̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Amy Erickson

Cambridge experts bust myths about family, sex, marriage and work in English history

ta385 — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 23:01:00 +0000

Sex before marriage was unusual in the past – Myth! In some periods, over half of all brides were already pregnant when they got married.

̽��ֱ��rich have always outlived the poor –Myth! Before the 20th century the evidence for a survival advantage of wealth is mixed. In England, babies of agricultural labourers (the poorest workers) had a better chance of reaching their first birthday than infants in wealthy families, and life expectancy was no higher for aristocrats than for the rest of the population. These patterns contrast strongly with national and international patterns today, where wealth confers a clear survival advantage everywhere and at all ages.

In the past people (particularly women) married in their teens – Myth! In reality, women married in their mid-20s, men around 2.5 years older. Apart from a few decades in the early 1800s, the only time since 1550 that the average age of first marriage for women fell below 24 was during the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s.

These are just some of the stubborn myths busted by researchers from ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (Campop). Their Top of the CamPops blog (www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog) went live on 11 July 2024, with new posts being added every week. ̽��ֱ��blog will reveal ‘60 things you didn't know about family, marriage, work, and death since the middle ages’.

̽��ֱ��initiative marks the influential research group’s 60th anniversary. Founded in 1964 by Peter Laslett and Tony Wrigley to conduct data-driven research into family and demographic history, Campop has contributed to hundreds of research articles and books, and made the history of England’s population the best understood in the world.

Earlier this year, the group made headlines when Professor Leigh Shaw-Taylor revealed that the Industrial Revolution in Britain started 100 years earlier than traditionally assumed.

Professor Alice Reid, Director of Campop and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, said: “Assumptions about lives, families and work in the past continue to influence attitudes today. But many of these are myths. Over the last 60 years, our researchers have gone through huge amounts of data to set the record straight. This blog shares some of our most surprising and important discoveries for a broad audience.”

Myth: Until the 20th century, few people lived beyond the age of 40. Reality: Actually, people who survived the first year or two of life had a reasonable chance of living until 70.

Myth: Childbirth was really dangerous for women in the past, and carried a high chance of death. Reality: ̽��ֱ��risk of death during or following childbirth was certainly higher than it is now, but was far lower than many people suppose.

Myth: Families in the past generally lived in extended, multigenerational households. Reality: Young couples generally formed a new household on marriage, reducing the prevalence of multi-generational households. As today, the living circumstances of old people varied. Many continued to live as couples or on their own, some lived with their children, whilst very few lived in institutions.

Myth: Marital titles for women arose from men’s desire to distinguish available women from those who were already ‘owned’. Reality: Both ‘miss’ and ‘mrs’ are shortened forms of ‘mistress’, which was a status designation indicating a gentlewoman or employer. Mrs had no necessary connection to marriage until circa 1900 (and even then, there was an exception for upper servants).

Myth: Famine and starvation were common in the past. Reality: Not in England! Here, the poor laws and a ‘low pressure’ demographic system provided a safety net. This helps to explain why hunger and famine are absent from English fairy tales but common in the folklore of most European societies.

Myth: Women working (outside the home) is a late 20th century phenomenon. Reality: Most women in the past engaged in gainful employment, both before and after marriage

Myth: Women take their husbands’ surnames because of patriarchal norms. Reality: ̽��ֱ��practice of taking a husband’s surname developed in England from the peculiarly restrictive rule of ‘coverture’ in marital property. Elsewhere in Europe, where the husband managed the wife’s property but did not own it, women retained their birth names until circa 1900.

Myth: People rarely moved far from their place of birth in the past. Reality: Migration was actually quite common – a village population could change more than half its members from one decade to the next. Rural to urban migration enabled the growth of cities, and since people migrated almost exclusively to find work, the sex ratio of cities can indicate what kind of work was available.

Campop’s Professor Amy Erickson said: “People, not least politicians, often refer to history to nudge us to do something, or stop doing something. Not all of this history is accurate, and repeating myths about sex, marriage, family and work can be quite harmful. They can put unfair pressure on people, create guilt and raise false expectations, while also misrepresenting the lives of our ancestors.”

On World Population Day, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers bust some of the biggest myths about life in England since the Middle Ages, challenging assumptions about everything from sex before marriage to migration and the health/wealth gap.

Assumptions about lives, families and work in the past continue to influence attitudes today. But many of these are myths.

Alice Reid

Black and white photograph of a family lined up against a wall in E W Hope, Report on the physical welfare of mothers and children (Liverpool, ̽��ֱ��Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 1917), volume 1

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London’s forgotten businesswomen

ta385 — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 07:00:00 +0000

A new exhibition celebrates the City of London's 18th-century female entrepreneurs

Opinion: Women’s suffrage centenary is a rallying call for us all to take action

ts657 — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 10:26:41 +0000

A hundred years on from women winning the vote in this country, gender pay gaps, sexual harassment and everyday sexism are still making headlines.

