About History: Crime and punishment in Merry Ol' England

“Lucy Worsley Investigates” is a BBC television series where the eponymous historian, author and presenter examines the mysteries surrounding some of the most infamous and brutal chapters in British history. All eight episodes from the two series so far aired are available on BBC iPlayer. As part of the pre-broadcast publicity, however, Dr Worsley wrote an article for the January 2025 edition of BBC History magazine concerning the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The conspiracy involved disaffected Catholics attempting to blow up the English parliament to kill King James I (and VI), his ministers and potentially hundreds if not thousands of people in the vicinity of Whitehall becoming collateral damage. Suffice to say the plot failed as it was discovered (almost at the last minute), and the leading conspirators were either killed or, after their capture, brutally executed for high treason.

In explaining how Robert Catesby, the ringleader, became so radicalised to devise the plot, Dr Worsley wrote:

“His journey towards radicalisation could have begun as early as 1586, when he may have witnessed the appalling public execution of a York woman, Margaret Clitherow. Having been caught sheltering priests of the outlawed Catholic faith, she was crushed to death with heavy weights.” (Worsley, 2025, 42)

Aside from the gruesome nature of Margaret’s death, and unless very much mistaken, what was being described was not necessarily a public execution per se. Rather, Margaret was being “pressed”. But before explaining the subtle difference, it is worth examining the background and history of England’s legal system.

Trial  Criminal cases in England at the beginning of the 13th-century could be tried either by ordeal or by judicial combat (although the latter was not available to women or those accused by the community). In “trial by ordeal” the guilt or innocence of the accused was determined by subjecting them to a painful, potentially injurious test. A popular version was heating an iron (a rod, bar or something similar) which the accused then had to grasp and carry a distance of nine feet. Although not a great distance, and one that could be covered in seconds, the red hot metal would undoubtedly burn the accused’s hand. The injury would be dressed and roughly three days later inspected. If the accused’s hand was blistered or burnt, then they were presumed guilty. If, in a “judgement of God” (Latin: judicium Dei, Old English: Godes dom), the accused was uninjured or healed, then it was presumed God had intervened to save the innocent person by performing a miracle on their behalf. A similar “judgement of God” was assumed in trials by judicial combat where the innocent would prevail while the guilty would be killed.

In 1215, however, the Fourth Lateran Council [1] forbade the clergy from participating in trials by ordeal effectively curtailing the practice. The problem thus created for England’s legal system was solved by allowing the accused to submit to trial by jury as an alternative to trial by combat. As trial by judicial combat remained a (theoretical) option, the accused could not be forced into a jury trial. Instead, they had to voluntarily submit to it by entering a plea seeking judgment from the court. If no plea was offered, then the accused would be remanded back to prison.

Obviously, a criminal justice system that could only punish those who had volunteered for possible punishment was unworkable. So, a means was needed to coerce the accused into entering a plea. To resolve the problem King Edward I gave Royal Assent to the Statute of Westminster in 1275 within which the “Standing Mute Act 1275” provided:

“That notorious Felons, which openly be of evil name, and will not put themselves in Enquests of Felonies that Men shall charge them with before the Justices at the King's suit, shall have strong and hard Imprisonment (prison forte et dure), as they which refuse to stand to the common Law of the Land: But this is not to be understood of such prisoners as be taken of light suspicion.”

The words “prison forte et dure” meant those refusing to offer a plea would be subject to a harsh prison regime and a meagre diet. Thus, the accused were incarcerated:

“[I]n the worst place in the prison, upon the bare ground continually, night and day; that they eat only bread made of barley or bran, and that they drink not the day they eat...”

By the 1300s the words of the statute had been corrupted to “peine forte et dure” meaning “forceful and hard punishment”. Under the revised provisions those who “stood mute” would be “pressed” until they volunteered a plea of guilty or not guilty. In effect “pressing” became the only instance in which anything like torture was recognised in English common law. A defendant being “pressed” would have a plank or board placed on their chest to which heavier and heavier weights or stones would be added until a plea was entered. The practice was recorded by a 15th-century witness and published in “Tait's Edinburgh Magazine”, dated 11 May 1851:

“…he will lie upon his back, with his head covered and his feet, and one arm will be drawn to one quarter of the house with a cord, and the other arm to another quarter, and in the same manner it will be done with his legs; and let there be laid upon his body iron and stone, as much as he can bear, or more...”

Of course, if the weight of the stones on the chest became too great, those condemned would be unable to breathe, suffocate and die. In such circumstances, “pressing to death” might take several days, but not necessarily with a continued increase in the load. Yet despite the gruesome nature of this punishment many defendants charged with capital offences nonetheless refused to plead so they could escape forfeiture of property thereby allowing their heirs to still inherit their estate. For those who pleaded guilty and were summarily executed, their heirs would inherit nothing, and any property would be escheated [2] to the Crown. Although the last known use of peine forte et dure was in 1741, it was formerly abolished in Great Britain in 1772. In that year it was judged that refusing to enter a plea was the equivalent of pleading guilty. A change to the law in 1827, however, deemed the accused’s silence to be a plea of not guilty. This change precipitated the practice that continues today in all common-law jurisdictions where standing mute is treated by the courts as equivalent to a plea of not guilty. In other words one is “innocent until proven guilty”.

Tudor crime and punishment  At the time of Margaret Clitherow’s pressing crimes against the person in Tudor England had noticeably increased mirroring a dramatic growth in the population. In concert with the decline of feudal system, where once ordinary folk were compelled to work for their local lord, this larger population led to higher unemployment. Moreover, the end of Feudalism and the adoption of new farming methods led to the widespread enclosures where land was physically fenced off for the exclusive use of the landowner. As more landowners restricted those who could hunt on their land, crimes against property, for example poaching, escalated. The hardships suffered by ever larger number of country folk led many to relocate to urban areas in search of work. This movement of people meant towns and cities were greatly enlarged which, in turn, caused an upsurge of street criminals and petty thieves. To add further pressure to the Tudor criminal justice system, the frequent changes of religion that happened in the period – from Catholic to Protestant and back again - led to a greater number of people being found guilty of heresy and high treason.

As all struggling governments do in such circumstances, the ruling Tudor elite introduced new punishable crimes, namely “vagabondage” and “witchcraft”. A vagabond or vagrant was an unemployed or homeless person. Such people had little choice but to resort to begging, thieving or charity when they could not find work. Viewed as lazy and responsible for their own situation, however, vagabonds were resented by local communities. The late 15th- and 16th-centuries saw a large increase in the number of vagabonds due to diminishing wages, an enlarged population, rising food prices and no system to help the needy. Laws were therefore passed making vagrancy a crime. Oddly this is a perfect example of how the general population can pressure a government to make laws on what they, the public, class as a crime.

Punishments  Despite there being no police force, Tudor laws were harsh and wrongdoing was severely punished. People believed if a criminal’s punishment was severe and painful enough, then the act would not be repeated and others also would be deterred from a life of crime. In 1494, for example, Henry VII signed into law the “Vagabonds and Beggars Act”. Under its provisions, vagabonds were to be placed in stocks for three days and then sent back to wherever they came from. In the year Henry VIII died, 1547, the “Vagrancy Act” was introduced which meant any able-bodied man without work for three days was to be branded and sold as slave for two years. This situation continued until in 1597 when Queen Elizabeth introduced the “Act for the Relief of the Poor”. This piece of legislation divided vagrants into two categories: the “deserving” - the elderly, sick and disabled, and the “undeserving”, those fit for work. Four years later in 1601, Elizabeth gave royal assent to the “Poor Laws” whereupon the deserving now could be given poor relief by the local parish. In contrast the undeserving were to be branded, whipped, or sent to a correction house.

