Saving the best for last? Old age retirement among the Urban middle classes in Leiden and Regensburg (c. 1650- c. 1800)

ABSTRACT

In pre-industrial Europe, many thousands of ‘middle-class’ individuals retired by purchasing a corrody: a contract allowing them life-long food and lodging, usually by spending their remaining years in a hospital. Given that people usually struggle to prepare for the later stages of life, this article asks whether corrodies were priced in line with the market. We study institutions that specialized in commercial retirement in two distinct areas: the Dutch Republic, where middle-class living standards were high in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and Bavaria, where purchasing power was lower. In the Bavarian city of Regensburg, the local hospital sold subsidized corrodies, probably to accommodate social middling groups with limited scope for saving but with a strong desire to continue to set themselves apart during old age from groups with a lower social status. In Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, it was more expensive to maintain that distinction because even lower social groups had the opportunity to save. As a result, here corrody prices were higher and more in line with the market price.

KEYWORDS:

• Eldercare
• financial history
• social history
• early-modern history

1. Introduction

Before the welfare state, how did the elderly manage to find the support they required during their final years? Apart from continuing to work until you could no longer make a living and then dying impoverished, or relying on charity, another way to make arrangements for your final years was to purchase a corrody. Since the Middle Ages, institutions in large parts of Europe allowed individuals and couples to pay a sum of money to enter a contract that entitled them to food and lodging for the rest of their lives, regardless of how many years they would continue to live. The contract is comparable to a life annuity paying out in kind; it thus protected the elderly against the whims of the market, such as inflation. Corrodians were able to spend their final years in comfort, initially in monasteries, but later also increasingly in hospitals. By the early-modern period these hospitals were inhabited by dozens of these paying customers, who often came from the ranks of social middling groups, and enjoyed an untroubled old age (Aspelmeier, 2009, p. 99; Dirlmeier, 1978, p. 526; Zuijderduijn, 2015a, p. 10, 2015b, pp. 37–38). Considering that most individuals usually find it difficult to set aside money to live off during old age, this raises the straightforward question of whether pre-modern corrodians paid enough to cover their expenses.

Up to now the question of corrody prices has hardly been addressed by scholars, and when they did do so, they were often hampered by a lack of observations. Some have claimed that corrody prices where high enough to prevent financial ruin to institutions (Bell & Sutcliffe, 2010). Others suggest that such institutions suffered losses in the short term and profits in the long run (Pettersen, 2007, p. 51). Yet others suggest that corrodies were sold at prices that were too low and caused institutions to run into financial problems (Heimpel, 1966, pp. 53–54; Schmitz, 1966, p. 41; Sonderegger, 2020, p. 73). These statements are all based on a limited number of observations, and as a result, at present it is unclear whether institutions offered affordable corrodies to those with limited means, or more expensive corrodies to those who were better off. To find out whether corrody prices sufficed to finance lifelong board and lodging, we use two datasets of many hundreds of corrodies sold by hospitals in Regensburg, Bavaria, and Leiden, Holland. We demonstrate a large difference between the two towns, with retirees in Leiden paying much more than in Regensburg. To understand this, we investigate the rations corrodians received, as well as their age at entry and length of stay. To compute prices hospitals should have asked, we use purchase prices of a similar financial instrument, the life annuity, which paid out an annuity for the remaining years alive. We thus take an ex ante approach and refrain from taking an ex post approach calculating yields of corrodies, as has been done by Bell and Sutcliffe (2010). Our analysis suggests that hospitals asking realistic prices that were likely to cover expenses coexisted with hospitals that did not do so. We propose that the latter may have offered subsidized corrodies in an attempt to prevent social descent towards the end of the life cycle among social middling groups in areas with low living standards – and thus protected the urban social fabric. We suggest that to understand why some hospital directors selling corrodies seem to have asked too little, and others too much, it does not suffice to look at hospital finances. It is crucial to also consider the social and economic background of the social middling groups who were most likely to purchase lifelong board and lodging. By doing so, it becomes possible to reconcile conflicting conclusions previous studies arrived at.

By addressing the issue of corrody prices, we also link up with recent research into pre-modern hospitals. As Thomas Frank (2020, p. 16) has remarked, for long scholars have either largely neglected the economic side of hospitals, or when they did look into hospital finances, they did not question how ‘economy’ and ‘charity’ were connected. The question of whether hospitals may have earned from selling corrodies and used their earnings to finance charity has not been raised (Stunz, 2005, pp. 147–148).¹ Even though our aim is not to delve deeply into the financial dealings of hospitals, our paper may also inform debates about hospital finances.

Furthermore, our study of corrodies ties in with research in family history. In past decades scholars have moved towards the concept of a plurality of pre-modern welfare and acknowledge that support for the elderly was provided ‘within a broad, complex and varied spectrum of different kinds of caregiving, that were not mutually exclusive’ (Verbeke, 2020, pp. 123–124). Care could be provided by the family, communities, and charitable institutions, and in addition individuals could prepare for old age themselves by saving or making investments.² For instance, they could contribute to the mutual funds of craft guilds, some of which entitled members to handouts in case of adversity. As an alternative they may have tried to arrange self-funded retirement, and in this respect the corrodies we study in this article may have been an excellent way to secure a decent old age. But where corrodies should be located within the broader concept of the plurality of welfare – on the side of charity or self-funded retirement – and which social groups could afford to purchase a place in an institution depends on corrody prices.

The paper begins with an overview of what is known about corrodies (section 2) and then introduces our case studies. Since opportunities for self-funded retirement likely depended on living standards, we take a comparative approach. We study institutions in one relatively affluent city – Leiden, in Holland, and its St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital – and one in a less prosperous city – St. Catherine’s hospital in Regensburg, in Bavaria. These hospitals represent different socioeconomic regimes: in Leiden living standards were much higher than in Regensburg (section 3). Next, we investigate corrody prices. We first demonstrate that there was a considerable price difference, with retirement in Leiden usually being twice as expensive as in Regensburg (section 4). Then we investigate whether this difference can be ascribed to the Leiden institution providing corrodians with larger quantities of food and drink (section 5). We also consider the possibility that the Leiden institution admitted younger corrodians, who spent more time in the care of the hospital and were therefore charged higher prices than in Regensburg (section 6). Our comparative analysis suggests that whereas corrody prices in Leiden may have allowed the institution to break even, those in Regensburg were too low. We reflect on this undercharging and discuss why this might have been the case (section 7).