While gender pay gaps and sexual harassment were certainly overt in earlier centuries, it is difficult to say whether the everyday sexism was more common.

While women were economically active in most sectors of the economy, and in much larger numbers than is usually thought, they could be legally excluded from high-status forms of employment by guilds and professional bodies.

In 17th century London, Samuel Pepys itemised in excruciating detail the sexual exploitation of female employees, friends and acquaintances in his meticulous diary. His actions may have been unwelcome but none were illegal unless they resulted in pregnancy. This kind of diary was fairly unusual. But the language to describe the commerce proliferating in early modern England and the language describing sex overlapped. A woman’s credit was largely sexual, whereas a man’s was financial. ̽��ֱ��range of options to discredit a woman was wide. In the introduction to the 1855 Philadelphia edition of Pepys’ Diary, it describes “almost every word in the English language designating a female, having, at some time or another, been used as a term of reproach”.

In the early 17th century, women sometimes sued name-callers for defaming their reputation. This largely disappears later, though probably because the legal defence of a woman’s reputation was no longer seen as necessary rather than that the name-calling stopped.

Feminist campaigns for equality since the mid-19th century achieved real improvements – first higher education in the later 19th century, the vote 100 years ago today, then birth control and statutory equal pay in the 1970s.

But even those radical achievements did not create a situation of equality. That is not because of any biological differences between the sexes, as some suggest. Cordelia Fine, in her books Testosterone Rex and Delusions of Gender, clearly outlines the very small biological differences between women and men.

Be aware of your bias

At least part of the answer – and it is not comforting – is that, in general, we have an ‘implicit bias’ in favour of male (and lighter skinned) people. Psychological work on these cognitive errors has been around for 30 years. We know that employers, whether male or female, rank a CV for a job application higher with a man’s name at the top than the same CV with a woman’s name at the top.

Similarly, ‘Anglo’ sounding names are preferred. One writer who ran her own personal experiment found that literary agents, who are predominantly female, were eight times more likely to respond to the same proposal coming from a (fictional) man as from a (real) woman, as Mary Ann Sieghart found out last week on Analysis.

These biases are unconscious, based on associations that are made in the culture around us, regardless of our personal beliefs. But the one thing that history can teach is that culture does change.

̽��ֱ��Everyday Sexism blog, which documents incidents ranging from trivial to criminal anonymously, as a way to share frustration and rage, is inconceivable in any previous century -- and not just because the internet is recent.

Jennifer Saul’s article ‘Stop Thinking So Much About “Sexual Harassment”’ (Journal of Applied Philosophy 31/3, 2014) directs attention away from the legal procedures and towards practical means of intervention in unacceptable situations, to intervene in the culture that tolerates discrimination.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Breaking the Silence campaign, as well as the wider movements of #MeToo and Time’s Up both speak to the possibility of changing the ‘climate’ of our institutions, even as we can expect to have to work towards that end on a daily basis.

When girls get shamed for their appearance, or boys for emotional vulnerability, or the founder of #MeToo gets abused as ‘too ugly to rape’, or one of your peers after a few too many says ‘you only got the job because you are a woman/black/asian’, it can be hard to remember that we are living in the 21st century.

Why is this kind of hatred and fear still around, in apparent contradiction to both laws and generally tolerant cultural norms?

Challenging a culture of discrimination

An institutional ‘climate’ of discrimination may arise from countless small incidents: a racist or sexist joke that passes unchallenged, for example; or a series of meetings or public forums where the voices of white men dominate.

These days, discriminatory comments may be subtle, or passing, or ‘jokey’, in such a way that makes them not worth following through with a formal complaint. Most of us don’t know how to respond in such situations, whether we or someone else is the target: we are embarrassed or freeze, hoping it will go away, or perhaps it never really happened?

But the one thing we can be sure of is that this situation will arise again. And if we do not intervene, it will continue to happen, and perhaps even more frequently. Bystander training offers options to stop the behaviour and give support to those who are targeted. ̽��ֱ��aim is to change the accepted cultural norms of workplaces and communities, even of a conversation, because most of us want to live and work in a more tolerant and supportive climate.

Sympathetic but effective interventions counter everyday sexism and racism. For example, one of the best ways to ways to deal with offensive ‘jokes’ is not to laugh. Smiling or laughing gives the speaker the impression that everyone around agrees with him.

