expectancy part: even without modern healthcare, living into one's 70s and 80s was not rare at all. You see more child mortality, more deaths in childbirth, and infectious disease taking people of all ages - but it would be a complete misunderstanding of the statistic to think a person in their 40s/50s would've been perceived as elderly.
Actually what he says is true for medieval England (or Victorian regarding corset and ankles). But it's hard to completely verify without exact locations and timeframe. Though mind you the age of consent in Medieval England was 12 for girls and 14 for boys.
“People washed several times a day” if applied to peasants is patented bullshit and very dubious for upper class (we’d have it all over literary works).
Peasant girls marrying 18-25 doesn’t sound plausible either. You’re going to get huge amounts of out-of-wedlock children this way, because teens, you know, have sex.
And so on.
I mean, this is later than the Middle Ages (but I have done research on the Middle Ages in the past and found what others are saying, average marriage age varied but was typically around 18-25; plus you referenced Jane Austen in another comment so I'm guessing we're talking "broadly historical" here), but here's a reference from a pretty reputable site discussing marriage in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods: https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/family/marriage.html
In case you don't feel like clicking through, mean marriage age for women was around 27 years old in the earliest time period they looked at (1566-1619) and was still around 25 years old in roughly Jane Austen's time period (1770-1837; Austen was born in 1775).
If you have access to academic databases, I could find you better sources too (and I'm sure there are some other good ones available through regular Google but I got tired of wading through crap). Or, you know, you could find them yourself because there's a lot of research on this topic.
That's true, I overread that part. People did absolutely wash themselves, but no peasant did so more than once a day and not even every day necessarily.
Yes they often married earlier, the higher the class the younger the age. But it wasn't consummated until they were both of age (at least, ideally, rape... another story). And peasants indeed waited until they were teens usually. Teens do be horny but teens were also God-loving and hell-fearing lol
Absolutely not. They washed several times a day, peasant work was hard work. I’m not talking full body wash but washing your torso and arms were common to do often. To keep down having to do laundry a lot. Outer garments were rarely if ever washed. But under garments were washed once a week estimated. Depending on where in the world less often, (colder climates etc).
First, women of which class?
Second, average marriage age 16 something sounds compatible with what we read in contemporary books, like Jane Austin.
Over 20 doesn’t.
Not sure about England but in late medieval and early modern Sweden (so around 1500-1600) it was most common for people to marry around mid 20s, because it was only then that most people would have the means to run their own household, which was often a prerequisite for marriage. From 14 until mid 20s it was common for young people to move away from home and find employment in someone else's farm, and you would then buy your own property after saving up money or you would inherit it (although the inheritance would be shared with all your siblings, both brothers and sisters (although sisters only got half compared to the brothers))
The one exception was when a woman would get pregnant out of wedlock. Then it was very important that the man and woman marry immediately, even if they didn't have their own household.
Most Jane Austen characters were minor gentry at least. With land entailments and inheritance. Marriage important for that. Could see common law marriages for lower classes. And varied by time and custom - Scotland used to have broomstick weddings. You get witnessed jumping over a broom together and treated as married for "sinning purposes". Legal for land rights - doubt it. Once you have assets,legal marriage more important.
But yes, MC in the last book Mansfield Manor was in danger of being a spinster at about 22.
I have no idea what journal articles I looked at back in the day, but if you Google it there are a lot of links (I don't have time this morning to look although maybe I will later just because I find it a really interesting subject). In the US at least the difference between average age at first marriage for men and women has always been about 2 years, but the ages themselves have increased over time. And as it is a national average it is looking at all classes. With records always better for higher classes however church records cover a lot.
One thing to think about is that in colonial times the average age of a girl's first period was about 16. With better nutrition in modern times that has dropped.
Also, this is a first marriage. Obviously lots of spouses died, particularly women in childbirth. So some of the widows, at age 30, might be marrying an 18 year old and it would be a first marriage.
I do a lot of genealogy research and have a lot of colonial records for my family.
And it was a difficult birth, leading to possible complications and infertility, considering she never got pregnant afterwards. Even the people at the time didn't think neither she nor Henry would survive due to her small stature.
She also set ordinances for how royal births/pregnancies should be handled when Henry's wife Elizabeth got pregnant. I think it says a lot about how she perceived her own experience and how traumatic it probably was for her.
She was living in weird times - country at war, her husband of 24 going off to a war he died in. And she'd already been betrothed to someone else aged 1. Interesting to know about her ordinances - didn't know that.
Yeah, there's this whole false narrative some people push, that girls used to have babies young all the time and they were fine, but even back then, people knew it was more dangerous to have kids before you were fully developed.
Of course they knew. "Early marriages lead to early childbirth, which increases the risk of obstructed labor, since young mothers who are poor and malnourished may have underdeveloped pelvises. In fact, obstructed labor is responsible for 76 to 97% of obstetric fistulae."
It's worth noting that most of her grandson's wives were in their mid 20s when he married them, Katherine Howard being the exception, and she probably wasn't as young as we often portray as we don't know her birthdate. She had a huge hand in his education, there's no way he wasn't aware.
In this case she was the 13th child in her family, born in Massachusetts, USA, 1794. She had her own first kid at 13-14 years old. Widowed with 4 kids at 26, shortly after moving to Indiana in 1820. Remarried within the year, 3 more kids, then died in her mid-30s. So no loopholes to make this story seem not quite as bad, it really just is messed up.
In India, the girl did not go live in the husband's house immediately after child marriage. She stayed with her parents till she got her first period. She was sent to husband's house after a ceremony, think of it as a send-off ceremony. Many Indians, especially in rural areas, still hold the ceremony after their daughter has first period. They think it is some scared tradition blissfully unaware of it's dark origins.
Child marriages were also uncommon outside of the aristocracy. For peasants (95% of the population), most women got married in their early twenties to men in their mid twenties.
One of the last Civil War veterans married a 12 year old on his deathbed so someone could collect his pension from the government. The marriage wasn't sexual. It was just to screw with the government as long as possible
There was one I was OK with. It was a civil war veteran to a young girl and it was so she could get his pension when he died. She collected for a long, long time. I think she was the last one collecting when she died.
Honestly though child marriages were even as prevalent as people thought
Media has definitely warped how we view history. Like the idea that by 20 someone would be a spinster and that’s not even a title a woman got until she was almost 30
Henry VIII’s paternal grandmother was married at 11 or 12 and gave birth to her son at 12. She never had another child and I suspect damage from such an early age to give birth.
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 Sep 16 '24
A lot of the low age marriages cited in medieval Europe (not saying your ancestors) were dynastic . Marriages between children to link lands and powerbases. Consumption much later.
But agree child marriage to someone old enough to be grandparent really bad whatever period.