2. Corrodies and corrodians in Northwest and Central Europe

Corrodians were to be found in all of Europe: they were admitted to monasteries and hospitals in regions as far apart as Norway and Sweden (Blom, 2000; Odén, 1997; Pettersen, 2007), Poland (Boguka, 1997), the Holy Roman Empire (Pohl-Resl, 1996, pp. 97–102; Stanislaw-Kemenah, 2008), Italy (Henderson, 2007), Spain (Andrade Cernadas, 2006, pp. 239–240), and England (Cullum, 1991). This type of retirement allowed both individuals and couples to make arrangements for old age. The former purchased corrodies that provided lifelong food and lodging; the latter were taken care of until the surviving spouse died. It seems that at first only monasteries sold corrodies, on occasion as a means of emergency funding. A recent study of monasteries selling corrodies, by Bell and Sutcliffe (2010), uses actuarial techniques to estimate whether medieval abbots sold corrodies at prices that were too low (for instance, because they were desperate for cash) and as a result, incurred great losses in the long run. That losses were incurred was believed by some medieval bishops, who therefore protested selling corrodies, claiming these would bring financial ruin to monasteries. However, Bell and Sutcliffe found that abbots managed to negotiate corrody prices such that they profited. One obvious element to be considered by medieval abbots was how old potential corrodians were when they arrived at the monastery’s doorstep: age at entry influenced the length of stay, and younger corrodians were more likely to draw on the resources of the monastery. Indeed, the age of the corrodian – or the annuitant of a life annuity – was considered when negotiating prices as far back as Roman times and continued to be taken into account in the Middle Ages and early-modern period (Bell & Sutcliffe, 2010, p. 146). To give one example of assessing life expectancy: in Heilbronn, Baden-Württemberg, hospital directors made the following assessment when negotiating a corrody price: ‘the man is at a good age, hopefully he will not live long’ (Dirlmeier, 1978, p. 466, our translation).

Hospital directors frequently faced questions about life expectancy as they began to take in an increasing number of corrodians. According to Stunz (2005), this development links up with hospitals increasingly developing financial functions, in part because city governments managed to gain control over hospitals and recognized the opportunities to use these wealthy institutions as bankers to the public sector. Stunz created a typology of hospitals, ranging from the small to medium-sized hospitals of the high Middle Ages, to the ‘diversified hospital’, which was characterized by 30–60 inmates, among whom a substantial number of corrodians, and the ‘large hospital’, which could have well over 50 corrodians. Such large hospitals existed in Nuremburg, Vienna, Cologne, Strasbourg, Biberach and Hamburg (Stunz, 2005, p. 139). In England, York’s St. Leonards would also qualify as a ‘large hospital’ around 1400, when it was home to more than 50 corrodians (Cullum, 1991, p. 21).

Such large hospitals can be said to have specialized to some degree in retirement. Usually, the retirees would have shared the location with recipients of charity, causing hospitals to become stratified, as they were inhabited by various classes of corrodians – a subject to which we return later – and the poor, with each category receiving different types of food and lodging. In the words of Wendehorst, ‘corrodians lived in the hospital “according to their social standing” which was expressed in care, lodging and clothing’ (Wendehorst, 1976, p. 90, our translation). This stratification could also have potential effects on the distribution of resources because on the one hand there were ‘paying customers’ who had a right to agreed-upon quantities of food,³ and on the other there were the poor inhabitants who relied on charity. The latter were the first to have their rations cut: in Bergen op Zoom, Brabant, during food crises, corrodians were prioritized over the poor (De Mooij, 1998, p. 215).

Social stratification in hospitals was expressed in many ways. Lodging could be in a small house, often on the hospital premises, or in a private room, or simply in a bed in a nursing hall. Rations served to inmates varied, with elites (called Herrenpfründner in the German-language historiography, and proveniers in Dutch-language historiography) not only receiving larger quantities, but also more luxurious food and drink than middling groups (Mittelpfründner in German, commensalen in Dutch). And these middling groups were still better off than the poor. Distinctions also existed with respect to eating. Wealthy corrodians were often allowed to eat with the directors. In addition, in many hospitals corrodians with more specific demands could negotiate special treatment; for those who could afford this, it was perfectly possible to maintain their social status in retirement. But this came at a price.

3. Leiden and Regensburg

We look at the development of corrody prices in two early-modern hospitals. These were quite similar: they were venerable institutions going back to the Middle Ages, and as a result had been endowed by benefactors with real estate over the centuries. The hospitals had large landed estates which provided them with the largest part of their income, and often rents in kind too, enabling them to provide at least some of the food required to feed the corrodians. A second similarity is that both the Regensburg and Leiden hospitals were relatively large, having been extended on several occasions, and accommodated many dozens of inmates. As a result, both institutions enjoyed economies of scale, not only in providing for the corrodians, but also with respect to reducing longevity risk: the hospital directors could create a diversified pool of corrodians, and thus try to mitigate the risks of long-living corrodians to a certain extent. Third, both hospitals sold corrodies not only to local citizens, but also to inhabitants of the surrounding countryside, and to foreigners who came from other cities. In Leiden corrodians came from surrounding villages and as far away as Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Regensburg’s St. Catherine’s hospital sold corrodies to people from the entire South and East of the Holy Roman Empire (Neumaier, 2011, pp. 507–511). Fourth, both institutions had a long tradition of selling corrodies going back to the fourteenth century (Ligtenberg, 1908, p. 28; Neumaier, 2011, pp. 42–43). It seems reasonable to assume that by the seventeenth century directors could profit from an ‘institutional memory’ when selling corrodies.

3.1. St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital in Leiden

Our first case study is the hospital of St. Catherine and St. Cecilia in Leiden, in Holland, one of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic. Leiden was a major textile-producing city that flourished in the seventeenth century, when Leiden’s acreage was repeatedly enlarged to accommodate scores of immigrants fleeing religious prosecution or looking for work. The city eventually became the second largest in Holland – after Amsterdam – reaching a population of close to 70,000 towards the end of the century. In the eighteenth century the population declined to 30,000 because of a severe depression in the textile industry. The economic downturn was also reflected in the standard of living, which declined throughout the second half of the eighteenth century (Pot, 1994, pp. 137–138).

Leiden’s hospital of St. Catherine was probably this city’s oldest poor relief institution, having already been established before 1276. In part thanks to pious bequests, it became Leiden’s wealthiest institution with vast landed estates (Ladan, 2012, p. 76). In 1570 the hospital was restructured and enlarged, and in 1596 the hospital also acquired the St. Cecilia convent – a former nunnery – which had been annexed by the Leiden government during the Reformation; it was converted into the subordinate St. Cecilia’s hospital (Huisman, 2008, pp. 112–113). The combined St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital was governed by directors drawn from the urban elite: this can be nicely seen in two group portraits of the directors of the combined hospital, from 1659 and 1730, which feature several masters of law, as well as a nobleman.⁴ In addition, the institution also had female directors (Van Mieris, 1762, p. 173).

