The Tudor Woman Who Ran the Household Pharmacy (And Accidentally Poisoned Everyone)

Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors

Heather Teysko

History

4.6 • 624 Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2026

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In early June in Tudor England, one woman was already up before sunrise. She had roughly four months to produce everything her household needed to survive the next twelve months. Medicine. Preserves. Cosmetics. Cleaning products. The entire household pharmacy. All of it, from scratch, while the plants were available. She had no name in the history books. But without her, the household didn't make it through winter. We follow a Tudor stillroom mistress through a day at the start of summer, from the early morning herb harvest before the dew burns off, through the hours of distilling rose water and filling the medicine chest, all the way to the evening ledger by candlelight. Along the way we get into the dissolution of the monasteries and why it made her job dramatically higher stakes, the cosmetics she was producing that were slowly poisoning the people she was trying to care for. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Some follow the noise.
0:03.3	Bloomberg follows the money.
0:05.4	Because behind every headline is a bottom line.
0:09.3	Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings,
0:13.8	there's a money side to every story.
0:16.5	And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss.
0:20.8	Get the money side of you understand what others miss.
0:22.3	Get the money side of the story.
0:25.3	Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.
0:31.3	Attention all passengers.
0:37.0	The Uber ride for Jeff's rugby team will depart in five minutes from Platform 15. Your ride comes with six toilets and a
0:40.1	refreshments carriage that you'll empty within five minutes. Thank you for booking your tickets on
0:46.3	Uber. Trains on Uber. So I want to talk today about a woman that you've probably never heard that
0:52.8	much about. She doesn't have a name in the history books. She's not a queen. She's not a countess. She didn't marry the
0:58.0	wrong king or get executed for treason. She ran a manor house in Tudor England. And right now,
1:03.9	in early June, she is in a race against the clock that she cannot afford to lose. Because
1:10.4	something about summer in Tudor England that, that we don't really think about,
1:13.5	is that summer wasn't a break.
1:16.5	Summer wasn't holidays and picnics and lazy afternoons.
1:20.7	Summer was the most intense working season of the year for the woman who ran the household,
1:26.5	and specifically for the woman who ran the household, and specifically for the woman who ran
1:29.0	the still room. And the reason is simple. The plants were not going to wait for her. Everything
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 17 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Heather Teysko, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Heather Teysko and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.