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Sickness in an early modern workplace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

James C. Riley
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Continuity and Change , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , December 1987 , pp. 363 - 385
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Voet, Leon, The golden compasses: a history and evaluation of the printing and publishing activities of the Officina Plantiniana at Antwerp (2 vols.; Amsterdam, 1969–1972), esp. 2, 372–5Google Scholar. Also Sabbe, Maurits, ‘De Plantijnsche Werkstede: Arbeidsregeling, tucht en maatschappelijke voorzorg in de oude Antwerpsche drukkerij’, Verslagen en mededeel-ingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamsche Academic voor Tool- en Letterkunde (07 1935), 595–694 (Sabbe reproduces most of the funďs rules)Google Scholar; and on the Flemish working classes in this period Craeybeckx, J., ‘De handarbeiders: De 17de en de 18de eeuw’, in Broeckx, J. L. et al. eds., Flandria nostra: ons land en ons volk, zijn standen en beroepen door de tijden keen (5 vols.; Antwerp, 1957–1960), 1, 310–28.Google Scholar

2 Shortcomings of other sources and a plan for the conceptualisation of morbidity are discussed in Imhof, Arthur E. and Larsen, Øivind, Sozialgeschichte und Medizin: Probleme der quantifizierenden Quellenbearbeitung in der Sozial- und Medizingeschichte (Oslo, 1975), 180ff.Google Scholar Imhof and Larsen depict ill health in terms of degree, likening the issue to the layers of an onion. A more familiar approach distinguishes ill health by diagnosed condition, but is troubled by the ambiguities of diagnosis and disease definition. This essay adopts a third approach, which distinguishes health from ill health according to ability to function, specifically capacity to work. One or another variation on the functional approach is followed in most present-day health surveys and, increasingly, in investigations of the health experience of the aged. See, for example, Manton, Kenneth G., ‘Changing concepts of morbidity and mortality in the elderly population’, Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly/Health and Society 60 no. 2 (Spring 1982), 183–244Google Scholar; and Verbrugge, Lois M., ‘Longer life but worsening health? Trends in health and mortality of middle-aged and older persons’, Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly/Health and Society 62 no. 3 (Summer 1984), 475–519.Google Scholar

3 Questions of definition are developed further in Riley, James C., ‘Disease without death: new sources for a history of sickness’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17 (winter 1987), 537–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bernardino Ramazzini offered a vague and undistinguished discussion of medical hazards believed (as of 1713) to trouble printers. See Wright, Wilmer Cave, ed. and trans., Diseases of workers (Chicago, 1940), 415–19.Google Scholar

4 In 1681 the waiting period was reduced, but the new schedule seems not to have lasted long (see Appendix 1). From about 1750, however, a waiting period of a half week seems to have been standard.

5 See Timmer, Emilia Maria Anna, Knechtsgilden en knechtsbossen in Nederland: Arbeiders-verzekering in vroeger tijden (Haarlem, 1913), passimGoogle Scholar; Huys, Emiel, Duizend jaar mutualiteit bij de vlaamsche gilden (Kortrijk, [1926]), esp. 9ff. and 75ff.Google Scholar; and Fisher, Alfons, Ceschichte des deutschen Gesundheitswesens (2 vols.; Berlin, 1933), 2, passim.Google Scholar

6 Membership was limited to Plantin employees, and former employees who elected to continue contributions, and who had not been dismissed for thievery or the like.

7 Press teams continued to receive wages when one of the pair was sick, meaning that some arrangements were made for replacements.

8 Plantijnsch Archief, Antwerp, in the Museum Plantin-Moretus, 334, 432–3, 666, 697, 772 and 1, 168. An inventory of the entire collection is available in Denuce, J., Inventaris op het Plantijnsche Archief (Antwerp, 1926).Google Scholar Many other items, especially the wage records, may be used in conjunction with sick-fund material. Principal languages of the records are Flemish and French.

9 During the first ten years, members paid some 58 per cent of fund revenues, and Moretus some 42 per cent.

10 The accounts are kept in exchange money until March 1702, and then sometimes in exchange and sometimes in current money. The ratio between exchange money, linked to Dutch bank money, and current money, the local medium, was fixed in 1710 at 7:6.

11 Compare the benefit levels with waves for printers and compositors reported by Impen, G., ‘Lonen in de Plantijnse drukkerij (16e–l 8e eeuw)’, in Verlinden, C. et al. eds., Dokumenten voor de geschiedenis van prijzen en lonen in Vlaanderen en Brabant (XVe–XVlIIe eeuw) (3 vols.; Bruges, 1959–1973) 2, pt. 2, 1057–1235.Google Scholar

12 No reduction in benefits was made for work weeks including holidays, so that the working year is counted as 52 weeks of 6 days. Plantin employees did not work a few working days during the year, but on most holidays they reported to work, receiving special liberties, such as visits from friends and more drink.

13 E.g. results of the National Health Interview Survey appear annually in United States, National Center for Health Statistics, Current Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, Vital and Health Statistics, Department of Health and Human Services, Series 10 (Washington, D.C., various dates). This survey, which has been conducted continuously since 1957, is described in Forrest Linder, E., ‘The health of the American people’, Scientific American 214, no. 6 (06 1966), 21–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

14 The firm hired people from a large region, as revealed by partial information on birthplace. This makes it impractical to track birth dates in baptism registers. Wage records show the date of first employment. The 31 founding members of the sick fund had been employed between 1621 and 1653, indicating that the initial membership was spread across the age spectrum. Plantijnsch Archief, 781. Different lists disagree about date of first employment in six cases among thirty-one charter members, usually by a matter of months but in one instance by three years. In these cases the earlier date has been used, and that use is warranted by the records of weekly wages, of which some have been published by Impen, ‘Lonen’. Fluctuations in the size of the eighteenth-century work force make it impossible to find a point at which the age of most members is known.

15 The number of presses is given on a fiscal year basis, with quarters of March-May, June—August, September-November and December-February, and the number of members on a monthly basis. Here the annual average number of presses is for the fiscal year, and that for members is the calendar year through 1718, and for the fiscal year from 1722/23. Figures in both columns have been rounded. Some employees did not belong to the sick fund.

16 Torfs, Louis, Fastes des catamites publiques survenues dans les Pays-Bas et particuliere-ment en Belgique… (2 vols.; Paris, 1859–1862), 1, 97Google Scholar. In three months 5,000 to 6,000 people died without any apparent age, income, or sex bias.

17 Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland, Report on Friendly or Benefit Societies… deduced from returns by Friendly Societies in different parts of Scotland… (Edinburgh, 1824), 148.Google Scholar Some Scottish friendly-society members entered claims only when both sick and needy. The committee made a correction for this, but it is not clear whether the correction was adequate.

18 It is necessary to distinguish between the level of morbidity and the distribution of the morbidity risk by age. Morbidity rates reported for Scottish friendly-society members would not be expected to describe the level of risk in other populations, but the age structure of the morbidity risk would be expected to resemble age structures found for other populations of working males where morbidity has been identified in the same or a similar manner. The probability of sickness is distributed across the age spectrum in a curve closely resembling the probability of death but occupying a higher position on the schedule. That is, in any given population sickness is likelier than death at every age, but the two risks are distributed in a similar manner. For example, compare the portion of the morbidity curves given in Riley, ‘Disease without death’, 556, which deal with friendly-society members in England and Wales in the nineteenth century, to the age-specific mortality risk plotted in Preston, Samuel H., Keyfitz, Nathan and Schoen, Robert, Causes of death: life tables for national populations (New York, 1972), passimGoogle Scholar, in life tables for England and Wales.

A trend decline in the mortality risk often causes an increase in the sickness risk, as more people survive to higher ages and, on average, to higher risk positions on the morbidity schedule. This association is explained in Riley, J. and Alter, G., ‘Mortality and morbidity: measuring ill health across time’, in Fogel, R. W. ed., Long-term changes in nutrition and the standard of living, Section B-7, 9th Congress of the International Economic History Association, Bern, 1986 (n.p., 1986), 97–106Google Scholar, and is being developed in further work by Alter and Riley.

19 See Appendix 1 for information about how these rates have been calculated.

20 van Schevensteen, A. F. C. ed., Documents pour servir a T étude des maladies pestilentielles dans le marquisat ďAnvers jusqu' à la chute de ľancien régime (2 vols.; Brussels, 1931), 2, passim, esp. 339ff.Google Scholar See also Charlier, J., La peste à Bruxelles de 1667 a 1669 et ses conséquences démographiques (Brussels, 1969Google Scholar), on the last experience of Brussels with the peste or haestige sieckte.

21 Craeybeckx, J., ‘De prijzen van granen en van brood te Antwerpen’, in Verlinden, et al. eds., Dokumenten, 1, 481–503Google Scholar, reports grain prices for some years during the period of interest here; and E. Scholliers, ‘Prijzen en lonen te Antwerpen en in het Antwerpse (16de–19de eeuw)’, in ibid., 2, pt. 2,641–1056, gives episodic price data for a wider range of goods.

22 In Verlinden, et al. eds., Dokumenten, passim.Google Scholar

23 [Farr, William], ‘Vital statistics’, in J[ohn, R[amsay ] McCulloch, ed., Statistical account of the British Empire (3rd ed.; 2 vols.; London, 1847), 2, 541–625.Google Scholar

24 Farge, Arlette, ‘Les artisans malades de leur travail’, Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations 32 (09–10 1977), 993–1006, esp. 993CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Farge's opening paragraph: ‘Un corps au travail est un corps qui se dépense et se fatigue, qui accomplit une suite routiniere de gestes et de déplacements dans un lieu particulier. S'il s'agit ďartisans et ďateliers au XVIIIe siècle, on devine aisement les conditions rudes, précaires et insecures dans lesquelles s'accomplit le travail. Malaises, blessures, maladies incurables font partie du paysage quotidien, aussi habituels que le sont les salaires insuffisants, les ateliers mal acres et 1'instabilité de ľemploi.’

25 Compare with the late eighteenth-century shop of the Sociéte typographique de Neuchâtel, in Darnton, Robert, The literary underground of the old regime (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 148–66.Google Scholar

26 Craeybeckx, ‘De Handarbeiders’, 310; and Impen, ‘Lonen’.

27 The 14 moderately unhealthy years (see above) account for 837 benefit weeks, and the one strikingly unhealthy year 108 weeks.