The hospital of St. Catherine and St. Cecilia sold two types of corrodies: first, a ‘middle-class’ commensalen contract, which allowed the buyers a bed in the nursing hall, food and drink, as well as personal care by a ‘mother’ or ‘maid’, medical attention by surgeons, and access to an on-site apothecary (Van Mieris, 1762, pp. 173–174). In 1612 the St. Catherine location had seven halls, one hall for old men with a capacity of 22, one for sick men (19), and in addition two halls for old women (50), and two for sick women (33). The function of a seventh hall, with a capacity of 20, is unknown. That same year the St. Cecilia location had two halls for old men (32), and three for old women (41); in addition there was a hall for plague victims and rooms for the mentally disturbed (Orlers, 1612, pp. 94–95). The contemporary Jan Orlers estimated the combined hospital had 300 inmates in 1612, both healthy and sick people (Ladan, 2012, p. 103). More than a century later, in 1762, St. Catherine’s had two halls for men, and four for women and St. Cecilia’s had six halls altogether. Frans van Mieris (1689–1763) wrote about the nursing halls using the term ‘cozy cohabitation’ (Van Mieris, 1762, pp. 173, 178, our translation) – but this is probably too rosy a picture: those who could afford to probably preferred to purchase a more luxurious proveniers contract, which provided a private room or small house in addition to food, drink and care. On average these proveniers contracts were twice as expensive as commensalen contracts. Unsurprisingly, the hospital sold relatively few of these costly proveniers contracts – a total of 97 between 1665 and 1799. Selling more was probably impossible anyway because there was only a limited number of small houses and apartments on the hospital premises where corrodians could be housed. The core business of the hospital consisted of selling commensalen contracts to retirees who would spend their final years living in nursing halls: the directors sold 920 commensalen contracts to individuals between 1665 and 1799, and in addition another 337 to couples. The latter contracts are not included in our analysis, mainly because only few corrodies were sold to couples in Regensburg, making any comparison with Leiden quite difficult. In addition, many of Leiden’s two-person contracts lack data for both corrodians.

3.2. St. Catherine’s hospital in Regensburg

When we turn to Regensburg, we see a city that had prospered in the high Middle Ages, which was also when St. Catherine’s hospital was founded. The city’s prosperous days were long gone by the middle of the seventeenth century: trade routes, on which the city’s wealth had been based, had shifted elsewhere and the devastations of the Thirty Years’ War which had seen Regensburg change hands several times only exacerbated the long-run economic decline of the city (Gömmel, 2000, p. 488; Schönfeld, 1959, p. 107). The city profited from the arrival of the Imperial Diet, the council of estates of the Holy Roman Empire. It was held on an ad hoc basis in the town hall of Regensburg after 1594, and in 1663 became the Perpetual Diet, which was continuously in session, and brought many diplomats and foreign dignitaries to the city. As the seat of the legislative body of the Holy Roman Empire, Regensburg acquired an important symbolical status, and its economy profited from demand for services and consumer goods as well. However, various tax exemptions granted to the foreign embassies and artisans nevertheless hurt the municipal budget and undermined local craftsmanship, cancelling out any true economic stimulus (Schönfeld, 1959, p. 30). To summarize, Regensburg, home to around 15,000 inhabitants, was economically stagnant in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

St. Catherine’s hospital was the joint possession of the city council of Regensburg and the bishopric since it had been devised in the early thirteenth century as a joint venture by the two in opposition to the neighbouring dukes of Bavaria (Dirmeier & Morsbach, 1994). Located on the opposite bank of the River Danube to the rest of the town, it initially assumed the typical functions of a medieval hospital such as poor relief and shelter for pilgrims passing by. The admission of paying corrodians had been practised at St. Catherine’s since the late 1300s and became fully established in the course of the fifteenth century (Dirmeier, 2018, p. 132). As in Leiden and numerous other hospitals, initially different types of corrodies existed, depending on the size of the wallet of the applicant. This distinction was, however, abandoned after the Thirty Years’ War in favour of a unitary corrody, called wirkliche Pfründe (real corrody), which could still be enhanced. Negotiating lodging with fewer roommates, more and better food, or even a private servant allowed for distinguishing oneself from many retirees who simply lived on the basic corrody. For most of the eighteenth century the general policy seems to have been to keep the number of inmates stable at around 60 to 70. Waiting lists for admission were always long, and some applicants did not live long enough to enter the institution.

The adoption of Lutheranism by the city (while the bishop remained Catholic) dragged the hospital into prolonged interdenominational animosities, which strained its economic and charitable activities for roughly a century. Only after the Peace of Westphalia effective prevention mechanisms were put in place. The Spitalrat (Hospital’s Council) consisted of a worldly bench, made up of four city councilmen, and a spiritual bench, consisting of four clergymen from the bishopric. It was the highest decision-making body of the hospital, wielding jurisdiction and governing admissions of corrodians. Day-to-day business, and most importantly the supervision of the corrodians, lay in the hands of two Spitalmeister, one Catholic and one Lutheran. These two officials were aided by a group of subordinates such as cooks, scribes and administrators of the estates in the countryside (Neumaier, 2011, p. 74). The dual-faith approach had important consequences for the admission of corrodians: strict parity had to be observed between Catholic and Protestant corrodians by making sure that the respective bench only made decisions for applicants of the same faith.

Before we move on to discuss corrody prices, it is important to point out that in Regensburg, Catholics paid more than Lutherans, especially after the 1720s. It is difficult to say why this was so: discrimination can certainly be ruled out, since admission decisions for Catholic applicants were only made by high-ranking members of the bishopric. It is more illuminative to look at the wider landscape of care provision in Regensburg. Whilst the Lutheran municipal government had set up an array of care-providing institutions (and inherited the pre-existing Catholics ones), the Catholic bishopric had done little to counter this (Kröger, 2006). It is plausible to assume that the higher Catholic demand for the few places at St. Catherine’s available to them drove up prices, and this pressure was much less for Lutherans. But even though Regensburg’s Catholics paid more, they still did not pay enough to cover the expenses they were likely to make as corrodians.⁵

4. Corrody prices

Our data on corrody prices is based on registers containing the copies of the corrody contracts. For the Leiden hospitals four hefty volumes cover the corrodies sold.⁶ These contain the names of corrodians, the type of contract (provenier or commensaal) and when it started. For a smaller part of the contracts, the age at purchase, age at death, or year of death are given. Our sources for Regensburg provide similar data, although the sources are more dispersed. Extensive lists for incoming corrodians were kept, but other information was contained in supplication letters or the protocols of the hospital’s directory.

