Negotiating Memory and Restoring Identity in Broken Families in Eighteenth-century Denmark

Court Records as Family Memories of Disobedient Children

During the eighteenth century, Denmark witnessed an increase in the use of tugt workhouses for multiple purposes. In the seventeenth century, prisons as well as tugt workhouses were located exclusively in Copenhagen. Even though they were supposed to receive people from all over the country, the expenses connected with bringing people there limited their use. The first of three tugt workhouses in the provinces opened in 1739; within thirteen years, each part of the country had its own tugt workhouse. ⁵ As the Danish name tugthus or “tugt” house indicates (“tugte” means to correct and educate), these institutions were intended not solely as prisons or workhouses, but to correct through work and education (although they were also used as prisons). ⁶ Among those in need of correction were not only disobedient children, but also married couples who were living an un-Christian life together. ⁷

This article draws on documents produced on the occasions when disobedient children were placed in the tugt workhouse. This could happen either on the initiative of their parents or against their parents’ wishes. I will concentrate on the first of the provincial tugt workhouses, established on the island of Møn, south of Copenhagen, because the education of children seems to have played a more significant role there than at the two later institutions. ⁸ I am interested in the stories told by parents in court and in their petitions concerning disobedient children: in what these stories reveal about how family memories of the events that brought children to the institution (and the families to potential breakdown) are narrated, contested, and negotiated in the process of restoring the family’s identity as responsible.

My material includes all correspondence sent to the tugt workhouse at Møn throughout the eighteenth century, including letters from local authorities explaining why the children were sent there, court records or testimony from the local pastor in some cases, and letters and petitions from parents and the children themselves about their release. I present a close reading of the most extensive court case in this material, and I underpin my reading with additional examples and analysis of the correspondence more broadly. The broad reading of the correspondence serves to establish the cultural scripts of a good Christian family and of responsible parenthood. Applying insights from the field of memory studies on how autobiographical narratives help define the identity of families, I suggest that narratives concerning disobedient children formed part of a memory process that contributed to a necessary re-establishing of the identity of the Christian family.

My approach is inspired by Robyn Fivush’s work on autobiographical memories. Fivush states that:

…memory in general, and autobiographical memory in particular, is constructed in social interactions in which particular events, and particular interpretations of events, are highlighted, shared, negotiated and contested, leading to fluid dynamic representations of the events of our lives that function to define self, other and the world. ⁹

Central to this approach is memory as a narrated representation of events in life, as well as memory as a flexible process in which meaning is ascribed through social interaction and negotiation. Fivush focuses on memories shared within families, but the courtroom is an additional arena in which parents can share autobiographical memories—if not always voluntarily. In the courtroom arena, however, family memory is the subject of negotiation with other witnesses, as well as the authorities, about how past events within the family are to be understood. In the case I have chosen for in-depth analysis, the negotiation of memories continues beyond the courtroom, in letters and petitions in which the parents recall past events with greater independence. My access to family memory is, of course, always transmitted through the medium of official documents, and I have no way of knowing what a parent’s “real” memory was of past events concerning a disobedient child. My focus is on how a family could negotiate their “private” memory of past events against the “official memory” of the authorities as part of the process of restoring family identity and parental authority. This negotiation reveals contested areas of family and parental identity, as well as the relation between family and state it underpins.

My approach is further inspired by Anne Muxel’s work on connections between familial memory and processes of identity. ¹⁰ As with Fivush, an approach to memory as a process, as negotiable and as something shaped from an individual perspective is central to Muxel’s work: “…elements are included in the narration and used in different ways to serve the individual’s identity and his or her personal goals and sense of self-esteem.” ¹¹ This perspective makes it possible to understand changing parental narratives as using memories of past events to create a recognizable cultural identity—for themselves as responsible parents, and for the family and household as Christian. Muxel asks, “how do individuals recall the past, and what meaning do they attribute to it?” ¹² I use this approach in my analysis to search for changes in the narrative as a way of ascribing meaning and creating inclusion for the family within a national community of good Christian households.

