Relevant History welcomes author M. E. Kemp. Kemp was born in Oxford, MA in 1713 — oops, that’s the year her ancestors settled the town. She lives in Saratoga Springs, NY where she touts horses in the racing season and writes historical mysteries on the side. She is married to Jack H. Rothstein, who keeps her “on track,” and lives with two kitties, Boris and Natasha, who act as editors tearing to shred her scripts — literally. For more information, check her web site.
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I write historical mysteries with two nosy Puritans as detectives. One of my tasks as a writer is to be historically accurate. Another is to dispel the many myths and false pictures of our colonial ancestors that are prevalent, even in the way the media portrays them today.
Far from the stern-faced skinny old stick-in-the-mud image, the typical Boston Puritan was a proud man strutting around in a scarlet cloak with a forest-green or perhaps a violet coat, embroidered waist coat, small clothes of various shades, and silk stockings with silver-buckled red shoes. And lace, plenty of exquisite lace falling from his collar and dripping from his sleeves. And that’s the men. (Men today could learn a thing or two about elegant dress from the old Puritans!) You can imagine that the women of New England would not be backwards in their attention to dress. From the earliest days women defied clothing restrictions and blossomed out in the latest fashions from Paris and London. Good sea-captain husbands helped out by bring back little dolls called “fashion babies” wearing the new fashions so the goodwives could study and share the dolls with neighbors. Colors ranged from bright to pastels, with scarlet being the favorite. Scarlet was such a bright warming color for a cold winter’s day — thus argued the Reverend Cotton Mather from his pulpit until a wealthy member of the congregation finally gave in and gifted him with such a cloak.
The one portrait I’ve found of a New England Puritan in black was of a handsome merchant dressed in a black velvet suit with a large, delicate lace collar covering his shoulders. (How I’d love to get my hands on lace like that!) His wife wears a sober olive dress — but her petticoat is bright red with gold embroidered trim. Even an old soldier wears an exquisite “fall” of lace at his throat while a battle rages outside his window. Dressed to kill? So much for the dowdy Puritans of myth!
The fine clothing covers a dirty little secret, though. Our ancestors were none too clean. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then our poor ancestors are groaning in H-E-double Hockey Sticks! And that just can’t be.
Oh, not that the Saints were saints; they ate prodigious amounts of food and drank even more prodigious amounts of hard liquor. Just check the tavern bills for a meeting of clergymen! I’ll bet on a Puritan minister over your biggest lush that the Puritan can out-drink the modern lush any day. Anyone who could down one of “Sparke’s Specials” — rum, beer, bread crumbs and molasses — must have a stomach of cast iron.
And as for sex, we forget that the early Puritans were actual Elizabethans, born and raised under that earthy Queen. The Puritans were probably more open about sex than we are today. They didn’t have the hang-ups, that’s for sure. One gentleman, accorded “a lusty big man,” bragged that he coveted the miller’s wife. He “coveted” her four times in one afternoon and was fined for it, no doubt with the secret envy of the magistrates. (I guess he must have been a lusty big man!) And there goes the joyless image of the Puritans.
My roaming rogue of a dancing master in Death of a Dancing Master isn’t so far off the mark! Unfortunately he meets a fatal end. There are plenty of suspects for my two nosy detectives to pursue — jealous husbands and deceiving wives, angry magistrates and sermonizing ministers. Death of a Dancing Master is based on a real incident, as are all my books, but in this case the real dancing master was merely harassed out of Boston. But then I wouldn’t have had a murder mystery to write, would I?
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Thanks to M. E. Kemp for the fun post! She offers to give away a print copy of Death of a Dancing Master to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available within the U.S. only.
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Thanks for being my guest today, Mistress Kemp. On the topic of sex in our historical mysteries, you and I encounter the same deer-in-the-headlights reaction from many readers. The truth is that pre-Victorian people in “the colonies” were earthy, and sex was one of their favorite activities.
Great post! And I agree, Suzanne, if people would branch out and read more time periods they would understand that not every society placed so many restrictions on sex!
