Abstract
This article explores living arrangements and both informal and formal support for the elderly who had no surviving children in the Russian Baltic province of Livland from 1850 to 1905. The article examines with whom the elderly who had no spouse and descendants to rely on lived out their twilight years; whether there were differences between the farmers and farm laborers; the role of poor relief, and whether adoption served well to ensure upkeep in old age.
Pressing problems with support for the elderly in today's world prompt interest in the question of how these problems were handled in the past. The question of who bore responsibility for the aged was one of the major social issues of the nineteenth century. 1 Children have usually been the mainstay of old-age support. 2 Co-residency and collaboration with kin, especially with adult children, have been considered vital to the life circumstances and well-being of the elderly. 3 If children were unavailable or absent, other sources of support included relatives beyond the household, friends and neighbors, the church, and charitable institutions, as well as the village, town, or state (called the “collectivity” by Peter Laslett). 4
Unmarried women and childless widows were particularly vulnerable groups. Among lifelong singles in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, urban dwellers and middle and upper-class women have attracted much more attention than rural inhabitants and women of the lower classes (with the exception of maids). 5 Most such studies, which concentrate on the backgrounds, occupations, and living situations of singles, overlook their survival strategies in old age. In rural societies, living in wedlock or otherwise under the authority of a man was the only socially accepted and economically viable way of life for women. The lives of unmarried women have often been described in terms of dependence, indigence, lack of security, and social marginalization. 6 Singleness, however, could also be accepted, either among elite groups or when it was the consequence of a family decision. 7 Poverty was the ultimate fate of many aged single women. Poor single women sometimes found help from friends, kin, and neighbors or, more rarely, from charitable institutions, but they were often among the poorest and most pathetic members of their communities. 8 In the countryside, younger single women were readily accommodated as maids in farmers’ households, but in old age, they became lodgers, often recipients of poor relief, and were rotated from farm to farm or ended up in relief institutions. A recent study on the informal networks and formal provisions surrounding the urban elderly in their final years in three Western European cities suggests that instead of being alone, many elderly singles relied either on family members or neighborhood-based networks at the end of their lives. 9
Ever married elderly could be without children for different reasons – for instance, the couple was infertile, the marriage was dissolved before the end of the woman's reproductive age, or the children had died. In addition, the couples could not expect support and care if their child was handicapped. In many European regions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 20 percent or more of women remained childless. 10 Studies on widowhood or poor relief in the past do not pay special attention to those elderly who did not have surviving children. It has been claimed that older childless widows and widows whose children lived far away were often in the need of assistance from the community, and in urban settings they made up, along with unmarried women, the bulk of the female inmates in poor relief institutions. 11 With regard to poor relief, the authors consider women with children rather than women without children.
Historically, the living situations of the elderly varied considerably in different parts of Europe. 12 Nuclear-family-based societies have been associated with the extrafamilial locus of welfare institutions (community, neighbors, and wider kin network) and the small role of family care, while multiple-family households have long been associated with support for elderly individuals. 13 The situation of the elderly also differed between the landed and landless groups, given the strong relationship between land ownership and family structure. 14 Even if the idea that complex-family societies provide for the welfare of their members better than Western nuclear-family-based societies has encountered increasing criticism, the notion persists that kin availability (e.g., living with one's children) plays an important role in evaluating the living arrangements and well-being of older adults. 15 It has been claimed that the combined effects of nuclear family organization, migration, celibacy, and adult mortality encouraged the early development of community-based welfare in Western Europe. 16
Most current research is less interested in drawing a broad picture of the poverty and suffering of vulnerable groups in society and more focused on identifying what people on the margins of subsistence actually did to survive. It has been shown that people pieced together their livelihoods from many different sources. 17 The survival of widows and the aged poor more generally was built on multiple strategies or survival techniques. The combination of family assistance, work, and poor relief formed the building blocks for existence in old age and widowhood. 18 Outdoor relief was designed as a contribution and was intended to be combined with other sources of income or support, as it was not sufficient to live on. In early modern Holland, a combination of several formal and informal provisions, along with egalitarian inheritance and access to a broad range of occupations, enabled widows to survive fairly well even after the loss of a male breadwinner. 19 Co-residence, in which women shared some sort of rented accommodation and helped each other, has been identified as one survival strategy for widows and spinsters. 20 In Britain, older spinsters lived either with kin or in institutions (mainly workhouses). 21 Depending on their socioeconomic status, they either relied on property income or resorted to poor relief.
In line with the research trend focusing on coping strategies rather than depicting poverty, this article explores living arrangements and both informal and formal support for the elderly without children in the Russian Baltic province of Livland from 1850 to 1905. Detailed findings are presented for one community (manor) in the parish of Paistu (Holstre) and two communities in the parish of Helme in southern Estonia (Riidaja and Leebiku). Both by law and in practice, the Baltic region took a family and kin-based approach to welfare provision. In Livland, the upkeep of the elderly was arranged through intergenerational cohabitation not only among farmers but also often among the landless. 22 The situation was similar in Finland, where most landless widows shared a household with their children; however, this was less common in Norway and Denmark. 23
First, the article examines who elderly people lived with in their twilight years when they had no spouse and descendants to rely on. Did the living and support arrangements of permanent singles and childless widows differ between two major socioeconomic groups—farmers and farm laborers? In the period under observation, farms (tenancies) were turned into freeholds. Did this profound change in property relations also affect the opportunities of disabled, sick, single, or widowed family members to expect care from their original farm owned by a sibling, nephew, etc., in their old age? Did the retired farmhands and maids remain on the farmstead on which they had last served? Second, the article considers the role of poor relief. As people with no living children had the possibility of adopting children to look after them in old age, the last section discusses who adopted whom and how well this measure served to ensure upkeep in old age. In European societies, adoption was seen as a way to help the condition of orphans. 24 It was also practiced to secure family continuity and old-age support. 25 However, the question of whether the adoptees actually supported their adoptive parent(s) has not been the subject of much attention in earlier research.
