Pox and parents: educational choices in the light of smallpox epidemics in seventeenth-century England

ABSTRACT

This study offers a microhistory by exploring the impact regular smallpox outbreaks had on the lives of gentry families in seventeenth-century England. It particularly focuses on the question as in what way smallpox influenced upbringing and educational decisions and draws on a collection of personal letters of the Clarke family (1667–1710), mainly correspondence between Mary (neé Jepp) (approx. 1655/7–1705) and her husband Edward Clarke I of Chipley (1650–1710), Somerset, and their children. Personal letters contain various information about infectious diseases, such as symptoms, care, and medical treatment. It is argued that the constant threat of epidemics of smallpox influenced the upbringing and education of children with regard to personnel, for example tutors or governesses, places, schools, and institutions, and the duration of studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Smallpox
• correspondence
• gentry family
• seventeenth century

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Christine Mayer for suggestions on references to further research on letters.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Susanne Spieker, “‘I Found Myself in a Storm’ – Unsicherheiten im England des 17. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch für Pädagogik 28, Innere Sicherheit (2019): 109–25.

² Jared Diamond, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? (London: Penguin, 2012).

³ Adriana Silvia Benzaquén, “Educational Designs: The Education and Training of Younger Sons at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Family History 40, no. 4 (2015): 462–87.

⁴ Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, Chipley, September 15, 1694, in The Life and Correspondence of Edward Clarke of Chipley 1650–1750, vol. 2, ed. Bridget Clarke (London: Bridget Clarke, 2007), n.p. The original spelling of the correspondence is kept throughout the article. The source will be further introduced in part two of this contribution.

⁵ Sigurđur Gylfi Magnússon, “The Singularisation of History. Social History and Microhistory within the Postmodern State of Knowledge,” Journal of Social History 36, no. 3 (2003): 701–35; John Brewer, “Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday Life,” Cultural and Social History 7, no. 1 (2010): 87–109.

⁶ Sigurđur Gylfi Magnússon, “Far-Reaching Microhistory: The Use of Microhistorical Perspective in a Globalized World,” Rethinking History 21, no. 3 (2017): 313, 323.

⁷ The Life and Correspondence of Edward Clarke of Chipley 1650–1750, vol. 1–4, http://www.nynehead.org/pdfs/clarke/clarke1.pdf; http://www.nynehead.org/pdfs/clarke/clarke2.pdf; http://www.nynehead.org/pdfs/clarke/clarke3.pdf; http://www.nynehead.org/pdfs/clarke/clarke4.pdf (accessed May 9, 2022). These four volumes include transcribed letters and further information on the local context, the Clarke family and their network. They are accessible through the website of Nynehead Parish, Somerset, under the header Nynehead General History, http://www.nynehead.org/index.php/history (accessed May 9, 2022). The letters belong to Sanford family of Nynehead and are kept by South West Heritage Trust (Somerset Archive). They were transcribed in a research project and first published 1998.

⁸ Somerset Archives and Local Studies, https://swheritage.org.uk/somerset-archives/ (accessed May 9, 2022).

⁹ John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education, ed. John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000); and Ruth W. Grant and Benjamin R. Hertzberg, “Locke on Education,” in A Companion to Locke, ed. Matthew Stewart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 448–65.

¹⁰ Sara H. Mendelson, “Child Rearing in Theory and Practice: The Letters of John Locke and Mary Clarke,” Women’s History Review 19, no. 2 (2010): 231–43.

¹¹ Research on John Locke’s medical documentation shed light in the relevance these thoughts had for his philosophical thinking: Peter R. Anstrey, “Further Reflections on Locke’s Medical Remains,” Locke Studies 15 (2015): 215–42; Clarie Crignon, Locke médecin. Manuscrips sur l’art medical (Paris: Classiques Guarnier, 2016).

¹² World Health Organization, “Smallpox,” https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/smallpox (accessed May 9, 2022).

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Frank Fenner, Donald Ainslie Henderson, Isao Arita, Zdenĕk Ježek, and Ivan Danilovich Ladnyi, Smallpox and its Eradication (Geneva: WHO, 1988), 224.

¹⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷ Ibid., 236.

¹⁸ Ibid., 239.

¹⁹ Daniel Headrick, When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 182.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ Andreas Würgler, “National and Transnational News Distribution 1400–1800,” in European History Online (EGO), ed. Leibniz Institute of European History (2012), http://www.ieg-ego.eu/wuerglera-2012-en (accessed May 9, 2022).