In our analysis we do not differentiate between male and female corrodians. The current longevity gap between men and women probably did not exist in premodern Europe (Smith, 2022) so there was no risk of the latter staying longer, and consuming more, than the former. Therefore, it probably made no sense for hospital directors to differentiate between the sexes. Neither was such a distinction made when contemporaries issued life annuities – the financial instrument comparable to the corrody – which further underlines that it is unlikely that sex was considered when negotiating corrodies. Only in a few contracts women seem to have negotiated smaller rations, likely to drive down entry sums, but the vast majority of corrodians received standard portions.

To find out how much was required to purchase a corrody, we must first discuss the sums required to retire in Leiden and Regensburg. Table 1 gives a summary of our data: Leiden data come from the aforementioned volumes with corrody contracts, for Regensburg we used the data Neumaier published in his book on the corrodians of St. Catherine’s hospital (Neumaier, 2011). Figure 1 gives the corrody prices for both sexes expressed in day wages of a skilled labourer. The figure does not consider the various provisions corrodians made in their contracts with respect to the rations they received, or age at entry and length of stay; we discuss these elements in sections 5 and 6. The figure provides a crude but nevertheless revealing picture of differences between Leiden and Regensburg. Corrodies appear to have been systematically more expensive in Holland than in Bavaria. In Leiden corrodies were least costly in 1690–1699, at 306 day wages of a skilled worker. Before that, average prices per decade were much higher – something we might attribute to the relatively low number of prices we could observe before 1690, which makes the averages more susceptible to outliers. After 1699, when we have many more observations, we see a steady increase to an average of 751 day wages of a skilled labourer in 1790–1799. When we turn to corrody prices in Regensburg, we see a gradual increase, from levels in the range of 62–105 day wages of a skilled labourer in the seventeenth century, to prices in excess of 300 day wages towards 1800. Prices were highest in the decade 1790–1799, at 320 day wages on average. Although this rising trend is comparable to what we see in Leiden, corrody prices were consistently much lower in Regensburg than in Leiden. In general, retirement in Holland appears to have been much more expensive than in Bavaria.

Figure 1. Corrody prices in Leiden and Regensburg in day wages of a skilled labourer.

Source: datasets for St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital in Leiden and St. Catherine’s hospital in Regensburg.Average and median prices per decade. Leiden wages based on master craftsmen and skilled labourer wages as reported by De Vries and Van der Woude for the western Netherlands (De Vries & Van der Woude, 1998, pp. 610–611). Regensburg wages based on Allen’s data for building craftsmen in Augsburg (Allen, 2001, p. 416) and Pfister’s data on silver content (Pfister, 2017).

Table 1. Overview of corrody contracts

	St. Catherine’s hospital in Regensburg	St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital in Leiden
	1649–1809	1665–1799
Single corrodies	575	920
Males	178	445
Females	397	475
Time period
<1700	145	146
1700–1749	223	500
>1750	207	274

Source: Datasets for St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital in Leiden and St. Catherine’s hospital in Regensburg.

Although the price difference is revealing, to understand corrody pricing requires further analysis of the costs of maintaining an individual. To calculate this requires two steps: first to determine the cost of maintaining a corrodian for a year, and second to capture the ‘longevity risk’ involved with providing an individual with lifelong food and lodging. For the first step we use the commodity basket compiled by Allen et al. (2007a), which gives the necessities to maintain an individual for a year. We look at the absolute minimum required to keep retirees alive. The subsistence basket provides a ‘bare-bones minimum for survival’; as we will see in section 5, corrodians are likely to have had diets well above this level. In addition, the basket does not cover house rent and should therefore be seen as the absolute minimum institutions would have had to spend on retirees. We use this minimum indicator to find out whether the Regensburg and Leiden institutions could have kept their corrodians alive with the money they received in the first place.

If we assume corrodians received products equivalent to this basket, what should they have paid? Allen et al. do not have data for Leiden, so we use data from Amsterdam (40 kilometres to the northeast). Here, in the period 1730–1800 the commodity basket cost 195 grams of silver on average (Allen et al., 2007b, p. 54). Expressed in day wages of a building craftsman, this amounts to 16.3 day wages; this income sufficed to maintain an individual for a year.⁷ For Regensburg we must also use commodity basket data from another city. Ideally this would be nearby Augsburg, but not all data are available for this city. We therefore have to work with data for Leipzig (300 kilometres to the north of Regensburg). Here the subsistence basket cost 160 grams of silver on average between 1730 and 1800; expressed in day wages of a local building craftsman this would be 26.7 day wages – over 60% more than in Amsterdam.⁸ This suggests a substantial difference in real wages between the two cities – a difference that has been observed more generally between Central Europe on the one hand, and Northwest Europe on the other, and which is known as the ‘little divergence’ (Allen, 2001; Broadberry & Malinowski, 2017; De Pleijt & van Zanden, 2016).

The second step to be taken is to see what would have been required to receive a commodity basket for the rest of one’s life. Since the corrody resembles the life annuity – an annual payment until the annuitant dies – it would have made sense for hospital directors to calculate corrody prices in a similar way as prices of life annuities. Even though early mathematicians suggested life annuities should be adjusted to take account of the age of the annuitant, in large parts of Europe life annuities were sold against interest rates of 8–10% regardless of the age of the annuitant.⁹ Thus in Holland, The Hague still issued life annuities at an interest rate of 10% as late as 1810, regardless of the age of the annuitant (Houtzager, 1950, p. 107).¹⁰ If we assume directors would have used a similar rate, they would have demanded a price of 10x the cost of the subsistence basket. This price is indicated as the solid line in Figure 2.¹¹ In Leiden this line is well below the average and median corrody prices, which suggests corrodians paid much more than would be required for retiring at subsistence level. However, in Regensburg the solid line is above the average and median corrody prices for almost the entire period 1740–1799 (Figure 3). Average values only climb to the solid line towards the end of the century, which is due to outliers: median corrody prices remain well below the solid line. This suggests that except for a few, Regensburg’s corrodians paid too little to retire at subsistence level, and far too little to allow for the lavish rations they received in practice, as will become clear shortly.

Figure 2. Leiden corrody prices in day wages of a skilled labourer.

Source: dataset for St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital in Leiden. Prices based on (Allen, 2001), p. 416; (Allen et al., 2007b), p. 54.The figure is limited to the period 1740–1799 because data on silver wages are unavailable before 1740.

Figure 3. Regensburg corrody prices in day wages of a skilled labourer.

Source: dataset for St. Catherine’s hospital in Regensburg. Prices based on (Allen, 2001), p. 416; (Allen et al., 2007b), p. 54. The figure is limited to the period 1740–1799 because data on silver wages are unavailable before 1740.