In this article, the elderly are classified as those aged 60 years or over. The definition of “old” has long been dependent on the physical capacities (working capacity) of individuals. Taking the age of 60 years as the entry point into old age fits well with the local context. Men over 60 years old were exempt from poll tax, except for farm owners. Farm heads also retired around this age if they had not retired earlier due to deteriorating health or in order to avoid a son's conscription into the army. According to the parish registers, some women died of “old age” as early as their late 50s, but after 60 years, the incidence of dying of “old age” increased considerably. Many women also seem to have lost their capacity to work outdoors around this age, and would therefore accept accommodation from their community (in the countryside, accommodation went along with work contracts), or upkeep from their (step)children. 26 This article looks at widowed or unmarried people who were 60 years old or older and had no living biological children. Such individuals constituted only a small group among the elderly.
The period of study is determined, on the one hand, by the economic and demographic developments and, on the other hand, by the sources. The number of elderly began to increase, in both absolute and relative terms, in the second half of the century. As long as there were very few people aged 60 years or more and out-migration was restricted, their maintenance did not create a serious problem for the community. 27 Judging by the community (municipality) council proceedings, the appeals for poor relief began to grow in the last decades of the nineteenth century, most likely reflecting the changing family and kin relationships rather than increasing destitution. The elderly made up over two-thirds of all annual relief recipients, as indigence among this age group posed the biggest problem for the community. In the period under study, the economic context also became more favorable for singles, as unmarried individuals became preferred to married couples as farm servants. Landless laborers formed two-thirds of the community inhabitants, and for most, being a farm or manor worker was a lifelong occupation.
The quality and completeness of sources on household composition unfortunately decrease over time. If we assume that strong ties existed between co-residents and that they supported the elderly, information on co-residency is of key importance. Studying the living arrangements of older unmarried women and, occasionally, of childless widows is seriously complicated by their frequent non-appearance in cross-sectional data on household composition. Fragmentary information on their co-residents has been pieced together from death records, municipal council proceedings, lists of poorhouse residents, and other such sources.
Although old-age support and poor relief in nineteenth-century Estonia have received some scholarly attention, the specific situation of elderly people without children and the subject of adoption are still undeveloped as research topics. 28 The article contributes to the long-standing discussion over the relative share of assistance from family and kin, as well as formal poor relief in the care of the elderly in the past, by focusing on rural women. Owing to their rich source materials, Western and Southern European countries figure prominently in the literature on social welfare and aging. Drawing on much scantier sources, this article seeks to illuminate the experiences of being old and without children in a less documented, poorer, and heavily agrarian part of Europe.
Sources and Methods
This article combines cross-sectional and longitudinal population data with community council proceedings and community court records. Cross-sectional data include the 1850 poll tax (“soul revision”) list, the registers of community inhabitants (members), the registers of parishioners, and the lists of communicants. The first two were compiled by rural municipalities (i.e., community authorities) and the latter by the parish clergy. The parish was the lowest ecclesiastical subdivision and covered the territories of several communities or rural municipalities. Cross-sectional sources provide data on the individual's age, marital and socioeconomic status, and co-residents. As the lists of communicants do not indicate the individual's age, this has been drawn from the registers of births or parishioners. Co-residents of widowed individuals and singles were identified for those years for which cross-sectional data is available (in 1850/1852, 1877, and 1900 for Holstre, and in 1881 and 1898 for Riidaja and Leebiku). The parishioner registers could be used to track co-residence patterns when they were categorized by farms rather than alphabetically by families. Starting in the late 1860s, or later in most cases, municipal registers of inhabitants record the place of residence (i.e., the farm name) but do not include immigrants. In the case of Holstre, the registers of inhabitants also omit many elderly people (the non-taxpayers), spinsters, and others.
The data has been drawn from a dataset of reconstituted populations of the Helme and Paistu parishes. 29 The individuals’ life courses have been reconstructed by linking birth, death, and marriage records. Death registers document the death place, but unfortunately not for Holstre from the mid-1880s onwards. The death place indicates the place of residence (farmstead) in the individuals’ final years. In addition to vital records, the registers of Lutheran parishioners, which contain data on the births, migratory moves, marriages, and deaths of all family members in the same place, help to track the individuals until migration or death. Data pertaining to in- and out-migration from the community were drawn from listings of migrants and parishioner registers.
After persons 60 years or older without surviving children were identified, additional information on their old-age arrangements was collected from municipal council and court records. The proceedings of the municipal council document local poor relief from the 1870s onwards. Although the proceedings are very brief and normally do not provide details of the council members’ deliberations, they nevertheless give the names of the applicants, the amount of relief, or the motivation behind decisions to refuse relief. Concerning appeals of municipal authorities’ decisions on poor relief, only small fragments have survived. Community court records contain information on adoption and inheritance issues.
Socioeconomic and Institutional Setting
In the nineteenth century, the three Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire (Estland, Livland, and Kurland) were rural economies that underwent a capitalist transformation from manorial and peasant systems and whose social stratification increased. The bulk of the Estonian population was still rural at this time; in 1897, urban dwellers constituted roughly one-fifth of the population of Estonia. 30 Up until the mid-nineteenth century, virtually all agricultural land belonged either to Baltic German nobles or to the Russian crown, and state estates as well as noble manors were large-scale agricultural enterprises based on corvée. By the middle of the century, the mutual economic dependence of manors and peasants (corvée) had ended, and only a cash nexus in the form of rent or mortgages between the estate owner and the peasant farmer remained. By the end of the century, approximately four-fifths of peasant farmsteads in Livland had been bought outright. The outright purchase of farms, land consolidation, the growth of the area under cultivation and increase in yields, the introduction of crop rotation, and the commercialization of farm production gradually eroded the traditional peasant society, which was oriented toward risk aversion, self-sufficiency, and stability. Baltic peasant farmers, for whom the notion of private land ownership had previously been unknown, began to value entrepreneurship and profit-maximization/cost minimization. In folk tradition as well as in literary culture, the residents of Mulgimaa (including the area under study) were stereotypically characterized by these values.
