Dramatic Context
Georgia Brown
Families and land owners within trade couldnt live comfortably after the black death, there was no real security and the heirarchy in social class had been eliminated, all crops had been destroyed in the disaster period which was, the black death.
Many efforts were made to control jobs within the clothing districts, this particular industry gave mass job opportunities and hope to suffering families for a stretch of 20 years. However, the industry was unstable and slumped from 1551 onwards.
Williams. P. (1969). LIFE IN TUDOR ENGLAD. (n/a). B.T. Batsford. Page 67.
Effects of the 'Black Death' on poverty and social class:
VAGRANTS:
"Begging developed, during the middle of the sixteenth century, almost into a profession"
"Beneath his rule were such frauds as the counterfeit cranks, who pretended to be stricken with the falling sickness, the Abraham men, who pretended to be mad, and the dommerers, who pretended to be deaf mutes."
"The conny-catchers" "Rich beggers and confident trickstars"
Their aim was to strip the rich and foolish of their money.
"The ruling classes reacted with the savagery later to be shown by nineteenth and twentieth-century buisnessmen and 'whites'.
BRANDING, WHIPPING, AND DEPORATION
wre all proposed.
Williams. P. (1969). LIFE IN TUDOR ENGLAD. (n/a). B.T. Batsford. Below left- page 68 and below right- page 69.
Doctors: Disease and Diet
Time Period | Poverty, Social Class and the Black Death:
The Black death reached England in the middle of the fourteenth century (1348) up until the late seventeenth century (1666) and plague was and has been the most traumatic killer- savage and repulsive.
The two varieties of Plague:
Bubonic Plague
Mostly confined to towns- black rat
"Produces monstrous swellings of the lymphatic glands. Its bacilli are seldon spread directly from a man to man, but require an intermediary, the flea, Xenopsylla cheopsis, whose favourite home is the body of the black rat, but which will sometimes leave its rodent host for man. (This requires rats and fleas to spread)"
"Some saw plague as the agent of Gods punishment and insisted that there was nothing more to be said or done. Others believed it came from a poisonous miasma in the air. Diagnosis altered unknowingly and isolation and quarantine were advised"
Pneumonic Plague
Likely 1348-9
"Attacks the lungs and is spread whenever the its victim coughs. (Will spread where there are only humans)"
William shakespear seen the Plague as a mixture of planetary conjunction, miasma, and divine vengeance. "As a planetary plague, when Jove Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poioson in the sick air."
Williams. P. (1969). LIFE IN TUDOR ENGLAD. (n/a). B.T. Batsford. Pages 100 and 101.
1543:
London aldermen were ordered to paint the sign of the cross on every afflicted house; any infected person was to stay indoors for 40 days... All dogs, except hounds, spaniels, and mastiffs, were to be destroyed; beggers were to be kept out of churches; and the streets were to be cleaned."
Treatments:
-Two pounds of figs, two handfuls of rue, and 60 walnuts blanched and beaten small.
-Roasted onions filled with treacle and pepper.
1548:
A new disease, the 'sweating sickness'. "As it found them, so it took them; some in sleep, some in wake, some in mirth, some in care, some fasting, and some full, some busy and some idle." -Four epidemics, the last being in 1551.
Diet and Nutrition: Practitioners
Relation to the Sitter in my chosen portrait:
The Sitter in my chosen portrait lived throughout the years of 1510- 1556. He outlived the 'sweating sickness' disease and avoided falling ill from the bubonic plague. He may have suffered from deficiency of vitamin A; being a Gentleman and soldier, and not surviving on peasant food such as eggs, milk and butter. This may have reflected in his skintone which looks to be pale/olive with gray/blue undertones (ill looking).