Muxel identifies three functions of familial memory: transmission, revival, and reflexivity. Together, these three functions show how familial memory “interpret[s] the past to give it meaning in the present.” Memory is thus not just a reconstruction of past events, but rather an interpretation of those events “in the interaction between the individual’s subjectivity and the collective familiar norm.” ¹³ Belonging to the family is established through adjusting to a prevailing norm—a norm that may not be the familial norm, but that of society. Muxel’s understanding of reflexivity as a result of negotiation, as changeable, and as forgetting certain aspects and experiences is especially useful as an approach to memory as something that can also be adjusted by choosing what to forget. ¹⁴

In my analysis of narratives by parents who were forced to explain why their children misbehaved, I explore how the memory of past events is evoked in these narratives, how that memory is negotiated in the courtroom and with the authorities in letters and petitions, and how it can be understood as an element in the attempted restoration of the family’s identity as Christian. This approach gives us knowledge not just of the process of negotiating family memory between families and authorities, but also of how to understand family and parental identity. I only have access to how parents are prepared in an official context to remember their disobedient children and their efforts to cope with the situation within the household. Situations in which parental memory is challenged, contested, and changed show us the critical points of negotiation and thus the indispensable elements of the identity of the Christian family and responsible parenthood.

Parents’ narratives and memories also contribute to the national memory of the tugt workhouses and their function concerning the family. ¹⁵ Liz Stanley has demonstrated how social structures are created and sustained on a daily level not only by people in power, but also by ordinary people through their letters and documents. My analysis will address how personal testimonies from poor families in court cases and in petitions also had a function in upholding, developing, and negotiating national norms and social structures.

A Disobedient Boy and a Broken Household

One child who spent five years in the tugt workhouse at Møn was a young boy named Johan Henrich Becker. He was committed to the institution in 1742 following disobedience to his parents, but he was brought there against their will. ¹⁶ This makes the case exceptional in comparison with most of the cases in my sample, but by the same token, very well documented. The case sheds light on the process of negotiating the private memory of the family against the public memory of local authorities, as well as identity construction by the family and the expectations of local authorities about parental responsibility. On several occasions after their son’s committal to the tugt workhouse, Johan’s parents changed their narrative about his behavior and their involvement. The aim seems to have been to create a memory of the family and their parenthood that would make them recognizable as a good Christian family in order to regain parental authority and have their son released. The case is read as an example of how family memory, once family life has broken down, is contested and negotiated with public authorities of various kinds in a process that both restores the identity of the family and underpins the social structures of society.

It was the local pastor who raised the alarm about Johan. He contacted the secular authority, the county governor, Count Rantzau, who also happened to be one of the largest estate-owners on Fyn. Rantzau took the case to court. There, witnesses confirmed the accusations against Johan, the pastor among them. The witnesses described a troubled household in which Johan habitually cursed and swore at his parents, called his mother a whore and his father a thief, had beaten up his mother several times, and got into fights with his father to the point where his mother had run to the neighbor for help. The witnesses also recounted how Johan would bother the neighbors and other citizens. The pastor specifically addressed Johan’s unwillingness to work as a problem of significant concern in his testimony. ¹⁷

Johan’s behavior was described as “wicked,” “scandalous,” “indecorous” and in general, “un-Christian.” He was characterized as “profligate” and “ill-mannered” and his misuse of time was dwelt upon. ¹⁸ His conduct transgressed both his Christian upbringing and the law. According to the Danish Code of 1683, children (and adults too) who did not live a good Christian life in accordance with their upbringing should lose their inheritance. ¹⁹ Direct disrespect for parents by a child in word or deed called for a lifetime prison sentence. In cases of physical violence toward a parent, a child was to be beheaded. ²⁰ Inheritance was a question of kinship, and loss of inheritance might be understood as expulsion from the family, underlined by expulsion from society through prison in the worst cases of disobedience. The law thus enabled parents to expel disobedient children from the family for un-Christian behavior. Provided the parents had given their children a Christian upbringing and fulfilled the societal expectations themselves, such expulsion even seems to have been the expectation.

The provincial tugt workhouses established in the mid-eighteenth century soon became an alternative to this harsh legislation. In 1740, a rescript stated that parents might send their children to the tugt workhouse at Møn if a child was misbehaving in ways that could be better corrected through work in the institution than through the means of chastisement available to parents. The institution thus became a means of correcting before disobedience became too strong. The 1740 rescript was in response to a request from a father who wanted his daughter taken into the institution for correction. Committal to a tugt workhouse was a course of action parents were more likely to take than the lifetime sentence and loss of inheritance prescribed in the Danish Code. ²¹

How parents acted when children were disobedient was important. In one case from Møn, a young girl of fourteen was caught by her parents stealing from the local church. According to the local county governor, they contacted him immediately, and thus were acting as responsible parents. Because she was under-aged and because of the responsible behavior of the parents, the county governor argued, there was no need to bring the girl to court and it would be more productive to send her to the tugt workhouse for correction and education. ²² In another case, a man from Norway directly underlined the good upbringing he had given his son and thus claimed to have fulfilled his obligations as a responsible parent in complaining about his son’s disobedience. The son was sent to the tugt workhouse and was to stay until he had shown stable improvement. ²³ These and other cases show how the identity of a responsible parent was important for parents who wished to influence the fate of their children and to be recognized as an authority to negotiate with.