The area under study includes three communities. Holstre was a large state estate; Riidaja and Leebiku were on noble land. In 1850, there were 1,329 individuals living on Riidaja and Leebiku manor and 2,259 on Holstre manor. The area in question was fertile and enjoyed increasing economic prosperity in the last decades of the century. A virilocal household formation system and complex households were typical of the area, which was also marked by the greatest income disparity in rural Estonia. Large farms constituted 60 percent of the farms, and middle-sized farms constituted 40 percent. There were very few small farms in the area under study, but on the state estate of Holstre, during the land settlement campaign and the redistribution of manor land in the early 1870s, seventy-three smallholdings (about five hectares) and twenty-nine soldiers’ allotments (about one hectare) were created in addition to the existing 107 farmsteads. 31
Access to land largely determined an individual's and family's socioeconomic status. The article considers the two main groups of the village population: farmers with large and medium-sized farms on the one hand, and the semi-landless (cottagers), and landless on the other. The semi-landless and landless groups comprised nearly two-thirds of the population under study. Cottagers had only small parcels of land or no land at all and normally worked for wages. Those without land circulated among the farmsteads and manors as hired labor. Forest wardens, millers, innkeepers, teachers, gardeners, and others whose livelihood did not come directly from farming formed a very tiny segment of the village population.
The upkeep of farmers and their wives in old age was secured by their property and “retirement contracts,” which were agreements (either verbal or written) in the form of wills, retirement contracts, purchase contracts, or deeds. 32 The successor of the farm provided for the retired farm head and his wife, but this principle applied to the widow (“mother of the farm”) only as long as she did not remarry. Upon widowhood, a woman was given back her dowry. A childless man could will his property to the widow, but if he died without making a will or giving verbal instructions in this regard, his relatives inherited his immovable property and one-half of the movables. 33 In one case, a deceased man's relatives attempted to deny a childless widow her inheritance, but as the man had verbally left all his movable property to the wife, and two testifiers confirmed the widow's claim, she won the appeal in court. 34 In practice, women's inheritance rights were not always executed. As a farmer's widow, the childless Epp Juhanson in Holstre was entitled to proper provision and accommodation, but the deceased husband's descendants neglected to provide it. 35 Instead, the community provided Juhanson with poor relief, and she died as a pauper whose funeral costs were covered by the community. 36 In general, court records contain few complaints by widows against farm successors on the grounds of insufficient support or poor housing, but such conflicts occasionally arose between the widows and the successors if the successors were not their own children (a stepson, a brother-in-law, or other close relatives of the man). 37
A childless person could will his or her property to someone who agreed to support and take care of the testator in that person's old age. The landless had clothes and household items or, in the best case, a cottager's house to bequeath; farm owners could bequeath a large farm. 38 Those who were landless owned, inherited, or received as dowries so little property that their livelihoods were highly insecure. In essence, hired manual laborers were unprotected in their old age. They had to rely on either their adult children whom the peasant laws obliged to take care of their elderly parents, poor relief, or a combination of both. 39 By custom, retired male and female servants who were unable to work were entitled to provision from the farm where they had last served, but this tradition was fading away in the last decades of the century. 40
Singles and childless couples could adopt or foster a child who was then obliged to look after them in old age. Any legally competent person could adopt a child if the father or guardian of the child agreed and if the age gap between the adopter and adoptee was at least 18 years. 41 The community court approved the adoption. 42 Persons adopted as minors were allowed to cancel the arrangement when reaching adulthood. The adopted children had the same inheritance rights as legitimate children. If the adopted son was the only living son of the adoptive parent(s) and supported him or her, he was exempt from military conscription. 43 According to the conscription statute of January 1, 1874, to qualify for the exemption, the son had to be adopted before the age of 10 years. An alternative to becoming the “sole provider” of the parents (whether biological, foster, step- or adoptive parents) was to pay for the exemption, but the price was very high, and the money was often borrowed.
Poor relief was used to prevent voluntary unemployment and begging, forcing all able-bodied people to work. The poor-relief system stipulated that elderly people who were unable to work and had no subsistence resources—if there were no adult (adopted, foster, step-) children, or if these children lacked the resources to take care of their parents in old age—could be housed and nursed in households headed by someone other than their own child. Until the end of the 1860s, rural municipalities restricted the out-migration of the family members of sick or disabled persons until they found someone to care for the person in need. 44 Reaching a defined age did not automatically qualify anyone for relief; it could be refused to anyone judged capable of earning income. The municipal authorities carefully scrutinized their inhabitants.
In cases where the municipality organized poor relief, its recipients received money and/or provision in kind and were placed in the households of their close relatives. If there were no close relatives, they circulated among farms, receiving care for an allotted time in each place. 45 The length of the stay varied and could be as short as one day, two weeks, or one month. 46 Those who housed elderly or incapacitated people often received reimbursement. In the late nineteenth century, the poor were auctioned to the lowest bidder, mostly for one year. Members of the community were eligible for aid even if they lived elsewhere. The annual relief sum was sent to their new location. 47 The municipal councils preferred to place in the local poorhouse those too sick to live on their own or too poor to afford a lodging outside the community. 48 In 1885, the blind widow Mari Neumann was living in Valga without means of subsistence, and the town authorities asked the parish magistrate (police) to return her to her native community in the parish of Helme. However, the municipal authorities failed to force her out. 49
In the 1860s, the funding of poor relief at the local level was regulated in more detail. 50 In addition to the monetary fund, rural municipalities were entitled to possess a special poor relief fund raised from donations, collections, fines, and the rent of communal land. The municipality was also allowed to use interest from granary loans. In Livland, the first poorhouses were established in the early nineteenth century, but their number increased considerably by the end of the century. The size and the form of poor relief, as well as its recipients, were initially decided by the community court and, starting in 1866, by the community elder and the council. As the community court, the elder, and half of the council members were farmer peasants, the allocation of poor relief was under the control of rich villagers. It was possible to appeal their decisions to the parish court, and after the court's dissolution in 1889, to the commissar for peasant affairs. In the final instance, a pauper could appeal to the governor. 51 As in Sweden and differently from Finland, there was no direct state control of the activities of the municipal poor relief, and there were no special inspectors responsible for ensuring that the existing poor relief legislation was observed in the municipalities.
