Abstract
In pre-industrial rural Nordic society, the care for animals and the working of animal products were part of the female domain. The purpose of this article is to analyse the inventories of eighteenth-century Helsinki to determine the presence of evidence for economic activity usually identified with rural pursuits, within the urban household. By demonstrating the existence of such activity, the aim is to challenge the idea of a pre-industrial male breadwinner family and provide further support for the demands to re-evaluate the existing paradigm within studies of the household economy.
Introduction
A woman has to be baker, brewer, butcher, cook, sugar baker, coffee maker, stocking weaver, candle maker, gardener, janitor, fire guard and shop assistant. In addition, she has to be wife and mother, child minder, teacher, house keeper, kitchen maid, nurse and the servant to her husband. 1
During the past decades, a considerable amount of new research, presenting evidence of female economic activity in pre-industrial society, has come to light. We have been told both of hidden female activity within the household and female economic activity separate from that of the husband, or activity before marriage and in widowhood. 2 However, from this perspective, the household economy has been subjected to less scrutiny, and the field has tended to be dominated by the food basket theory of Allen, where the idea of a male breadwinner system is being put forward. 3
In 2024, Joyce Burnette presented important evidence for a re-interpretation of the analysis of family economies. Using the data collected by Frederic Le Play and his co-workers in the nineteenth century, she was able to show that the economic burden in the European past rested not only on the shoulders of the male head, but about one half of what the family consumed was provided through the efforts of the wife with assistance of the children. On the other hand, in England, the input of family members was slighter. Therefore, while it might be possible to claim that the male breadwinner family was in evidence in English society, the same cannot be said for the rest of Europe. The consequences this has for the size of the food baskets engendered by Allen, based on male earnings only, are considerable. Burnette underlines the need to analyse the household economy in terms of all production, irrespective of whether it entered the market or not. This, on the one hand, complicates the data availability but, on the other hand, creates a more accurate picture. 4
The fact that England has been used as the yardstick and models created based on English evidence must be seen as problematical. The rest of Europe, and maybe the rest of the world before the late nineteenth century, was more agrarian in nature, and therefore it would be wise to reanalyse the household economy in Europe and beyond, with less focus on male wages. 5 The role of in-house production and the importance of the wife in a rural environment has previously also been demonstrated by Osterud for North eastern United States. 6
The fixation on male wages and market prices as a basis for economic analysis is far from new. In the early decades of the twentieth century, a Finnish female economist, Harmaja, unsuccessfully raised the need to include household production in calculations of GDP. She presented figures showing that on average more than half of household consumption in the country as late as the 1920s was covered by items produced at home. 7 1930s female activity surveys confirmed the image of the supposedly non-productive rural women engaged in production. 8 More recent studies have also addressed the importance of the female input in the rural Finnish economy, particularly animal care, dairy-related activities and textile production. As documents from the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries demonstrate, baking, brewing and work with cows, sheep, pigs and fowl belonged to the female domain. This was the case both on family farms and large units with hired farm workers. Men worked with horses. 9 Male occupations like the English cowman or the New Zealand sheep-shearer did not exist.
In the Nordic countries of the past, not only rural areas but also the urban environment were far from devoid of production within the household. Historically, the towns have been small and the boundary between town and countryside, although administratively firm, has been less clear viewed from an economic perspective. In the eighteenth century, food production for household consumption was the norm in Swedish small towns. Agricultural land represented a lifeline in areas where the urban economy could not sustain the population. Even in Stockholm, keeping animals and engaging in cultivation were far from unknown. Wealthy representatives of the administrative class sometimes owned manor-like enterprises in the countryside, bringing in products to their townhouses. Similar information is available for Copenhagen. 10 In Finnish small towns, many burghers were de facto farmers, and even in the largest town, Turku, a continuing argument was going on about boundary fences and access by the inhabitants to their fields. Owning animals was also part of town life. 11
While the augmentation of rural products to the table of the wealthy was a bonus, access to home production could have an important impact on the household economy of the middling kind. It is necessary to remember that in-house production has been of greater importance in the Nordic household economy than in, for example, London. When trying to calculate the standard of living in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Sweden, Palm and Söderberg used grain, salt and hops, not beer and bread, making adjustments for the fact that in a Scandinavian environment, readymade products were less in use. 12
Another aspect of the presence of in-house production is the importance of the female input. As animal care and dairy work belonged strictly to the female sphere in Nordic society, where there was opportunity to exploit plots of land or keep animals, this input has been far from insignificant. 13
The question of how everyday life was sustained in the past could be closely linked to extra earnings or access to resources of sustenance in the form of a garden, a small field, grazing an animal or the right to catch fish. However, female activity in making products into food was a reality in towns as well as the countryside and should not be forgotten. 14
The aim of this study is to examine the inventories of pre-industrial Helsinki (1679–1808) to gather information about in-house production and the household economy in an eighteenth-century Nordic town. The inventories will be supplemented with information from tax records, court records, diaries and other narrative sources to demonstrate that production within the household was common and that this production was in the hands of women.