Often comments are more thoughtless than malicious. Open-ended questions that give the speaker the chance to apologise are a good way to challenge quickly and effectively: "Why do you say that?" "How did you develop that belief?" If our first response is anger, then questions like these can help to buy time to recover our temper and think more clearly.

It can be hard to challenge prejudice without feeling like you’re making a scene or causing a fuss. It is hard to step in, and can feel costly. But as ̽��ֱ��Breaking the Silence film says, it is also hard to imagine that the cost you may experience will be equal to a victim’s suffering.

Alone, we can’t change a culture, but if attitudes are challenged, together we can change a climate of discrimination.

Join this week's Breaking the Silence campaigning to increase bystander interventions to stop sexual harassment as part of National Sexual Abuse and Sexual Violence Awareness Week 2018. Download materials here or at www.breakingthesilence.cam.ac.uk.

As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of women gaining the vote in the UK today, the fight for equality feels far from over, says historian Dr Amy Erickson

̽��ֱ��aim is to change the accepted cultural norms of workplaces and communities, even of a conversation, because most of us want to live and work in a more tolerant and supportive climate

Time's up for sexual harassment, or is it?

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Mistress, Miss, Mrs or Ms: untangling the shifting history of titles

amb206 — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 07:00:00 +0000

In July composer Judith Weir was named as the first woman to hold the post of Master of the Queen’s Music, following in the footsteps of dozens of eminent male musicians with the same title. ̽��ֱ��Guardian reported that 'the palace never even suggested "mistress" of the Queen's music and neither did she'.

When the role Master of the King’s Music was created in 1626, the words master and mistress were direct equivalents. Today mistress carries multiple connotations, one of which the Daily Mail alluded to in a headline before the announcement asking if Weir might be the Queen’s first Music Mistress.

Research by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� historian Dr Amy Erickson, published in the autumn issue of History Workshop Journal, unravels the complex history of an extraordinarily slippery word and suggests that the title of Mrs, pronounced ‘mistress’, was for centuries applied to all adult women of higher social status, whether married or not.

Erickson’s inquiries into forms of female address emerged from her study of women’s employment before the advent of the national census in 1801. What she found in registers, records and archives led her to question existing assumptions and track the changes that have taken place in the history of titles.

She says: “Few people realise that ‘Mistress’ is the root word of both of the abbreviations ‘Mrs’ and ‘Miss’, just as Mr is an abbreviation of ‘Master’. ̽��ֱ��ways that words derived from Mistress have developed their own meanings is quite fascinating and shifts in these meanings can tell us a lot about the changing status of women in society, at home and in the workplace.”

Throughout history ‘mistress’ was a term with a multiplicity of meanings, like so many forms of female address. In his Dictionary of 1755, Samuel Johnson defined mistress as: '1. A woman who governs; correlative to subject or servant; 2 A woman skilled in anything; 3. A woman teacher; 4. A woman beloved and courted; 5. A term of contemptuous address; 6. A whore or concubine.'

Neither ‘mistress’ nor ‘Mrs’ bore any marital connotation whatsoever for Dr Johnson. When in 1784 he wrote about having dinner with his friends “Mrs Carter, Miss Hannah More and Miss Fanny Burney”, all three women were unmarried. Elizabeth Carter, a distinguished scholar and lifelong friend of Johnson’s, was his own age and was invariably known as Mrs Carter; Hannah More and Fanny Burney were much younger and used the new style Miss.

Erickson’s investigations have revealed that ‘Miss’ was adopted by adult women for the first time in the middle of the 18th century. Before that, Miss was only used for girls, in the way that Master is only ever (today increasingly rarely) used for boys. To refer to an adult woman as a ‘Miss’ was to imply she was a prostitute.

She explains: “Until the 19th century, most women did not have any prefix before their name. Mrs and, later, Miss were both restricted to those of higher social standing. Women on the bottom rungs of the social scale were addressed simply by their names. Thus, in a large household the housekeeper might be Mrs Green, while the scullery maid was simply Molly and the woman who came in to do the laundry was Tom Black's wife or Betty Black.

“Historians have long known that Mrs indicated social status, but they normally assume it also shows that the woman was married. So they have wrongly concluded that women like Johnson's friend Elizabeth Carter were addressed as Mrs as an acknowledgement of distinction, to grant them the same status as a married woman.”

Erickson suggests that this interpretation is mistaken: “Mrs was the exact equivalent of Mr. Either term described a person who governed servants or apprentices, in Johnson's terms – we might say a person with capital. Once we adopt Johnson's understanding of the term (which was how it was used in the 18th century), it becomes clear that ‘Mrs’ was more likely to indicate a businesswoman than a married woman. So the women who took membership of the London Companies in the 18th century, all of whom were single and many of whom were involved in luxury trades, were invariably known as ‘Mrs’, as the men were ‘Mr’. Literally, they were masters and mistresses of their trades.”

