How People Actually Lived: Toilets, Lice and Toothache: True Stories of Dirt, Death and Everyday Life in History

Your tooth has kept you awake half the night. There’s nobody to call. When it gets light, the best help in the village is the man who shoes the horses. Your head itches, your only shirt has to last another month and the pot under the bed won’t empty itself. For most of history, this was ordinary life. How People Actually Lived: Toilets, Lice and Toothache tells the true stories behind the everyday problems we now take for granted. Forty short stories, every one about real people, take you from a Tudor poet’s flushing toilet that almost nobody wanted to the summer that made London stink, and from the lice in Samuel Pepys’s hair to the washerwoman at her tub, the village blacksmith with his pliers and a Victorian family waiting a week to bury their dead. Along the way, some famous stories fall apart. Thomas Crapper didn’t invent the flush toilet. George Washington’s false teeth weren’t made of wood. Where a story turns out to be a legend, the book says so and tells you what really happened. Inside you’ll find: • Five parts: toilets, lice, washing day, toothache and death at home • Eight true stories in each part, every one short enough to read in a few minutes and able to stand on its own • A “Meanwhile, Around the World” story and a page of quick facts at the end of each part • A plain guide to old British money, so a shilling never slows you down • Sources for every story at the back • Three free bonus stories and a printable Old Money reckoner, free to download Printed in easy-to-read 12-point type, this is a book to read straight through or dip into. It makes a good gift for a dad, a grandfather or anyone who likes real history.