Preliminary Programme

The passing of a new Poor Law of 1834 in England initiated a wave of Northern European poor relief reforms, which reached Finland in the 1870s. The main goal of the reforms was to reduce the costs to ratepayers by promoting the workhouse as the primary method of poor relief. While the English network of workhouses was built from the 1830s onwards, the Finnish one was established a half a century later. This paper discusses the ways in which official poor relief records can (or cannot) be used to analyse the agency of female workhouse staff such as matrons/directresses, nurses and schoolteachers in England and Finland. The paper explores whether the voice and experiences of these women can be found in the records, which were mostly produced by male agents of poor relief such as workhouse masters and doctors, local boards of guardians and state inspectors of poor relief. If yes, the history of poor relief institutions can be broadened by making gender and the possible gendered experiences more visible. The paper also aims to discuss the possible similarities and differences between the two countries. (Show less)

The need of use of old age as analytical category and gendered view of growing old was underlined by several predominantly English speaking researchers (Thane, Botelho, Ottaway). With emphasis, that if being biologically female changed as a result of age, what it meant to be a woman changed as well. Preindustrial urban community took the responsibility to relieve the aged poor and that, in turn, elderly poor to some extend regarded themselves as entitled to such aid. In pre-industrial Ljubljana majority of poor-relief recipients of poor-relief (based on outdoor relief) were growing old women between 1815 and 1845. In 1820 around 85% poor-relief recipients were older than 50 years, majority of them were women. With use of qualitative and quantitative sources and methodology the paper will reconstruct various life experiences, identities and strategies of old women in this pre-industrial small urban environment. Due to the financial limitations (bankruptcy of the Habsburg monarchy and consequently fund’s strong reliance to personal charity) the poor-relief officials after receiving a pauper letter or oral request systematically gained various information about the petitioners (potential beneficiaries.) They collected details of age, marital status; household structure and living conditions, occupation, latest work, state of health and body, length of residence of petitioners, but lather also date of entering in receipt of poor relief.
Paper will address the following questions: co-relations between chronological, functional and cultural old age, women’s social and marital status, questions of intergenerational solidarity and the health conditions, living conditions and other personal data of poor-relief petitioners and beneficiaries. Some of them contain “incidental” information about role of individual or family networks, intergenerational relations, strategies and agencies of old women in the economy of makeshifts and role of neighbourly support for the needy old women, attitudes toward body, and with several limitations sometimes also self-perceptions of growing old. Special attention will be given to complexity of agencies, networks and strategies of old spinsters. Poor-relief censuses and petitions make these often invisible illiterate old women visible and could overcome several stereotypes and hypothesis about process of female ageing, ideas about the “ageless” nature of women’s work and better abilities of poor women to survive in old age. (Show less)

Works on old age have proven to be relatively inaccessible, as scholars have repeatedly failed to adopt age as a category of historical analysis. In Britain, works on ageing are said to be relatively few, while in Australia, the field is said to be very much in its infancy. However, from the small sum of works which have been published, a number of key debates have emerged. The most noteworthy of these considers workhouse populations. David Thomson has argued that the aged formed a minor portion of any workhouse population, while Lynn MacKay suggests that the workhouse was ‘not primarily the abode of the helpless or the elderly.’ This is largely in contrast to the findings of Susannah Ottaway and Virginia Crossman who have both argued that the workhouse ‘virtually become an old people’s home.’
From an Irish perspective, old age history has been almost completely neglected. To situate the Irish experience within these key debates, both census material and admission records for several Irish institutions have been consulted. This paper will therefore discuss the movement of elderly women through these institutions to determine whether elderly individuals were dependant on state funded relief, charitable and philanthropic relief or family care. Four Irish workhouses have been consulted in a bid to determine why elderly women were forced to utilise these institutions, how many aged individuals entered the workhouse and the length of time spent in the institution. The experiences of these women will then be compared to the number of elderly individuals who sought relief via charitable and philanthropic institutions. Almshouses, asylums and homes, established by religious organisations, will be addressed, to determine whether or not aged women faced religious discrimination when seeking relief outside of the workhouse.
On the whole, this paper will explore the institutional care of Irish women, aged 50 years or more, from 1845 to the introduction of the old age pension. It will explore themes of gender, religion, class and family dynamics, adding significantly to our understanding of nineteenth century Irish society. It will consider how Irish society responded to old age, the expectations of family members and the impact of poverty on older members of society. In doing so, it serves to fill a void by bringing this almost ignored group of individuals to the fore within the historical narrative. (Show less)