• Tudor home is icon of Britishness
• Quaint relics of the past – changed them and us
• Age of discovery and anything is possible – change most evident in the home, domestic life transformed
• As with anything new there were risks
• Life threatening changes made their way into the heart of the Tudor home
• Emergence of people with new wealth – aspirations for their homes
• New homes introduced hidden killers to the home
• Newly discovered lands brought killers home into the kitchen and dining room
• Boom in trade, prospering in trade and new goods including food and furniture, home became more comfortable than ever home
• Increase in material goods
• Dining room – taste for the new and exotic
• Until the 1540s the English didn’t have a word for orange
• Sugar became more available with lower prices – slave trade
• Medieval diet rather bland, enhanced with sugar in Tudor period
• Sugar needs to be broken up – work hours as well as expense, desirable way of displaying status
• Could play with sugar to shape and dye it
• Huge release of energy when sugar introduced to a diet that had none before
• Consumption more widespread but caused trouble – changes in disease patterns over time, impact of sugar on health
• Dental health – marked change in dental health. Medieval teeth much healthier than Tudor skulls as sugar introduced
• Methods of cleaning teeth in the Tudor period made things worse
• Used solutions to clean their teeth containing sugar or alabaster
• Kissing comfits were sweets which took away bad breath but damaged teeth
• Sugar also affects chemicals in the body – serotonin, pleasure chemical

Continue reading “Documentary Notes – ‘Hidden Killers of the Tudor Home’ with Suzannah Lipscomb” →