To thrive, one must wive? Subsistence strategies of single women in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century rural Flanders

Abstract

In eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century rural Flanders the number of unmarried women rose, as they did in the rest of Western Europe. While previous studies of unmarried women mostly concentrated on urban dwellers, this contribution focuses on the coping strategies of unmarried women in two rural areas of the Franc of Bruges characterized by two different ‘social agro-systems’. This concept aims to link the social, economic and demographic patterns with the geological characteristics and economic activities of a specific region. Based on two censuses, this article discusses the occupations of unmarried women, their household situations and their migration behaviour. The numbers show different outcomes for the two agro-systems, which validates the idea that the coping strategies of unmarried women were influenced by the region they were living in.

Keywords:

• single women
• social agro-systems
• female work
• living conditions
• migration
• eighteenth and early nineteenth-century

Acknowledgements

This article is written as part of my PhD project on subsistence strategies of never married women in the eighteenth and early nineteenth Franc of Bruges, called: ‘Analyse van de bestaansstrategieën van nooit gehuwde vrouwen tijdens de vroegmoderne tijd. Casus: het Brugse Vrije (1730–1850)’. This project is financed by the Special Research Fonds (BOF) of the Ghent University and is under the supervision of Isabelle Devos. I would like to thank Isabelle Devos (Ghent University), Thijs Lambrecht (Ghent University/State Archives Bruges), Ariadne Schmidt (Leiden University), Susie Sutch (Ghent University) and Jan Van de Poel (Free University of Brussels) for their useful comments on earlier versions of this text. I would also like to thank Bart De Wit (Ghent University) for designing the map of the Early Modern Franc of Bruges.

Notes

^1. In our sources, ‘spinster’ is not used as a term of marital status but as an occupational term. When contemporaries wanted to indicate an unmarried woman they referred to them as ‘jongedochter’, ‘bejaarde dochter’, ‘meerderjarige dochter’ or ‘jonge bejaarde dochter’ (‘damsel’, ‘old maid’, ‘adult daughter’ or ‘young old maid’). As a consequence, when I use ‘spinster’ in this article, it means ‘someone who spins’ and not ‘an unmarried woman’.

^2. Scholars consider people in the eighteenth century to be poor if their assets were below the value of 250 day wages of an unskilled labourer. For eighteenth century Flanders this can be equated with 30 ponden Vlaams (Mechant, 2006).

^3. Parish Registers, Certificates of Baptism Lichtervelde, p. 2, 25/12/1706, Petronilla Kesteloot; Certificates of Burial Lichtervelde, 28/9/1769, Petronilla Kesteloot; Register 358, folio 152, n. 56, 16/12/1769, State Archives Bruges (hereafter: SAB).

^4. This phenomenon was coupled with a rise in age at first marriage. According to C. Vandenbroeke (1976) this rose for women in the Southern Netherlands from 25.3 years at the beginning to 27.5 at the end of the eighteenth century, increasing even to 29.7 years in the first half of the nineteenth century.

^5. Christine Peters (2007) argues that in early modern England contemporary authors took it for granted that women married based on the idea that it was ‘natural’ and an ‘economic necessity’.

^6. Male wages alone were in fact in most cases insufficient to cover a family's basic needs. Female work was crucial to complete the family income but their contribution was considerably less than that of other (male) family members.

^7. In the duchy of Brabant, for example, widows and unmarried women had no formal legal powers although in practice they were sometimes able to act independently. (Van Aert, 2007).

^8. These censuses are published by: Cornette, J. & Leupe, A. / Dewulf-Heus, R.L., Volkstelling 1748, Brugge, Vlaamse vereniging voor familiekunde. Afdeling Brugge, 1977–1989 and Burghgrave, G. / Dewulf-Heus, R.L., Volkstellingen 1814/1815, Brugge, Vlaamse vereniging voor familiekunde. Afdeling Brugge, 1976–1989. Other main sources used in this text are the parish registers and civil registers of birth, marriage and death kept in the State Archives of Bruges, the State Archives of Beveren and the Municipal Archives of Bruges.

^9. As a consequence, widows are not included in this analysis.

^10. As Susan Watkins (1984), we are not interested in the implications for fertility if women were not able to marry (the reason why demographers usually take age 50 as a demarcation) but in how women construct their lives when chances of marrying decreased.

^11. Lotta Vikström (2010) compared two data sets of female occupations. The first was based on qualitative sources (newspapers, taxation registers and trade directories), the second on a quantitative source (parish registers). She found a bias of 85 per cent between the information in the two data sets. In particular occupations of unmarried women from upper classes were generally disregarded in the parish registers. See also the studies of Higgs, 1987; Horrell & Humphries, 1995; Sharpe, 1996 and Speechley, 1999.

^12. For example in France in the early nineteenth-century (Fauve-Chamoux, 1998).

^13. For the Northern Netherlands, recent research by A. Schmidt (widows, 2001), D. van den Heuvel (female traders focussing on the not-so-well-to-do women, 2007), E. van Nederveen Meerkerk (women and wage work, 2007), M. van der Heijden and D. van den Heuvel (seamen's wives and married female traders, 2006) and M. van Dekken (female brewers, 2010) focuses both on the importance of women's work as well as on the differences between women (single vs. married) in the early modern period.

^14. It is important to be aware of the fact that the ‘poor’ unmarried women from the inland area also could have been spinsters and so belonged to the occupational category ‘spinsters’. On the other hand, spinster could also have meant ‘labouring poor’, as domestic servants, seamstresses, knitters, etc. were.

^15. This was for example the case in Tilburg where a large part of the spinsters, even those living on their own, received not only informal but also formal support (van Nederveen Meerkerk, 2007).

^16. Municipal records of Lichtervelde 14/5/1846-9/6/1847. SAB, TBO 61, nr. 325, ‘Dossier over het Plaatselijk Comité tot steun aan de behoeftige spinners en wevers 1840–1842’, SAB.

^17. TBO 61/325, ‘Dossier over het Plaatselijk Comité tot steun aan de behoeftige spinners en wevers 1840–1842’, SAB.

^18. Municipal records of Lichtervelde, 14/5/1846-9/6/1847, film 46, nrs. 165–603, SAB.

^19. TBO 17, nr. 177. ‘Broederschap van de devote en gewillige slavernij aan O.L.Vrouw, ledenregister 1669–1787’, SAB.

^20. Therefore, it is probable that the work situation of females described in the census of 1814 did not correspond with other moments before and after.

^21. TBO 54, nr. 123, ‘Register der dischgenoten Gistel, 1830‘. SAB, Parish registers of Gistel OLV Hemelvaart, Registers of baptism, p. 1781, 29-4-1772, SAB.

^22. Lichtervelde Oud 2252, Parish registers of Lichtervelde, Registers of baptism, 21-10-1720, SAB; Census of Lichtervelde, 1748 (Dewulf-Heus, 1983).

^23. I compared the data on servants in the city from the census of 1814 with parish baptism registers.

^24. For more, see Winter & Lambrecht (in press).