Historians have often misidentified women as married because they were addressed as ‘Mrs’ – when they were actually single. “It's easy enough to identify the marital status of a prominent woman, or those taking the Freedom of the City of London (since they had to be single),” says Erickson. “But it’s much harder to identify whether those women described as Mrs in a parish listing of households were ever married - especially the ones with common names like Joan Smith.”

A 1698 tax list from Shrewsbury lists from the top: William Prince Esqr Mm [Madam] Elizabeth Prince Wdd [widow] Mm Mary Prince Wdd Ms [mistress] Mary her daughter Mm Judeth Prince Mr Philip Wingfield Bat [baronet] Ms Gertrude Wingfield [who is either the wife or the daughter of Mr Wingfield above] followed by a number of women below with only a first and last name. This example shows that not all women had a title in front of their name, and demonstrates the use of Ms for an unmarried women (Mary Prince) and for a woman whose marital status is unclear (Gertrude Wingfield). Madam appears to be used here as the title for married/widowed women of social standing.

Erickson’s research into the 1793 parish listing for the Essex market town of Bocking shows that 25 heads of household were described as Mrs. She says: “Female household heads were by definition either single or widowed and, if Bocking was typical of other communities, around half of them would have been widows, and the other half single. But two thirds of these women in Bocking were specified as farmers or business proprietors. So Mrs is more reliably being used to identify women with capital, than to identify marital status. Only one woman was Miss: the schoolmistress.”

It seems that it was not society’s desire to mark either a woman’s availability for marriage (in the case of ‘Miss’), or to mark the socially superior status of marriage (‘Mrs’) which led to the use of titles to distinguish female marital status. Rather, socially ambitious young single women used ‘Miss’ as a means to identify their gentility, as distinct from the mere businesswoman or upper servant.

This trend was probably fuelled by the novels of the 1740s such as those by Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Sarah Fielding, which featured young gentry Misses and upper (single) servants titled Mrs. ̽��ֱ��boundaries between the old and new styles are blurred, but Mrs did not definitively signify a married woman until around 1900.

In the course of her research, Erickson has also looked at the way in which from the early 19th century married women acquired their husband’s full name – as in Mrs John Dashwood (Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility, 1811). Austen used this technique to establish seniority among women who shared the same surname. England in the early 19th century was the only place in Europe where a woman took her husband's surname

To many women in the late 20th century, the practice of replacing her first name by his first name added insult to injury. That's why this form of address was satirised as “Mrs Man", and why it has dropped out of use in all but the most socially conservative circles – except of course where a couple are addressed jointly. ̽��ֱ��introduction of Ms as a neutral alternative to 'Miss' or 'Mrs', and the direct equivalent of 'Mr', was proposed as early as 1901.

“’Those who objected to ‘Miss’ and ‘Mrs’ argue that they define a woman by which man she belongs to. If a woman is ‘Miss’, it is her father; if she is addressed as ‘Mrs’, she belongs to her husband,” says Erickson. “It’s curious that the use of Ms is often criticised today as not 'standing for' anything. In fact, it has an impeccable historical pedigree since it was one of several abbreviations for Mistress in the 17th and 18th centuries, and effectively represents a return to the state which prevailed for some 300 years with the use of Mrs for adult women – only now it applies to everyone and not just the social elite.”

̽��ֱ��question of which titles are appropriate for which women is likely to remain hotly contested. In 2012 the mayor of Cesson-Sevigne, a town in France, banned the use of ‘mademoiselle’ (the French equivalent of ‘Miss’), in favour of 'madame' (the equivalent of ‘Mrs’), which would be applied to all women, whether married or not, and regardless of age. ̽��ֱ��proposal has not met with universal favour. Some women protested that calling an adult woman ‘mademoiselle’ was a compliment.

Dr Amy Erickson's paper, ‘Mistresses and Marriage’, is published in the autumn 2014 issue of History Workshop Journal.

In a paper published in the autumn 2014 issue of History Workshop Journal Dr Amy Erickson unravels the fascinating history of the titles used to address women. Her research reveals the subtle and surprising shifts that have taken place in the usage of those ubiquitous M-words.

‘Mistress’ is the root word of both of the abbreviations ‘Mrs’ and ‘Miss’, just as Mr is an abbreviation of ‘Master’. ̽��ֱ��ways that words derived from Mistress have developed their own meanings is fascinating and shifts in these meanings can tell us a lot about the changing status of women."

Amy Erickson

Shropshire Record Office

1698 tax list from Shrewsbury

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Yes