The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #162941 Message #3882397
Posted By: Steve Gardham
15-Oct-17 - 12:04 PM
Thread Name: just as the tide' last verse
Subject: RE: just as the tide' last verse
You are discussing common people from previous centuries here. You only need go back to the 19thc and look at the lives of common people to realise that they lived in conditions just one step above slavery.
The relative crapness of one individual's life compared with another, looked at with modern eyes, is pretty insignificant.
The cliche is that sailors had a wife in every port and I'm sure there was some truth in this. Most people, the girls in the ports, the sailors themselves, existed in conditions we would find appalling today. Survival was the first instinct for those not blinded by religion and other similar control mechanisms.
The only people I would condemn from this period are those in power who abused that power, the common people had few options.