Margaret martyred  Despite new legislation, the common law courts of Tudor England upheld the earlier idea that they lacked authority over a defendant until he or she had voluntarily submitted to it by entering a plea seeking judgment from the court. This leads us to the most famous case in the United Kingdom, as mentioned by Dr Worsley, namely the prosecution of Margaret Clitherow. On 25th March 1586, in order to avoid a trial in which her own children would have been obliged to give evidence, Margaret refused to plead to the charge of harbouring Catholic priests in her house and was pressed. She died within fifteen minutes under a weight of at least 320 kg (700 lbs). In recognition of her martyrdom, she was canonised in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as Saint Margaret.

The only death by peine forte et dure in American history was that of Giles Corey, an English-born farmer who, alongside his wife Martha, had been accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. After being arrested, Corey refused to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty so, following English law, he was subjected to pressing. Regrettably Giles Corey died on 19th September 1692 after three days of being crushed. Yet, his steadfast refusal to enter a plea meant his estate passed to his sons instead of being seized by the Massachusetts colonial government.

Mediæval torture implements  As already mentioned, pressing was the only instance in which anything like torture was recognised in English common law. Yet “torture chambers”, replete with gruesome pain inducing implements, feature prominently in Mediæval era movies, exhibitions, some museum collections, and widely available imagery on the internet.

Most so-called Mediæval torture implements, however, were “invented” by febrile minds in the 19th-century to be as gory and abhorrent as possible. Consider the example of the “Iron Maiden”. A fearsome version (pictured) may be seen in the Museo de la Tortura in Toledo, Spain amongst a display of torture devices used in the Spanish Inquisition and other scourges of mediæval Europe. A deceptively simple device, the Iron Maiden is a human-shaped box with incredibly sharp spikes protruding into its interior intended to impale any victim placed inside. As the box was shut the spikes were not long enough to kill a person outright but would, presumably, pierce the victim such that they would bleed out over time experiencing a slow and agonizing death. The only problem with this idea is that the Iron Maiden was never a mediæval torture device. The first written reference to it appeared in the late 1700s, long after the Mediæval period had ended (Harvey, 2023). The German philosopher Johann Philipp Siebenkees wrote about the alleged execution of a coin-forger in 1515 by an iron maiden in the city of Nuremberg, but his tale is a suspected fabrication. Later moralising Victorian authors often strived to make the past look as barbaric as possible in juxtaposition to their own more enlightened times. While there were certainly many wealthier, altruistic Victorian benefactors keen to help the poorest, it is equally evident that some writers happily glossed over exploitative child labour, prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases, poor sanitation and equally poor housing for the most vulnerable, underprivileged members of Victorian society. Much of this suffering was ascribed to loose morals, unchristian values and a work-shy underclass. It seems Mediæval and Tudor notions of punishing vagrancy still endured.

Like the Iron Maiden, the Pear of Anguish was similarly associated with the Middle Ages and the Inquisition. From the example picture above left, it was a sort of speculum supposedly inserted into a body’s orifices and painfully opened by a screw thread. Inconveniently, once again records of such devices do not appear until the middle of the 19th-century. The same is also true of the Rack, pictured above right, which has become synonymous with Mediæval punishment but only one, more recent example of a rack can be traced to the Tower of London in 1447 (Harvey, 2023).

In reality, Mediæval European torture involved much less complex methods. The slow crushing of body parts in screw-operated iron “bone vices” was common for example. A large variety of cruel instruments were used to savagely crush the victim’s head, knee, hand and, most frequently, either the thumb or the naked foot. Such instruments were finely threaded and variously provided with spiked inner surfaces or heated red-hot before their application to the limb to be tortured.

Death penalty common  The common perception is a Mediæval world where gallows or gibbets could be seen everywhere, and where people could be hanged, burned, quartered and horribly tortured for the smallest crimes. Although these punishments did happen, they were not nearly as widespread as is often claimed by sensationalist commentators. Executing someone or imprisoning them cost a community money so other ways were found to punish criminals that were less of a burden on the public purse. In many cases the convicted person was simply ordered to pay a fine which, rather usefully, generated income for the community while costing it nothing. Alternatively, troublemakers might be instructed to embark on pilgrimage thereby removing them from the community for a time, and with a bit of luck they might never return.

For those sentenced to death, their public execution was an event not to be missed, with spectators often vying for the best places to watch. The notoriety of some of the condemned drew very large crowds producing a somewhat carnival-like atmosphere where pie sellers, ale merchants and producers of execution memorabilia might do a good trade. Of the major methods of public execution, murderers could be “boiled alive” in a large pot of boiling water, while women found guilty of either treason or petty treason were sentenced to be burned alive at the stake.

Hanging from the Gallows  By far the commonest means of execution was hanging for crimes such as stealing, treason, rebellion, riot or murder. With a rope placed about the neck, the condemned is killed by suspending them with a noose or ligature. Death is caused either by strangulation or by fracturing the cervical vertebrae (breaking the neck). During the Mediæval period and into the 1800s, the Short Drop was the standard method of hanging. The condemned prisoner stood on a raised support, such as a stool, ladder, cart, horse, or other vehicle, with the noose around their neck. Suddenly removing the support left the person dangling from the rope whereupon the weight of the body tightens the noose causing strangulation and death. Loss of consciousness is typically rapid, with death occurring within a few minutes.

In 1866 the Standard Drop method was adopted as a more humane improvement over the Short Drop. This technique used a drop of between 1.2 m and 1.8 m (4 ft and 6 ft) sufficient to break the person's neck triggering immediate unconsciousness and rapid brain death. Use of the Standard Drop spread rapidly to English-speaking countries and those with judicial systems of English origin. Less than a decade later, in 1872 the Long Drop, or Measured Drop, was introduced to Britain as a scientific advance on the Standard Drop by William Marwood, the State’s official hangman. Further refined by his successor James Berry, instead of everyone falling the same standard distance, the person's height and weight were used to determine how much slack would be provided in the rope. This ensured the distance dropped would be enough to guarantee the neck was broken, but not so much that the person was decapitated. Careful placement of the eye or knot of the noose (so that the head was jerked back as the rope tightened) contributed to breaking the neck.

Beheading (Death by the Axe)  The nobility who committed crimes were more likely to be beheaded than hung, with their heads sometimes placed on spikes in public places, such as on London Bridge, as a warning to all. Beheading was considered less shameful than hanging, and it had the added bonus of killing more quickly (usually). Executioners were notoriously bad at beheading their victims, with many resorting to several agonising blows to sever a neck. To be fair, it was not a job that many volunteered to undertake so executioners were often unskilled, ill-prepared or amateurish. Equally unhelpful was the typical headsman’s axe which was poorly designed with an offset blade that did not make it easy to wield or indeed cleanly sever the head from the neck. Some beheadings took several blows to decapitate the condemned. Consequently, when Queen Anne Boleyn was found guilty of the crime of treason this carried the penalty of death by burning. Henry commuted Anne's sentence to beheading. Perhaps cognisant of the possibility of a botched execution by the headsman’s axe, he hired an expert swordsman from Saint-Omer in France to perform the beheading. A single stroke took the queen’s head.

