Bathing and laundry arrangements are occasionally mentioned. The regulations for the Sherburn lepers direct a strict attention to cleanliness. Two bath-tubs (cunæ ad balneandum) were supplied; heads were washed weekly; and two laundresses washed the personal clothing twice a week. In the fifteenth-century statutes of Higham Ferrers matters of health and toilet are detailed. None might be received “but such as were clean men of their bodies”; and if taken ill, a bedeman was removed until his recovery. Every morning the woman must “make the poor men a fire against they rise and a pan of fair water and a dish by it to wash their hands.” The barber came weekly “to shave them and to dress their heads and to make them clean.” When the Savoy was officially visited in 1535, the authorities were asked p174 “whether the bathes limitted by the founder be well obserued and applyed.”
As to hair-dressing, “tonsure by the ears” was commonly used by the staff. After profession at Chichester it was directed:—“then let the males be cropped below the ear; or the hair of the women be cut off back to the middle of the neck.” Among the instructions in the register of St. Bartholomew’s near Dover is one about the round tonsure, and there is a marginal note as to the mode of shaving the head. The visitation of St. Nicholas’, York (temp. Edward I), showed that formerly brethren and sisters were tonsured, but that Simon, recently master, had allowed them to change both habit and tonsure.[106]
5. CLOTHING
(a) The habit of the staff.—The dress worn by the master and his fellow-workers was usually monastic or clerical, but it varied considerably, for the priests might be regulars or seculars, the brethren and sisters religious or lay persons. Occasionally the warden was not in orders; it was directed at St. Leonard’s, York, that “when the master is a layman, he shall wear the habit of the house.” In an ecclesiastical type of foundation, the dress was commonly after the Augustinian fashion, consisting of black or brown robe, cloak and hood, with a cross on the outer garment; white and grey were occasionally worn by officials of both sexes. The Benedictine brethren of St. Mark’s, Bristol, were clothed in a black habit with a quaint device, namely, “a white cross and a red shield with three white geese in the p175 same.” Secular clerks had more latitude in costume; the sombre mantles were enlivened by a coloured badge, a pastoral staff at Armiston, a cross at St. John’s, Bedford, etc.
(b) The almsman’s gown.—The early type of pensioner’s habit is perpetuated at St. Cross. Ellis Davy, having sober tastes, provided for his poor men at Croydon that “the over-clothing be darke and browne of colour, and not staring neither blasing, and of easy price cloth, according to ther degree.” This stipulation was probably copied from the statutes of Whittington’s almshouse, which as a mercer he would know. The usual tendency of the fifteenth century was to a cheerful garb. The bedeman of Ewelme had “a tabarde of his owne with a rede crosse on the breste, and a hode accordynge to the same.” The pensioners at Alkmonton received a suit every third year, alternately white and russet; the gown was marked with a tau cross in red. At Heytesbury the men’s outfit included “2 paire of hosyn, 2 paire of shone with lether and hempe to clowte theme, and 2 shertys”; the woman had the same allowance, with five shillings to buy herself a kirtle. The two servitors at St. Nicholas’, Pontefract, wore a uniform “called white livery.”
(c) The leper’s dress.—The theory of the leper’s clothing is described in the statutes of St. Julian’s; they ought “as well in their conduct as in their garb, to bear themselves as more despised and as more humble than the rest of their fellow-men, according to the words of the Lord in Leviticus: ‘Whosoever is stained with the leprosy shall rend his garments.’” They were forbidden to go out without the distinctive habit, which covered them almost entirely. The outfit named in the Manual consisted of p176 cloak, hood, coat and shoes of fur, plain shoes and girdle.
The hospital inmate in his coarse warm clothing was readily distinguished from the ragged mendicant. The brothers and sisters at Harbledown were supplied with a uniform dress of russet, that is to say, a closed tunic or super-tunic; the brethren wore scapulars (the short working dress of a monk), and the sisters, mantles. At St. Julian’s hospital, the cut of the costume was planned; thus the sleeves were to be closed as far as the hand, but not laced with knots or thread after the secular fashion; the upper tunic was to be worn closed down to the ankles; the close black cape and hood must be of equal length. The amount of material is recorded in the case of Sherburn, viz. three ells of woollen cloth and six ells of linen. At Reading the leper’s allowance was still more liberal, for the hood or cape contained three ells, the tunic three, the cloak two and a quarter; they also received from the abbey ten yards of linen, besides old leathern girdles and shoes.
Lepers were forbidden to walk unshod. At Sherburn, each person was allowed fourpence annually for shoes, grease being regularly supplied for them. Inmates of both sexes at Harbledown wore ox-hide boots, fastened with leather and extending beyond the middle of the shin. High boots were also worn by the brethren at St. Julian’s “to suit their infirmity”; if one was found wearing low-cut shoes—“tied with only one knot”—he had to walk barefoot for a season.
For headgear at Harbledown, the men used hoods, and the women covered their heads with thick double veils, white within, and black without. Hats were sometimes p177 worn, both in England (Fig. 9) and in France. (Fig. 26.) In the Scottish ballad (circa 1500), Cresseid is taken to the lazar-house dressed in a mantle with a beaver hat. This was probably a secular fashion.
