18th C. Cosmetic “Betrayal”

In the late 1700’s, according to the British Parliament, no woman could “betray into matrimony any of His Majesty’s subjects by the scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, bolstered hips” or she’d be charged with witchcraft and more. Perhaps they were worried about some of the outlandish women’s fashions of Versailles making their way across the English Channel?

In “Strange As It Seems” –

A Prohibition on ‘Gilding the Lily’ for Landing a Husband

Evidently alarmed by the growing usage of artificial beauty aids in the late eighteenth century, the staid English Parliament of the period actually enacted the following law: 

“All women, whatever age, rank, profession or degree . . . that shall from and after such an act . . . betray into matrimony any of His Majesty’s subjects by the scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty against witchcraft and like misdemeanors and that the marriage upon conviction shall stand null and void.” 

The law, so far as is known, was not rigidly enforced and some time after its enactment was shelved—possibly to avoid the risk of a feminine revolution. – John Hix, 1936

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Alcohol, Society and Mores

A Depiction of a 16th Century Brewery – “Chaucer, it will be conceded, was an accurate painter of the contemporary manners. With the one exception of Shakespeare, no Englishman has surpassed him. Many of the characters in the “Canterbury Tales” got drunk, and misfortunes happen to them in consequence, but nothing is ever said to indicate that the poet had any sympathy with this gross form of vice. The same may be stated of the Elizabethan dramatists.” – (image source, wikimedia commons)

Drinking in the Middle Ages

We are of opinion that drinking had not in the Middle Ages, reached anything like the disgusting extreme at which we find it in the latter part of the seventeenth century and the whole of the eighteenth century. Chaucer, it will be conceded, was an accurate painter of the contemporary manners. With the one exception of Shakespeare, no Englishman has surpassed him. Many of the characters in the “Canterbury Tales” got drunk, and misfortunes happen to them in consequence, but nothing is ever said to indicate that the poet had any sympathy with this gross form of vice. The same may be stated of the Elizabethan dramatists. It is not until we reach the reign of Charles II that we find writers of repute, speaking of excess in drink as if it were no frailty, but rather a virtue. 

This distorted view of things continued getting worse and worse until the days of our grandfathers. All eighteenth-century literature is full of it. There was a print once so popular that it was found on the walls of cottages, as well as in bar parlors, which represented two compartments. In each was a man sitting. The first was labeled “A Jolly Good Fellow.” He had a tankard of foaming beer beside him. The other had for the inscription “A Muckworm,” and represented a thin and care-worn man, making entries in a ledger. 

The inference to be drawn, of course, was that the man who cast up his accounts was infinitely inferior in the social scale to the boon companion who stupefied himself with beer. We imagine this was the common feeling of the time, and that it continued in many classes down to the beginning of the present reign. We ourselves knew a farmer who had broken his ribs twice and an arm three times by falling off horseback when returning drunk from market. – The Academy, 1884

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

George Washington’s Table Manners

First President of the United States, George Washington. Click on Washington’s name for the complete 110 “Rules of Civility” 

What rules of etiquette were thought to be of sufficient importance by Washington, that he copied them in a note book? The social status of a man or woman is usually easily determined by his observance or lack of observance of prevailing rules of etiquette. That these rules vary from time to time is indicated by the following advice given to young people in the time of George Washington. 

In a neatly written volume by our first President during the days of his youth, he copied down 110 rules by which his social standards were to be maintained. Among those rules were the following: 

1. If you soak bread in sauce let it be no more than you can put in your mouth at a time; blow not your broth at table, stay until it cools itself. 
2. Being set at meal, do not scratch, cough, or blow your nose except there’s necessity for it. 
3. Put not your meat to your mouth with your knife in your hand, neither spit forth any stones of any fruit pie upon a dish, nor cast anything under the table. 
4. Cleanse not your teeth with the table cloth, napkin, fork or knife, but if others do it, let it be done with a toothpick. 
5. Kill no vermin, as fleas, lice, ticks, etc., at table in the sight of others.
6. Drink not too leisurely, nor yet too hasty. Before and after drinking, wipe your lips. Breathe not then, or even with too great a noise. 
7. Put not another bite into your mouth till the former be swallowed; let not your morsels be too big for the jowls. 

Folks were surely limited in their operations at the dinner table during the days of Washington, weren’t they? – By Guy Allison, 1943

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Old Etiquette "Don'ts" for Dining, That Are Still Good Today

It is always a law of politeness to incommode one's self rather than incommode others...

Don't leave your knife and fork on your plate when you send it for a second supply. (This rule is disputed by the English. The logic of the question, however, proves the correctness of the rule for it is not easy to place food up on the plate already occupied by a knife and fork. It is always a law of politeness to incommode one's self rather than incommode others, so the problem of what to do with your dinner tools should be your own problem, rather than that of the hosts. The handles of knives and forks are leaded so that the blades or tines will not soil the cloth when rested upon the table. Or, one may with a little skill hold his knife and fork without awkwardness.)

Don't reject bits of bone or other substances by spitting them back into the plate. Quietly eject them upon your fork, holding it to your lips and place them up on the plate. Fruit stones may be removed with the fingers.

Don't trowel butter across an unbroken slice of bread.

Don't bite your bread: break it with your hand.

Don't trowel butter across an unbroken slice of bread.

Don't stretch across another's plate to reach anything.

Don't apply to your neighbor to pass articles when the servant is at hand.

Don't finger articles: don't play with your napkin or your goblet or your fork or with anything.

Don't mop your face or beard with a napkin. Draw it across your lips neatly.

Don't forget that the lady sitting at your side...

Don't turn your back to one person for the purpose of talking with another; don't talk across the one seated next to you.

Don't forget that the lady sitting at your side has the first claim upon your attention. A lady at your side must not be neglected, whether you have been introduced to her or not.

Don't talk when your mouth is full.

–From “Don't: A Manual of Mistakes and Improprieties more or less prevalent in Conduct and Speech,” by Oliver Bell Bunce 1884

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia