Genealogy Chat

nudged in response to query!

The pits at Blackheath were used to bury bodies from the great plaque of London (black death one ) several years later bodies were removed and re buried at Gravesend .Well that is the story we were taught in school in Charlton //Greenwich in the 1950`s .We were even taken to see the holes on the heath. Doreen

I saw a Horizon programme several months ago about how our health is affected by the diet of out ancestors. We really are a product of our past - makes you think doesn't it.

Nudged this again for you to read. x

Not surprising that there were so many bugs around, surprised we survived at all. Survival of the fittest xx

My mother was born in 1915 and I remember her telling me that she used to clean her teeth with a mixture of soot and salt. She had perfect teeth and only had one filling all her life and that was in her fifties

My dad, born 1914 always used to rub salt on his teeth to clean them!

I have been told of people using a small twig, with the end bashed/flattened/frayed/splayed (whatever the technical term may be) to clean their teeth. Apparently it's an old Romany way, but not sure if it's just my Grans imagination or my memories of the tales she told us some 40 years ago. Joan

There is an area in Enfield, Middx, called Enfield Chase, which has a green and is quite a pleasant location. Apparently building on this spot will NEVER be allowed as it is, supposedly, the site of a mass grave where the local victims of the plague were buried!

Apparently soot or salt was used to clean teeth, yuck ! Kim

The digging up and reusing graves bit is right. The bones were then stored in charnel houses, I think we visited a former charnel house on a visit to Northern France. Louise

Oh yes Old Crone, well spotted! The tomato plant was not grown in England until the 1590s, according to Smith. One of the earliest cultivators was John Gerard, a barber-surgeon. Gerard's Herbal, published in 1597, and largely plagiarized from continental sources, is also one of the earliest discussions of the tomato in England. Gerard knew that the tomato was eaten in both Spain and Italy. Nonetheless, he believed that it was poisonous (tomato leaves and stems are indeed poisonous but the fruit is safe). Gerard's views were influential, and the tomato was considered unfit for eating (though not necessarily poisonous) for many years in Britain and its North American colonies. By the mid 1700s, however, tomatoes were widely eaten in Britain, and before the end of that century the Encyclopædia Britannica stated that the tomato was 'in daily use' in soups, broths, and as a garnish. Tomatoes were originally known as 'Love Apples', possibly based on a mistranslation of the Italian name pomo d'oro (golden apple) as pomo d'amoro.

Um - tomatoes in the 1500s? Why do I think they are relatively modern?? Olde Crone

About 30 years ago, my dad had been made redundant from the docks and had become what he had always wanted to be - a professional gardener. He was doing some work for Peckham council and came home one day absolutely horrified that the graveyard he had been round to tend had been sold for housing and there were digger/dumpers just hauling the coffins out of the ground, with the skeletons falling out. It really shocked him people could be treated with such disrespect.

I know that when I was studying history that the teacher told me that there are also massive burial plots in London where people were just thrown in. They were revealed when the London underground was being built and therefore, the tracks had to be built round them, I am sure that Blackheath was one of these areas. Bev

I've heard of cemetries being cleared in order to make way for more houses to be built. Certainly not somewhere I'd want to live!

It would be interesting to look into wouldnt it. Certainly people who dug up bodies to sell for medical research back then were hanged, so I wouldnt think it was a common thing.

Well, it might be true. In London in the late 1800's the graveyards were becoming very over-crowded, which is why massive expanses of land on the outskirts of London were bought, hence the existance of the City of London cemetery and other's like it. I don't think people could afford to be very fussy about corpse's back then.They certainly didn't get the respect they do now. One of my Great grandmother 's was buried in a paupers grave in the early 1900's. It was, I'm told, little more than a hole in the ground, shared with stranger's and no headstone to mark the spot.

Cant see how Dead Ringer would work as an explanation for that one - it means someone/thing which is exactly the same doesnt it. Its awful to think people were scrabbling to get out, isnt it. But Im not sure if people would ever have been allowed to dig up coffins and remove bodies/bones even back then. So possibly a bit of a tal story legend rather than truth, eh?

Another thought; I wonder how people brushed their teeth? It makes me wonder how people ever got close enough to one another to even procreate as they would have been so smelly!