Lady Q, thanks for stopping by. Yes, it’s amazing how many folks don’t stop to think that people of different times and cultures may not have had restrictive attitudes toward sex. In some scenarios, such a restrictive attitude may have marked the person as crazy.
Very interesting! Some of my ancestors were Puritans and obviously they had a lot more fun than I thought. (of course, one had 19 children, so I should have known!)
Nineteen kids? Wow, Carol, thanks for confirming that Puritans did, indeed, love a roll in the hay!
What an eye-opener! It’s obvious where you get your information, Mistress Kemp — you do your research! But what is puzzling to me is where did we get our present-day ideas about the Puritans?
Susan, I’m hoping that our guest author weighs in on your question soon. From the research I’ve done for my Revolutionary War mystery series, I can tell you that most of our loyalist and patriot ancestors didn’t have those stereotyped restrictive, sourpuss attitudes, either.
Very interesting article! Thanks! One question, though… I know they were hard drinking, but was the alcohol content in each drink as high as it is today?
Suzanne, great idea for a series of posts!
There are so many erroneous opinions about our ancestors. Thanks for an entertaining examination of the Puritans.
Love the background – debunk away! Was “scarlet” already limited to the color at this point in history? I know earlier it was a type of fabric (not sure what kind), not a color. I suspect red must have been a favorite shade to dye it.
I knew that our Revolutionary era ancestors were not repressed as many modern people believe they were, having more in common with us than with those of the Victorian era. But I wasn’t aware that the Puritans of the 17th century had this much in common with their Revolutionary descendants. One must remember that official church pronouncements were not always congruent with what real people did in their everyday lives, any more than it is today.
So far as them being none too clean according to modern standards, we must remember that taking a bath wasn’t a simple matter of turning a faucet and filling a tub or shower, but that bathing was a laborious, time-consuming task. Water had to be hauled from a creek or a well, bucket by bucket, then heated over a fireplace. A tub had to be dragged inside, then filled, bucket by bucket. After the bath, the tub had to be emptied in the same matter, then dragged back outside. In winter, cold and ice would make this task even more unpleasant and time-consuming. It was too much of a production to be done every day for every member of the household. I’m guessing many of us would also bathe less frequently if this was how we had to do it.
Posted for M. E. Kemp, who is experiencing technical difficulties accessing the comment form on my blog.
Here are her responses:
Suzanne – thanks for much for having me on your blog, and a big THANK
YOU to your readers who added their intelligent comments!
To Susan, the Victorian era kept the Puritan era under wraps and produced some of the stereotypes; time added some, too.
Yes, Lady Q and Carol, big
families were the norm and women seem to have either died young in childbirth or lived to a great old age!
For Mary and others, yes, the alcohol content was high, but drunkenness was frowned upon and fined if
in public. There are some hilarious stories about minister ordination
dinners that were pretty boisterous. As I say, they must have had stomachs of cast iron in those days. But the loads of food might have balanced the liquor somewhat.
Sandra, scarlet is a bright red color, on the dark side. I do have a scarlet cape which I sometimes wear when I give a talk.
Thanks for the compliment, J. R. Lindemuth. I
appreciate it.
Marilyn aka: M. E. Kemp, the Scarlet Woman (ooops, back to Victorian again! In Puritan times it would be a lusty woman.)
Sandra, etymology for the word “scarlet” in my dictionary shows that while the word originally came from a Persian word to describe a kind of rich cloth, by the 13th century, scarlet was already being associated with the color. I’m not sure when the word ceased meaning the cloth and referred to the color only. Can anyone else weigh in on this?
Tracy, I read a report that as much as 50% of the populace during the Revolutionary War declared no church connections. In the backcountry, ministers rode a circuit and showed up at certain settlements only once or twice a year. When they officiated over weddings, they often found the bride large with child or recently having delivered.
You make a valid point about the availability of bathwater. For most people who lived during the Revolutionary War, daily hygiene consisted of washing hands and faces. In the summer when they were extra sweaty, people would try to perform a more extensive bathing routine once a week or every two weeks. In the winter, well, everyone was pretty ripe. Given that the Puritans had basically the same plumbing infrastructure, I suspect that they had the same hygiene.
