[Sca-cooks] "Child Safing"

[Susan Fox]

Lilinah wrote:
> Adamantius wrote:
>> On a marginally related note, I remember always being mystified by the
>> claims that such-and-such-a-child or woman in some historical setting
>> died after "falling into the fire". But add things like corsets on the
>> victims and thermal updrafts in a large fireplace, not to mention
>> smoke and carbon monoxide, and it starts to seem like a more viable
>> concept.
Don't fall into that old Urban Legend trap that "corsets are limiting 
and uncomfortable".  That's not really the case for a properly fitted 
corset.  Do today's women wear their fancy underwires and high fashion 
wardrobe while working in the kitchen?  Not me, bubba. 

I excused the sequence in "Pirates of the Caribbean" because that 
teenaged girl had been forced into a corset that had been built in 
England from measurements taken months before, then shipped over the 
sea.  Of course it didn't fit right, she was still a-growing!
>
> My ex-husband was born in a village on Lake Samosir in North Sumatra 
> (nota bene: that is south of the region known as Acheh). He has a 
> college education, but his father, who died recently, always lived in 
> the village, and his siblings - several of whom also have college 
> educations and work for the Indonesian government - also all grew up 
> there.
>
> Some of his siblings didn't survive. While at least one died of 
> pneumonia, another died because he fell into the fire.
>
> One does not have to go into the far past for such things to happen. 
> They still happen today in developing countries (and maybe even in 
> parts of developed ones)
I'm just grateful that it does not happen more often in the SCA.  I 
police long drippy sleeves and long skirts in my kitchen, particularly 
around wood fires by people who are not accustomed to working with them, 
but I'm not sure everyone does. 

Be careful out there,
Selene