The article presents the settlements and household accounts following the death of Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, as well as testamentary and pre-mortem bequests the prince made to provide for his servants. Surviving documents show the decision taken by the executors of the last will, while the books reveal ambiguous, sometimes astonishing variation of amounts designated as wages and lifetime stipends for the prince’s domestics, as well as attest to the concern of the testator himself and his wife for the fates of people engaged in the household.
The material culture of washing bodies is not as rich as that for clean linens. Chapter 11 uses a range of evidence to examine how widely it was practised by looking for basins, kettles, and towels which are ubiquitous but multi-purpose in inventories and household accounts. The consumables are more reliable; recipes for wash balls (soap explicitly for the skin), washing, and bath waters appear in household manuals and personal collections. These products were also sold by apothecaries, country mercers, and chapmen. The Old Bailey proceedings reveal a range of cleanliness practices—how frequently people washed themselves and sometimes exactly what parts—as well as standards and expectations. New literature on the early modern urban provision of water suggests it was widely available for washing bodies and clothes in all but the poorest neighbourhoods.
Laundry was the process by which the hygienic function of linen—as required by propriety and medicine—was regularly renewed. Chapter 9 surveys the process of washing linens (washing, bucking, drying, starching, ironing) and the tools and resources it required (water, boilers, soap, irons, clothes lines, etc). Inventories reveal which tools and materials for laundry early modern English people owned and in what spaces this work was done. Household accounts document the necessary consumables (soap and starch), how frequently and in what quantities these were purchased, and what these patterns tell us about laundry.
Using spoken language is the easiest and most natural way of communication for human beings. The communication between humans and machines using sounds or language is a huge move forward. This article demonstrates the development of a mobile application for managing household accounts with the integration of a speaking voice and touch-screen function on smartphones; this could also be used as a tool to manage household accounts for elderly Thai people. The content was evaluated by five experts to identify each feature of the developed mobile application. Afterwards, the developed mobile application was distributed to thirty-three elderly people. The findings showed that the elderly people were able to learn and use the mobile application effectively. The learning post-test results scored higher than the pre-test results. The effectiveness evaluation results in terms of the accessibility barriers that can be faced by elderly people while using mobile applications showed that the average mean was 4.13 and the standard deviation was 0.36 and the acceptance of the mobile application based on accessibility barriers that could be detected by elderly people while being used has high consensus. This indicates that the developed mobile application is effective for elderly users at a high level.
„Proszę, by wszystkim moim domownikom wypłacono gaże i pensje…” – odprawa dla służby i spłata długów Armanda de Bourbon, księcia de Conti po jego śmierci