In his testimony about Johan, the pastor described how he had tried to talk sense into the boy. While he was undergoing preparation for confirmation and participating in the sacrament of the altar, Johan had promised to behave. ²⁴ After his confirmation, Johan would know his catechism. ²⁵ Confirmation was introduced in 1737, but even before that, the pastor had to make sure young people knew (and understood) Luther’s Small Catechism before giving them the sacrament of the altar for the first time. ²⁶ In 1737, Luther’s Small Catechism was supplemented with an explanation of the catechism, “Truth Unto Godliness,” written by Erik Pontoppidan at the request of the absolute King. Knowledge of this explanation was mandatory in preparation for confirmation, and the obligations of the Fourth Commandment, to honor your father and your mother, were described in more detail in the explanation than in the Small Catechism itself. Johan thus should have known his obligation to “honour, love, serve and obey” with “heart, words, gesture and acts” not only his parents, but all other authorities he might encounter, because they stood in a parental relation to him. ²⁷

Johan’s behavior was the responsibility of his parents. Pontoppidan describes the responsibility of parents toward children as to “pray for them and have care for their worldly, religious and eternal welfare” and to punish disobedience in a “sensible and loving way, not for indignation but improvement” as a part of the Fourth Commandment. ²⁸ He also addresses the obligation of the pastor to “teach, warn and punish from a loving, gentle, and meticulous heart.” ²⁹ The obligation of any authority appointed over its subjects, also part of the Fourth Commandment, was to “love them, seek their worldly and eternal welfare, keep peace and good order through the punishment of evil, and reward of the good.” ³⁰

Like the obligation placed on children to honor their parents, the obligation placed on parents through religious texts also found its way into the Danish Code. Parents were to “keep their children, boys and girls, to school, honest service, trade or craftsmanship,” even if they did not need their children to work for economic reasons. If the parents failed to do this, a board of guardians in every town was to ensure that the child be placed in service at the cost of the parents. ³¹ The pastor had a special obligation to keep an eye on the Christian life of the household. ³² When parents in contact with the local authorities and with the tugt workhouse claimed that to be responsible parents who had taken care of their children’s upbringing, it was this cultural script of religious norms and legislation that they tried to inscribe themselves in.

The witnesses in the court case against Johan draw a picture of an unruly household in which brawls and offensive language were everyday practice. According to several of the witnesses, the blame for Johan’s behavior lay with his parents. They recounted how every time they complained about Johan, the parents supported him. His mother in particular had “scolded and cursed them” and supported her son in his wickedness. One witness described an occasion when the mother had encouraged Johan to attack a neighbor with a stone. The witnesses noticed that the pastor had been to the house to admonish not only the boy but also the parents, but to no effect. They still kept a “wicked house with cursing, scolding and fights.” They reported several incidents of brawls between the boy and his father. An incident at the time of morning service on Whit Monday seems to have caused particular indignation. ³³ Unruly behavior when people were supposed to be in church was one of the cases pastors were required to reprimand. ³⁴ The witnesses probably reflected a public memory of irresponsible parenthood, an un-Christian family, and a lazy, ill-mannered boy.

Following the court case and ruling, Count Rantzau sent Johan to the tugt workhouse. In his letter to the administrators, Rantzau argued that witnesses had demonstrated that the parents, and particularly the mother, were the source of Johan’s disobedience. Therefore, he would not support the father’s offer to send Johan away from home to Holstein. While this might solve local problems, Rantzau argued, the boy would probably cause a new lot of trouble and revert to his wicked behavior, because his parents had overlooked his wickedness up till now. Instead, he should be taken into correction and improvement in the tugt workhouse. The administrators even argued that the parents should pay Johan’s expenses themselves to remind them that they had failed to raise their child properly. ³⁵ A central reason for sending Johan to the institution was thus that his parents had failed in their obligation to provide him with a good Christian upbringing, including setting him to work. Because of their lack of responsible parenting, the authorities had to take over. In this way, the accusation against the disobedient child challenges a crucial Christian identity for the entire family as well as the authority of the parents.

