Women and Ageing in British Society since 1500Women have always made up the majority of older people: this examination of the lives of elderly women in Britain in the period 1500 to the present reveals attitudes towards the ageing process. It sheds light on household structures as well as wider issues - including the history of the family, the process of industrialisation, the poor law, and welfare provision - and questions many common beliefs about elderly women, particularly that female old age was a time of poverty and want. An important book for students of history and sociology alike. |
Contents
| 1 | |
1 Strategies of poor aged women and widows in sixteenthcentury London | 13 |
2 Who most needs to marry? Ageing and inequality among women and men in early modern Norwich | 31 |
3 Old age and menopause in rural women of early modern Suffolk | 43 |
Old age in the diary of Lady Sarah Cowper 16441720 | 66 |
the lifecycle of single women in early modern England | 89 |
6 The old womans home in eighteenthcentury England | 111 |
7 The residence patterns of elderly English women in comparative perspective | 139 |
8 Old and incapable? Louisa Twining and elderly women in Victorian Britain | 166 |
older women in the twentiethcentury countryside | 186 |
10 Old women in twentiethcentury Britain | 207 |
Older women in Britain since 1500 | 232 |
| 239 | |
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Common terms and phrases
aged women Ambleside Berkhampstead Bilston Bitteswell Botelho Britain Bruges Cambridge census cent child Chilvers Coton co-residence Corfe Castle Cratfield cultural daughter death decline demographic diary early modern England economic eighteenth eighteenth-century elderly widows elderly women Elizabeth England English essay Europe example experience female gender Ghisony Growing Old guardians historians History independence individuals inmates Jacques Dupâquier Kertzer Lady Sarah late later London Louisa Twining male marriage married Mary Medieval menopause mother never-married women non-relatives nurse occupation old age old women older single women older women onset of old Ottaway parents parish past paupers Pelling pension Percentage of elderly period Peter Laslett physical Pontoise poor law poor relief population poverty proportions of elderly recorded residence patterns residential retirement Richard Wall rural seventeenth century social Society Southampton spouse St Michael Cornhill status stereotype Table Thane tion twentieth century urban West Flanders widowhood woman workhouse younger