Incapacitated retired conscripts and their family members were entitled to aid from state funds. However, the state aid of three rubles per month was initially allocated only for those who became incapacitated during their service and had no children to provide for them. At the end of the century, the existence or absence of children was no longer a factor in the veterans’ eligibility.
Elderly People Without Children
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the number and share of elderly increased considerably. Individuals aged 60 years or more constituted less than 3 percent of those listed in the soul revision list for Holstre, Leebiku, and Riidaja in 1850. Their number rose four- to five-fold from 1850 to 1900, totaling roughly 400 in 1900. 52 In 1897, at the age of 40 years, men had a life expectancy of 28 more years, and women of 29 more years, respectively. The remaining life expectancy at this age had risen five and four years, respectively, compared to the mid-1850s. 53 According to the first all-Russian census in 1897, 10 percent of the rural population in the province of Livland were aged 60 years and over, and in this age group, women outnumbered men. 54 Roughly three-fourths of older men and a third of older women were married; permanent singles made up about 5 percent of men and 11 percent of women. The rest were widowed. In the county of Viljandi, the proportions of married older men and women were similar to those in Livland, but the share of single people was larger: they constituted 7.5 percent among older men and 15.6 percent among older women. Aged women as well as permanent singles of all ages were seriously underrecorded in the registers of rural municipality residents. In order to calculate the number of elderly in the three communities under observation in 1900, I excluded from the registers those who had died by that time (i.e., corrected errors) and added widows and spinsters drawn from the parish records (i.e., added omissions). Table 1 presents the results.
Number of Elderly (60+) by Civil Status and Cohabitants, Holstre, Leebiku, and Riidaja, 1898–1900.
Source: Municipal registers of inhabitants from 1898 to 1900; gaps filled with data from the 1904 register, parishioner registers, death registers, and municipal council proceedings.
Five out of eight men lived with relatives.
Including poorhouse inhabitants.
Among elderly people who did not have a living spouse or living children, there was a strong gender bias in favor of women due to differences in life expectancy, age gaps in marriage, marriage rates, and most importantly, remarriage rates. Men who had been married rarely ended up being without either wife or living children in their old age. Ever married women were more likely to have neither a living husband nor surviving children, as the majority of widows stayed single and did not remarry. 55 In some cases, the spouse's death had cut short their reproductive options while they were still young. Out of all the couples who got married in 1834–1854, 9 percent migrated out of the area studied, and 8 percent of those staying remained childless. 56 Besides childlessness, high mortality among children, as well as increasing migration, contributed to the loneliness of widows. In 1852 as well as in 1900, one out of six Holstre widows aged 60 years and over had no child living in the same community. In 1900, one out of eight widowers was “de facto childless,” having no children residing in the same community. Although migration had increased considerably in the meantime, the share of the de facto childless did not increase as much. Normally, at least one child stayed or the widowed parent migrated along with a child or joined his/her household later.
It has been estimated that about 15 percent of Estonian women never married. 57 In the three communities studied here, out of spinsters reaching 45 years, a third did not live to 60 years old. 58 Four out of five never-married women were from landless families, but the share of farmers’ daughters grew over time. Singles typically stayed for a long time at their parents’ house, a practice that depended on the survival of the parents. Some permanently single people were people suffering from health problems: they were blind, deaf, lame, crippled, epileptic, or mentally disabled. Death causes recorded in death registers were unspecific and revealed little about the causes of the premature deaths of lifelong single women (among the causes of death cited was “chest disease,” which could mean many different diseases, or even just “disease”). Other causes included dropsy, accident, pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhus, and smallpox, but none of these was particularly prevalent. Most older spinsters had no children, but 70 percent of the unwed mothers born between 1810 and 1845 still had living children by the time they reached 60 years. 59
Living Arrangements and Old-Age Support
First, this section shows whether widowed and unmarried individuals aged 60 years or more lived with their offspring, with relatives, or with strangers. Then it deals with the three main coping strategies available to older people without children: (1) to seek assistance from the family members, (2) to receive board and lodging on the farm where they had served, and (3) to apply for formal aid. In most cases, informal and formal support was combined. The role of the relatives beyond the household, friends, and neighbors does not emerge in the sources used for this study.
Old-age (security) options for widowed men and women without children included residing on the farmstead of their employer, joining the household of relatives or strangers, moving to a poorhouse, or living on their own. In 1852, three out of five childless widows lived with their employers, 60 and in 1881, the figure was three out of eight. 61 The others lived with non-relatives or on their own. In 1900, a third lived with relatives. 62 The others mostly lived with non-relatives, and only one resided on her employer's farm. At the turn of the century, most of the de facto childless widows with no children residing in the same community also lived with non-relatives and received poor relief from the municipality. Some relied on stepchildren for varying lengths of time yet still ended up in a poorhouse. The municipal registers of inhabitants from 1898 to 1900 include only three childless elderly widowers: one lived in a poorhouse, the other with a stepson, and the third with his long-time employer (Table 2). In the latter case, the employer was also a close relative of the widower's deceased wife, who had once been a farm wife. Taken together, these data show that childless rural laborers could rely less and less on their employer for their upkeep in old age. In 1900, the only two examples were a widow whose former employer took her in at an auction and a widower who had been married to a farmer's widow.