In defense of his son, Johan’s father tried to downplay the episodes of violence and disobedience leading to the court case. He ascribed Johan’s behavior to his youth and claimed that he was sorry. He also tried to pin responsibility for the violent clashes with the neighbors on them and described Johan as a victim of people who wanted to get him into trouble. This might have been the case, but he could not convince the court. He further complained about the treatment Johan had received in prison. He underlined his fatherly love and responsibility, but apparently without effect. His narrative had lost its credibility because in the eyes of neighbors and local authorities he had not fulfilled his parental obligations. His memory of the events therefore did not count as an argument. ³⁶

Johan’s father could not save his son from the tugt workhouse. The pastor and the county governor seem to have been quite determined to send the boy for education in the institution. They wanted him to learn to work and to behave in accordance with his Christian education, and they no longer trusted his father to see to this. The household and the authority of the father were both broken—and, along with them, the family’s Christian identity. They were no longer in charge of the narrative of their family, or of the memory of past events.

The Process of Remembering

Johan was sent to the tugt workhouse in 1742 without any specific recommendation as to how long he should stay. He could be released once he had improved and had learned to work. ³⁷ That might have been the end of the story, with the family memory preserved in the court records representing a disordered household in which quarreling parents were unable to uphold their parental authority and manage their Christian duties. However, after a year, Johan’s father made his first application to the tugt workhouse administrators to have Johan released. The father argued that the boy had only been supposed to be there for six months, but now more than a year had passed. ³⁸ This was rather soon for a request simply to have the boy released, apparently without any effect.

In making this request, Johan’s father was trying to subscribe to a narrative of responsible parenthood. Several of the children in the tugt workhouse had been sent there at their parents’ request—some for disobedience to their parents, some for other kinds of un-Christian behavior. Girls were placed in the institution by relatives for lewd behavior or drunkenness. ³⁹ One father asked for his seventeen-year-old son to be taken into the tugt workhouse for wicked behavior. He described how the son was becoming ever stronger and more wicked and did not listen to his father, who was not only ashamed of his son’s behavior but wished to save him from getting into even worse trouble. The father concluded that hard labor in the tugt workhouse would benefit the boy, and as the pastor could bear witness to his unruly behavior to his parents, the boy was accepted for education and improvement in the institution. ⁴⁰

Common to these cases is that the parents contacted the authorities apparently on their own initiative to have their children taken into the tugt workhouse for education and correction. ⁴¹ By asking the local authorities to take over in cases of disobedience, the parents performed the role of responsible parents who cared about the upbringing of their children and the Christian identity of their family and household. These parents describe not just the sorrow and shame caused by their children’s behavior, but also their love for them and their desire to have them improved. In so doing they are substantiating the existing social understandings of responsible parenthood and the responsible household, as well as the appropriate action of the state in taking over.

Another common feature in these cases is the parents’ offer to pay for their children’s stay in the tugt workhouse if they could afford it, and their application to have their children released once they were thought to have improved. ⁴² By appealing to the workhouse administrators as he did, Johan’s father drew on a familiar narrative of responsible Christian parenthood. He was claiming his right to decide when the boy had improved and when he should therefore be released. This might have been a tactic on the father’s part or a desperate attempt to adjust his narrative, but it might also have been a less conscious adjustment of his memory of how his son had ended up in the tugt workhouse. In leaving out or forgetting the court case, the father might have been creating a self-memory in which he had acted as a responsible father was expected to.

Two years later, in 1744, Johan was caught in Copenhagen, after running away from the tugt workhouse at Møn. He was brought back and flogged on his return. He was threatened with committal to the much harsher Rasphus or Rasphouse in Copenhagen if he did not improve, but he was also promised an apprenticeship in the textile production if he did improve his behavior. ⁴³ Children were educated in the textile production to enable them to earn their living when released, and in some cases received an apprentice certificate before they left. ⁴⁴

After this incident, Johan’s father tried again to help him. This time he went over the heads of the local authorities and the workhouse administrators and paid a sum of money to petition the King. ⁴⁵ In the petition, the father’s narrative of his son’s misbehavior changed significantly. He now explained that his son had run away from his apprenticeship at the age of twelve—in other words, that the parents had placed him in an apprenticeship to learn a craft, as they were supposed to do—and that after this, his parents had agreed that the authorities should place him in the tugt workhouse for five or six months as punishment and also for moral improvement. By including the apprenticeship in the narrative, the father has moved the site of the troublesome behavior outside the household and has portrayed himself as a responsible parent who has tried to bring his son up to work. This part of the story is very likely to have happened. In focusing on this memory, the father is building one of the characteristics of responsible parenthood—the wish to educate the boy—into his narrative about the disobedient child. He still does not mention the court case, but states that Count Rantzou had agreed to send the boy to the institution at Møn, conveniently forgetting the troublesome part of the story in the attempt to portray himself as a responsible parent.