Incidentally, when Cornwallis’s army was on the march, he made the men pause every three days to change their shirts and stockings. He might have done it more often if he was riding downwind.
An interesting and diverting article for a dull afternoon!
Oddly enough,I was discussing bobbin lace with a friend the other day, and learned how it became more or less an overnight sensation. Apparently its popularity was due to certain sumptuary laws forbidding gold and silver trim to folks below a certain social level. Lace was a fine alternative trim, being quite decorative, less expensive, easier to obtain, and easier to care for as well.
I think we forget that our ancestors were just as smart, vain, lusty, and inventive as we are today. They may have had different methods, tools, and priorities than we do, but they lived lives as least as rich as our own.
Many thanks to Mistress Kemp and Mistress Adair for such enlightening reading.
In my college course on Early American History, the professor mentioned a study of church registeries from Puritan times. It showed that nearly 40 percent of first-born children arrived within six months or less of the parents’ wedding. And after the wedding, records show that these young parents took their places in the community, worked farms, owned businesses, and had more children. Doesn’t sound like the kids were too scared to have their fun, or the community too punitive of the consequences.
These books are on my must-read list. They sound fun.
Larry, nice to see you here! And you made a great point about our “smart, vain, lusty, and inventive” ancestors. If they hadn’t been so, we wouldn’t be here.
Jaye, thanks for dropping by and corroborating that we’ve sure been taught a lot of balderdash about the Puritans.
Thanks, Shirley!
Thanks so much for this interesing post. I had a sixth grade teacher who took glee in telling us the royals never bathed and were probably crawling with bugs.
My guess is that the alcohol content was the same or greater rather than less. Note that “holding one’s liquor” is, in fact, a sign of increased tolerance, a hallmark symptom of alcohol dependence, aka alcoholism. That’s a matter of human biology, not era or politics. The fact that alcoholism “runs in families” was known in ancient Rome (the genetics is being worked out bit by bit today)–and some of the crazier Roman emperors were probably crazy because the wine they drank was stored in lead vats. Yep, lead–there’s a poison for you.
Ruth, thanks for stopping by. Re: your sixth-grade teacher’s comment, I read that when Napoleon was separated from Josephine, he’d write to her, “Miss you. Be back in two weeks. Don’t bathe.” Makes my scalp itch, just to think of it.
Liz, nice to see you here! Consider what was colonizing unboiled water during the early days of our country, need we wonder why our ancestors were big on booze? 😉
M. E. Kemp’s technology-delayed response to Tracy:
Tracy makes a great point — it was a big production
to take a bath, especially with hot water! And many people could not swim so you couldn’t just go jump into the river. Marilyn aka: M. E. Kemp
More responses from M. E. Kemp:
Larry, I’m glad you’re so understanding about other times, other peoples – they were still human beings and that’s how I write my Puritans.
Jaye – ‘premature’ births were a fact of life. In Dutch Albany as high as 90% of the brides were preggers!
Shirley – I hope you enjoy reading the books!
Ruth – lice? Yuck! I wonder if that’s any better than the ticks that infest New England today.
Liz — at least the water was pretty clean in New England, although they soon turned it into beer. Cider was a favored drink, too, but rum punches were the big treats for a party, served in special punch bowls that were handed around person to person.
Thanks for introducing me to a most interesting author! I need to look for her books . . . .
Kathy V, thanks for stopping by my blog. M. E. Kemp’s books are on Amazon. Since you left a comment, you might win that copy of Death of a Dancing Master.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Marilyn, aka M.E. Kemp, and Jack when we did a library reading for Murder New York Style. So glad to hear you’ve got a new book out, Marilyn. I look forward to reading it.
Another response from M. E.Kemp:
Hi Anita — I remember that meeting very well, and it’s
good to hear from you! Wish we could do another panel! Marilyn aka:
M. E. Kemp