Sources
In the Nordic countries, the inheritance legislation included relatively clear rules about the shares of different family members. On the other hand, disputes about property division and debt have been present as long as there have been court records. To mitigate the situation, the urban authorities of seventeenth-century Sweden and Finland started to inventory the property of a person who had died. From 1734, the law code stipulated a compulsory inventory for a just and legal division. Unlike in Britain, inventories were taken of the property of married women as well as of the property of men and widows. Married women were, like on the European continent, legal persons who could hold property and transmit it to heirs. 15
The main sources for this study are 1150 inventories set up in Helsinki between 1679 and 1808. The warfare and unrest during the early decades of the eighteenth century resulted in gaps in the series, and it would also seem that work on the inventories before the 1740s was primarily focused on the propertied classes. The inventories had a fairly uniform structure. They included first and foremost information about real property, followed by lists of cash, precious metals (gold, silver), other metal objects (brass, copper and iron), wearing apparel, linen goods, bedding, furniture and household goods, animals, fishing gear and books. Lastly, creditors and debtors were listed with a summary of the total assets. When a person had been engaged in trade, a separate inventory of the shop was conducted. There are therefore ample opportunities to detect the presence or absence of engagement in agriculture, keeping animals, etc. In addition, household items connected to brewing, baking, butter making, salting and distilling give insight into the prevalence of refining raw materials in the home. Equally, the presence of equipment connected to textile work like carding and spinning throws light on the tendency of women to engage in the provision of textile goods for the household or even the market.
In addition to data on property, information about persons and households has been gathered from the Helsinki tax lists of 1762, 1780, 1785 and 1790, communion books for the years 1730–35, 1785–94, 1795–1805 and information about births, deaths and marriages 1700–1790 in Helsinki parish. Court records, biographies and diaries that illuminate the household economy and the economic activity of women have also been utilized.
Eighteenth-Century Helsinki, Population, Economy and Society
Most of Swedish and Finnish towns were fairly small in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and agriculture was a part of the subsistence of town dwellers. The population of Helsinki was no larger than 1,520 persons in 1749, 3,500 in 1810 and 10,400 in 1830. 16
Towns in Sweden and Finland of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had in many cases developed from a rural area where markets had been held. To be classified as a town, the locality needed to have Royal town privileges. The purpose of a town was to be a centre for trade and crafts, and trading elsewhere, that is, in the countryside, except at locations where legal Royally sanctioned markets could be held at specified times of the year, was defined as unlawful activity. Free trade was an unknown concept. This was also the case in an urban environment. At the core of a town was the marketplace where rural residents could sell their goods after paying toll at the edge of town.
The urban population was divided into groups with privileges to buy and sell (merchants, traders), manufacture goods and sell them (craftsmen), people in the employ of these (so-called servants) and groups employed by the municipality (town fishermen with the right to catch and trade in fish), customs officers, soldiers, sailors, etc. Each group was to keep to their own trade and not to encroach on the sphere of another. Transgressions usually resulted in court cases. Therefore, while the manufacture for household consumption was legal, the sale of such produce was the monopoly of merchants. The production and sale of beer and alcohol was only allowed to licensed innkeepers, and the females engaging in inn-keeping were often the widows of merchants. 17
The eighteenth-century Helsinki still retained a rural image, although the position on a peninsula burdened with stony ground, hills, and some swampy areas made agriculture in the town itself complicated. The municipality as legal owner of most of the land gained some income from the rent of fields and pasture. In the 1770s, altogether four cowherds were in urban employ, two in the west and two in the north. In addition, the town council was repeatedly looking to engage a person dealing with roaming pigs and goats straying into people’s gardens. Equally, complaints were filed about roaming dogs attacking the sheep of the town burghers. The need to attend to the domestic animals was not of insignificant importance as at this time attacks by wild animals were not unheard of and the town sometimes arranged hunting parties to kill wolves. 18
