Property, gender and the life course: Inheritance and family welfare provision in early nineteenth-century England

Since the nineteenth century, attention in folklore and folklife studies has shifted from viewing certain customary symbolic actions such as “calendar customs” and rituals of the life course to a more inclusive performance-oriented perspective on holidays and customs. Folklorists recognize the multiplicity of events that people may consider ritual and festival, and the porous nature of these categories. The concept of the “sacred” has expanded to include realms other than the strictly religious, so as to include the political and other domains, both official and unofficial. A comprehensive study of ritual and festival incorporates a close study of folk and popular actions as well as institutional ceremony. In the twenty-first century, approaching events as both carnivalesque and ritualesque allows folklorists to describe purpose and intention in public events, and to account for political, commemorative, celebratory, and festive elements in any particular event.

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“They Live in Indifference Together”: Marriage Mobility in Zeeland, The Netherlands, 1796–1922

International Review of Social History ◽

10.1017/s0020859005002130 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 50 (S13) ◽

pp. 247-274 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Hilde Bras ◽

Jan Kok

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Social Class ◽

The Netherlands ◽

Life Course ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Personal Relationships ◽

Mixed Marriage ◽

Government Report ◽

Logistic Regressions ◽

The Life Course

This article investigates developments in and antecedents of socially mixed marriage in the rural Dutch province of Zeeland during the long nineteenth century, taking individual and family histories, community contexts, and temporal influences into account. A government report of the 1850s said of Zeeland that farmers and workers lived “in indifference together”. However, our analysis of about 163,000 marriage certificates reveals that 30 to 40 per cent of these rural inhabitants continued to marry outside their original social class. Multivariate logistic regressions show that heterogamous marriages can be explained first and foremost by the life-course experiences of grooms and brides prior to marriage. Previous transitions in their occupational careers (especially to non-rural occupations for grooms, and to service for brides), in their migration trajectories (particularly moves to urban areas), and changes in the sphere of personal relationships (entering widowhood, ageing) are crucial in understanding marriage mobility.

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“Freedom and Friendship to Ireland”: Ribbonism in Early Nineteenth-Century Liverpool

International Review of Social History ◽

10.1017/s0020859000112404 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 39 (1) ◽

pp. 33-56 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

John Belchem

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Pivotal Role ◽

Popular Politics ◽

Early Nineteenth Century ◽

Secret Societies ◽

Welfare Provision ◽

Chain Migration ◽

Sense Of Identity

SummaryThe paper examines the role of “nationalist” secret societies among the rapidly growing Irish community in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s. The main port of entry, Liverpool occupied a pivotal role as the two main “Ribbon” societies developed secret networks to provide migrant members with political sanctuary and a range of “tramping” benefits. Through its welfare provision, offered irrespective of skill or trade, Ribbonism engendered a sense of identity wider than that of the familial and regional affiliations through which chain migration typically operated. A proactive influence among immigrant Irish Catholic workers, Ribbonism helped to construct a national or ethnic awareness, initiating the process by which ethnic-sectarian formations came to dominate popular politics in nineteenth-century Liverpool, the nation's second city. This ethnic associational culture was at least as functional, popular and inclusive as the class-based movements and party structures privileged in conventional British historiography.

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Sequence Analysis of How Disability Influenced Life Trajectories in a Past Population from the Nineteenth-Century Sundsvall Region, Sweden

Historical Life Course Studies ◽

10.51964/hlcs9340 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 4 ◽

pp. 97-119

Author(s):

Lotta Vikström ◽

Helena Haage ◽

Erling Häggström Lundevaller

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Sequence Analysis ◽

Life Course ◽

Demographic Data ◽

Extended Period ◽

Disabled People ◽

Advantages And Disadvantages ◽

Premature Deaths ◽

The Disabled ◽

The Life Course

Historically, little is known about whether and to what extent disabled people found work and formed families. To fill this gap, this study analyses the life course trajectories of both disabled and non-disabled individuals, between the ages of 15 and 33, from the Sundsvall region in Sweden during the nineteenth century. Having access to micro-data that report disabilities in a population of 8,874 individuals from the parish registers digitised by the Demographic Data Base, Umeå University, we employ sequence analysis on a series of events that are expected to occur in life of young adults: getting a job, marrying and becoming a parent, while also taking into account out-migration and death. Through this method we obtain a holistic picture of the life course of disabled people. Main findings show that their trajectories did not include work or family to the same extent as those of non-disabled people. Secondary findings concerning migration and mortality indicate that the disabled rarely out-migrated from the region, and they suffered from premature deaths. To our knowledge this is the first study to employ sequence analysis on a substantially large number of cases to provide demographic evidence of how disability shaped human trajectories in the past during an extended period of life. Accordingly, we detail our motivation for this method, describe our analytical approach, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages associated with sequence analysis for our case study.

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Vulnerable and unsteady: life histories and changes of residence of unwed mothers in Lyon at the end of the nineteenth century

Continuity and Change ◽

10.1017/s0268416010000196 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 25 (2) ◽

pp. 263-284

Author(s):

GUY BRUNET ◽

JEAN-LUC PINOL

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Life Course ◽

Single Mothers ◽

Life Histories ◽

Unwed Mothers ◽

Geographical Mobility ◽

Illegitimate Child ◽

The Subject ◽

The Life Course ◽

The City

ABSTRACTThis article is a study of single mothers in Lyon in the nineteenth century, including what happened to them after they gave birth to an illegitimate child. Unmarried mothers have been the subject of much previous research on different countries but such studies often begin with the last days of the pregnancy and stop a few days after the delivery. Our aim is to look at the life course of single mothers before pregnancy and after delivery. In Lyon, at the time the second French city in terms of population, we studied 2,000 unwed mothers, some of them multiparous, noting their extensive geographical mobility and the frequency of their moves within the city.

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