The father further describes how, after six or seven months during which the boy had improved and was behaving impeccably, his wife had visited the tugt workhouse at Møn (which is quite a journey from Odense) to ask the administrators to release the boy on the grounds that he had served the time set by the count, a request which was refused. The mother had returned home with “sorrowful heart” after her long and exhausting journey. Perhaps the parents thought that a plea from the mother to have the boy released would make a more effective impression on the administrator. The underpinning of her emotions of sorrow could suggest this. A girl requesting her own release also alludes to her mother’s tears as one of the reasons she longs for her freedom. ⁴⁶ The mother’s sorrow and grief at her child’s confinement in the tugt workhouse seems to have been a component of “correct” motherhood in such a situation. That Johan’s mother made the journey herself also shows us that she had the authority to do so, and that she was taking an active part in negotiating the boy’s fate.

Both parents’ insistence that Johan should be released after half a year may indicate that this actually was their remembrance or understanding of the situation. No specified timeframe was documented at the time of Johan’s committal to the tugt workhouse, only that he should stay there until he had improved. Supposing it to be the cultural norm for parents who had sent their children to the tugt workhouse for improvement by agreement with the local authorities to secure their release after half a year, Johan’s parents might reasonably have expected this. This would explain why they continue to highlight this point in their narrative of the disobedient boy, while neglecting to mention the court case. As several of the neighbors had appeared as witnesses in court, the parents may also have regarded the court case as an element in an ongoing conflict with the neighbors, as distinct from a case concerning a troublesome child, often handled between parents and local authorities.

Or the parents may simply have acted too soon. In most cases we cannot determine how long children spent in the tugt workhouse before their parents tried to have them released. Some cases, however, indicate that years, rather than months, seem to have been expected before the necessary improvement would have taken place, especially in the early years. In one case where a boy was sent to the tugt workhouse for disobedience to his mother, the responsible local authority applied to the institution five years later to ask if he had improved enough to be released. ⁴⁷ A girl spent eight years in the tugt workhouse before she pleaded to be released. She had stolen food at the age of thirteen but blamed her misdeed on having been fed too little, contrary to her entitlement. ⁴⁸ In other cases, improvements seem to have been achieved more quickly, and there is a tendency toward shorter imprisonment later in the eighteenth century. ⁴⁹

The tone of the father’s petition to the King was critical of the workhouse administrator. The father accused him of “taking our child,” making an “independent decision” to keep him there, and forcing him to learn textile manufacturing against Johan’s and his parents’ will. In referring to the administrator’s independent decision, the father also indicates that he has acted contrary to the intention of the competent authorities: the county governor and the directors in Copenhagen. The father complains about the treatment of his son compared with other boys, and his lack of freedom, and uses these as mitigating factors to explain the escape. Harsh treatment had caused Johan to “fall into despair,” and because he had no good and reliable friends in the tugt workhouse to advise him, he had run away. He had done this, the father explained, with the sole object of getting to Copenhagen to submit a petition to the King for his release. To submit a petition was the right of every subject of the King, and to turn to the King in time of despair was a reasonable act, through which the boy was showing that he knew the correct authority. This explanation, coupled with the lack of morally upright people within the institution (Johan had bad company there, no doubt), is an attempt to present Johan as a good and loyal subject to the King, who would behave properly with the right guidance—which, it was implied, he had not received in the tugt workhouse.

This critique of the authorities is interesting because it gradually drops out of the father’s story, indicating that proper collaboration with and trust in the local authorities were also a part of responsible parenthood and the identity of a Christian household. The changing points in the narrative Johan’s father constructs of his son’s behavior show us where the story was contested in the negotiation with the authorities. Even though we cannot know to what extent the private memory of the family changed, the adjustment of the narrative in the encounter with the authorities highlights the essential elements of responsible parenthood and a Christian household. A petition is still an official document, but in handing in a petition Johan’s father removed the narrative from the formal structure and mediation of the court record to his own narration, enabling him to highlight the aspects of the story he wished. As the family reforms their account of what happened to enable a new image of their family and the production of a respectable identity, family memories became unstable and subject to re-inscription.

In his petition, the father continued by describing how Johan starved and suffered on his way to Copenhagen because he received no help. When he ran into some soldiers, they were therefore able to convince him to enlist. They had also promised that their commanding officer could help him get released. In bringing this element into the narrative, Johan’s father points at yet another authority which has not acted responsibly concerning his son. As soon as he learned of his son’s enlisting, he had gone to see the boy and convinced him to come with him. The father had taken him back to the tugt workhouse, and Johan had followed like an obedient son. The father underlines that he had paid for the boy’s clothing while he was imprisoned. He further repeats that Johan had not committed any serious crime. ⁵⁰

With his narrative in the petition, the father highlights the improvement achieved by his son, indicating the apparent importance of this element, while he also tries to place responsibility for his son’s wrongdoings on other people and on the authorities. He highlights how he and his wife have tried to act as responsible parents who wanted to educate their son, and how they showed active parenting in bringing Johan back to the institution, thereby also underlining that they had placed him in the tugt workhouse voluntarily. The father also manages to point out that the administrators of the institution have failed in their responsibility by letting the boy run away and be conscripted. However, as the story moves on, his critique of the various authorities involved in Johan’s case is contested—even though petitions were a way in which ordinary people could complain about misuse of a local authority to the absolute King.

Narrating for Release

Johan was not making it easy for his father. Later in the same year, he committed fornication with a female inmate in the tugt workhouse. Together with another inmate who had also been engaged in illicit sexual activity, Johan was now to be sent to a harsher prison, the Rasphouse in Copenhagen. The only problem was that these two boys were also the most efficient workers in the workhouse, and the textile manufacturing could not spare them both. Because Johan had only had a relationship with one woman, and the other boy with several, the other was sent to Copenhagen first. Johan was told it would be his turn when the other returned, unless he had improved significantly. The directors of the poor-relief system in Copenhagen, who were also in charge of the tugt workhouse, underlined that the authorities had imprisoned Johan because of his un-Christian life. He was characterized as “lewd and not educated or castigated,” a narrative that was in line with the official account both of his behavior and of his lack of proper upbringing. ⁵¹ The directors in Copenhagen further held that he had not yet improved during his stay. He had, on the contrary, shown his wickedness and un-Christian behavior by running away and by his subsequent sexual impropriety transgression. The directors finally used the incident with the two boys to remind the administrators (in charge of the daily life in the institution) of their duty to keep good order and prevent episodes like this from happening in the first place. This underlined that education and proper upbringing were the intentions of the place. ⁵²

A little later that year, the second boy returned to Møn. Johan was sent to the Rasphouse in Copenhagen to work. ⁵³ Apparently, he had not improved sufficiently. Back on Møn again, Johan was caught once again after being out one night with the same boy and a female inmate and coming home drunk. Because both boys were good workers in the manufacturing, this time they were not sent to Copenhagen but given corporal punishment. This underlines the importance of the economic aspects of the manufacturing, in addition to indicating the importance of their work. ⁵⁴ At stake here is not only the memory of a disobedient boy and the actions of his parents, but also a narrative about the authorities and the purpose of the newly established tugt workhouses. The administrators in charge of the tugt workhouse were also forced to negotiate the public memory of the institution through cases such as Johan’s.

Johan’s behavior in the tugt workhouse did not prevent his father from trying to help him again. ⁵⁵ In 1745, he sent a new petition to the King, and once more asked to have the son released. Even though the poor-relief directors in Copenhagen had made it reasonably clear that they remembered that Johan was imprisoned by the authorities and not the parents, the father kept to the story that he and his wife had sought help from Count Rantzau in having the boy committed to the tugt workhouse for six months as combined punishment and improvement. As mentioned before, this part of the narrative must have been significant, because the parents hold onto the memory of their initiating the local authorities’ involvement from their first encounter with the authorities after Johan’s imprisonment. Whether or not they had come to believe this was what had happened, the parents’ insistence on this memory points to this action as being central to the identity of responsible parents in a Christian household. In this second petition, Johan’s father also points to his advanced age (sixty-five years) and his son’s youth at the time he showed disobedience in running away from his master. In doing so he makes the case that he hopes to support himself in old age with the help from of son, as well as indicating that his son’s young age was an excuse for his behavior. Work and self-support were central to the identity of a Christian household that Johan’s father was trying to build.

Being young did not seem to keep children out of the tugt workhouse, though. Perhaps, on the contrary, the possibilities for improvement through work and education were seen as greater. One boy as young as eight and a half was brought in to the Møn institution. ⁵⁶ Johan’s father’s age might, on the other hand, have legitimized his lack of control of the household. Another father who wanted his son taken into the tugt workhouse pointed to his shame and “painful sorrow as an old man.” ⁵⁷ The underlining of both shame and sorrow might indicate that shame was seen as an appropriate emotion for a father whose child had been sent to the tugt workhouse, just as sorrow and tears were seen as appropriate for a mother.

In the second petition, Johan’s father also talks about the sorrow Johan had caused his parents through his behavior at the tugt workhouse. “God knows best how me and my wife in our age daily sigh under the Cross to have our child at liberty” he writes, indicating their Christian mindset. This reference to God and to a Christian household are new in his narrative, and quite in opposition to the image of the household drawn by the witnesses in the court case. Drawing this element into the narrative makes the emotions as well as the parents’ religiosity part of the family story and indicates that the loss of their son had led them to regret and thus to improve behavior within the household. It points to the need for the parents to reconstruct the identity of a Christian household and family, and it suggests that when a disobedient child was removed from the household by the local authorities, the aim was also to improve the household itself.

One thing Johan’s father does not emphasize in this second petition is the court case and Johan’s disobedience to the parents. Thus the un-Christian behavior of the entire household is forgotten and the parents are presented as responsible in their reaction to the boy’s disobedience to his master. Again, the father describes Count Rantzau’s support for his request to send the boy to the tugt workhouse for education and improvement and complains that Johan has been there for three years though only six months were intended. The father now regrets that he did not obtain a written resolution on the length of his child’s stay in the tugt workhouse—another indication that he thinks himself to be in a position to obtain such a resolution, and that he might have come to believe in this memory himself.

The criticism expressed in the father’s first petition is almost gone. He tries to explain the illicit sexual incident by Johan’s sorrow at his confinement in the tugt workhouse, together with the excuse that he had been led astray. This time, however, he acknowledges that the punishment had been fair. The narrative of both Johan’s and his parents’ interaction with the authorities at different levels is thus altered through the explanations of different situations and events. Formerly, the father expressed anger at the treatment Johan received both in the local prison and in the tugt workhouse and used this as an explanation and excuse for his subsequent behavior. Now, he admits that the treatment was fair and that Johan has improved as a result of his stay—a sign of collaboration rather than conflict and objection between parental and state authority. In this second petition, Johan’s father argues that his son is ready to be released and turned over to him “as his father” because he is sure Johan will improve further through this course, “by the help of the blessed and merciful God.” After all, he has “learned what justice meant.” ⁵⁸ By means of the narrative, the memory of Johan’s stay in the tugt workhouse has become something that has improved him—a memory underpinning the official understanding of the purpose of the institution.

A central aspect of the second petition is the expressed intention to keep Johan in service. In combination with his advanced age and his frailty, the father’s intention to place Johan in an apprenticeship is the reason for the request to have the boy released. The father points out that Johan’s mother believes that Johan will be an obedient and helpful child if he is allowed to be trained to a trade of his own choice rather than as a prisoner. Then the parents will have help in their old age, goes the argument, which follows the cultural script of parental obligations implemented through legislation.

Through the offer to place Johan in service once again, to learn a trade holding more interest for him than manufacturing, the father is again drawing on known narratives from the tugt workhouse. Children were often released when they could be taken into service by someone undertaking to take care of their future education and further improvement. It was part of the agreement that they should be brought back to the tugt workhouse if they did not continue to improve. At least one boy had learned this the hard way when he was brought back for evil behavior at his place of service. ⁵⁹ But masters of trade also turned to the tugt workhouse to ask for good Christian boys and girls to hire. ⁶⁰ The masters who took on this responsibility probably did so on attractive conditions; but they were also giving the child a way back into society.

