# What was life like in the 1600s? (research here) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 25, 2011, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122 "2011-05-25T06:18:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/41 "2011-05-26T20:08:55Z")
Thanks again for the info and recommendations, people 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/42 "2011-05-26T20:48:01Z")
The novel _Forever Amber_, the main character of which is a fictional mistress of Charles II, was a huge bestseller in the 1940s and is credited with good research. (IIRC the author, Kathleen Winsor, had planned to do grad work in history but marriage and World War II derailed the plans, and the Restoration Era was to have been the focus of her study; she made so much money off of the novel that she became a writer and married a bunch of times instead.) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2011, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/43 "2011-05-26T21:28:59Z")
One of the most readable books is: _At Home: A Short History of Private Life_, by Bill Bryson ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/44 "2011-05-27T07:35:18Z")
> [@glaeken](#): > > You also have the industrial revolution kicking off big time towards the end of the 17th century which is a pretty signficant thing in itself. I think you’re about a century off here. The Industrial Revolution is usually considered to have started in the second half of the 18th century. ---
**Author:** ![glaeken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@glaeken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glaeken)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/45 "2011-05-27T08:58:04Z")
I think you can see a lot of the start of the industrial revolution around that time. I guess for me I am linking the industrial revolution to things like steam engines starting to arrive from people like Savery and Newcomen. These developments seem like the dawn of the industrial revolution to me. I don’t know what academically is considered the dawn though so this is really just my general concept of it. ---
**Author:** ![BarryB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@BarryB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BarryB)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/46 "2011-05-27T09:24:01Z")
> [@glaeken](#): > > I think you can see a lot of the start of the industrial revolution around that time. > I guess for me I am linking the industrial revolution to things like steam engines starting to arrive from people like Savery and Newcomen. These developments seem like the dawn of the industrial revolution to me. I don’t know what academically is considered the dawn though so this is really just my general concept of it. Savery’s engine was patented in 1698, and Newcomen’s work came afterwards. Yes, there were some novelty steam engines in the 17th century, but the term Industrial Revolution is used to describe the large economic and social shift that came about because of the widespread use of steam power and machinery, something that would not happen until well into the 18th century. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/47 "2011-05-27T09:35:44Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > You might be interested in [A Journal of the Plague Year](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Journal_of_the_Plague_Year) by Defoe. He wrote it about 50 years after the plague, but it’s a very meticulous account of the plague in London, and certainly gives you a feel for the impact on the ordinary citizen. Plus, if you’re writing about vampires, your character may have a professional interest in that many deaths… I second this - it’s not a gripping narrative but there’s a lot of detail in it. I would think your average vampire’s reaction to the plague depends on his immunity to it. If he’s immune, having lots of people dying is a great cover. If he isn’t, he’d be scared to bite anyone. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/48 "2011-05-27T12:36:55Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > [QUOTE=Little Nemo] > > The problem was that all the suspects were corpses and you just couldn’t get the same satisfaction executing somebody who was already dead. Speak for yourself. [/QUOTE] Note that Charles II around this time had the corpses of Oliver Cromwell and a few other regicides dug up, hanged, then decapitated, as a retroactive punishment for regicide. See: [Oliver Cromwell’s Head](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell%27s_head). Again, that’s something that may be of some interest to **Opal’s** vampire character. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/49 "2011-05-27T17:02:01Z")
I think it would be interesting to see a vampire who’s been around for 500 years but of the peasant class, middle aged in appearance and chubby. He’s irked by fictional vampires being aristocratic and beautiful and having memories of wild parties at St. Petersburg palaces and the like; he remembers how to work a loom in a Scottish waddle and daub cottage and once saw somebody ride down the road that people bowed to but has no idea if it was a king, a lord, or just somebody with a really nice suit of clothes and that’s as close as he ever got to mingling with royalty. ---
**Author:** ![Intelligently\_Designed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intelligently_designed/32/20957_2.png) [@Intelligently\_Designed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intelligently_Designed)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/50 "2011-05-27T22:32:55Z")
[Edward Rutherfurd’s historic novels](http://www.edwardrutherfurd.com/edward-rutherfurd-books.html) are great reads. In your case, I suggest _London_ and _Sarum_. They cover huge periods of time but you could focus on the 17th century. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2011, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/51 "2011-05-28T18:51:30Z")
Thanks for the recommendations, everyone. Some of this stuff is even available for Kindle for free 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2011, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/52 "2011-05-28T21:47:39Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > . . . In scientific circles, the Royal Society was founded in this century and Isaac Newton did his most important work. If you’re interested in the Royal Society and how people viewed themselves and the functions of their bodies, you might want to read **Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain - and How It Changed the World** by Carl Zimmer. The bulk of the book covers between 1600 and 1691, mostly in England. This is the time when medicine shifted from balancing the body’s humours to . . . other things. If your vampire is curious to know what vampires are and how they operate, he might have looked into the science of the times. At the beginning of the century, the philosophical consensus (or argument) was a mix of Ancient Greek and biblical theories. By the end of the century, the consensus (or argument) was largely based on recent disections and experiments. Could your vampire have had to go from a peasant superstitious understanding of vampires (perhaps with devils and demons), to an Old Testament understanding (the soul resides in the blood), to a scientific\* understanding? Would he have been intreagued or irritated by the way that the understanding of how bodies worked kept changing? - Natrual Philosophy split from Philosophy during the 17th century. It wasn’t called Science until later. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2011, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122/53 "2011-05-29T13:40:35Z")
Regarding the industrial revolution, it wouldn’t take off big time until the eighteenth century, but an important precursor step took place: the discovery that baking coal in an airless oven into “coke” made it useful as a fuel on an industrial scale. This ended the “energy crisis” of being limited to firewood and in the 1600s particularly allowed the brickmaking and glass smelting industries to take off. Glass bottles became cheap enough to routinely store wine in for the first time, and building in brick as an intermediate option between wooden and stone structures became affordable. It was in the 1600s that Spain’s monopoly on the western hemisphere began to loosen, with inroads by English, Dutch and French privateers, adventureres and pirates. The seventeenth century was the classic age of Caribbean piracy. Further east, the 1600s was also the highwater mark of the Ottoman empire’s attempts to conquer middle Europe, with the seige of Vienna being turned back. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-in-the-1600s-research-here/583122.md?page=2)