A visitor to the town in 1760 describes the buildings, with a couple of exceptions, as being one storey high and made of wood. The inventories, combined with information from compensation claims after the war in the 1740s, indicate that the townhouse was not radically different from those in the countryside. Two rooms with a connecting porch and a chamber were fairly standard. These could be extended, and those in trade provided with space for shops and storage. Everybody, from the rich to the poor, had external storage buildings: cowsheds, stables and buildings housing smaller animals like pigs, sheep and fowl. In addition, we find woodsheds, bath houses and bake houses plus storage sheds by the sea, even those with small houses had outbuildings and space for animals, fodder and firewood. 19 In the second half of the century, the town centre experienced growth and saw the erection of public buildings accompanied by some stone houses belonging to opulent merchants. The concept of eighteenth-century urban life still included such things as uncovered wells, the presence of latrines in the back yards, plus refuse from cow sheds and stables, which was not regularly transported away. 20
Agriculture and Fields in Town
While many small towns in Finland relied heavily on agriculture in the town and surrounding areas, access to land was a problem in Helsinki. In the 1750s, the total amount of fields was estimated to be about 45 hectares. The main crops were at this time rye and barley with some tobacco. In 1766, the making of alcohol was only permitted to those owning a specific amount of fields. At this point, only 22 householders qualified for the privilege. Eight of these were merchants, three master craftsmen, of the rest two were widows of merchants, one a gardener, one a butcher, two were lesser burghers and five in transport by land or sea. According to the tax registers, 33 persons were renting land from the municipality for the purpose of agriculture in 1777, sowing altogether 91 barrels of grain. By the 1780s, the area of fields belonging to the municipality and cultivated by the citizens was approximately 4–6 hectares in size. On the other hand, the growing of potatoes had already started with a certain amount of success, as they were more suitable than grain for the uneven plots. All the space on the outskirts of town had been taken into use and put under cultivation. 21
A scrutiny of the inventories indicates, in the majority of cases, that the person had one or perhaps two fields (Table 1). What is, however, of some interest is that some had a barn and or a threshing shed in conjunction with the field. One should also note that, as Finns engaged in hot threshing, a threshing shed contained a heating device. Therefore, we can conclude that a. the owner was willing to invest some money and b. the field was probably used for growing grain, like in the case of the carter's widow Margareta Nordman 22 and the glazier Backman. 23 12 persons had two fields and 10 persons had a field with a barn and a threshing shed. Therefore, the assumption can be made that the crops cultivated here were either grain destined for consumption or the manufacturing of beer or alcohol. However, despite the relatively meagre information on the cultivated area, the municipal tax records show that in the 1790s, still 21 persons paid tax to the municipality for the use of fields within the town boundary and were engaged in cultivation. 24 There is therefore evidence of cultivation, but only 10% to 20% of the householders seem to have had access to other land within the town boundary than their own garden.
Amount and Type of Urban Land in Eighteenth-Century Helsinki Inventories.
Source; Inventories, Helsinki 1679–1808 [Helsinki inventories with land: 15.12 1698, 7.4 1695, 11.3 1703, 11.4 1703, 18.4 1703, 27.1 1708, 18.3 1727, 12.12 1727, 25.1 1730, 1.6 1730, 6.7 1733, 10. 1734, 9.2 1736, 30.7 1736, 23.6 1737, 6.4 1738, 9.10 1740, 3.12 1741, 15.4 1742, 18.6 1745, 8.11 1745, 11.12 1745, 16.4 1746, 17.4 1746, 6.5 1746, 1.9 1747, 12.11 1747, 15.3 1751, 30.6 1753, 4.8 1753, 7.11 1753, 7.11 1753, 10.6 1755, 28.3 1757, 1.10 1757, 24.4 1759, 28.8 1759, 4.11 1763, 23.1 1767, 23.6 1767, 26.8 1767, 4.8 1769, 12.9 1769, 23.1 1770, 24.11 1775, 28.11 1775, 26.11 1781, 2.12 1785, 7.4 1790, 1.3 1791, 28.8 1793, 31.10 1794, 18.3 1796, 29.3 1798, 27.4 1800, 12 1803, 18.6 1805, 24.5 1800, 12.8 1806, 3.8 1807.] Helsinki Municipal Archive.
The town did not, however, suffer from a shortage of grain or hay and straw. The interaction between a town like Helsinki and the surrounding countryside was lively. In wintertime, the non-intensive part of the agricultural year, when because of the frozen ground and snow, heavy goods could be transported by land on a sledge, grain and tar would be brought into town, but also hay and firewood. While the expectation was that all produce should be sold at the marketplace some was transported straight to the house of the merchant with whom the farmer had a special economic relationship, and then sold on at an inflated price by the merchant. Such behaviour was criminalized in the eighteenth century. 25
Horses, Cows and Pigs
Keeping animals was within the reach of more people than having access to fields. According to the inventories, the most common animals were horses and cows. Ninety-eight inventories contain information about horses and 165 about cows; in addition, 83 inventories state that the person owned one or more pigs. There are examples of wealthy burghers having large flocks of animals on their country estates or farms 26 . These are not included in the tables or the discussion as the production did not take place in Helsinki.
The animals kept in the town itself were less numerous (Table 2). Commonly, we find one or two cows. While horses were found among the wealthy groups, the men engaged in the transport sector were also owners of such animals. In addition, we find examples of sheep, chickens, geese and occasional goats. Although there was variation in the type of animals in the possession of opulent citizens, the craftsmen and less prosperous either had a cow, a pig or both and sometimes chickens. The townhouse of a ship's carpenter in 1770 held two cows, three pigs and four chickens and that of a shoemaker in 1771 one cow, one pig and two geese. 27
Socio-Economic Distribution of Owners and Type of Animal in Eighteenth-Century Helsinki Town.
Source: Inventories of Helsinki 1679–1808 [Helsinki Inventories with animals 20.10 1680, 26.4 1684, 1689, 14.3 1692, 15.12 1692, 9.7 1695, 7.4 1695, 25.2 1701, 11.4 1703, 3.12 1710, 2.5 1711, 30.7 1725, 18.3 1727, 7.2 1729, 20.6 1729, 25.1 1730, 1.6 1730, 31.3 1732, 9.6 1732, 9.2 1736, 19.4 1736, 30.7 1736, 17.4 1738, 18.12 1738, 23.1 1739, 9.10 1739, 20.3 1740, 9.10 1740, 31.12 1741, 5.4 1742, 18.6 1745, 7.10 1745, 23.10 1745, 27.11 1745, 11.12 1745, 16.1 1746, 10.4 1746, 16.4 1746, 17.4 1746, 6.5 1746, 4.6 1746, 23.1 1747, 1.9 1747,9.9 1747, 22.10 1747, 22.10 1747, 11 1747, 12.2 1748, 3.3 1748, 15.7 1748, 12.4 1749, 4.7 1749, 23.2 1750, 14.12 1750, 10.1 1751, 28.2 1751, 15.3 1751, 18.6 1751, 18.3 1752, 19.5 1752, 30.11 1752, 15.5 1753, 30.6 1753, 4.8 1753, 3.1 1754, 25.6 1755, 26.6 1755, 25.6 1755, 3.1 1756, 1.6 1756, 1.10 1757, 17.4 1758, 8.5 1758, 22.7 1758, 26.3 1763, 21.4 1763, 14.5 1763, 15.7 1763, 2.8 1763, 6.4 1763, 5.11 1763, 5.11 1763, 19.1 1764, 28.2 1764, 8.3 1764, 13.3 1764, 10.4 1764, 24.4 1764, 122.5 1764, 16.6 1764, 16.8 1764, 27.9 1764, 23.10 1764, 15.3 1765, 15.3 1765, 11.4 1765, 1.6 1765, 7.5 1766, 1.9 1766, 23.1 1767, 27.5 1767, 29.5 1767, 23.6 1767, 26.8 1767, 17.3 1768, 23.8 1768, 14.12 1768, 10.2 1769, 12.4 1769, 28.6 1769, 3.7 1769, 4.8 1769, 16.8 1769, 9.11 1769, 24.11 1769, 12.9 1769, 18.1 1770, 1770, 23.1 1771, 25.10 1771, 8.11 1771, 19.11 1771, 17.12 1771, 29.1 1772, 1.2 1772, 1.8 1773, 23.3 1773, 7.4 1773, 13.4 1773, 30.3 1773, 27.8 1773, 28.8 1773, 30.9 1773, 2.2 1774, 19.2 1774, 4.3 1774, 3.6 1774, 5.7 1774, 24.8 1775, 2.2 1775, 10.3 1775, 3.6 1775, 4.8 1775, 9.8 1775, 16.11 1775, 23.11 1775, 24.11 1775, 28.11 1775, 30.11 1775, 19.12 1775, 16.3 1776, 16.4 1776, 23.8 1776, 6.3 1777, 16.3 1780, 6.4 1781, 30.8 1781,11.9 1781, 27.9 1781, 25.10 1781, 26.11 1781, 27.11 1781, 3.6 1782, 14.8 1782, 22.4 1783, 26.6 1783, 28.8 1783, 7.10 1783, 28.11 1783, 2.12 1783, 17.2 1784, 10.3 1784, 15.6 1784,20.7 1784,2.11 1784, 17.8 1785, 19.8 1785, 17.11 1785, 27.11 1785, 13.12 1785, 22.2 1786, 31.3 1786,20.1 1791, 2.2 1791, 4.2 1791, 17.2 1791, 1.3 1791, 4.6 1790, 17.3 1791, 12.4 1791, 26.4 1791, 16.7 1791, 15.9 1791, 6.3 1792, 13.10 1791, 11.9 1792, 25.10 1792, 8.11 1792, 22.11 1792, 29.4 1793, 11.1 1794, 14.1 1794, 3.2 1794, 6.2 1794, 6.3 1794, 12.3 1794, 8.4 1794, 16.4 1794, 15.10 1794, 30.10 1794, 31.10 1794, 3.2 1795, 27.3 1795, 29.4 1795, 23.10 1795, 10.11 1795, 26.2 1796, 18.3 1796, 7.4 1796, 3.5 1796, 6.7 1796, 12.7 1796, 7.10 1796, 14.10 1796, 20.10 1796, 30.10 1796, 1.12 1796, 14.3 1797, 16.3 1797, 3.6 1797, 14.11 1797, 5.12 1797, 23.2 1798, 29.3 1798, 11.4 1798, 7.8 1798, 14.9 1798, 2.10 1798, 20.10 1800, 26.2 1801, 21.7 1801, 4.9 1801, 15.10 1801, 13.3 1802, 22.9 1802, 6.5 1803, 31.8 1803, 7.9 1803, 20.9 1803, 7.11 1803, 9.12 1803, 21.12 1803, 3.8 104, 8.2 1805, 23.3 1805, 2.5 1805, 21.9 1805, 28.10 1805, 8.1 1806, 17.3 1806, 3.5 1806, 17.6 1806, 12.8 1806, 13.9 1806, 25.5 1807.] (The table excludes animals kept on farms and landholdings outside the town).
Although the inventories give us information about the number and type of animals an individual possessed at death, more information is needed to estimate their role in the urban economy. Keeping animals with the right to graze on land controlled by the municipality was subject to taxation. The town council accounts contain tax lists, but some tax avoidance seems to have been possible, considering the variation in numbers between years (Table 3). The variation might be linked to people deciding to keep fewer animals, but agreements could also have been struck with farmers outside the town boundary to stable and feed some animals against a fee. Such a practice has been documented for various localities in Finland in the seventeenth century. It was also possible to rent the right to keep animals on the islands around the town. 28 Overall, the cow stock shows greater stability than that of the pigs, as pigs tended to be kept for a year and then slaughtered.
Animals in the Tax Registers of Helsinki 1734–1777.
Source: Hornborg, Helsingfors stads historia II 1950 : 465.
The animals in Helsinki were pastured from the 1st of May until the end of September in the 1750s, 1960s and 1970s. The pastures were situated outside the town boundaries, one in the west and one in the north, and the municipality employed herds who worked for a modest fee plus food calculated per animal. The herds belonged to the poorest class, and it was common employment for elderly, penniless women. The animals were taken to the toll area by the owners at 6 in the morning (after morning milking) and returned by the herds to the same place at 7 in the evening (for evening milking). Two herds were commonly employed for each area. From the 1770s, there is information that 116 cows owned by 70 people were taken to the grazing grounds in the west. As this would roughly represent one half of the cows for which tax was paid, we should perhaps not view the tax records as completely unreliable, although perhaps likely to err toward under than over recording.
In 1762, the number of taxpaying households was 413 (in 1785 471), while the number of houses was 340. The reason for this is that not every taxpayer owned or rented a whole house; those who were single could live in the household of others as lodgers or renting rooms. 29 If the number of cows grazed on the northern side were similar to that in the west, we would end up with an estimate that about one-half of the households in the town had a cow or two. We also have some, though variable numbers for the pigs and the information of the employment by the town council of special swineherds, who were to gather up the animals and take them out of town to forage. 30 What we find from the inventories is that animals seem to have been kept by all social groups from the richest to those in much more limited circumstances and more than one out of four inventories contained animals.
Fishing
Another activity open to people in Helsinki was fishing for home consumption in the municipal waters and around the islands controlled by the town 31 . For obvious reasons, the town fishermen and the sea transport sector display families in the possession of boats and fishing tackle. However, owning shares in boats and nets was not outside the remit of all sectors of society (Table 4). 76 inventories record boats and or fishing gear, for example, the inventory of a pilot from 1768, the widow of an inn keeper in 1759, the wife of a merchant and that of the wife of a burgher included these items. The butcher Remander had no less than ¾ of a seine, 2/3 of a small seine, material for nets, a small boat for transporting live fish and ¾ ownership of another fishing boat listed in his inventory. 32
Socio-Economic Distribution of Helsinki Inventories With Fishing Gear.
Sources: Inventories of Helsinki 1679–1808, Helsinki municipal archive [Helsinki inventories with fishing gear: 26.4 1684, 7.6 1690, 14.3 1692, 15.12 1692, 1692, 11.4 1703, 1705, 30.9 1725, 6.11 1735, 6.11 1735, 17.4 1746,6.6 1746, 22.10 1747,12.11 1747, 4.7 1749, 23.2 1750, 12.12 1750, 10.1 1751, 28.11 1752, 30.6 1753, 5.12 1753, 6.4 1763,17.1 1755, 7.6 1757, 28.8 1759, 26.3 1763, 10.7 1763,15.7 1763, 6.4 1763, 2.8 1763, 5.11 1763, 24.4 1764, 28.2 1764, 10.4 1764, 27.9 1764, 10.10 1764, 23.10 1764, 15.3 1765, 15.3 1765, 11.4 1765, 1.6 1765, 1.9 1766, 29.5 1767, 26.8 1767, 17.3 1768, 23.8 1768, 14.12 1768, 10.2 1769, 3.7 1769, 9.11 1769, 7.11 1771, 10.7 1772, 13.4 1773, 30.3 1773, 28.8 1773, 19.2 1774, 4.3 1774, 5.7 1774, 10.3 1775, 19.12 1775, 16.4 1776, 6.3 1777, 16.3 1780, 30.3 1780, 10.8 1781, 11.9 1781, 26.11 1781, 27.11 1781, 14.8 1782, 10.10 1782, 28.8 1783, 7.10 1783, 20.7 1784, 2.11 1784, 27.9 1785, 17.11 1785, 24.11 1785, 13.12 1785, 4.8 1786, 25.9 1786, 21.1 1791, 15.9 1792, 6.3 1792, 18.3 1793, 14.1 1784, 20.7 1794, 26.7 1794, 15.10 1794, 7.4 1796, 12.7 1796, 29.3 1798, 26.2 1801, 28.2 1803, 21.9 1805, 17.3 1806, 3.5 1806, 13.9 1808.].
Although fishing was tightly regulated at this time, towns like Helsinki retained the right to fish around certain islands and at specific spawning places. The fishing techniques varied, but many were land-based, like seine fishing. 33 The summer seine was smaller and needed less manpower while the winter seine was large and expensive. We therefore find that it was common for people to own a share of a seine, usually one-quarter. In addition, special ropes were used that would also be distributed among several owners. As the Baltic froze over in the winter, the techniques were specially adapted to fishing on the ice using a series of holes to pull the nets to the shore and catch the Baltic herring underneath. 34 The few remaining eighteenth-century illustrations of the town from the sea do show nets drying and people engaged in fishing. Place names like ‘Fiskareberget’ (fisherman's hill) in the south give some indications about the presence of the activity. It should also be mentioned that the governor launched a complaint to parliament in the 1750s about the damaging effect of the fortification works on the fish stock and the fishing areas, because of the army taking over islands and being busy making noise and disturbing the fish at critical spawning times. 35 The numerous citizens drowning in the eighteenth century also speaks for considerable activity on the waters. The drowned were not only those with sea-related occupations but also merchants, craftsmen, labourers, servants and their family members. In most cases, there is no information about the circumstances of the drowning, but occasionally, the fact that it happened on a fishing trip is mentioned. 36 When the town was gentrified in the 1840s, one of the groups suffering displacement was those living in the southern hills and engaged in fishing and boatbuilding; however, some people were still fishing in central parts of the town waters as late as in the early twentieth century. 37
The Household Economy
While Helsinki was radically restructured with new town plans in the nineteenth century, its eighteenth-century counterpart was smaller and decidedly more rural in character as we have seen from the presence of animals and efforts to engage in agriculture and fishing. While craftsmen and even craft guilds can be found, the focus of these was on building and metal work with the exception of shoemaking, tailoring and hats (Table 5). The production of necessities for the household fell primarily on the household itself. No baker can be found in the 1730s communion books or the tax registers. No baker's guild existed until the 1830s. One baker was active in the town in the 1760s, but when he was out of town, fresh bread could not be bought anywhere. 38
Craft Professions in Helsinki 1755.
Source: A. R. Cederberg, Landshövdingarnas i Finland Riksdagsberättelser 1755–1756 (Helsinki, SHS, 1950): 71.
The image of the urban household economy that the inventories provide is one where the household members (women) 39 were engaged in producing goods for the household to eat, drink or wear. Of 414 inventories from the years 1680–92, 1703, 1729–41, 1749- 1753, 1764–6, 1768, 1771–5, 1780–82, 1785–7, 1793–6 and 1799 no less than 302 contain information about household goods related to baking; dough tub, dough pail, baking pan, brewing, bread pole, brewing: brewing vat, brewing tub, brewing trough, brewing pole, beer barrel, salting; salt, fish barrels or butter making: butter churn, milk barrel, etc. In addition, we have frequent listings of textile working equipment for carding and winding, spinning wheels, untreated and partly treated wool and flax and sometimes looms. The inventories lacking such information belong to the destitute, unmarried men, older men not running a household, persons dying abroad or when an inventory is taken years after the death of all family members. There are some cases where the person was incredibly wealthy with property in town and outside town, money, shop goods, farms, sawmills, gold, jewels, etc., and the contents of their kitchens were summarily recorded or omitted.
Normally, however, where a family was present, particularly in those of craftsmen and merchants, the kitchens were well equipped for activity worthy of a farm. In addition, frequently those who had to work for others, like sailors, soldiers, guardsmen, customs workers and builders (the latter an occupational group favoured by Allen in his calculations of the standard of living) had the means to home production (see Table 6).
Examples of Inventories of Soldiers, Sailors and Builders With Information on Items Connected to In-House Production.
Source: Inventories of Helsinki 1730–1799, Helsinki municipal archive.
In houses containing families, like that of the pharmacist Johan Tingelund, we find fishing nets, a horse and four sheep, in addition to pharmacy goods. The kitchen was well stocked with objects related to brewing and preserving food, and the wife and two maids also seemed to have put their hands to textile work as there was a spinning wheel and ribbon weaving gear. 40 The burgher's wife, Johanna Lindberg, was able to share the housework and the work in the shop with her daughter and a maid. Three pigs and a horse had to be fed, alcohol was distilled in-house and beer was made at home. The house also engaged in fishing, judging by the share in a boat and fishing nets. 41 The widow of the hatter Abraham Adrian added to her economy for 10 years with two cows, one horse, seven pigs, a plot of land outside town and a field on urban land; she was also making alcohol and brewing beer. 42 Among the household goods of the butcher Holmberg, we find brewing equipment, a spinning wheel, two horses, nine pigs and a cow. According to the tax register of 1762, the house was maintained by his wife, Greta, and the couple had a son and a daughter in their teens. 43
In warm summer weather, drinking water was decidedly unwise, as the sanitary conditions were far from ideal and in the winter, when the cows were unable to produce milk, low alcohol beer was a staple. Brewing beer for the household was women's work in the countryside, 44 and there is no reason to assume that the system in Helsinki was different. While a municipal company was engaged in brewing and alcohol production, the customers were not necessarily the majority of the citizens but rather the inns, the garrison and the fortification workers. 45 Because of the problems connected with keeping horses and maintaining travel to and from the town, the carters were repeatedly given licences to sell beer to augment their economy. The municipality also awarded the right to sell beer and alcohol to the wives of sailors currently at sea in the 1770s. 46
In the 1760s, we find the builder's wife, Maria Johansdotter, with her husband in a cheap part of town. This was also an area with many fishermen and where the citizens kept animals for which occasionally no tax was paid. Unsurprisingly, the couple kept a cow. In addition, the house contained brewing vats and buckets, barrels for salting fish and a spinning wheel. 47 The inventory of another builder, Anders Ullstrom, who had a wife and young son, was remarkably similar. There were brewing vats and barrels, dough pails and a spinning wheel. 48 Those who desired some space, but did not have the means of the opulent merchants or administrators settled on the edges of town. One of those was the carter, Anders Ahlgren. He had a house by the town toll gate in the north on municipal land. The house had a chamber, a porch and outbuildings. In addition, there was a woodshed, another building for the animals and a bathhouse. Among other things, the inventory also lists a horse, a cow and two sheep. There were barrels and brewing gear, untreated flax, a spinning wheel and a loom. 49
