The aim of this article is to explore the economic status and the quality of life of widows in the Nordic past, based on the evidence contained in retirement contracts. Analysis of these contracts also shows the ways in which, and when, land and the authority invested in the headship of the household were transferred between generations in the Nordic countryside. After the early eighteenth century, retirement contracts became more detailed but these should be viewed not as a sign of tension between the retirees and their successors but as a family insurance strategy designed to protect the interests of younger siblings of the heir and his or her old parents, particularly if there was a danger of the property being acquired by a non-relative. Both the retirement contracts made by couples and those made by a widow alone generally guaranteed them an adequate standard of living in retirement. Widows were assured of an adequately heated room of their own, more generous provision of food than was available to many families, clothing and the right to continue to work, for example at spinning and milking, but to be excused heavy labour. However, when the land was to be retained by the family, in many cases there was no intention of establishing a separate household.

Clothing was paramount in early modern Europe. It accounted for a significant proportion of household expenditure at many different levels of society, and attracted much comment. Just as contemporaries described, often in minute detail, the garments worn by their compatriots, so foreign visitors to cities and courts devoted considerable attention to the appearance of the people they encountered. Such close observation was motivated by a serious purpose since clothing was thought to offer a kind of window on individuals and societies alike. The instructive qualities attributed to clothing may help to explain why so many costume books were printed during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; they also shed light on the inclusion of exotic garments in the collections of curiosities which similarly characterize the period.

Traditionally a large role has been attributed to the spread of clocks and watches in fostering a ‘modern’ awareness of time. Yet, little research is available that empirically enables signs of growing time awareness to be linked to the distribution of time-keeping devices. In this article both these phenomena are brought together using two independent sets of evidence that permit the hypothesis that clocks and watches contributed to a heightened consciousness of time to be tested. While the ownership of clocks and watches was socially skewed, highly gendered and unevenly distributed over time, time awareness – as exemplified throughout numerous court cases – was essentially none of these.

In 1584, fearing death, Eleanor Cumpayne, a single woman in the parish of Halesowen (Worcestershire), commended her soul to almighty God and her body to the earth, divided her sheep and money amongst her godchildren, relatives and friends, and placed particular trust in her cousin, Margery Cumpayne, who, amongst other duties, was to bestow the sum of 20s at her funeral. Unlike most testators, Eleanor Cumpayne survived this fearful illness, dying in the summer eight years later. Eleanor is also unusual because the detailed provisions establishing her as a single woman that were made 25 years before her death also survive. In his will her father, George, bequeathed to her for her natural life a chamber next to the fire in his house in Hill, a garden, an acre of land, 3s 4d annually, a cow called Fillpayle, a mare, bedding, the best pot and pan, six sheep which were to be kept with the rest of the family's sheep and also, at the death of her mother, a pasture. The experience of Eleanor Cumpayne, living semi-independently as a single woman with the assistance of her family, suggests that the idea that early modern society expected all women to marry needs closer examination. Such a view can indeed be found in prescriptive literature. The author of The law's resolutions of women's rights (1632) stated without hesitation that all women ‘are understood either married or to be married’. For him women were defined by their marital status, and marriage was the natural expectation for all women.

Contemporary authors based their ideas of the necessity of marriage for women on two main arguments: first, that marriage was natural and demanded by scripture, particularly as a consequence of the Fall, which imposed on women the twin obligations of childbearing and subjection to the authority of a husband; and second, that marriage was an economic necessity, a notion encapsulated in the well-known adage that ‘To thrive one must wive.’ The strength of these arguments in preventing remaining unmarried from seeming to be a viable and attractive option for early modern women is the subject of this article. In particular, I shall concentrate on the second argument, the economic dimension, since it was in this respect, as the experience of Eleanor Cumpayne suggests, that social attitudes did most to encourage the possibility of women remaining unmarried.

This article looks at marriage in Catalonia during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a period of rapid economic and social change, using a case study of a proto-industrial community. Differences in age at marriage are related to data on occupations, wealth and age rank in order to consider as many of the factors influencing marriage decisions as possible. Economic factors were one obvious constraint upon marriage, but another was the particular system of impartible inheritance practised in Catalonia. This article shows that, while inheritance continued to affect marriage choices to a considerable extent, the rapid transformation of the economy was breaking down the traditional constraints upon marriage.

It has been claimed that in the late eighteenth century sixty per cent of couples in the Welsh village of Llansantffraid Glyn Ceiriog married by jumping over a broomstick, and a number of commentators have inferred that informal marriage was widespread in this period. Yet an examination of the primary and secondary sources shows that both the initial claim and subsequent speculations are based on ‘Chinese whispers’ rather than evidence. This casts a new light on the way in which people reacted to the 1753 Marriage Act, and illustrates how myths may be created through uncritical reliance on secondary sources.

This article examines the extent of compliance with the Clandestine Marriages Act 1753 through three parish studies. It demonstrates that the vast majority of the sample cohort of parents whose children were baptized in church, and indeed of couples living together, had married in church as required by the 1753 Act, and shows how the proportion of marriages traced rises as more information about the parties becomes available. Through a study of settlement examinations, the article posits an explanation of why some marriages have not been traced, and argues that researchers should be cautious in inferring non-compliance from the absence of a record in a specific parish. It is also argued that the reason for such high rates of compliance has less to do with the power of statute and more to do with the fact that the 1753 Act was not such a radical break with the past as has been assumed.

This article studies temporal variations in wealth levels and distribution in an Ottoman context during the eighteenth century. By analysing the probate estate inventories of the Muslim deceased in Kastamonu, located in north-central Anatolia, we demonstrate that real wealth levels generally declined over the course of the century. Our analysis also suggests that the economic conditions of poor men, if not women, deteriorated more so than those of the rich, fuelling growing inequality. The article explores the factors that contributed to these trends and discusses the relevance of our findings for long-term economic development patterns in the region from a comparative perspective.

What explains the gender division of labour in preindustrial economies? Although men and women frequently do different types of labour in any given society, men's and women's tasks vary considerably across different societies. In some societies, women engaged in trade and agriculture (in parts of Africa, for example); though these were men's duties in others (in parts of Europe, for example). At the same time, European historians discovered that women often engaged in tasks, such as agricultural labour and commerce, that were often assumed to be the domain of men, again suggesting a wide variation in the gender division of labour. Understanding the division of labour in preindustrial economies is important, because these historical cases often serve as implicit or explicit referents for understanding how much – or how little – has changed in contemporary societies.

A number of excellent works, such as those by Barbara Hanawalt and Martha Howell, have explored women's roles in the economy. However, often missing from treatments that focus on women's history is an analysis of the gender division of labour, that is, an explicit comparison of men's and women's activities. Undoubtedly, such a comparison is hampered by the difficulties of finding documentary sources that provide the appropriate type of evidence.

This article takes up this task in a particular way, by examining single-person households, composed of either males or females in fifteenth-century rural Tuscany. This empirical evidence is useful for several reasons. First, from an analytical perspective, it makes it possible to compare explicitly the activities of men and women who are in an identical position, that is, living alone. Second, as I discuss below, the documentary record from this period makes it possible to provide the evidence for this comparison. Third, this evidence provides historical information on a relatively under-researched group, rural widows and widowers. For example, there is generally more information available for Florentine women than for female rural inhabitants. Furthermore, little research explicitly compares men's and women's tasks to examine the gender division of labour. Although Piccinni and Mazzi and Raveggi provide much information about women's duties and activities in rural Tuscany, their work does not directly address the gender division of labour. While the archival evidence presented below cannot explain the division of labour at all points in individuals' life courses, it does provide explicitly comparative information about men and women.

If the household head had important functions in his household and in the community, his disappearance could have major consequences for his family and members of the community. In agricultural communities in early modern Japan, where the village was organized and run by the heads of the households, and where small-scale family/household farming required the integration of family members under the leadership of the household heads, the death of the household head was a major concern for both family members and the community at large. In two Northeastern villages in Japan, for example, it has been shown that the death of the household head actually increased the probability that female members of the household would also die, even after controlling for other household and individual factors. This increased mortality was occasioned by economic stress resulting from the loss of a core labour component of the household, from psychological stress occasioned by the loss of a family member, and finally from the loss of power by the household which operated within the stem family system.

Our focus in this article is on the age at achieving the headship of a household, and to whom the headship of the household might be transferred. Japanese families in pre-industrial times are said to have followed the stem family rule, which was characterized by non-partible inheritance and succession by just one child. In this system, one child continued to live with the parents while his or her siblings all left home at some point. The eldest son was the preferred successor but some regions selected the eldest child, even if that child was a daughter, or the youngest child. Headship in this family system involved a number of specific responsibilities: to represent the family in the village organization, to sign contracts and negotiate agreements, to manage the family's labour force and finances, and to practise the religious rites of the family. The survival of the family line indicated by the continuation of household names and properties (and businesses) depended, therefore, upon obtaining and training capable heirs. Thus focusing on the transfer of headship provides a clue to the kind of strategies which were followed by peasants.

This article questions the notion that migrant networks provided an incentive to travel by furnishing both contacts upon arrival and continued assistance for those who remained. It focuses on newcomers to Paris from Brittany from 1875 to 1925. Sources include (a) memoirs and interview data from large-scale studies, (b) information on marriage patterns in the XIVe arrondissement and the industrial suburb of Saint-Denis, and (c) information on the witnesses to these marriages. Although each source reveals a different configuration of contacts, together they suggest the importance of ongoing family ties and significant contacts formed from ‘weak ties’ after arrival.

The article explores the roles of household compositional factors and socio-economic status on widowhood and remarriage. By using micro-level data from a nineteenth-century Italian community for the period 1819–1859, we found evidence of the very predominant role of household structure in the decision to remarry for both widows and widowers. In particular, the interplay between the presence of a supportive family network and the presence of coresiding children from previous marriages stood out as the key factors. The presence of children aged 12 and under promoted the search for a new bride for widowers, whilst the presence of children of any age, especially young ones, decreased the chances of remarriage for widows.