Life In Tudor London

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Pages: 2

Lifestyle
The population of London was fast growing. Lives for lower classes in 16th century Tudor London were of a farming lifestyle. For a comfortable living, it took both the husband and the wife. The wife would take care of the household, children, servants, and apprentices taking residence in their home. The husband would tend the farm and would be a tradesman. The average house would have three to five children and once they reached their teenage years, they left to work as farmhands, servants, or apprentices. Food would vary by class. Those with more money were able to afford meat for every meal. Lower classes would be lucky if they could afford any type of meat. All classes ate bread but bread for higher classes were made from better
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They were also not allowed professions such as doctors, lawyers, or teachers and whatever employment they did receive was low paying. Generally, they worked into the house and made candles and soaps, tended to the animals, grew small crops, and cooked washed and cleaned. Children from poorer families would begin working for their families by age seven.

Fashion
Clothes in Tudor London were made of wool or linen and were shaped to emphasize gender. Women wore petticoats, a garment worn under the skirt, and the dresses had detachable lace sleeves. All women wore hats but those in the poorer class wore hats made of linen called a coif. Eventually, laws were enacted over what classes could and could not wear. This was not a problem for the lower classes because they couldn’t afford the silks from Egypt and China.

Time of Shakespeare
During the time of Shakespeare, people generally had a short life span. Generally, “As many as one-half of the children born never lived beyond fifteen years and, thus, never reached adulthood” (Shakespeare’s World). Food supplies were uncertain and there was little medical knowledge. Shakespeare himself was born around the 23rd of April 1564 and died on the 23rd of April 1616. He was married to Anne