We should also consider a scenario where hospital directors made use of new insights that emerged in the late seventeenth century. Following the work by early mathematicians, in a limited number of cases life annuities were adjusted to take account of the age of the annuitant, and thus reflected their estimated life expectancy. After 1672 this technique was applied in Rotterdam (Van der Burg, 2003, p. 128 note 14) and in Amsterdam, where the mathematician Johannes Hudde (1628–1704) served as a mayor. He drew on Johan de Witt’s (1625–1672) pioneering work in financial mathematics, applying his insights when issuing life annuities in 1672 (Houtzager, 1950, p. 105). Hudde distinguished between age groups, offering an annuitant aged between 55 and 60 an interest of 14.8%, while one aged between 60 and 65 received 16.7% per annum. Somewhere between 55 and 65 was a common age to buy a corrody (Figure 4), and hospital directors applying the most recent insights would have asked between 6.8 and 6.0 times the subsistence basket from corrodians in this age bracket. In Leiden this would have amounted to 114 and 100 day wages of a skilled labourer respectively – which again indicates that the prices they actually demanded, as depicted in Figure 2, were much too high. In Regensburg hospital directors applying state-of-the-art financial techniques would have asked 211 and 187 day wages respectively – far above median corrody prices, but close to the average corrody prices that retirees actually paid (Figure 3). At first sight this may suggest that St. Catherine’s directors may have asked about the right price for retirement. But since retirees received rations far above subsistence level, as we will see in the next section, the Regensburg institution in fact asked far too little.

Figure 4. Age at entry (years).

Source: datasets for St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital in Leiden and St. Catherine’s hospital in Regensburg.

5. Rations

That entry sums for corrodians in Regensburg were too low is confirmed by an analysis of the diet in St. Catherine’s hospital. Reconstructing the rations is rather difficult because we must rely on general diet plans and notes of purchases in the hospital’s account books. As a result, it is impossible to differentiate between various corrody contracts, such as the few Herrenpfründe, and the much more common and less luxurious Mittelpfründe. Our sources only allow for the quantification of bread and beer served to the corrodians, and a minimum estimate for the butter handed out to them. Whether cheese was served is unclear, and how often vegetables were on the menu, and in what quantities, is also unknown.¹² Yet even allowing for these gaps in the menu, it becomes clear from Table 2 that the retirees were well off. As a point of reference, the table gives both the subsistence basket and the ‘respectable basket’ – which indicates the typical consumption pattern of the middle class. Corrodians received 264 kilograms of bread per annum, which is well above the 182 kilograms benchmark of the respectable basket. The same is true for servings of beer, 341 litres per year, whereas the typical middle-class ration was only 182 litres. In addition to the very generous servings of beer, the corrodians also received 41 litres of wine on holidays. Meat was also served very regularly – 90 kilograms per annum – which is in line with what has been observed in other early-modern middle-class institutions (Frijhoff, 1998, pp. 197–200; Jütte, 1987, pp. 123–124; McCants, 1997, p. 42). The only commodity that may have been handed out more sparsely is butter, at a minimum of 2.8 kilograms per year. Even though our data are a bit rough, as we cannot distinguish between Herrenpfründe and Mittelpfründe, and we have no information on provisions of the other necessities, it is safe to say that corrodians in St. Catherine’s received bread, meat and beer at levels well above the ‘respectable basket’ level – and certainly above the ‘subsistence basket’ level.

Table 2. Rations in Regensburg and Leiden

	Leiden proveniers	Leiden commensalen	Regensburg	Respectable basket	Subsistence basket
Grain	-	-	-	-	155 kg
Bread	227 kg	215 kg	264 kg	182 kg	-
Meat/Fish	-	-	90.5 kg	26 kg	5 kg
Butter	25.5 kg	20.8 kg	>2.8 kg	5.2 kg	3 kg
Cheese	21.6 kg	18.2 kg	-	5.2 kg	-
Beer	681.2 litres	408.0 litres	341.0 litres	182.0 litres	-
Candles	-	-	-	2.6 kg	1.3 kg
Peat	-	-	-	5 mBTU	3 mBTU
Soap	-	-	-	2.6 kg	1.3 kg

Where no quantities are indicated, our sources did not allow for calculating these.

Sources: dataset for St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital in Leiden; (Kühne, 2006); (Neumaier, 2011).

Respectable and subsistence baskets: Allen et al. 2007a, 25.

Table 2 also has estimates for diets in Leiden’s St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital. To reconstruct these is – again – not always easy. First we used the quantities of commodities mentioned in the corrody contracts. Contracts mention varying quantities of bread, beer, butter and cheese, and it seems these were apparently subject to negotiations when arranging the corrody contract. In addition, corrodians could negotiate such commodities as candles, vinegar and lamp oil. Furthermore, we have information on purchases of foodstuffs to be used in the kitchen. The hospital’s account books mention purchases of a host of other foodstuffs, including various types of vegetables and meat, which were apparently served to the inmates.¹³ Such food products were not only crucial for a healthy diet, but also important for maintaining a middle-class status as a retiree (Frijhoff, 1998, p. 198). Table 2 also reveals that rations differed between the various groups of corrodians. The more luxurious proveniers contract provided more bread per annum than the ‘middle-class’ commensalen contract (227 kilograms versus 215 kilograms). The same is true for servings of butter (20.8 kilograms versus 17.7 kilograms) and cheese (18.2 kilograms versus 17.2 kilograms). Differences between the two types of corrodians were largest when we look at the quantity of beer they received: proveniers received 681 litres, commensalen 408 litres. The wealthy corrodians could also have individualized ‘service packages’, stipulating rights to luxurious bread, specific quantities of dairy products and beer, and on occasion also vinegar – a seasoning – and soap, candles and lamp oil.

In as far as we can reconstruct diets, it seems that both in Leiden and in Regensburg corrodians maintained their middle-class status during old age.¹⁴ They received substantially more than the subsistence level, consisting of the minimum quantity of foodstuffs required to keep an adult male in working condition (Allen, 2001, p. 427). To be in working condition was probably not necessary, even though Mittelpfründner are known to have performed light labour duties – a topic we return to in section 7. But because they are unlikely to have carried out heavy physical labour, they probably required fewer calories per day than prescribed in the subsistence basket for an adult male.¹⁵ In fact they received much more, even up to the point where they were overfed. In Regensburg, hospital officials are known to have therefore prevented corrodians from reselling leftovers from their daily rations (Neumaier, 2011, p. 258). Given such lavish handouts of food and drink and keeping in mind that corrody prices in Regensburg probably did not even cover the subsistence basket, it should be clear that the retirees of St. Catherine’s paid too little for retirement. In contrast, their Leiden counterparts paid so much more than subsistence would require, that it is very well possible that the money they handed over sufficed to cover their stay. Indeed, when we follow Allen et al’s (2007a, p. 25) suggestion that around 1750 the respectable basket was 2,6 times as expensive as the subsistence basket, and multiply the solid line for Leiden by 2,6, it would come quite close to the average and median lines (Figure 2). In contrast, doing the same for Regensburg increases the gap, and again underlines how far the corrodians of St. Catherine’s were from paying what would really have been required (Figure 3).