Cohabitants of Elderly Widowed Persons (60+), Holstre, Leebiku, and Riidaja, 1898–1900.
Source: See Table 1.
No surviving children by 1898/1900.
For a childless man, marrying a landed widow was also a strategy for securing support in old age. In 1875, 48-year-old bachelor Jaak Jaama married a widow, Ann Kukk. Before marriage, he contracted with Ann and her adult son Jaanus at the court that Jaak would build a house, cowshed, and barn on her land, which had recently been carved out from manor land, and in return receive upkeep and shelter until his death. 63 Ann died in 1890, and Jaak, who had no children of his own, lived there with his stepson until he died in 1903. 64
Tables 1 and 2 indicate major differences in residence patterns between widowed persons with and without surviving children and similarities between those without children and never-married elderly people. Those with surviving offspring tended to share a household with the child; those without children resided with unrelated persons rather than with relatives. However, socioeconomic status also played a role, and the landless had fewer chances to rely on their relatives. Regardless of their socioeconomic status at birth, the vast majority of never-married elderly and widowed without children received poor relief from the municipality.
Cross-sectional data from 1850/1852 include almost no spinsters over 60 years old, but the situation changed by 1877/1881/1882, when single people considerably outnumbered the childless widowed in this age group. Half of the childless single women over 60 years old from farmers’ families lived with their relatives and half with strangers. Among the landless, a third (five out of fifteen) lived with relatives, and over a quarter lived with their employers. At the turn of the century, singles from landless families often lived their final years in the poorhouses, although there were regional differences. In Riidaja, almost all never-married women of landless background aged 60 years or older spent their old age in the poorhouse, regardless of whether they had adopted or illegitimate sons. By contrast, singles born to a farmer's family resided with their kin, although in exceptional cases, they also temporarily resided in the poorhouse. 65 In Leebiku, never-married women who were from landless backgrounds and who had no children also lived in the poorhouse, but unwed mothers were spared this. In Holstre, lifelong singles of landless background became poorhouse inmates less often than in Riidaja and Leebiku. 66 In 1900 in Holstre, at least two-thirds of the childless never-married men and women from the farmers’ families aged 60 years or older lived with their relatives.
The unmarried offspring of farmers could stay on their parental farm as long as their parents kept it, and typically also after it had been transferred to the successor (i.e., to their sibling, nephew, etc.). Customarily, they inherited a brother's or sister's part of the farm in full or in part as a way to ensure care and a home in their old age. 67 Two other aspects combined in their case. First, unmarried children in their old age had to be accommodated “on the father's farm,” as the municipal council put it. Second, it had long been customary for old farmhands and maids to live out their twilight years on the farm which they had served. 68 In those very rare cases when the farm successor also remained single, an unmarried sister might assume the role of a farm wife as long as the brother held the property and thereafter live out her twilight years in the household of a married sibling and his or her children. 69 The municipal council also allocated poor relief—although in a limited amount—to old lifelong singles living on their parental farm. This relief, however, might have been associated with the disability of the person, although it is not always clear from the sources. 70 In 1894, the head of Varese farm, Jaan Vares, claimed 70 rubles for the annual upkeep of his blind uncle Peter. He had already received relief in kind earlier. 71 The Holstre municipal council decided to allocate him provision but not to pay for his accommodation, which was to be free, as Peter lived on his father's farm, and he had lived there up to that point. 72 In the following years, Jaan Vares submitted new appeals for relief, which were partially approved, and in 1898 Peter was, for a while, placed as a resident of a farmstead owned by another farmer. 73 In the council proceedings, there are a few other cases where farm heads refused to give their disabled close kin (e.g., siblings or uncles) free upkeep and accommodation and instead claimed relief for them from the municipality. Such a practice, however, was not common, and the municipal council partially approved these appeals. 74 Unmarried disabled people in landless families also lived with their close kin, and the municipality helped to cover the costs of their upkeep. 75
Childless farmers’ widows also returned to their parental homes, although as “the mothers of the farm” they were entitled to lifelong provision and accommodation by the farm's successors. These rare cases might occur, for example, if the widow felt uncomfortable on a farm run by her stepson or brother-in-law. 76 Upon widowhood in 1845, 23-year-old Ann Ormesson returned to her parents’ farm but later left to serve on other farms. 77 In old age, she lived with her brother Juhan Raestik, who took over their parental farm. Ormesson also adopted Juhan's son Henn (born in 1865). Although Ormesson lived on her parents’ farm with her brother's family and had an adopted son, she was nevertheless a recipient of poor relief in her final years. 78 Ormesson's case suggests that, in principle, the parental home was a viable option for childless widows, at least as long as the parent or parents were alive. Moreover, if Ormesson had remarried, she would have married socially downwards; despite becoming a farm maid in her parental home, she was treated at the same time as a daughter and a sister.
For a childless woman married to a farmer, widowhood meant losing the status of a farm wife after the wife of the new head took over this position. In worse cases, it also led to serious conflicts with the farm successor on the grounds of poor housing, maltreatment, or the abuse of contractual rights. 79 From the early twentieth century onwards, however, it became more common that if the couple had no surviving children, the husband willed the farm to his widow for lifelong possession. Until the end of her life, she could manage the farm “as she saw fit.” The farm was taken over by the deceased husband's male relative only after the widow's death. 80 This slowly emerging change in custom substantially improved the position of childless widows of farmers, but the number of childless widows who had no stepchildren from the deceased husband's earlier marriages was miniscule.
