![]() ![]() However, the researchers found bunions were more common among town dwellers and in particular those buried in the friary, who would have included clergy and wealthy laypeople. The study cannot prove that the bunions were triggered by poulaines. ![]() Analysis of remains that could be dated revealed bunions were significantly more prevalent during the 14th and 15th centuries, with 19 out of 71 individuals having the condition, compared with three out of 52 from the 11th–13th centuries. The team found that 31 of the individuals, 20 of them men, had skeletal signs of bunions. Writing in the International Journal of Paleopathology, Mitchell and colleagues report how they analysed the remains of 177 adults, all of whom had at least one first metatarsal present, from four cemeteries in Cambridge, including a rural parish cemetery, an Augustinian friary inside town, and a hospital. In 1463 Edward IV restricted the length of the points for anyone below the rank of a lord to less than two inches within London “on pain of forfeiting 40d to your highness for every offence”. According to the Museum of London, in 1394 a monk of Evesham noted that some people wore shoes with pointed toes “half a yard in length, thus it was necessary for them to be tied to the shin with chains of silver before they could walk with them”.īut the fashion became contentious. The parsnip-shaped shoes, known as poulaines, became widespread in Britain in the 14th century, and ended up reaching absurd lengths. “People really did wear ridiculously long, pointy shoes, just like they did in Blackadder.” “We were quite fortunate that we happened to be studying a time period where there was a clear change in shoe fashion somewhere in the middle of our sample,” said Dr Piers Mitchell, of the University of Cambridge, a co-author of the study. New research reveals that medieval fashionistas may have discovered this the hard way. ![]()
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