6. Age at entry and length of stay

A final line of inquiry concerns the age at entry and length of stay. In theory the low corrody prices encountered in Regensburg’s St. Catherine’s hospital could be because its directors admitted elderly individuals who were on the verge of death and did not spend many years as corrodians. Conversely their Leiden counterparts may have targeted another – younger and healthier – group, who simply paid more because they could expect to live longer as retirees. To investigate this, we begin by trying to get an impression of what age differences would have justified paying twice as much for retirement. An eighteenth-century table created for Amsterdam’s Leprooshuys hospital indicates what entry sums corrodians should pay depending on their age. A 69-year-old could suffice with paying 1,744 guilders, whereas about twice the amount was asked from a 50 year old (3,446 guilders); here paying twice the entry sum required an age difference of almost 20 years (Wagenaar, 1765, p. 314). A ‘guide’ by the mathematician Willem Kersseboom (1691–1771), published in 1738, suggests a similar age gap of 20 years. He suggests that for every ten guilders a corrodian requires for food and drink, he or she should pay the following:

a corrodian aged 70 should pay 71 guilders

a corrodian aged 69 should pay 74 guilders …

… a corrodian aged 49 should pay 140 guilders (Kersseboom, 1738, p. 29)

And when we briefly return to the example of Amsterdam’s state-of-the-art life annuity issue, in 1672, an age gap of at least ten years was required to justify a doubling of the return. However, we should point out this concerns the very old group aged over 75 (33.3% return) and that of individuals aged 60–65 (16.7% return); when we look at the age groups 70–75 (25% return) and 45–50 (12.5%), we see again a gap of 20 to 30 years.¹⁶ Assuming the same logic drove our corrody prices, for differences in entry sums for the retirement homes in Regensburg and Leiden to be explained by age at entry, corrodians in Regensburg should have been at least 10 to 20 years older than in Leiden.

It will come as no surprise to see that age differences between the two cities were not so great. The average and median ages at entry in Regensburg are shown in Figure 4. Corrodians overwhelmingly belonged to age cohorts where ‘retirement’ became a relevant issue – usually between 55 and 65. Only a few corrodians entered at a younger age, mostly because they were burdened with severe illness or impairment from early in life. In Regensburg the age at entry hovered around 65 in the seventeenth century, then it gradually dropped to below 50 in the 1750s, followed by a rise back to 60 in the 1790s. When we compare this to Leiden, the averages here are consistently above 60, except for the final decade of the eighteenth century. Based on this, one would expect retirement in Leiden to have been less expensive than in Regensburg, where corrodians were on average likely to spend a longer period at the expenses of the hospital. But as we have seen, in reality the opposite was true.

That corrodians in Regensburg spent more time in the care of the hospital than their counterparts in Leiden is also confirmed by the average length of stay (Figure 5). Leiden data before 1700 are unreliable because of a low number of observations (this also explains the spike in the later seventeenth century), so we focus on the eighteenth century. In most decades Leiden’s average length of stay was lower or equal to Regensburg, and the same is true for the medians. By and large, corrodians spent an average 5–15 years in institutions in Regensburg and Leiden; throughout the eighteenth century the length of stay was usually shorter in Leiden than in Regensburg, and in the second half of the century this is also reflected by a higher average age at entry in Leiden.

Figure 5. Length of stay (years).

Source: datasets for St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital in Leiden and St. Catherine’s hospital in Regensburg.

We may conclude that differences in age at entry and length of stay cannot explain why corrodies in Leiden were twice as expensive: the average corrodian in Leiden was slightly older when he or she entered the hospital and Leiden corrodians stayed for a shorter period than in Regensburg. In theory this should have reduced Leiden corrody prices compared to those in Regensburg. Our corrody price analysis indicates the opposite was true and again seems to confirm that retirement in Regensburg was under-priced: in Regensburg’s St. Catherine’s hospital relatively young corrodians, who were taken care of for a relatively long period of time, paid comparatively little for corrodies.

7. Labour, living standards and social distinction

Our comparison between hospitals in Leiden and Regensburg indicates two entirely different takes on retirement. Whereas Leiden’s Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital seems to have demanded prices that may have covered corrodians’ expenses, Regensburg’s St. Catherine’s hospital did not. Its directors asked entry sums that would hardly allow for retirement at subsistence level, yet they admitted relatively young corrodians, who spent many years in the hospital and who received corrodies at the level of a ‘respectable basket’. How are we to explain the price differences between Regensburg and Leiden? To this question three possible answers can be given.

First, we should consider labour duties. Only few Leiden corrodians seem to have agreed to work for the institution. Contracts mention such functions as getting firewood, biljetplakker (someone who puts up bills), zaalmoeder (woman in charge of a nursing hall), or serving in the apothecary.¹⁷ In contrast, in Regensburg corrodians were expected to help out.¹⁸ They were generally asked to lend a hand as long as they were physically able to do so, providing the institution with a source of labour that was altogether not unimportant: when the hospital admitted fewer corrodians who were willing to help out, the Spitalrat faced labour shortages (Neumaier, 2011, pp. 70–73). In theory, corrodians in Regensburg may thus have paid less because they provided the retirement home with services. But how valuable these services were is difficult to establish: most of the elderly performed light tasks, such as monitoring the fields, or delivering messages (in the case of male corrodians) and cleaning, cooking, washing and mending clothes (in the case of female corrodians; Neumaier, 2011, pp. 292, 300). Even though such services may have been useful, we must ask whether these would have justified lowering the entry fees to the extent we observed in Regensburg. The gap between the average corrody prices and the sums required for a ‘respectable’ retirement was about 400 day wages of a skilled labourer; the gap with median prices was closer to 600. It is difficult to imagine corrodian could cover the difference by working: the elderly performed tasks that would have been paid far less than what skilled labourers could earn, and moreover, most are unlikely to have worked more than a few hours per day because of their advanced age. To make matters worse, their working condition was also likely to deteriorate as they grew older. Altogether labour duties may have served as compensation for low corrody prices, but it is difficult to imagine this covered more than a fraction of the difference.