Lesser punishments  Those found guilty of lesser crimes may have escaped execution but not public humiliation. One of the punishments for committing the crime of public drunkenness was the “Drunkard's Cloak”. Unlikely to prove fatal, the drunk was forced to don a barrel and wander through town while the villagers jeered at him or her. Holes were cut in the barrel for the person's hands and head making it akin to wearing a heavy, awkward shirt. As alluded to, this form of public scorn was a common theme. The pillory, for example, was a T-shaped block of wood with holes for the hands in the crossbar. The person being punished would have to stand, secured in the device, in a public place to be ridiculed by passers-by. Those who gathered to watch typically wanted to make the offender's experience as unpleasant as possible, but the main purpose of the pillory was not necessarily to physically harm the offender. That said, being forced to bend forward and stick their head and hands out in front of them would have been extremely uncomfortable for offenders confined in the pillory, even if said punishment generally lasted for only a few hours. In addition to being to mocked, jeered at, and publicly humiliated, those in the pillory might be pelted with rotten food, mud, offal, dead animals, and animal excrement.

Like the pillory, stocks were also a “lesser” form of corporal punishment and public humiliation. The difference between the two devices being that stocks were a heavy block of wood with two holes where the feet were secured about the ankles. Once restrained, the offender would be exposed to whatever treatment passers-by could imagine. The variety of abuses might range from verbal insults, being spat on, having refuse thrown at them, kicking, or having the unprotected feet tickled, paddled, or whipped (“bastinado”) [4].

Many Mediæval towns had a wooden post to which a condemned person could be chained, stripped to the waist, and whipped or flogged. One could be whipped for the crime of stealing a loaf of bread. For those who stole from shops, having a hand cut off was considered an appropriate punishment. Likewise, poachers might lose a hand or perhaps an eye for illegally hunting in or stealing from the King’s Forest. Hot irons were used to burn letters onto the skin of an offender’s hand, arm or cheek. A murderer for example would be branded with the letter “M”, vagrants with the letter “V”, and thieves with the letter “T”.

One final example of a minor punishment in the popular imagination was the brank, sometimes known as “The Gossip’s Bridle” or “Scold’s Bridle”. Largely reserved for women who gossiped or spoke too freely, the device consisted of a large iron framework placed on the head of the offender, forming a type of cage. A metal strip on the brank fitted into the mouth and was either sharpened to a point or covered with spikes so that any movement of the tongue was certain to cause severe injuries to the mouth. In this manner the offender was silenced. For extra humiliation, a bell could also be attached to draw a crowd’s attention as the wearer was paraded around town on a leash.

Witchcraft  Any discussion of punishments ought to include mention of witchcraft. For most of the Mediæval period this had been a minor crime dealt with by the church courts since witches were seen as people who went against the rules of the church by dabbling in ancient superstitions and magic. It became a more serious crime after Henry VIII’s reformation. Thereafter, witches were viewed as being in league with the devil and actively working to destroy the church and to take people’s souls to hell. Several laws were therefore passed against witchcraft:

• In 1542 Henry VIII made witchcraft punishable by death.

• In 1563 charges of witchcraft had to be tried in a common court, not in a church court.

• In 1604, a year after Queen Elizabeth’s death, the new king, James I (& VI), extended the death penalty to those found guilty of summoning evil spirits.

The Ducking Stool  Ducking was a lesser punishment reserved it seems for women from Mediæval times until the early 18th-century to establish whether a suspect was a witch. Those accused were submerged into a river, pond or body of water to see if they were innocent or guilty. Ducking stools were first used for this purpose, but ducking was later inflicted without the chair. In this instance the victim's right thumb was bound to her left big toe. A rope was tied around the accused’s waist, and they were thrown into a river or deep pond. If they floated, they were considered guilty and burnt at the stake. If they sank, they were innocent but died anyway, by drowning. Either way, they perished - a disturbing Catch-22. Bon appétit!

References:

Harvey, A. (2023), “The Surprising Story Of The Iron Maiden, Said To Be The Most Brutal Torture Device Of The Medieval Era”, All That’s Interesting, available online (accessed 15th April 2025).

Worlsey, L. (2025), “How to build a radical”, BBC History Magazine, January 2025 edition.

Endnotes:

1. The Fourth Lateran Council opened in the Lateran Palace in Rome on 11 November 1215. This 12th ecumenical council was years in preparation as Pope Innocent III desired the widest possible representation. More than 400 bishops, 800 abbots and priors, envoys of many European kings, and personal representatives of Frederick II (confirmed by the council as emperor of the West) took part. The purpose of the council was twofold: reform of the church and recovery of the Holy Land. Many of the conciliar decrees touching on church reform and organization remained in effect for centuries.

2. Escheating: the reversion of property to the state, or (in feudal law) to a lord, on the owner's dying without legal heirs.

3. William Spiggot (also spelled Spigget) was a highwayman who was captured in 1721. On 13th January that year, Spiggot appeared at his first trial at the Old Bailey charged with highway robberies and violent thefts. Refusing to enter a plea, he was returned to Newgate Prison after being sentenced to Peine forte et dure. The excruciating pain forced Spiggot to agree to be brought back to court where he pleaded not guilty. A second trial found him guilty, and Spiggot was duly executed on 11 February 1721 at Tyburn, London.

4. Foot whipping, falanga/falaka or bastinado is a method of inflicting pain and humiliation by administering a beating on the soles of a person's bare feet. Unlike most types of flogging, it is intended to be painful rather than to cause actual injury to the victim. Blows are generally delivered with a light rod, knotted cord, or lash.

Dispelling Some Myths: Medieval waste mismanagement?

Despite the best efforts of historians, the internet is still awash with misconceptions about the Middle Ages. Many of these ideas were the product of Victorian writers and historians reflecting Mediæval life through the lens of their own society, as was done by antiquarians before them and by historians since. However, after more than a century in popular culture, and being taught in schools, these sometimes broad, sweeping assertions remain deeply rooted in everyday consciousness. This is especially so when repeatedly reinforced online, in social media, on television and in the movies. Before addressing one such notion, it is worth remembering that the Mediæval period lasted roughly 1,000 years during which peoples’ lives and experiences varied a lot according to time, place and circumstance. So, with that in mind, did our forebears really dump their waste in the street?

Waste not, want not  Before addressing one of the more pervasive myths that people threw the content of their chamber pots out of a window onto the unsuspecting heads of passers-by in the street below, let us consider what we know of waste management in the Middle Ages. In the last few decades we think we have become so responsible with innovative recycling programmes and the repurposing or upcycling of unwanted items. But this is far from a modern idea. Mediæval people were equally as smart as us today and knew how to make full use of the resources at their disposal. Every ounce was put to good use, and towns and cities were full of artisans who mended things. One good example was discovered during the analysis of the asset tax rosters of Mediæval Frankfurt in Germany. The data revealed how commonplace it was to find jobs relating to mending and refurbishing things. Moreover, the repairers were often itinerant setting up stalls at fairs or in markets where they might mend shoes, pots, bags, tools or clothing. That these people submitted tax returns strongly suggests they were operating successful businesses.