The vast majority of farm heads were married. In exceptional cases, never-married farm owners secured their future livelihoods by leaving their property to a family member who agreed to take care of them in their old age. 81 Smallholders and owners of soldier's allotments had less property to offer in return for old-age care and were often cared for by strangers. 82 Occasionally, strangers could not prove to the court that the deceased person had left the landholding to them. There were also cases in which the designated caretaker appropriated the movables and left the elderly relative alone. 83
By tradition, farmers boarded the elderly poor who had no children to rely on, or whose children did not reside in the same community. It was considered inappropriate to deny housing to the poor without a strong reason to do so. 84 The boarders performed work tasks for the farmer according to their abilities. If all farmers refused to accommodate a particular person or couple, boarding out into families was organized by drawing lots. 85 In the worst case, the system of boarding out into families resulted in frequent changes of residence for the poor. In an extreme case, one Riidaja spinster, Katt Tiidermann, changed living places every year or every other year in the 1880s. 86 Finally, in 1893, she was placed in the poorhouse, where, blind, she lived for 10 years and died at the age of 79 years. 87 The system changed markedly in the late nineteenth century. As a way of minimizing the cost of poor relief, rural municipalities adopted the practice of auctioning the poor to the lowest bidder. 88 As a result, there was no shortage of families willing to board, and smallholders, cottagers, and even retired conscripts took in boarders. 89
Socioeconomic status had a major impact on the life conditions of the widowed persons without children. Landholders and their widows were guaranteed shelter and provision from their holding; widows of men who did not make their living from agricultural production (e.g., teachers) could rely on inherited wealth and pensions, 90 and the vast majority of rural workers became poor-relief recipients. 91 The transformation of tenancies (farmland) into freehold substantially diminished the retired workers’ chances of remaining on the employer's private property.
Poor Relief
Rural municipalities administered outdoor and indoor relief to the poor, as well as issuing poverty certificates to the retired conscripts and their family members. Outdoor relief varied in size and composition. Grain was the most common form of aid. It amounted to a maximum of approximately 270 kg per year (half rye and half barley), but most of the elderly received half or a quarter of this amount. 92 Besides grain, some of the poor also received cash (normally three to 10 rubles) and firewood. We cannot judge paupers’ living conditions solely by how much formal aid they received, as they also relied on family and kin networks or other families living on the same farmstead. Applying for poor relief did not always indicate that the elderly person was facing starvation but rather that she or he needed additional support as an individual who was unable to work. By the turn of the nineteenth century, the municipal authorities did not consider aid from (married) children as unconditional and allocated aid only on the basis of age (and poverty). 93 Employment served as a crucial supplement to the municipal poor relief. 94 Poorhouse inmates were also expected to earn something through work. 95 Aid varied over seasons and years. In the spring of 1890, 70-year-old pauper and childless retired veteran Andres Pirka received provision in kind. In summer he worked as a herder for a farmer, and in autumn he was boarded on farms by rotation. Four years later, he received approximately 290 liters of grain and 10 rubles in cash per year from the municipality. 96
In the late nineteenth century, the central authorities strongly encouraged rural municipalities to establish poorhouses. In some places, old public or farm buildings were converted to poorhouses, rapidly leading to a shortage of space. 97 In 1893, the lord of Riidaja manor offered the municipal authorities several hundred rubles for the construction of a new house, provided that the local people agreed to transport the building materials for free, and people who had adopted sons would not be accepted to the poorhouse. 98 Instead, the community authorities built a new courthouse and converted the old one into the poorhouse. In most cases, the poorhouse was the final place of residence, although some residents of the poorhouse also returned to the village. 99 The majority of poorhouse inmates were disabled or had no children.
The role of the state in poor relief was marginal and limited to retired conscripts and their spouses (or widows) who were provided with either a small land allotment or monetary aid. In the late nineteenth century, they became entitled to poor relief from state funds even if they had adult children. 100 By issuing poverty certificates to retired veterans or their wives, the municipal council considered, in addition to the applicants’ own work capacity and provision with land, whether the applicants’ children were in a position to support the parent(s). 101 There were even cases in which the council found that none of the working-age children were capable of supporting their widowed mothers. 102 The offspring might also live on the margin of subsistence. In many cases, the council did not take into consideration the existence or absence of the children at all. 103 If necessary, the municipality provided additional relief from local funds, either in money or in kind. 104 However, in addition to the applicants’ needs, their determination in pursuing their interests played a role in shaping the council's decisions about the allocation of aid. For example, retired conscript Karel Eichenbaum repeatedly complained to the parish magistrate about insufficient support from the municipality. In 1893, the municipal authorities found that by citing his status as a retired conscript, Karel Eichenbaum attempted to get more help than the typical applicant, although he had a working-age wife and children (the children were minors at the time). 105 Of the other twenty-eight poor relief recipients in Leebiku at that time, most received less aid than Eichenbaum, who got approximately 200 kg of potatoes, 165 liters of grain, 15 kg of meat and 2 kg of fat, 5 kg of salt, and 6.5 liters of peas per year.
In summary, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, families became increasingly reluctant to provide for their old and incapacitated members (e.g., siblings, uncles, aunts, and incidentially, also parents), and the role of extra-familial welfare institutions grew accordingly. With regard to the landless, it gradually became more difficult for state officials as well as municipal authorities to deny them relief on the grounds that they had offspring. Instead, the authorities took into consideration the actual situation on the ground, as well as what economic means the individuals had at their disposal. If a man owned land, he was expected to feed and accommodate two or more incapacitated family members. 106 By tradition and law, offspring were obliged to support their elderly parents, but in practice, assistance from working-age children (typically, sons or sons-in-law) could not be taken for granted in every case and was not unconditional. The protection of retired conscripts and their wives or widows by the state government, regardless of their familial situation, was the first major step in this development at the end of the nineteenth century. Poor relief not only became essential to the survival of laborers without children but also partially supported the propertyless elderly who had children. Similarly, the poorhouses established at the end of the century were homes not only to impoverished individuals without children but also to those who had (working-age) children and had no economic resources. The municipal council proceedings reveal that in order to avoid the abuse of poor relief by “undeserving” people, the municipal authorities tried to collect detailed knowledge of the applicants’ individual circumstances: the ability to work, landholding, income, the living circumstances of adult children and their income, and so on. Therefore, the decision was based upon an individual appraisal, with the objective parameters at the center.
