Beware of dung carts! One day in August 1565, James Johnson got drunk. By early evening he was so intoxicated that he fell asleep in a Southwark, South London, alley. When he woke up “barely possessed of a healthy and calm mind” he decided to empty his bowels in a ditch. Feeling light-headed, he fell into the filthy water, got tangled in his breeches, and drowned.
Johnson’s unenviable fate was documented for posterity because Tudor law required any suspicious or sudden death to be investigated by a coroner. And so, after his body was discovered, this official (assisted by a jury of at least 12 trustworthy local men) examined his corpse and questioned witnesses about the circumstances of his death. Once the coroner reached a verdict (in this case, of “misfortune”) his report was sent into storage at Westminster, where over the course of the 16th century it was joined by records relating to nearly 9,000 similarly unfortunate individuals.
In An Accidental History of Tudor England, the Oxford historians Steven Gunn and Tomasz Gromelski mine this treasure trove of information to build an engaging picture of the lives and deaths of ordinary people. The figures who loom large in most histories of the Tudors are almost entirely absent: the only Anne Boleyn in this book is a Norfolk maidservant who drowned while fetching water; the only William Shakespeare is a Warwick shoemaker who took a fatal dip in the River Avon.
Danger, it seems, lurked everywhere, even at home. James Sywft was just eight days old when he fell out of his mother’s bed into the fire, while Margaret Morlande, a clergyman’s wife, drowsily mistook an arsenic-based lice treatment for a pot of beer. Work was no safer: farm labourers tripped over pitchforks, miners died in pit collapses and brewers toppled into vats of boiling mash.
Travellers were vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather: Catherine Awsten was walking to a neighbouring Norfolk village with her six-month-old daughter when it began to snow so heavily that, despite sheltering under a hedge, both died. And even churchgoing was not risk-free. The Kent butcher Henry Siesley was listening to a sermon when a large theological tome fell off the pulpit and hit him on the head.
Unsurprisingly, some of the hazards faced by our Tudor ancestors remain all too familiar. Drunk and otherwise incompetent drivers — such as Nicholas Hull, who, being too old and frail to control his horse, managed to run himself over with his own dung cart — were an ever-present danger. And dangerous dogs, including the mastiff that savaged the leatherworker William Wakering, were another common problem.
New technologies created new ways of dying, as an unfortunate Tonbridge apprentice named John William discovered when he was suffocated by smoke and dust from a blast furnace in 1565. By the end of the century guns were a growing problem, but knives were a bigger risk to life and limb. Since most people wore knives in their belts, even when embracing or playing football, stab wounds to the thighs and stomach were horrifyingly common.
So too was drowning, by far the largest cause of accidental death in Tudor England, where a lack of domestic plumbing meant routine tasks such as fetching water or doing the laundry could easily prove fatal. Hundreds died while bathing in open water, including Thomas Seyland, a 16-year-old Essex servant, who tied inflated bladders to his body to keep himself afloat. When the rope holding them snapped, he cried out: “I’m drowning, I’m drowning. For the love of God help me!” Two of his friends tried to save him but all three boys drowned. (Learning to swim was almost unheard of in Tudor times).
Although this onslaught of accidental death can feel overwhelming, Gunn and Gromelski’s extensive archival research provides new insights into the early-modern mindset, and challenges some deeply entrenched misconceptions. Then, as now, the very young were particularly vulnerable. Many toddlers fell into ponds, knocked over hot liquids or were run over by carts. But the heart-rending stories of parents who spent weeks searching for lost children, or desperately tried to revive drowned offspring, provide a powerful rebuttal to those who claim that premodern people did not love their children.
Indeed, the world that emerges from these documents often seems surprisingly modern in its attitudes. Although Tudor coroners did not dissect bodies, they were meticulous in their examinations, measuring wounds and favouring scientific explanations (such as blood loss or bad air) over supernatural ones. When, in 1583, the viewing stand at a Southwark bear baiting event collapsed, killing seven and injuring many more, the Puritan preacher John Field claimed the victims had been punished for profaning the Sabbath. The inquest’s conclusion — that the scaffolding was old and the unusually large crowd had ignored warnings to stand still when it began to creak — was more pragmatic.
This incident implies a blatant disregard for health and safety, and some deaths clearly were the result of reckless behaviour. In pre-Reformation Chippenham, boys celebrated Palm Sunday by throwing cakes from the church roof, with predictable consequences. Poorly maintained infrastructure was another widespread problem: rickety buildings and bridges frequently fell down, and one Hertfordshire high street had potholes so deep that people drowned in them. (Such potholes still exist, as you can read in some of my previous blogs!)
Yet elsewhere there was a surprising degree of caution. After Richard Parrett died while working at the bottom of a well, the property’s owner was fined for not providing him with the appropriate protective clothing. And when men did their government-mandated archery practice they tried to mitigate the risks by providing safe areas for spectators and shouting, “Ware, ware, ware!” or, “Beware the pryk!” as they fired. Although accidents still happened, such measures surely saved many from a gruesome death — and from the dubious distinction of being included in this horribly fascinating book.
An Accidental History of Tudor England: From Daily Life to Sudden Death by Steven Gunn and Tomasz Gromelski (John Murray £25).
I have to buy this book, and thank you Steve for sending me the article about it.