If you have ever wondered why so few Mediæval shirts, shifts and other garments are seen in museum collections it is because people were expert in reusing and upcycling items. Indeed, textiles were integral to the Mediæval recycling industry. Any worn-out clothing, whether underwear or cloaks, bed sheets or tablecloths, or even tapestries would be resold rather than simply discarded. Such material was highly sort after not only to produce new textiles but, when finally exhausted, the ragged remnants would be used to make paper. The latter industry rapidly expanded from the mid-15th-century as the demand for paper dramatically increased after Johannes Guttenberg developed Europe’s first mechanical printing press. The paper trade became ever more profitable, and paper manufacturers would engage small subcontractors, rag-and-bone men or ragpickers to go door-to-door and buy any old clothes or scraps people might have lying about. In such a competitive market those involved required a permit in some places.

Dirty, muddy streets  In popular imagination Mediæval towns are always foul-smelling and filthy places. At least that is the impression one might get from television and film. But as Dutch author Henk ‘t Jong writes:

“An examination of ‘keuren’ or by-laws of Dutch towns in the 14th and 15th centuries reveals that sanitary legislation is there but offenses against them are relatively scarce. Surviving documentation of court cases suggests that only few persons were fined or punished for breaking these laws. From this and other proof can be concluded that late medieval townspeople did not live in filth and dirt if they could in any way avoid it.”

While many villages and towns had dirt roads that would get muddy when it rained, paved streets were also common, as were gutters to drain away rainwater. On top of that many towns had strict rules regarding what people were allowed to do and not to do with the street in front of their homes. Not keeping it clean, throwing rubbish outside your front door and so on could land you with a heavy fine.

Public toilets  Most readers are probably familiar with public toilets being communal affairs during ancient Rome’s hegemony. Such latrines (Latin: latrinae [1]) were rooms around which were ranged long wooden or stone benches with holes cut for waste to fall into a channel below where it was carried away by a constant flow of water. The vertical slot in the bench front allowed the use of the infamous “sponge-on-a-stick” to clean the user. The orientation of the hole/slot combination is highly suggestive that both Roman men and women sat to relieve themselves. Indeed, a man’s tunic would have made sitting the easier option while also having the added bonus of preserving their dignity. Many people would use these latrines at the same time sitting within touching distance of their neighbour with no dividing screen between them. Public toilets were not completely open to view, however. Some form of curtain would have shielded the entrance, and we do have evidence at some communal toilets of doors blocking the view from the street.

Communal toilets were still in use in England during the Middle Ages. Dated to the 12th-century, a wooden bench sporting three holes was found in Ludgate Hill, London during the 1980s. Large communal municipal latrines are known to have been on London Bridge, maintained by the city of London authorities, which emptied into the River Thames. At Langley Castle in Northumberland, the latrine tower featured four stalls set in a row, with low stone screens between them, but no doors are again evident. Communal toilets persisted into the Tudor period in some places. The Great House of Easement in Hampton Court Palace, for example, provided 28 seats set over two floors. Once more, there were no cubicles so men and women might find themselves sitting beside each other. This proximity, however, provided an opportunity to chat discreetly and gossip about the latest events and rumours circulating at court.

Of course, for men it has always been much quicker and easier to urinate outside, but this led to some unfortunate consequences. Courtiers urinating against the walls of Tudor palaces annoyed Cardinal Wolsey so much that in 1526 he issued the Eltham Ordinance to establish a set of rules for conduct at court. The ordnance records his strategy for combatting this behaviour whereby he ordered red crosses to be placed in areas where the activity was most prevalent. It was, of course, considered bad form to relieve oneself on a crucifix so Wolsey’s ploy fixed the problem.

By the late 18th-century, private toilets were becoming commonplace, and the “middling sort” (the middle class) embraced the flushing water closet. Even so, communal toilets were still in use. One notorious place was Bagnigge Wells near King’s Cross in north London where users would perch side-by-side on a long pole, chatting and gossiping as they relieved themselves.

Now wash your hands  Signs extolling “Now wash your hands” still appear in public toilets today. Sadly, in our experience, whether this advice is followed by some people is another matter. Perhaps, like our ancient forebears, they may not have understood the message in quite the same way. The Romans, for example, may have washed their hands after visiting the latrinum, but they may not have fully grasped the health implications of keeping hands clean. An example of this may be found in Volume 2 of Petronius Arbiter’s Satyricon which describes the fictional dinner party known as “Trimalchio’s Feast” (Latin: cena Trimalchionis). For those unfamiliar with the Satyricon, it is a satire mocking the vulgar habits of nouveau riche Romans [2] through, in this instance, the exploits a rich freedman named Trimalchio who is hosting a lavish dinner party where extravagant dishes are served. The opening paragraph of Chapter 27 in Volume 2 ends with the following lines:

“Menelaus had scarcely ceased speaking when Trimalchio snapped his fingers; the eunuch, hearing the signal, held the chamber-pot for him while he still continued playing. After relieving his bladder, he called for water to wash his hands, barely moistened his fingers, and dried them upon a boy's head.”

The author’s intent may be to expose how unrefined and boorish people with newly acquired wealth were in comparison to the rich, cultured and aristocratic Roman elite. Or he could be drawing attention to the pretentiousness of the wealthiest in Roman society. Either way, the Trimalchio example is useful to highlight an apparent disconnect between personal hygiene in the past and knowledge of how infections and disease are spread. Even though extolled for their famously advanced sewer technology, the Romans did not recognise the risk of bacterial disease transmitted via excrement. Roman sewers were not built with health and hygiene in mind. Rather they were merely practical means to move waste matter away from populated areas. In doing so, of course, public health and hygiene were much improved, but this was, one might argue, an unintended consequence.

Moving forward in time, as a rule people in the Middles Ages were keen to maintain a high level of personal cleanliness. Thus, receptacles holding water might have been positioned at or near toilets for the purpose of handwashing. Similarly, recesses or niches set into toilet walls may have been to store mosses for cleaning oneself. By the time of the Tudors, most people were very careful about washing their hands, particularly before eating. Indeed, Tudor etiquette demanded that hands were washed before a meal. This might have been done on the way into the dining hall at the “ewery board” where a large ewer of water, a basin and towel would have been attended by a servant. Alternatively, servants might bring the ewer and basin to the seated guests so hands could be cleansed. Even the servants, particularly the carver of meat, were expected to be seen washing their hands. All being said, this ritual of handwashing in the dining chamber was largely symbolic since guests were expected to have washed thoroughly beforehand.

Flushed with success  It would be unwise to claim that Sir John Harington invented the flushing toilet as he was not the first to devise such a contraption. Born in Kelston, Somerset in 1560, Harington’s father was a poet while his mother worked as a gentlewoman of Queen Elizabeth I’s Privy chamber. When an infant Sir John was baptised by the Queen herself, she calling him her “saucy Godson”. Like his father, Harrington also became a poet, albeit not an entirely successful one. Even so, he was constantly encouraged by her majesty about his writing until, in 1596, he published a political allegory against the monarchy and was duly banished from court. Exiled in Bath until 1599, Harington built himself a house within which he devised and installed the first flushing lavatory comprising a pan with an opening at the bottom, sealed with a leather-faced valve. A series of knobs, lifters and weights that opened the valve allowed water from a connected cistern to flush away the waste. His invention was described in his work “A New Discourse of a Stale Subject called the Metamorphosis of Ajax” – Ajax being a play on “jakes” the slang word for a toilet. When the Queen eventually visited Harington, she was shown his invention and we know that afterward Elizabeth ordered a flushing toilet to be installed in Richmond Palace.

While Queen Elizabeth seemed keen on Harington’s invention, most people preferred using chamber-pots. These were usually emptied from an upstairs window into the street below, or so the myth goes. Indeed, it is said that in France, the cry “gardez à l’eau” warned people in the street below to take evasive action, and that this phrase may be the origin of the English nickname for the lavatory, “the loo”. However, www.etymonline.com has the following entry which is probably more correct:

Empty chamber pot from window  Whatever the origin of the word, and before the advent of flushing toilets, did people in the Middle Ages really throw their rubbish and bodily waste into urban thoroughfares? Generations of school children have been taught that people emptied chamber-pots out of windows into the street. That this nonsense persists is in part due to the feelings of disgust the image engenders in modern people so used to a sanitary life. Indeed, today we are less inured to pungent aromas and more distanced from human waste than in the past. Even so it would be wrong to say that the Mediæval populace were any less sensitive to foul odours or disgusted by human waste than us. While they may not have understood scientifically how human waste could spread disease, they knew from observation and lived experience that it did. This awareness meant Mediæval towns and cities had many ordinances and laws on waste disposal, cesspits, and toilets. One such ordinance in London made residents directly responsible for the upkeep and cleanliness of their street outside their houses. Mediæval records show that those who failed to follow the rules could be heavily fined. As historian, atheist, sceptic and rationalist, Tim O’Neill wrote in answer to this very question:

“The fines that could be imposed on them if they didn’t do this could be extremely onerous. One account talks of an outraged mob badly beating a stranger who littered their street with the skin of a smoked fish, since they didn’t want to have to pay the heavy fine for his laziness. In an environment like that, people are hardly going to be dumping buckets of excrement out of their windows.” (O’Neill, 2013)

For most of the Mediæval period towns and cities were not as overcrowded as they would become in post-Renaissance Europe. The very agrarian nature of early urban centres meant that many houses had some form of a garden or yard attached. Larger houses are known to have enclosed latrines attached to or behind the home emptying into deep cesspits. Known as “jakes” (cf. above) or a “gong”, one of the worst possible jobs in the Middle Ages had to be the “gongfermours” or “gong farmers”. These were the men employed to empty the foul-smelling cesspits who, not surprisingly, were well-paid to do so. Equally unsurprising, at the end of the day Mediæval London’s gongfermours would take a much-needed dip in the River Thames.

Smaller residences made do with a bucket or “close stool” over a basin. Both would be emptied daily, typically into one of the streams that flowed into the nearest river. This made some of these streams, like the Fleet in London, rather foul-smelling and gave one in the city of Exeter the lyrical name of “the Shitbrook” (O’Neill, 2013).

It was when towns and cities started growing and became ever more overcrowded that things started to go wrong. The earlier single-storey houses began to be replaced by taller houses with multiple upper floors. Building space became increasingly valuable such that gardens and yards shrank in size or disappeared altogether. This meant fewer residents had the space for their own well or land to erect, let alone use, an outhouse or cesspit to dispose of waste. Moreover, the household cottage gardens that had previously supplied herbs and vegetables to individual families were slowly supplanted by readily accessible shops and marketplaces in the towns and cities. There was no longer a need to “grow your own” if folk could buy the family’s provisions from local traders.

In properties where a garden or yard survived only those occupying the ground floors of these taller houses might still have had access to a cesspit. Those living on the floors above did not and, in such circumstances, it is not hard to imagine that people forced to carry their waste to a special dumping area or wait for it to be collected might be tempted to throw it somewhere the rules forbade. Pictured is one of the few images depicting someone emptying what could be a chamber-pot from a window that is often used to illustrate this bad habit. It was published in Basel ca. 1497, at the very end of the Mediæval era, in Sebastian Brant’s “Das Narrenschiff” (“Ship of Fools”). The translated caption however reveals that the emptying of the chamber-pot is not being done out of laziness or habit but is instead a subtle way for the householder to express their opinion of the musicians making a racket late at night.

Post the Mediæval period, several new laws were enacted to manage waste in 16th-century Antwerp, Belgium. One very specific law stated that windows overlooking a neighbour’s yard or garden needed bars so a “piss pot” could not be emptied out of the window. So, as we have seen, if anything the surviving documents suggest that Mediæval Europeans tried very hard to keep cities and towns clean. In fact, it is even recorded that foreign visitors were full of praise for the cleanliness and neatness of the Low Countries.

While here in Britain, the idea of English medieval towns and cities being filthy, muddy and insanitary has been overturned in a 2019 study by Carole Rawcliffe, Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. She argues that through the efforts of crown and civic authorities, mercantile élites and popular interests, English towns and cities aspired to a far healthier, less polluted environment than previously supposed (Rawcliffe, 2019). All major sources of possible infection were regulated, from sounds and smells to corrupt matter. The study of public health in pre-Reformation England challenges several entrenched assumptions about the insanitary nature of urban life during “the golden age of bacteria”. Rawcliffe’s interdisciplinary approach drew on material remains as well as archives to examine the medical, cultural and religious contexts in which ideas about the welfare of the communal body developed. Far from demonstrating indifference, ignorance or mute acceptance in the face of repeated onslaughts of epidemic disease, the rulers and residents of English towns devised sophisticated and coherent strategies for the creation of a more salubrious environment. Among the plethora of initiatives whose origins often predated the Black Death can be found measures for the improvement of the water supply, for better food standards and for the care of the sick, both rich and poor.

In conclusion  There always have been (and always will be) indolent people who dumped their waste into the streets and communal spaces. But the evidence suggests that in much of Mediæval Europe such “crimes” were rare and that both law enforcers and neighbours would react harshly to offenders. Waste was mostly disposed of in one’s backyard cesspit, taken to a communal dump or special stream, river or gutter meant just for this purpose [3], or taken away by a paid refuse collector. When cities became overpopulated, this relatively well functioning system sometimes stopped working as it should and although the problems were often fixed, they became more frequent.

Things clearly went wrong and there were plenty of accidents and incidents where people complained about a filthy stench or waste everywhere. But the idea that this was a common part of daily life across Mediæval Europe is a myth. Mediæval people connected smell with health such that bad air and smells were assumed to be unhealthy. This albeit simplistic notion gave our forebears the extra incentive to avoid or combat unhygienic situations. In short, they were not that different from us. Bon appétit!

References:

Jong, H. (2008), “De mythe van de vuilnisbelt”, published in Millenium 22, pp. 68-91.

Kehnel, A. (2024), “How did medieval people deal with waste?” in “Q&A”, BBC History Magazine (Christmas edition), p. 33.

O’Neill, T. (2013), “How Did People in the Middle Ages Get Rid of Human Waste?”, www.slate.com, available online (accessed 4th December 2024).

Rawcliffe, C. (2019), “Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities”, Martlesham: Boydell Press.

Endnotes:

1. From www.etymonline.com, the noun “latrine” enters English c. 1300 as “laterin” meaning a privy. It is probably from Latin latrina, latrinum, a contraction of lavatrina “washbasin, washroom,” from lavatus the past participle of lavare “to wash” plus -trina, a suffix denoting “workplace”. The word's reappearance in 1640s probably is a re-borrowing from French.

2. Nouveaux riche (French for “new rich”) is a pejorative term for one who has recently become rich and who spends money conspicuously.

3. Water flowing along such streams, rivers or gutters would have minimised odours and flushed waste away from living areas. Naturally, if the system became clogged, the result would be less than pleasant.

A Brief History of Food: Words, names and meanings

What follows was inspired by the video “Vegetables don’t exist” on the YouTube channel “Words Unravelled” hosted by Rob Watts from “RobWords” and Jess Zafarris author of the etymology books “Words from Hell” and “Once Upon a Word”.

As Tastes Of History is based in the UK our focus on food history and recipes is unashamedly British and Euro-centric. Clearly, however, cuisine and dining in the “Old World” has been heavily influenced by pretty much all areas of the globe. Putting aside any arguments about colonialism and imperialism for the present purpose, our diets have been enriched by discoveries in the Americas, Asia and Africa that introduced Britons to foods previously unknown in the classical and Mediæval eras. These new ingredients inspired innovative recipes and led to changes both to our mealtimes and our dining experience. It might surprise some to discover that even the meaning of the words we use to describe food in general, or more specific ingredients, have also changed over time. With that in mind, let’s dig in to a select few.

Meat

Today we use the word “meat” to mean the flesh of animals eaten as food. What we are actually describing is typically skeletal muscle plus its associated fat and connective tissue, but the term can also mean offal and other edible organs such as liver and kidney. “Meat” in this sense is often limited to mean the flesh of mammalian species (pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, etc.) raised and prepared for human consumption, while excluding fish, other seafood, insects, poultry, or other animals. However, the word comes from the Old English “mete” meaning food in general (and animal feed), but it was also used to mean a meal. Interestingly, vegetables were called “green meat”, and dairy products were called “white meat”. Over the centuries, however, “meat” simply became the word for flesh as we recognize it today.

A favourite of linguists, the words we use for the animals and their associated meal products illustrates the class dynamics between the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans. When William, Duke of Normandy, conquered England in 1066 he replaced all the existing Anglo-Saxon nobility with his Norman comrades. So, when pigs, cows, and chickens (the Germanic terms for these animals) arrived on the plate of the new ruling-class, they became a Norman-French derived word like porc (“pork”; from Latin: porcus “pig”), boeuf (“beef”), and poulet (“chicken”).

Daily bread

“Bread” is commonly used as a word for the most basic kinds of food - as in our “daily bread”. The root of the word means “to bubble” or “to boil” in reference to the rising of yeast (“yeast” itself also means “to froth or bubble”). While “bread” was used for the many and varied forms of food produced from flour, it could also mean a crumb or a morsel. Perhaps confusingly, bread is occasionally recorded as a word for meat, as in the term “sweetbreads”, which refers to the pancreas of an animal eaten as food. In this instance the bread element in “sweetbreads” might not be related to the word bread but might instead be related to another very similar Old English word meaning flesh.

It may not be readily apparent but the Latin for bread, panis, gives English speakers the words “company” and “companion”, that is the people you share bread with. The same Latin root is in “panini”, “empanada” and “pantry” where, in Mediæval England, “pantlers” oversaw the storage and preparation of bread. Even earlier a “loaf-ward” in Old English meant someone who looked after your bread, but more importantly the term evolved into the word “lord”. Meanwhile, a lady was literally a “bread maid” or a “bread maker”, someone who kneads bread.

The flour used to make bread is sometimes called “meal”, a word directly related “to mill” which might take place, for example, in a “windmill” where a “miller” grinds the grain. But “meal” as in a repast, a time of day when we eat, is unrelated as it comes from a Germanic root that meant “time”. Anyone familiar with German will know that the word “mal” means time in the sense of now. In German “once” is “einmal”, literally “one time”, “zweimal”, “two times”, and if you want something again, then “noch einmal” translates as “another time”. This is the sense of where the word “meal” means time, which leads to the oddity that a “mealtime” is literally the tautology “time time”.

Vegetables

It may seem an odd thing to say but “vegetable” as a term describing a particular group of popular foods may be a misnomer. There is currently no consensus that there is a scientific definition of a vegetable specifically as opposed to the plants we eat, which can be categorised as fruits and berries for example. So, the debate as to whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable is somewhat moot. As an aside, the tomato is a berry because, in botany, a simple fleshy fruit that usually encloses a seed or many seeds within it. Thus, apricots, bananas, and grapes, as well as bean pods, corn grains, cucumbers, and (in their shells) acorns and almonds, are all technically fruits. Thus a strawberry is not strictly a berry because its many true fruits, or achenes, which are popularly called seeds, are on the outside. Even so, for most people any small fleshy fruit is popularly called a berry, especially if it is edible.

Returning to vegetables, the literal and first recorded meaning of term was originally an adjective as indicated by the “-able” word-ending. But a vegetable is something capable of life or growing since its Latin root vegetari means “to animate” or “to bring to life”. All of which means the words vegetable and meat essentially represent something living, and that makes all of us vegetables.

Fruits

Apple  In a similar vein, in the past “apple” simply meant any kind of fruit. As such apple tends to appear frequently in the ancestries of other words. A date for example was originally called a “finger apple”, but the word itself is derived from the Greek dactylos also meaning “finger”. In Old English eorþæppla (plural) literally meant “earth-apples”. This word was eventually replaced by “cucumber” to describe the widely cultivated creeping vine plant (in the family Cucurbitaceae) that bears cylindrical to spherical fruits used as culinary vegetables.

Peach  The word “peach” was adapted via French from the Latin “malum persicum” meaning “Persian apple”, and a pomegranate literally means an apple with many seeds, from the Latin “pomum granatum”. The latter is related to the word “grenade” which make some sense since when a grenade explodes, its many fragments - figuratively its “seeds” - are blasted far and wide.

Pineapple  In 1398 the word “pin-appel” was coined in Middle English (ME) to describe the reproductive organs of conifer trees (now termed “pinecones”). Remembering that “apple” simply meant any kind of fruit, a pin-appel was therefore the fruit of the pine tree. When Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus) encountered the pineapple in 1493 on the Leeward Island of Guadeloupe, he reputedly named it piña de Indes meaning “pine of the Indians”. However, since piña means pinecone in Spanish, and since pineapples look nothing like pine trees but a lot like pinecones, it is probably safer to translate the meaning as “pinecone of the Indians”. Either way, a linguistic connection between pinecones and pineapples was established. By the 1660s, however, pineapple referred to the tropical plant, with “pinecone” emerging in 1694 to replace the original ME sense of pin-appel.

The scientific name of the pineapple, Ananas comosus, combines the Tupi word nanas, meaning “excellent fruit”, as recorded first by André Thevet in 1555, and comosus meaning “tufted” in reference to its stem. Given the fruit’s South American origin, the first European explorers to discover pineapples were undoubtedly Spanish or Portuguese. With that in mind, there are two names used in Spanish for the pineapple: piña (as in piña colada) and ananás. Interesting, however, English is one of the few Indo-European languages (and its derivatives) that does not use a variation of the word “ananás” to mean pineapple. It is hypothesised that English stuck with piña (“pinecone”) possibly because the English colonies in the New World were trading extensively with the Caribbean islands and ended up using the Caribbean name. Meanwhile, the Spanish introduced the fruit to the rest of Europe whereupon a variation of the Spanish word ananás became the common term.

Avocado  Another fruit with an interesting backstory is “avocado” which comes from the Spanish word aguacate, itself from the Nahuatl (Mexican) word āhuacatl. In Molina's Nahuatl dictionary [1] “āhuacatl” is also given as the translation for compañón “testicle”. Unsurprisingly popular culture makes the frequent claim that the word's original meaning was testicle, but this is not the case. The original meaning can be reconstructed as “avocado”, so the word seems to have been used in Nahuatl as a euphemism for testicle. Another piece of popular folk etymology holds that avocado is the same word as the Spanish for lawyer, abogado (an advocate), thus euphemistically comparing legal professionals with testicles. While this may explain the popularity of the connection, it far is more likely that these two homophones - avocado and abogado - were simply misheard. In the same vein, sometimes avocados are called “alligator pears” which, according to more folk etymology, stems from Europeans struggling to comprehend the original Nahuatl word. So, sounding a bit like “alligator”, and with a skin that can be green and kind of rough like an alligator’s scales, it is easy to see how this might make sense - it looks like a pear albeit with alligator skin. The same logic has seen avocados being called “butter fruits” because they have a buttery inside.

New World staples

Following on from avocado, “tomato” is from the same Nahuatl language and means “swelling fruit”. Originally a drink, “chocolate” also derives from the same language and, together with the tomato, was not introduced to Europe until after the Spanish and Portuguese imperial conquest of South America. The same can be said of the humble “potato”, whose name is from the Caribbean language of Haiti where “batata” originally referred to a sweet potato. In the early 16th-century Portuguese traders carried the crop to all their shipping ports and the sweet potato was quickly adopted from Africa to India and Java. When first introduced to Europe by the Spanish, the name had changed from “batata” to “patata”. Spanish invaders in Peru had begun to use the common white potatoes as cheap food for sailors in the 1530s, and the first such “potato” reached Pope Paul III approximately ten years later, in 1540. According to popular tradition, potatoes were introduced to Ireland in 1565 by John Hawkins and later brought to England from Colombia by Sir Thomas Herriot in 1586.

Cultivated in Spain around 1560, just under a century later (1648) potatoes were being grown in Virginia. Between these two points (ca. 1590s), a variation of the Spanish name for the sweet potato was extended to the common white potato native to Perus since both had similar edible tubers. At first, albeit mistakenly, these varieties were called Virginia potato or the “bastard potato” because it was of lesser significance compared to the sweet potato.

Salted foods

It is fascinating how many words essentially mean “salted”. For example, while not necessarily brined now, “salad” was originally a word for brined vegetables that was later extended to mean any mixture of vegetables. Meanwhile, the word pasta in Greek described a “barley porridge”, but originally was perhaps “a salted mess of food”. The word’s etymology derives from the neuter plural word pastos, an adjective meaning “sprinkled, salted” (from passein “to sprinkle”). In late Latin pasta meant “dough, pastry cake, or paste”, but the term retained the implied meaning to salt or season food. From 1874 onwards pasta became the generic name for Italian dough-based foods such as spaghetti, macaroni, etc. The term was not common in English until after World War II. Pasta probably became more familiar to post-war Britons when, in the 1950s and to a degree the 1960s, small numbers of Italian immigrants, mainly from Lazio, settled in areas such as Manchester, Bedford, and Peterborough. Naturally they brought with them recipes from the Italian homeland which, over time, became popular with Britons until pasta has become one of the ubiquitous foods in the country.

Pizza  While on the subject of pasta, let us dispel a couple of myths that the ancient Romans ate pizza and lasagne. First off, did the Romans eat pizza? The answer to this question was complicated when an image of a Roman period fresco (right) purporting to show a pizza gained traction on social media in June 2023. At the time BBC News reported “Archaeologists in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii have uncovered a painting which depicts what might be the precursor to the Italian pizza.” To which the Italian Culture Ministry added that the flatbread depicted in the 2,000-year-old fresco “may be a distant ancestor of the modern dish”. The fresco was discovered in the hall of a house next to a bakery during new excavations of Regio IX in the centre of Pompeii nearly 2,000 years on from the volcanic eruption which engulfed the city.

Tastes Of History is confident that although repeatedly described as such, technically what the fresco depicts lacks the ingredients to be considered a pizza. Instead, it would be more correct to say that it simply shows a flatbread apparently loaded with toppings resting on a silver platter alongside a silver goblet of wine. Yet, while the fresco might appear to show a “pizza”, there are two good reasons why it would be impossible for ancient Romans to make one in the modern sense. Firstly, one key ingredient typically found on today’s pizza is mozzarella cheese. While the Romans had similar cheeses, modern mozzarella is a recent invention [2]. A bigger “problem” is that in most instances the flatbread forming the pizza base is first topped with a tomato-based sauce. Inconveniently for the “Roman pizza” theory, as already mentioned tomatoes are native to South America and were not introduced to Europe until the colonization of said Americas. Why many modern viewers “see” a pizza is connected to arguments made in “Dispelling Some Myths: Romans in the Americas” where a “pineapple” is often identified in an early 1st-century AD floor mosaic. As we have already determined, like tomatoes, pineapples were also native to South America and did not arrive in Europe until nearly a thousand years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Moreover, we argued that it was highly unlikely Roman-era ships were robust enough to cope with a long Atlantic crossing and, more importantly, contemporary accounts by Greek and Roman geographers, historians and commentators make no mention of lands West of Ireland. The likelihood, therefore, of the ancient Romans being even remotely aware that the Americas existed is extremely doubtful. Thus, if tomatoes were unknown to ancient Romans, then pizza in the modern sense was also unknown.

Lasagne  Lasagna (noun sing.) is a single flat sheet of pasta in Italian cuisine. When layers of these sheets are combined with a minced beef ragu, bechamel sauce, and topped with melted cheese, the resulting dish is the classic lasagne (pl.). Supposedly the word lasagna comes from the Greek λάσανα (lasana) or λάσανον (lasanon) meaning “trivet”, “stand for a pot” or “chamber pot”, although the last seems somewhat obscure as it unrelated to cooking. The Romans borrowed the word as lasanum, a “cooking pot” in which lasagne are cooked. Later the dish took on the name of the cookware, much as a casserole is a French cook pot.

In the 1st-century AD, references are made to tracta (singular: tractum; ancient Greek: τρακτὸς, τρακτόν), thin sheets of drawn-out or rolled-out pastry dough that were typically fried [3]. To confuse things further, this everyday foodstuff, popular in both ancient Roman and Greek cuisines, was also called laganon, laganum, or lagana (Greek: λάγανον). Writing in the 2nd-century AD, Athenaeus of Naucratis provides a recipe for lagana which he attributes to the 1st-century AD Chrysippus of Tyana. The recipe has sheets of dough made of wheat flour mixed with the juice of crushed lettuce that are flavoured with spices and then deep-fried in oil [4].