A second explanation for corrody price differences would be higher surplus earnings in the Dutch Republic: in the eighteenth century skilled labourers in cities in the Dutch Republic earned twice the poverty line, which would have allowed them to save for retirement (Horrell et al., 2021). In cities in Bavaria the same occupational group did not exceed the poverty line, which would have severely reduced their ability to save for later (Allen, 2001, p. 428). As a result, Regensburg’s St. Catherine’s hospital may not have been able to ask prices similar to those in Leiden because middle classes in Bavaria could not set aside money for later. Unable to sell corrodies at prices likely to cover expenses, the Regensburg hospital seems to have offered subsidized corrodies. From the perspective of the hospital this made sense because receiving a small sum from ‘paying customers’ was better than receiving nothing at all, as was the case when they admitted the elderly poor free of charge. The losses the hospital incurred by providing ‘subsidized’ corrodies were probably covered by revenues from the hospital’s real estate holdings. St. Catherine’s in Regensburg thus offered what we might call a ‘quasi-commercial retirement contract’: the elderly brought in amounts of money that did not suffice to pay for lifelong maintenance but had to be topped up with other hospital revenues. Only when the hospital faced financial problems, towards the end of the eighteenth century, did the directors stop selling subsidized corrodies and begin to demand higher prices. This is likely to have reduced middle classes’ opportunities to purchase corrodies.

A third explanation for the price differences emerges when we take a more social than economic view of the matter: the quasi-commercial retirement contract in Regensburg may have been aimed at those who were at risk of downward social mobility because of impoverishment during old age (Menning, 1993, pp. 99–100). For these ‘shamefaced poor’, turning to charities for handouts was not an acceptable remedy. Turning to welfare institutions would result in a painful loss of social prestige. But subsidized corrodies may have allowed ageing individuals to maintain their social status during old age because these corrodies still required them to pay. This was important because by paying for retirement, the elderly subscribed to the urban civic value of thrift (which included saving and self-sufficiency during old age).¹⁹ Indeed, historians of old age have noticed how the elderly took great pride in maintaining self-sufficiency and continuing to work for as long as possible (Botelho, 2004, p. 102). In Regensburg – as almost everywhere in the early-modern world – for most social groups it was nearly impossible to accrue the savings required for self-sufficiency during old age: they simply did not have enough earnings for this. A subsidized type of corrody, as Regensburg’s St. Catharine’s hospital provided, may have allowed small-time savers to uphold the fiction of self-sufficiency during old age though – a fiction that set them apart from the poor who lacked the means or values to save at all, and therefore ended up depending entirely on charity. Although all the elderly were usually considered ‘deserving poor’ – unable to make a living – the Regensburg example suggests there may also have been a notion of what we might call the ‘more deserving poor’: those whose capacity to pay at least something for a corrody demonstrated their embrace of urban civic values. These individuals were rewarded with admission to a retirement home by hospital directors. Such corrodians were regarded as subsidized customers, and certainly not strictly as recipients of charity. The idea that hospital directors may have rewarded elderly individuals who had lived up to the virtue of saving for old age is perhaps reflected in petitions the elderly sent to get a place in an almshouse. Prospective applicants in Regensburg were eager to point out that their physical shortcomings due to old age had forced them to turn to the hospital – not idleness. Flawless moral conduct, as well as the ability to pay a reduced entry fee, qualified them as corrodians. A similar picture appears from Verbeke’s (2019) study of the applications of the elderly looking to be admitted to an almshouse in Brussels in the eighteenth century. Many alluded to savings in their applications – usually by explaining that because of their poverty, they did not have any savings for their old age. Their inability to save is less important here: what is more important is that the poor in Brussels understood that underlining that they were aware of – and tried to comply with – urban civic values would increase their chances of being admitted.²⁰ As competition for places in hospitals was often fierce, one can imagine applicants using urban civic virtues to distinguish themselves from other applicants, either by explicitly subscribing to these values, or by demonstrating they had try to comply with those values as much as possible by handing over what little savings they had managed to scrape together. Thus, they set themselves apart from those who had demonstrated a lack of such values and were said to have taken ‘the direct route to the almshouse’ – the title of a sixteenth-century Dutch literary text that denounces unruly behaviour and propagates such values as order, industriousness and thrift (Pleij, 1988, p. 337).

8 Conclusion

Our study indicates that early-modern hospitals offered both subsidized corrodies and corrodies that were priced in line with the market. The latter were sold by Leiden’s St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital, which demanded entry fees that may well have sufficed to pay for food and lodging. Subsidized prices were asked by Regensburg’s St. Catherine’s hospital, which offered ‘quasi-commercial retirement contracts’. In this way the hospital functioned as a social institution that provided urban inhabitants with an opportunity to maintain social status during old age; it is much more difficult to picture this hospital as a strictly economic institution that facilitated retirement for the elderly who had managed to save up enough to pay for lifelong maintenance. That achievement was restricted to Regensburg’s happy few – and to middle classes in the Dutch Republic who had much more purchasing power, and who could pay for retirement in Leiden’s St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s hospital.²¹ Our comparison of Holland and Bavaria thus reveals the early-modern world harboured both commercial and ‘quasi-commercial’ retirement homes. The latter should remind us of the importance of distinguishing oneself as a member of a specific social layer during old age. Where possibilities for saving enough to achieve self-sufficiency during old age were limited – as in Regensburg – retirement homes subsidized corrodies to facilitate middle-class retirement. Where purchasing power was greater – as in Leiden – corrody prices were of necessity higher, both to allow middle-class members to show off their saving capacities, and perhaps also to exclude the lower classes from entering retirement homes. The latter – earning 40–50% above the poverty line in the Dutch Republic (Allen, 2001, p. 428) – were serious competitors if corrody prices were set too low. By preventing social decline among ageing members of the ‘middling sorts’, hospitals made a crucial contribution to the social fabric of urban society.

Hospitals did not necessarily look to profit from selling corrodies; the possibility of earning revenue was but one reason for admitting paying customers. Leiden’s St. Catherine’s and St. Cecilia’s may have been in a position to use the yields from its ‘retirement business’ to fund its charities, but the decision to ask ‘market prices’ was probably in part informed by the relatively high living standards in the Dutch Republic. As a result, the Leiden retirees could afford corrodies, and were motivated to purchase them to prevent social decline during their final years. One may speculate that they would not have agreed to pay lower prices, as this would make retirement less ‘exclusive’, and allow lower social groups to invest in corrodies as well. Regensburg’s St. Catherine’s hospital found itself in the exact opposite position. Its clientele could not afford to pay high corrody prices, and also did not have to do so to stand out from the less affluent. Our case studies thus provide new insights into how ‘commerce’ and ‘charity’ could be connected. In Leiden the former may have paid for the latter, but in Regensburg the two are much more difficult to disentangle.

