Sara Read > Quotes

“this time excessive reading was thought to be damaging to girls’ physical and moral health,”
― Sara Read, Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women's Lives, 1540–1740

“was normal for girls to be home educated, just sufficiently to be able to read, and many who learnt to read did not go on to learn to write.”
― Sara Read, Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women's Lives, 1540–1740

“At the beginning of the period, women had not yet heard of the potato, which was introduced to England in the 1590s, and used carrots and turnips instead, yet by the end of the century potatoes had become an everyday foodstuff”
― Sara Read, Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women's Lives, 1540–1740

“Both Yorkshire gentlewoman Alice Thornton and Sussex minister Isaac Archer noted in their memoirs that family members had died from eating melons.”
― Sara Read, Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women's Lives, 1540–1740

“As a proverb in John Ray’s 1670 collection noted, the normal practice was to ‘wash your hands often, your feet seldom, and your head never.”
― Sara Read, Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women's Lives, 1540–1740

“Christmas banquet, served over two courses. The first course included: Oysters, brawn, mutton stew with marrow bone, a grand salad, capon pottage, breast of veal, boiled partridges, roast beef, mince pies, mutton in anchovy sauce, sweetbreads, roasted swan, venison pasties, a kid with a pudding in his belly, a steak pie, chickens in puff pastry, two geese (one roast, one larded) [covered with bacon or fat while cooking], roast venison, roast turkey stuck with cloves, two capons, and a custard. If guests had any room left after all that, the second course comprised: Oranges and lemons, a young Lamb or Kid, Rabbits, two larded, a pig sauced with tongues, ducks, some larded, two pheasants, one larded, a Swan or goose pie cold, partridges, some larded, Bologna sausages, anchovies, mushrooms, caviar, pickled oysters, teales, some larded, a gammon of Westphalia [smoked] bacon, plovers, some larded, a quince or warden pie, woodcocks, some larded, a tart in puff pastry, preserved fruit and pippins, a dish of larks, neats’ [ox] tongues, sturgeon and anchovies, and jellies.”
― Sara Read, Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women's Lives, 1540–1740

“cannot but complain of, and must condemn the great negligence of Parents, in letting the fertile ground of their Daughters lie fallow, yet send the barren Noddles of their Sons to the University,”
― Sara Read, Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women's Lives, 1540–1740

“There is a great variety of Waters, all which are cold and moist,”
― Sara Read, Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women's Lives, 1540–1740

“for as physician John Pechey wrote in 1696, the washing of the feet and legs unseasonably, or at inappropriate times, could cause problems such as nose bleeds.”
― Sara Read, Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women's Lives, 1540–1740