²² Ibid.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Jürgen Wilke, “Media Genres,” in European History Online (EGO), ed. Leibniz Institute of European History (2010), http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/transnational-movements-and-organisations/international-organisations-and-congresses/en/threads/backgrounds/media-genres/juergen-wilke-media-genres (accessed May 9, 2022).

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ James Daybell and Andrew Gordon, “Introduction. The Early Modern Letter Opener,” in Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain, ed. James Daybell and Andrew Gordon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 9.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Headrick, When Information Came of Age, 182.

²⁹ Ibid., 183–5.

³⁰ Ibid., 185.

³¹ Daybell and Gordon, “Introduction,” 8.

³² James Daybell, introduction to Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450–1700 (London: Palgrave, 2001), 1–15.

³³ Gunilla Friederike Budde, “Der Brief als Forschungsfeld. Geschichtswissenschaft,” in Handbuch Brief. Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig, Jörg Schuster, Gesa Steinbrink, and Jochen Strobel (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 61.

³⁴ Regina Dauser, “Brieftheorie der Frühen Neuzeit,” in Handbuch Brief. Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig, Jörg Schuster, Gesa Steinbrink, and Jochen Strobel (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 661–73; and Rebecca Earle, Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers1600–1945 (Farnham: Ashgate, 1999).

³⁵ Dauser, “Brieftheorie,” 666.

³⁶ Ibid., 666–7.

³⁷ Ibid., 668–72. Letters as self-formation can be traced back to the seventeenth century in pietistic networks: Katja Ließmann, Schreiben im Netzwerk. Briefe als Praktiken frommer Selbst-Bildung im frühen Quedlinburger Pietismus (Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen, 2019).

³⁸ Andreas Rutz, “Ego-Dokumente oder Ich-Konstruktion? Selbstzeugnisse als Quellen zur Erforschung des frühneuzeitlichen Menschen,” Zeitenblicke 1, no. 2 (2002), https://www.zeitenblicke.de/2002/02/rutz/rutz.pdf (accessed May 9, 2022).

³⁹ Willemijn Ruberg, “Children’s Correspondence as a Pedagogical Tool in the Netherlands (1770–1850),” Paedagogica Historica 41, no. 3 (2005): 295–312.

⁴⁰ Meritxell Simon-Martin, “Barbara Bodichon’s Epistolary Archive: Silences that Speak,” Paedagogica Historica. doi:10.1080/00309230.2021.1946103; Liz Stanley, “The Epistolarium: On Theorizing Letters and Correspondence,” Auto/Biography 12, no. 3 (2004): 201–35.

⁴¹ Meritxell Simon-Martin, “Barbara Bodichon’s Epistolary Archive,” 2.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Clarke, acknowledgement to Correspondence, vol. 1.

⁴⁵ Archival practices were gendered, as only very little correspondence of women survived. With regard to family archives, letters preserved were related to the estate and law. Only within family correspondence were letters of women kept: James Daybell, “Gendered Archival Practices and the Future Lives of Letters,” in Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain, ed. James Daybell and Andrew Gordon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 212–13, 234.

⁴⁶ Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 287.

⁴⁷ Daybell, introduction to Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 4.

⁴⁸ See note 44 above.

⁴⁹ Ruberg, “Children’s Correspondence,” 295–312; Emily C. Bruce, “‘Each Word Shows How You Love Me’: The Social Literacy Practice of Children’s Letter Writing (1780–1860),” Paedagogica Historica 50, no. 3 (2014): 247–64; Kaisa Vehkalahti, “The Urge to See Inside and Cure: Letter-Writing as an Educational Tool in Finnish Reform School Education, 1915–1928,” Paedagogica Historica 44, nos. 1/2 (2008): 193–205.

⁵⁰ Ruberg, “Children’s Correspondence,” 296.

⁵¹ Anne Stobart, Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 14–15; Hannah Newton, “‘She Sleeps Well and Eats an Egg’: Convalescent Care in Early Modern England,” in Conserving Health in Early Modern Culture. Bodies and Environments in Early Modern Italy and England, ed. Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Story (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), 104–32.

⁵² Hannah Newton, “The Sick Child in Early Modern England, 1580–1720,” Endeavour 28, no. 2 (2014): 122; Hannah Newton, The Sick Child in Early Modern England, 1580–1720 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

⁵³ Newton, The Sick Child, 128.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 122.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 122–3.

⁵⁶ Hannah Newton, “Children’s Physic: Medical Perceptions and Treatment of Sick Children in Early Modern England, c. 1580–1720,” Social History of Medicine 23, no. 3 (2010): 456–74.

⁵⁷ Newton, The Sick Child, 122–3.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 124.

⁶¹ Ibid., 125.

⁶² Stobart, Household Medicine, 15.