Adoption
In the following, adoption is defined as the act of legally taking another's child and pledging to raise the child as one's own. The child's parents or guardians promised old-age support to the adopter in return. The action was registered in the community court records. In the vernacular, the term used for a such child was kasulaps, which also means “stepchild.” As will be shown below, the children were, in fact, mainly raised by their own parents, but the role of “fictive kin” (adopter) cannot be completely ruled out, since the adoptive parent and the child often lived on the same farmstead. Furthermore, the adoption was a legal action with legal consequences for both sides. For the community and the adopter, problems arose when the latter became old and needed support. It was up to the municipal council to decide in their appeals for poor relief. In order to ascertain whether the adoption really secured old-age support for the adoptive parent, I will examine who adopted whom and whether the sources show that the adoptees accommodated their adopters or supported them in some other way.
The community court records show that boys far outnumbered girls and that most of the boys were under 10 years old at the time of adoption. As mentioned above, this was required in order to qualify for exemption from military conscription. Among the children, farmers’ sons clearly dominated, and among the adopters, relatives, and farm laborers, both female and male, prevailed. 107 In addition, cottagers were able to become the adoptive parents of a son or the younger brothers of the farm head. 108 Childless women living in other municipalities also, on occasion, adopted farmers’ sons. 109 The sons of landless people could also be adopted, provided that they had a childless aunt or uncle who agreed to adopt them. 110
In several cases, the adopter—a spinster aunt, retired conscript, farmhand, or maidservant—and the adopted child (the farm head's son) lived on the same farmstead. In these cases, the customary right to accommodation and provision from the employer coincided with the adoptive parent's legal entitlement to provision from the adopted child. The head and servant families sometimes lived on the same farmstead side by side for decades. 111 In Riidaja, the childless retired conscript Hans Paukson adopted the brother of the farm head and a girl, probably his wife's distant relative. In his old age, he was apparently provided for by the farm head. 112 Paukson appealed for poor relief, and the municipal council rejected it on the grounds that his adopted son was obliged to support him. 113 His appeal for relief, however, does not mean that he lived in destitution; Paukson probably applied because many other retired conscripts applied. Paukson died at the age of 77 years on the farmstead where he had lived at the time of adoption, proving that although the act of adoption was fictive, the support in old age was real. In a few instances, the church records reveal that the adoptive mother moved along with her “son.” For example, Katt Grensmann, a 41-year-old widowed farm laborer with no surviving children, adopted her employer's nine-year-old son. She later moved along with the son from parish to parish until she died at the age of 84 years. 114
Paukson's and Grensmann's examples show that either the father or the adopted son whose adoption was arranged in order to save him from military conscription fulfilled the promise given at the time of adoption. There were also other cases where childless elderly people whose adopted nephews or other close relatives lived on the same farmstead were supported by those relatives in their old age. 115 However, if the farm laborer who adopted the employer's son was not a close relative, he or she might face old age in the poorhouse. For example, Miina Ilves, who was unmarried and childless, lived on the farm owned by the father of her adopted son until the age of 63 years and then was placed in the poorhouse, where she died three years later. 116 The Riidaja municipal council provided her with grain while she was living on the farm; after she was placed in the poorhouse, the council obliged the adopted son to contribute to her provision there.
Community records occasionally mention that adopters were rewarded for saving farmers’ sons from conscription earlier rather than in the adopters’ old age. It could also be a rational choice, since many (especially never-married women) died at a working age; it was also possible that the adopted son would die before the adopter. 117 According to one deal between a child's father and an adopter, Ruta Mets, a widow with no living children, received a bushel of rye per year, and if the son was exempt from conscription, also 25 rubles per year, four years in a row (100 rubles in all). 118 In this case, the adoptee's father was a very rich farm owner, and it was probably an atypically favorable deal from the adopter's viewpoint. The widow Ann Luik, who adopted the son of Hans Silk in 1891, made a contract with Silk five years later to receive a bushel of rye and a bushel of barley per year from him for the rest of her life. 119 Just a year later, however, Ann appealed for provision and accommodation from the communal funds. 120
In many cases, adoptive parents applied for poor relief, which the municipal council either denied or approved only partially on the grounds that they had a kasupoeg (“stepson”). Therefore, the adoption might have worsened the adoptive parent's situation in old age, as he or she then did not receive either provision from the adopted child or sufficient poor relief from the municipality. The adoptive parents lived on the margin of subsistence and, in return for food and clothes, helped village people in domestic work (e.g., minding children). 121 This should have given the potential adopters extra caution. It requires further research to understand the position of the municipal authorities in this matter. They definitely had to balance the interests of different groups; the groups willing to deceive the army conscription commissions and save their sons from years-long military service were much stronger than the often marginal individuals whose subsistence was at risk. On the other hand, the municipal council was in charge of poor relief, and the more such deceptions there were, the more relief the council had to allocate from its funds. When refusing to grant relief, the council referred to the obligation of “adopted” sons to provide for their parents in need. The idea may have been to press the sons to contribute to the maintenance of their “adoptive parents.” However, it may also have been a pretext to refuse the help and save the costs of the community.
The case of Epp Turva might illuminate this matter. However, as it was one of the very few examples of vigorous action by the community, it might also have been an atypical event; for example, it may have been an act against a particular family in the context of local conflicts. Instead, ignorance might have been commonplace. 122 In 1875, childless Epp Turva adopted Jaak Ritso, the son of the farm head Hans Ritso, in Holstre. For many years, Turva and her husband boarded on the Ritsos’ farm, but the family later moved to Pahuvere in the parish of Paistu, leaving Turva behind. 123 Epp Turva repeatedly asked for assistance from the Holstre municipality. Although Jaak Ritso lived on his father's farm, he refused to help his “adoptive mother,” alleging that he had no economic means to do so. Jaak Ritso also claimed that as a child, he had no contract with anyone. The Holstre municipal council found that if the son refused to support Turva, then it would be the duty of the father who arranged the adoption. The council informed the commissar for peasant affairs of the case and claimed that it was a deception of the community as well as the state if “rich farm owners” used adoption to save their sons from military conscription but then left the “poor stepmothers” to be fed by the community. Furthermore, if the Ritso family did not fulfill its obligations toward Epp, it would be the task of Pahuvere municipality. In 1894, Turva was auctioned out to the lowest bidder in Holstre, who was obliged to take care of her in return for payment of five rubles per month. 124 The next year, Turva died. In the meantime, the municipal authorities of Holstre hired a “guardian” to go to Pahuvere and charge the Ritsos the expenditures made for Epp Turva's accommodation and provision. 125
In theory, the option to adopt or foster a child who would take care of a childless person in his or her old age should have been an effective means of securing old-age support. In practice, the adopted sons clearly benefited from the deal and did not always provide for their adoptive parents in their old age. The heavy presence of farmers’ sons among the adopted children, however, might also point to the fact that their biological parents were expected to pay the adopter. Therefore, instead of old-age support, the adopter might receive a (tiny) payment at the time of adoption. This might also explain why there were not many complaints by the “adoptive parents” against their “deceivers.” It is also possible that such conflicts were resolved informally.
Conclusion
By tradition and law, familial welfare provision in old age was common in the Baltic provinces, and it normally took the form of intergenerational co-residence. In the area under study, at least two-thirds of the widowed elderly who had surviving children shared a household with a child, even in the early twentieth century. Aging without children usually meant cohabitation with unrelated people. Even if the extended families of elderly parent(s) and their (married) child secured care in old age, they lived side by side, not necessarily happily or without friction. Custom and law on the one hand, and a lack of means, on the other hand, bound them together.
It is widely believed that the development of labor markets and capitalism were linked with the declining role of family and kin in the provision of welfare. 126 Formal poor relief, it has been argued, increased as a result of these changes. The results of my study lend also support to this idea. The introduction of (private) peasant land ownership and increasing migration eroded the tradition in which the farm household functioned as a welfare unit where aged farm laborers, paupers, the disabled, incapacitated veterans, conscripts’ wives, orphans, and the like all showed up as farmstead members. As a result, farmers became unwilling to host on their farms unmarried older family members and close relatives, aged farm laborers, the disabled, and other poor people. If members of these groups did reside with the farmers, the local authorities were expected to provide additional support. It became less common for farm laborers without children to remain on the farmstead on which they had served. This practice was still generally followed if the employer–employee relationship had been a relatively long one; however, such long-lasting relationships also became rare. Farm owners usually abandoned the custom that in which a servant's salary included strips of “pay land.” As a result, servants became less tied to the land, switching from one farm to another more frequently. This, in turn, reduced the chances of parents of farm laborers to live out their twilight years with their sons and, to some extent, meant that among the landless peasants, elderly people with children were no better off than the childless.
The introduction of peasant land ownership weakened the position of landless widows without children but improved that of propertied widows. If it was set in a will, a childless widow could now retain the farm until the end of her life, and male relatives acquired it only after her death.
The living and support arrangements of permanent singles and childless widows between the farmers and the landless differed to some degree: those from farmers’ families lived and grew older in the households of their relatives more often than the landless who lived mostly with non-relatives, such as persons compensated by the community to take them in at auctions. In two communities out of the three under observation, older spinsters of landless background eventually found themselves in the poorhouse; in one, boarding in a household of non-relatives was more common. Singles from farmers’ families were usually safe from the threat of the poorhouse.
The burden of poor relief on the rural municipality grew, and the recipients of poor relief became more diverse. Although able-bodied working-age sons were held responsible for the upkeep of their aged parents, their assistance was no longer taken for granted. People with adult sons might receive relief if the adult sons did not earn enough to support themselves. Even infirm or disabled siblings or unmarried uncles and aunts of the farmers might receive relief from the municipality. Poor relief recipients were not necessarily destitute; they or their household heads made use of the available schemes. The low value of available aid suggests that most recipients had additional sources of income through safety networks and their own labor. This result resonates with earlier findings from several other European settings that the survival of the aged poor was based on a combination of poor relief, family assistance, and work. In the Baltic provinces of Russia, the role of the state in poor relief remained very marginal; as in Sweden, it was a municipal concern, and the municipalities organized their poor relief without state supervision.
For the childless, adopting a son was one possible survival strategy. However, in most cases, the adoptive parents still eventually applied for poor relief, after which community authorities needed to remind the adopted sons of their obligation to maintain their “adoptive parents.” Often the existence of an adopted child served as an excuse for refusing to provide municipal poor relief. In general, adoption was not an effective means to secure support in old age. The childless adopters most likely received a fee for exempting their so-called “sole providers” from military conscription long before the adopters’ old age. For a close relative, being an adoptive parent occurred in tandem with being a member of the extended family and farmstead. Therefore, for them, adoption was not a separate strategy.
In the Baltic provinces of Russia, old-age support was a responsibility of the family or farm household for longer than in Western European countries. The developments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were similar in part to those that had already occurred in socioeconomically advanced Western European countries centuries before: assistance from adult children was no longer a guarantee; the (aged) poor were entitled to poor relief even if they had adult children; out relief was designed as a contribution and was insufficient to live on; and the aged combined various sources of income and support.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Eesti Teadusagentuur (grant no. PUT1517).
