Ruth Goodman > Quotes

“sealing the pores were undertaken, famously with a horse. The poor animal was carefully varnished all over with several layers of shellac (the same solution that is used to varnish furniture) to ensure a complete seal, and died within hours. It was assumed that it had asphyxiated, thus ‘proving’ that the skin played an important role in respiration as well as perspiration.”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

“The level of skill considered 'normal' and wholly unremarkable was higher than that of many twenty-first-century textile professionals.”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian

“My own historical laundry experiences have led me to see the powered washing machine as one of the great bulwarks of women’s liberation, an invention that can sit alongside contraception and the vote in the direct impact it has had on changing women’s lives.”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

“Countrymen wore heavy, hard-wearing cotton fabrics that were mostly pale and undyed. Townsmen wore dark-coloured wool.”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

“Right next door to the bear gardens on the south bank of the Thames in the last years of Elizabeth's reign sat the main theatres of the day. Permanent theatres were brand sparking new, the very first not appearing until 1576. Throughout the reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I, theatre had been a mobile activity, and a largely amateur one.”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“Not all clothing had to wait for its aristocratic owner’s demise to be sold on to playhouses. Fashion at court changed rapidly, and that which had cost the equivalent of a large town house to buy could appear upon the back of the most ambitious only a handful of times before appearing passé. For those like Robert Dudley, patron of one of the acting companies, handing on such clothes could form part of his financial support package, perhaps in lieu of cash for private performances. It was also possible for such public display of his recently worn clothing to be seen as advertising and promoting his standing among the populace. The stage was a fashion show and a window on to the rarefied world of court and courtiers. It held much the same appeal as the Hollywood glamour films of the 1930s and the more modern celebrity lifestyle shows. The”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“West Ham was founded at the A. F. Hills shipyard and went by the name of Thames Ironworks; and of course Arsenal was a club set up by the workers at the Woolwich Arsenal factory complex. The surprising thing was that none of these clubs had in common the rules of the game. Could you pick up the ball and run with it? How big was the goal? How many players should there be to a side? These were all questions that had to be settled, or argued about, before the start of a game.”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

“American tooth powder. Coral, cuttlefish bone, dragons blood, of each eight drachms; burnt alum and red sanders, of each four drachms; orris root eight drachms; cloves and cinnamon of each half a drachm; rose pink, eight drachms. All to be powdered and mixed.”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

“The domestic matters. It is the base unit upon which all else is built. The history of the domestic is the history of everything: how ordinary people choose to lead their lives dictates the future of mankind. Politicians come and go, ideologies wax and wane, but the practical details of how you warm your house or do your washing-up will, added up with the actions of your neighbours and their neighbours, reach into the longer term. Your heating and washing-up habits don't simply use a few resources or add a touch of pollution. Nor do they merely favour some industries over others. They also create a mindset that will touch future generations and shape their decisions.”
― Ruth Goodman, The Domestic Revolution

“Below them were the labourers”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“Christabel Allman made cheese in Nottinghamshire for the Willoughby family at Wollaton Hall.”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“Other merchants formed the next”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“stately homes of Britain. Trerice in Cornwall not only has its bowling alley still, but an original Tudor set of kayles, which are rather fat-bellied skittles, or bowling pins, to play with. And whether it really happened or not, Sir Francis Drake is reputedly said to have refused to break off his game of bowls when the Spanish Armada was finally sighted, a story that gains its credibility from the popularity of the game among gentlemen. The city of London had public bowling alleys, both indoor and outdoor.”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“Manchester United was once called Oldham Road and was based at the Three Crowns pub, with its players recruited from the men who regularly drank there. Everton began life at the Queen’s Head pub in the village of Everton in much the same way. But Queens Park Rangers started not as a pub team but a school team”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

“still recalled the bath of his aristocratic childhood in the late 1860s and early 1870s as less than satisfactory: A call on the hot water supply … did not meet with an effusive or even a warm response. A succession of sepulchral rumblings was succeeded by the appearance of a small geyser of rust coloured water, heavily charged with dead earwigs and bluebottles. This continued for a couple of minutes or so and then entirely ceased. The only perceptible difference between the hot water and the cold lay in its colour and the cargo of defunct life which the former bore on its bosom. Both were stone cold.”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

“Mr Rimmel’s Book of Perfumes”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

“Anatomical studies notwithstanding, Victorian medicine maintained that there was a link between a woman’s reproductive functions and her mental balance (remnants of this belief survive today in popular thought with the vestigial bias about ‘hormonal’ women).”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

“Enormous genetic changes have occurred in varieties of bread wheat over the past 400 years, affecting the look, the yield and the nutritional make-up of the plants.”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“The domestic past charts how we have changed the world before. The domestic present has the power to change it right now.”
― Ruth Goodman, The Domestic Revolution

“Absence of evidence”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England: A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Drunkards, Liars, Thieves, and Braggarts

“begin to see the occasional recipe that could have been produced for dinner in the cottages of labourers. My personal favourite is the one entitled ‘To Frye Beanes’. First soak your beans, then boil them until they are cooked through. Next put a large lump of butter into a frying pan, along with two or three finely chopped onions, add the beans and fry it all together until it begins to brown, then sprinkle on a little salt and serve. Another recipe book adds large handfuls of chopped parsley towards the end of the cooking, which I think is an improvement.”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“Beneath them sat the gentry,”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“Their link with the sex trade at a time when syphilis, almost unknown before 1490,”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“bottom of the pile consisted of labourers paid by the day.”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“Neither train nor bus, at this point in time, was interested in carrying working-class passengers; theirs was a service for the wealthy or middle-class person; the timetables and routes were tailored to their specific needs. Trains and omnibuses alike were in the business of delivering gentlemen to the City of London and to the business and commercial districts of all of the major towns and cities in time for a ten o’clock start.”
― Ruth Goodman, How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

“the word ‘banquet’ in the Tudor period meant sweets, cakes, cheese, nuts and fruit with a glass or two of wine).”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“For our tiny urban population the hierarchy was a little different, with international merchants occupying the top spots,”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“Henry VII had been largely content to simply reiterate the sumptuary laws of his predecessor;”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“Far more numerous were the yeomen.”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life

“Shakespeare made up thousands of words, over 1,700 of which are still with us. Both moonbeams and mountaineers are his, and if you were to sit in your bedroom and submerge yourself in lacklustre chat as you hobnob with those you have friended, you would still be talking his language. His phrases, too, fall from the mouths of people who might claim to hate his work: to be as dead as a doornail or up in arms, to come upon something all of a sudden and decide that it’s a foregone conclusion. These are everyday idioms that pepper our common tongue.”
― Ruth Goodman, How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life