⁶³ Newton, The Sick Child, 126.

⁶⁴ Hannah Newton, “The Dying Child in the Seventeenth Century England,” Pediatrics 136, no. 2 (2015): 218–20.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 126.

⁶⁶ Newton, “She Seeps Well,” 104–32.

⁶⁷ John Locke to John Locke, sen. [L 110], Oxford, 20 December [1660?], in John Locke. Selected Correspondence, ed. Mark Goldie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 24.

⁶⁸ Roger Wollhouse, Locke: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 43.

⁶⁹ Edward Clarke “matriculated ad Wadham College, Oxford, on March 1667 (when his age was given as sixteen), moved to Inner Temple in 1670, and was called to the bar in 1673”: Mark Goldie, “Clarke, Edward (1649/51–1710),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/37290 (accessed May 9, 2022).

⁷⁰ Edward Clarke to Edward Clarke sen. from Mrs Baseley’s house in Holywell, 31 March 1668, in Correspondence, vol. 1, n.p.

⁷¹ George Fletcher was a gentleman who became Fellow of Wadham College in 1667, in Correspondence, vol. 1, n.p.

⁷² George Fletcher to Edward Clarke sen., Oxon, 31 March 1668, in Correspondence, vol. 1, n.p.

⁷³ Edward Clarke to Edward Clarke sen., Wadham College, 6 May 1668, in Correspondence, vol. 1, n.p.

⁷⁴ Edward Clarke to Edward Clarke sen., Holywell, 1 November 1669, in Correspondence, vol. 1, n.p.

⁷⁵ The biography of Locke, for example, tells us that this behaviour was widespread among the gentry. For instance in 1666, Locke once returned to Oxford earlier than he had planned, when there were cases of bubonic plague reported in Somerset: Roger Woolhouse, Locke: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 67.

⁷⁶ Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, Chipley, 24 November 1697, in Correspondence, vol. 3, n.p.

⁷⁷ Edward Clarke to John Spreat, London, n. D. November 1697, in Correspondence, vol. 3, n.p.

⁷⁸ Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, Chipley, 29 November 1697, in Correspondence, vol. 3, n.p.

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, n.p., 14 February 14 1703/4, in Correspondence, vol. 4, n.p.

⁸¹ Mary Clarke to John Spreat, n.p., 7 April 1705, in Correspondence, vol. 4, n.p.

⁸² Clarke, Correspondence, vol. 1, n.p.

⁸³ Ibid.

⁸⁴ Sir George Ent (1604–1689) was a physician of Flemish decent, who lived in London.

⁸⁵ Edward Clarke to Edward Clarke sen., London, n. d. January 1671/2, in Correspondence, vol. 1, n.p.

⁸⁶ See note 82 above.

⁸⁷ Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, Chipley, 15 September 1694, in Correspondence, vol. 2, n.p.

⁸⁸ Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, Chipley, 19 September 1694, in Correspondence, vol. 2, n.p.

⁸⁹ Ibid.

⁹⁰ Clarke, Correspondence, vol. 2, n.p.

⁹¹ John Locke to Edward Clarke, London, 9 September 1697, in Correspondence, vol. 3, n.p.

⁹² Adriana Benzaquén, “Educational Designs,” 467.

⁹³ Ibid.

⁹⁴ Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, n.p., 11 May 1700, in Correspondence, vol. 4, n.p.

⁹⁵ Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, n.p., 26 May 1700, in Correspondence, vol. 4, n.p.

⁹⁶ Ibid.

⁹⁷ Ibid.

⁹⁸ Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, n.p., 29 May 1700, in Correspondence, vol. 4, n.p.

⁹⁹ John Locke to Edward Clarke, Oates, 28 December 1701, in Correspondence, vol. 4, n.p.

¹⁰⁰ Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, n.p. 30 January 1701/2, in Correspondence, vol. 4, n.p.

¹⁰¹ Mary Clarke to Edward Clarke, n.p. 5 January 1701/02, in Correspondence, vol. 4, n.p.

¹⁰² Guillaume Lachenal, “COVID-19: When History Has No Lessons,” History Workshop (2020), http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/covid-19-when-history-has-no-lessons/ (accessed May 9, 2022).

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Susanne Spieker

Susanne Spieker, Dr. phil., is lecturer at the Institute of Educational Foundations at University of Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau. As historian of education, she works on colonialism and on constructions of difference in educational theoretical writings. Current research covers articles on education in sixteenth-century Mexico, on John Locke, and migration and refugees in postwar Germany. She belongs to the editorial board of Jahrbuch für Pädagogik and is member of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Vormodere Bildungsgeschichte within the German Educational Research Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft).