Almost all every day's activity was performed on the street, so it must have been a sociable excitement of yelling, singing and arguing. In the early days cattle, like chicken and pigs were found in the streets and even in the houses. Most streets did not have pavement, so these animals found their food in the mud and between the remainders of the marketplace. In about 1500 the City Council restricted cattle within the city walls, except for the Sint Anthony – and the Sint Cornelis pigs, property of two convents. The citizens fed these pigs and the meat was distributed among the poor each year.

Markets were very characteristic and dominant in Amsterdam, first of all the fish market. In the food range of the Dutch, fish has always been important. But Amsterdam did not only have four fish markets, but also a special market for cheese and butter, one for wood, for peat, for straw, for pipes, for cattle, flowers, vegetables and many more. The street names still indicate where these markets were.

Most of the people lived on the streets during the daytime, especially the children. When they could walk, the boys were allowed to play in the street, girls had to play in or near the house, on the doorstep. The games they played and the toys they used did not change a lot throughout the centuries, although in this age of computer games, our children or grandchildren hardly play these games anymore. But many of us remember our marbles, stilts and kites. Like the children in the 17th century we played tag, blindman’s buff and hopscotch, skipping rope, bounceball or hide and seek. They too played with a hoop and with a top.

I found one game I did not know, “pulling cobbles”, The young rascals took a peace of leather, cut it into a circle, made a little hole in the middle, attached a rope to it and if the leather was wetted, they had created a sucker cup. The pavement in Amsterdam was in general cobblestone, so with their sucker cup they could pull cobbles out of the pavement. This game made them very unpopular with the authorities.

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