Contrary to his earlier critique, Johan’s father now acknowledges that the extended stay in the institution has improved his son and that he now knows how to behave and the consequences of not doing so. He has not included his criticism of the administrators of the institution, and in so doing he has acknowledged that they were the authorities so long as Johan was in the tugt workhouse. In this respect he is thus supporting the official understanding of the tugt workhouse as a place of education and improvement. This narrative also indicates that collaborating with local authorities in the event of problems within the household is an essential aspect of being a responsible parent. Johan’s father draws on his advanced age and his need for someone to support him and his wife, on their behavior as responsible parents in the form of their promise to place Johan in service again, but finally also on their godliness, a new element in this petition. The shared responsibility of the two parents is apparent: the father has included his wife in all decisions and arguments, and it was she who visited the tugt workhouse to ask for Johan’s release. The court case and the accusation of Johan’s disobedience to his parents have been entirely left out. They have been replaced by an image of responsible and godly parents.

Finally, in 1747, the directors of the tugt workhouse decided that Johan could be released, unless Count Rantzau, the local authority who had sent the boy to the tugt workhouse, had something to say against it. ⁶¹ Rantzau’s only concern was that he “just wants the beginning improvement of him [Johan] to continue.” Johan could be released “with a serious admonition that he corrects and improves and continues to live a proper life.” Otherwise, he could be placed in the tugt workhouse for life. ⁶² There are no signs that Johan went back to the tugt workhouse in Møn, so he may have settled down in Odense with his parents and helped them to provide for themselves in their old age.

In the process of negotiation with the authorities at various levels, Johan’s father adjusted his narrative of the family and presented a different story from that drawn by the witnesses to the court case a few years earlier. The passing of time as well as his purpose might have changed Johan’s father’s remembrance and retelling of the story, the things he brought in or left out or forgot. We do not know whether he managed to convince himself of his own story that he had acted as a responsible parent in contacting the local authorities for help. Nor do we know whether the retelling of the story brought the other narrative elements—a good Christian household—with it as a natural thing. Changing the narrative from defending his son in court to pleading for mercy in a petition to the King provides part of the explanation for the change, because of the need to say what the authorities wanted to hear. But a part of the explanation may also be that in his attempt to portray his family as a good Christian family, Johan’s father grew to believe his own story. ⁶³

Conclusion

Family memory, understood as the narration of past events within and about the family, is a social process whose objective is to create and uphold a family identity. This process can include reframing, reinterpreting, even fictionalizing elements. But it is not a private process. It is a social process—of negotiating the meaning of past events. Family memory is group memory, and a social memory binding the group together. This article argued that family memory is also a kind of public memory, at least when the family breaks down and fails to meet socially required expectations. Negotiating the narrative of the events that have led to such breakdown becomes a process that includes both the family and the authorities in the attempt to rebuild the identity of the respectable family who can have their child back. Memory and identity for families are therefore not a private matter; they are very much a matter of state concern. Moreover, families accepted that the state would play a role in the negotiation of this memory, helping to define family and the nature of ideal parenthood.

Court cases have long been the source material of preference for cultural historians seeking access to ordinary people in the early modern period. In this article, I have suggested that approaches based on autobiographical and family memories can shed new light on the negotiation between individuals and authorities within the courtroom, as well as in letters and petitions. I have read the negotiations concerning Johan, from his court case to his release, as a negotiation over how the family history, as well as their interaction with the authorities, are to be remembered and interpreted. These negotiations were intended to restore the identity of the family as respectable and Christian, a necessary step to secure their child’s release, and one therefore in the interest both of the parents and of the authorities.

We can only access the memory of Johan’s parents through the court case and the petitions from his father to the King. Letters between the various parts of the administrations reveal the official recollection of the case. We do not know why Johan’s father changed his narrative of a specific aspect of the events, but the gradual alteration of events points to the way in which the memory of the family was contested. This shows the essential components of identity as a Christian family and household. It was not in the interest of the authorities to keep Johan in the tugt workhouse forever, and we can therefore assume that they wanted Johan’s parents to regain their authority as responsible parents. From their perspective, it also makes sense to see the negotiation of memory as a way of restoring the family’s identity as a good Christian family.

The authorities did not succeed in getting Johan’s father to acknowledge that he had failed as a parent in not having his disobedient child sent to the tugt workhouse on his own initiative. They did, however, succeed in getting him to alter his memory of what time in the workhouse did for the boy. In most of the narratives he traced, Johan’s father tried to legitimize himself by attacking other authorities, in particular the administrators of the tugt workhouse. Only when he parted from this narrative and incorporated Johan’s improvement in the tugt workhouse into his story about the institution was the boy released. Thus we see how memory about disobedient children was not only a question of responsible parents and Christian households, but also one that acknowledged the structures of society and the purpose of the new institutions in educating and raising Christian subjects. And, moreover, the right of the state to intervene.