By comparing the two hospitals it has also become clear that it is important to look further than the institutions’ treasure chest. The financial situation of the Leiden and Regensburg hospitals was quite similar since both could rely on a steady income stream coming from their landed properties. Yet the Leiden directors asked sufficiently high corrody prices, whereas their Regensburg colleagues apparently sold corrodies at a loss. We suggest the latter may have been making a conscious decision that was informed by the Regensburg hospital’s task in supporting the social fabric by making retirement possible for social middling groups. Directors of other premodern hospitals in regions with relatively low living standards may also have felt the need to offer subsidized corrodies, and this may help explain why scholars have reported both high and low corrody prices, and reconcile the literature on corrody prices.

How do corrodies fit with the concept of plurality of welfare? Corrodies allowed those without a family safety net to ensure a decent old age, enjoying food and lodging in a hospital while maintaining social status. The corrodies we encountered in Leiden are comparable to life annuities that were sold in the market, with the difference that returns were paid not in cash, but in kind, in the form of food and lodging. It stands to reason that these retirement contracts were priced in line with the market; our calculations demonstrate the entry fees may well have sufficed for maintaining an individual. The corrodies we encountered in Regensburg were different and combined self-sufficiency through self-funded retirement with assistance during old age by a charitable institution. The two are often conceived as incompatible, but the example of Regensburg suggests that they could also overlap. Quasi-commercial retirement contracts opened opportunities for individuals from social middling groups to prepare for old age – even in cases where their earnings would not have allowed them to amass the capital required to become a rentier. For them, subsidized retirement is likely to have provided both an important stimulus to prepare for old age, and a way to achieve a comfortable final stage of the life cycle, despite their inability to amass the capital necessary to live off during their final years.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Vetenskapsrådet [2017-01857].

Notes

1. That the notion of funding charity by means of selling corrodies was not unheard of is visible in Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, where hospital directors legitimized the admittance of corrodians by claiming prices were so steep that ‘the goals of poor relief could be met’ (Begon, 2002, p. 173).

2. The scope for saving in high income areas, such as England, has been established by Horrell et al. (2021).

3. The contractual framework and obligations of the hospital and the corrodians were extensively discussed in legal treatises of the time (Begon, 2002, p. 170).

4. See the 1659 painting by Jan de Vos IV (Collectie Museum de Lakenhal, S 457, http://www.lakenhal.nl/nl/collectie/s-457) and the 1730 painting by Frans van Mieris the Younger (Collectie Museum de Lakenhal, S 309, http://www.lakenhal.nl/nl/collectie/s-309).

5. Average payments by Catholics reached a maximum of 2.000 grams of silver in the eighteenth century; enough to cover subsistence, but nowhere near sufficient to pay for the lavish food and drink they received (section 5).

6. Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken, Gasthuizen 1311–1873, inv. nrs. 58–1, 58–2, 58–3, 58–4.

7. Assuming wages of 12 grams of silver per day for building craftsmen, based on Amsterdam wages (Allen, 2001, p. 416). The rather limited number of days required to pay for the commodity basket has been observed by Muldrew (2011, pp. 138–139).

8. Assuming wages of 6 grams of silver per day for building craftsmen, based on Leipzig wages. Wages in Augsburg were at about the same level (Allen, 2001, p. 416).

9. This is the picture that appears from data on life annuities collected by Angela Huang and Alexandra Sapoznik for the Benefits of Empire Project (personal communication from Angela Huang).

10. Similar returns are reported by Feenstra (2018, p. 117) and Dormans (1991, p. 232), who assume a return of 9.1% to life annuities for the first half of the seventeenth century. There is not much on returns on life annuities issued by Leiden in our period, but we know of issues paying 8–10% in the later seventeenth century (Nagtegaal, 1989, note 67).

11. We focus on 1740–1799 because this is the only period for which the silver wages we use in our computations are known.

12. The diet describes an average daily intake for the mid-eighteenth century, regardless of periods of fasting and feasts, and is based on data from Kühne (2006) and Neumaier (2011, pp. 247–250).

13. The sources do not allow for an estimation of the quantity of meat per corrodian though.

14. Additional evidence for retirees maintaing social status is presented in: (Zuijderduijn, 2020).

15. Today the difference is considerable: an active adult male in the age category 36–55 requires 2800 Kcal per day, whereas a sedentary adult male – whose activities consist of independent living – in the over-61 age category requires 2000 Kcal per day (https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/appendix-2/#footnote-1; accessed 18-1-2022).

16. The gap was ten to fifteen years between the ages 60–65 (16.7% return) and >75 (33.3%). The ages 45–50 (12.5%) and 70–75 (25%) required an age difference of at least 20 years (Houtzager, 1950, p. 104). Differences were even greater in Groningen (1672) where annuitants aged 1–20 received 10%, and those aged 65–70 years 20% (a gap of 45 years and more), and in Groningen (1782–1793) where annuitants aged 1–20 received 6%, and annuitants aged over 75 received 12% (a gap of 55 years and more; Feenstra, 2018, pp. 117, 288).

17. Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken, Gasthuizen 1311–1873, inv. nr. 58–1, f. 64, 114 v, 204 v, 217 v. Cf. labour duties in Leiden retirement homes: (Zuijderduijn, 2015a), 5–6.

18. The opportunity to ‘pay’ for corrodies with labour was quite common in the Holy Roman Empire (Dirlmeier, 1978, pp. 472–473).

19. Pleij (1988, pp. 144–145) discusses civic virtues in the Low Countries in terms of the ‘ideal of self-sufficiency through thrift, prudence and industriousness’ (our translation). Cf., Boele (2013, pp. 251–253), and for the Holy Roman Empire Münch (1984, pp. 22–25), and for England Hunt’s (1996, pp. 197–202) analysis of the domestic values of the ‘middling sorts’, and a ‘middling’ culture embracing commercial, prudential and industrious values. Of course, such values may have been more prominent in the minds of the authors of normative works trying to educate urban inhabitants than in the minds of the audience they targeted (French, 2000, p. 289). Yet it may be assumed hospital directors were quite prominent among these ‘educators’ who tried to transmit values to ‘middling sorts’, by making admission conditional on a virtuous life.

20. Likewise, the Brussels petitioners stressed their industriousness – another typical pre-modern urban civic virtue.

21. This finding links up with Słoń’s (2005, p. 465) question as to whether ‘the urban community needed the hospital, to solve the problem of urban poverty’ – something he doubts given the scores of corrodians in urban hospitals.