An early 5th-century AD cookbook describes a dish called lagana that consisted of layers of dough with meat stuffing. This has given credence to the misleading claim that the ancient Romans ate lasagne. There is no evidence to link the two dishes, and it would be misleading to do so even though, on the face of it, the two dishes do seem recognisably similar. Some might claim lagana was the inspiration for the modern-day lasagne, but the ancient method of cooking the sheets of pastry dough (lagana) does not correspond to our modern definition of either a fresh or dry pasta product. The confusion is easily understood when you consider that both have similar basic ingredients and perhaps a similar shape.

Salt cured meats  Returning to the salted foods theme, the cured meat originating from Romania, usually made from beef brisket, known as “pastrami” is from the same salty root. The raw meat is brined (salted), partially dried, seasoned with herbs and spices, then smoked and steamed. Like many other meat products, making pastrami was a way to preserve meat before the invention of refrigeration. “Salami” is another food derived from the Latin word “sal” meaning salt, but so are “salsa”, “sauce”, “sausage” and, of course, “salad”.

Salary myth  It is commonly believed that, at certain times in the Roman period, their soldiers were paid with salt, hence the word “salary”, but this is unlikely. The Latin word salarium does seemingly connect employment, salt and soldiers, but the precise link is far from clear. Any misunderstanding probably stems from the Roman historian Pliny the Elder who stated, as an aside in his discussion of sea water in Natural History XXXI, that:

“In Rome...the soldier's pay was originally salt and the word salary derives from it...”. 

On the face of it, Pliny’s claim is categorical but today it is more generally accepted that Roman soldiers were typically paid in coin. The word salarium is indeed derived from the word sal (salt) possibly because a soldier's salary at some point may have included an allowance for the purchase of salt. Alternatively, it reflects the price of having soldiers capture vital salt supplies and subsequently guard the roads, such as the via Salaria (literally “salt road”), along which this valuable commodity was transported to Rome.

Bacon  One of the oldest methods of preserving food is by salt curing using dry edible salt. Two historically significant salt-cured foods are salted fish (usually dried and salted cod or salted herring) and, when combined with smoking, salt-cured meat such as bacon. It turns out, however, that “bacon” was a much vaguer term than currently and could refer to all cuts of pork. Its root is the proto-Germanic *bakkon meaning “back meat” and enters English in the 14th-century from the Old French for “meat from the back and sides of a hog”, originally either fresh or more likely cured. So, “back bacon”, the most preferred type of bacon in the UK, is something of a tautology meaning “back, back”.

Hidden terms

Food and its preparation is so pervasive that some words are related even though it might not be readily evident. Take for instance the word “precocious”. Originally related to plants, in the 1640s it meant “developed or ripe before the usual time”. Its Latin root combines prae “before” plus coquere “to ripen” or more literally “to cook”. Thus, a precocious child in English is one that is “precooked” - a wholly different and slightly disturbing connotation. Of course, in this sense the “precocious” is drawing attention to a person’s immaturity. Here are a few more:

• Often used today to mean a jumbled mix, hotchpotch was originally a type of thick soup or stew made of meat, vegetables and other ingredients available at the time. In English usage since the 14th-century, reading contemporary recipes one might encounter a variety of different spellings including hotchpot, hotch pot, or hog pot, or the early 15th-century hodgepodge (the spelling favoured in the US), hodge-podge, hodge podge, or hogpoch.

• Linked to hodgepotch, the word gallimaufry originating in the 1550s means “a medley, hash or hodge-podge”. This too enters English from the French word galimafrée for a “hash, ragout, dish made of odds and ends”. In Old French of the 14th-century, galimafree (or calimafree) meant a “sauce made of mustard, ginger, and vinegar; a stew of carp” although its origin is unknown.

• Potpourri (or pot-pourri), another word clearly borrowed from French, enters English in the 1610s. By 1749 the term referred to the “medley or mixture of dried flowers and spices” familiar to us today but, from 1855, it is also recorded as a “miscellaneous collection” in the figurative sense (originally in music). In French, however, “potpourri” literally means “rotten pot” where “pourri” is the past participle of pourrir meaning “to rot” that ultimately derives from Latin putrescere “grow rotten” which itself gives us words like putrefy and putrescent. In Spanish “olla podrida” has the same meaning although “podrida” is probably a variant of the original word “poderida” and could be translated as “powerful pot”. In both languages the term refers to a stew, which in Spain is usually made with chickpeas or beans, assorted meats like pork, beef, bacon, partridge, chicken, ham, and sausage, and vegetables such as carrots, leeks, cabbage, potatoes, and onions. The meal is traditionally prepared in a clay pot over several hours. So, rather than rotten food, potpourri probably implies food that has been stewing for a long time to enhance its flavour.

And finally

In Swedish, the word for a sandwich is “smörgås” which has given English speakers a “smorgasbord” - literally a “sandwich board”. As for the ubiquitous “sandwich” itself, its origin story was revealed in another article about mealtimes inspired by “Words Unravelled”. In the 18th-century it became fashionable among the British aristocracy to copy the French and eat a light meal in the evening while they gambled the night away. From this trend emerged a famous late-night snack that now dominates the modern lunchtime menu. The popular story goes that one evening during a 24-hour gambling session the 4th Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, supposedly ordered his valet to bring him cold meats between two slices of toasted bread. In this manner he could eat his snack using just one hand while avoiding getting grease on anything else. Whether he was engrossed in an all-night card game or, as some suggest, working at his desk is not at all clear; both theories have been suggested. Whatever he was doing, the Earl’s name has ever since been attached to similar snacks, even though he probably was not the first person to place a filling between two pieces of bread. Oddly, however, if the tale is true then what we now call a “toasted sandwich” should, in fact, be just a “sandwich” and all other versions should be “non-toasted sandwiches”.

We have only just scratched the surface as there are many more food related words that could have been included. Perhaps Tastes Of History will return to the subject as discover the meaning behind other words, terms and phrases of a historical or culinary nature. If you have read this far then thank you and hopefully it has been a bit of fun. Bon appétit!

Endnotes:

1. Alonso de Molina was a Franciscan priest and grammarian, who wrote a dictionary of the Nahuatl language published in 1571.

2. Mozzarella is the Southern Italian diminutive form of mozza (“cut”), or mozzare (“to cut off”), derived from the method of producing the cheese. The earliest use of the word is in a 1570 cookbook by Bartolomeo Scappi who writes of “milk cream, fresh butter, ricotta cheese, fresh mozzarella and milk”. Reference to 12th-century pilgrims to the Monastery of Saint Lorenzo, in Capua, Campania being offered a piece of bread with “mozza” may date the term even earlier. Either way, mozzarella is not attested in the ancient Roman period.

3. τρακτὸς, τρακτόν: “dough drawn out or rolled for pastry, Lat. tractum or tracta”, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus, retrieved May 7th, 2020.

4. Serventi, S. & Sabban, F. (2002), “Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food”, Columbia University Press, p.16.