Everyday Life and Fatal Hazard in Sixteenth-Century England
tudoraccidents.history.ox.ac.uk
tudoraccidents.history.ox.ac.uk
Another favorite is the diary of Samuel Pepys. It's just so touching human and specific. Like when the Great Fire of London breaks out and he desperately tries to save the parmesan cheese he bought on his vacation in Italy:
The fire coming on in that narrow streete, on both sides, with infinite fury. Sir W. Batten not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese...
Mrs. Turner and her husband supped with my wife and I at night, in the office; upon a shoulder of mutton from the cook’s, without any napkin or any thing, in a sad manner, but were merry. Only now and then walking into the garden, and saw how horridly the sky looks, all on a fire in the night, was enough to put us out of our wits; and, indeed, it was extremely dreadful, for it looks just as if it was at us; and the whole heaven on fire.
Anyway, to get to your point: yes it's awesome reading these old accounts of seemingly mundane things, so many years ago, sometimes references places or houses that still exist. I don't think I could ever be a historian and do it for years on end, but just sniffing around a bit (and in a repurposed medieval church, with the complete surroundings just breathing that 'The name of the Rose' feeling, in my case) is, in a way, intellectually exhilarating (who would have thought anyone would ever describe reading 500 year old court cases 'exhilarating'...).
That sounds like a really interesting course! How difficult was it to parse the old Dutch?
If you're into this sort of thing (and know Dutch), a really fun read is "Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen", a Dutch cook book from around 1510. Annotated (translated) version available at http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_not001nota01_01/_not001nota01_01.... . Illustrates the issues above very well.
>> When exploring and mapping the Chesapeake bay Smith waded in the shallow water. Smith was stung by a sting ray.
The barb in the ray’s lashing tail pierced his arm. Smith got so very sick, thinking he would not survive this …his men dug him a grave. But a doctor applied heat to the wound and by this Smith was saved. Feeling better that evening, he ate the stingray for supper that night.
When he drew up his map,… he marked the spot on his map where he almost met death “Stingray Point”
(http://www.williamsburgprivatetours.com/captain-john-smiths-..., there's a similar account inside the museum)
What a baller! Fantastic story, little touches like this make it so believable.
And contra the parent comment, it doesn't look like a scan of a centuries old document -- it just looks a scan of a book from the mid 20th century.
I've read lots of such books, and while some have better typography than others, they are all quite easy to read. I think we have a habit of conflating "this is ugly I wish it were different" with "I can't read this".
Example video https://www.instagram.com/p/BVeIBFdBgtI/?hl=en Life was amazingly dangerous until very recently...
Or check out this one in China, forging huge flanges in the street with very little safeguards. https://youtu.be/yE8A6uMYXmw
Saw a guy in Fiji using the tip of a chainsaw to cut a notch in a beam. He was wearing flip-flops, and had no hearing protection, not to mention cutting things with the tip of a chainsaw is a bad idea, even with proper protective equipment.
Even in more developed countries, there are still plenty of very dangerous industries, such as logging. Farmers are notorious for poor H&S as well, it's a struggle here in New Zealand to get them to wear helmets while on bikes and put rollbars on quads. I've seen plenty of dodgy shit go down on building sites as well, despite attempts by Worksafe to wrap everything in cotton wool.
This is what drives me crazy about the outcry about unsafe working conditions in the developing world. I worked in a lumber mill just like that video and mills like that are still operating in Canada.
Yes, we in the West want the developing world to improve conditions, but let's also keep in mind we were just about as bad within living memory.
Especially fascinating are the cases where modern life is significantly more or less dangerous. You might be more likely to be killed by a house fire or stairwell fall now, but less by animals (simply due to reduced contact) or drowning (because so many more people can swim, or even perform CPR).
I'm pretty sure something similar is true for stairwell falls and drownings would probably be tempered by the prevalence of lifeguards in popular swimming spots, and signage warning of particular dangerous areas.
The biggest threat was massive blaze. If some house caught a fire, no one would be putting it out, instead, everyone would be breaking other nearby houses, to contain the fire.
“May 2014. House fires were comparatively less deadly in the sixteenth century than they are today. Even conflagrations that consumed whole neighbourhoods claimed few victims, for wooden houses burnt readily but slowly and few had many storeys.”
What I assumed they meant is that while your cause of death is less likely to be a building fire, in the event of a building fire you may be more likely to be killed. That is, the absolute probability has gone down, but the conditional probability has gone up. I dunno about the truth of it, but I found it an interesting thing to consider.