Not only wagon drivers but also builders lived near or outside the town boundary, like Petter Lindqvist. He and his wife, Christina, had a cottage by the northern border. The cottage was furnished with clothes and bedclothes, chests, cupboards, plates, bottles, pots, pans, buckets, baking equipment, barrels for storing beer and carding implements. 50 The contents had great similarities with those of the house of the sailor Brandt and his family. The inventory lists pots, pans, buckets, baking utensils, barrels, a still, a spinning wheel and carding gear. 51 The one point at which the contents of the house of Johan Backman, engaged sea transport, differed from those of builders and wagon drivers was the presence of a boat. 52 While clergymen tended to have a fairly solid economy, the church did not reward its lesser employees generously. 53 The bell ringer Henrik Sjostrom and his wife Helena had been able to acquire a cow, not an insignificant item in a household economy augmented by brewing, baking and preserving food. 54 The importance of a cow should not be ignored. Studies of the household economy of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century labourers in Sweden and Finland and elsewhere have demonstrated how the presence of a cow in addition to female work on a potato patch and kitchen garden could make the difference between well-being and destitution, providing much-needed sustenance for adults and children and almost one half of the household budget. 55
Things to Buy
Delving into the inventories of shopkeepers also provides insights into the local economy. In 1736, the merchant Sund had in stock, salt, for the citizens to use in salting their meat and fish, grain (rye), to be milled into flour and baked into bread, hops, for the brewing of beer and the only readymade products, butter and tobacco (19.4 1736). Similarly, the merchant Simon Borgelin had goods in stock, indicating not only brewing and baking (rye, barley and malt), salt for preserving meat and fish but also flax to be worked by the customer. Similar goods were found in other inventories of merchants (Tables 7 and 8). 56
Contents of the Shop of the Merchant Hans Sund, Included in His Inventory 19.4 1736.
Source: Helsinki inventories 1680–1808, Municipal Archive of Helsinki (1 barrel of grain = 1.4–1.6 hectolitres, 1 barrel of salt = 1.5 hectolitres).
Contents of Shop in the Inventory of Simon Borgelin 9.6 1732.
Source: Inventory, Helsinki 9.6 1732, Helsinki municipal archive.
The merchant class was roughly divided into two: those with the privilege to trade in domestic products and those with the right to buy and sell imported goods. 57 Above, we have seen the kind of stock found in the warehouses of the former group, and below, we will discuss what was sold by the latter. The shop goods listed in the inventories of these merchants were numerous and variable. They stocked a large selection of fabrics: silk, patterned and plain, lace, cotton fabrics of different types, high quality wool fabrics. As most of the fabrics were made into clothes at home, other items of the shopkeepers were needles, thread, buttons and ribbons for decoration. There were silk ribbons, gold ribbons and ribbons with tassels. The readymade clothing apparel that was stocked by these merchants consisted of luxury items like silk shawls, silk stockings, gloves, waistcoats and slippers. The items related to personal hygiene and ornamentation were mirrors, combs, powder and soap. The pens and paper were to be used for correspondence and accounts, which naturally could be both personal and commercial. Tobacco and snuff were widely used, and the merchants tended to stock a variety of domestic and imported brands. Tea, coffee, cocoa, liqueurs, biscuits as well as dried fruit and spices would play a role both in entertainment and everyday consumption. In addition to imported china and glassware, the shops had kettles, pots and pans, spoons, knives and cleaning brushes in stock. Additionally, the ironmongery section was extensive with nails, locks, hammers, pincers, other tools and agricultural implements like sickles and scythes. Keeping and caring for animals was an important part of the local economy; therefore, we find horse brushes, horse shoes, spurs, reins, etc., scissors for cutting cows' hoofs, sheep shearing equipment, etc. 58
‘What I Have Acquired for My Dear Parents’
Bill of What I Have Acquired for the Household of My Dear Parents.
Source: Inventory of the merchant Erich Gronberg and his wife Helena Tallqvist 7.8 1771.
Markets were held in Sibbo, a parish close to Helsinki and Pikkala, not far away at certain times of the year and were free for persons from Helsinki to frequent
Maids
The division of labour between the mistress of the house and the maids in Helsinki cannot be clarified. Opulent merchants as well as the upper stratum in general did employ female servants. The work of a so-called ‘servant’, whether male or female, could vary from tending horses and cows, working in a brewery, or an inn, functioning as a shop assistant or a non-apprenticed assistant in building work to doing service work in a domestic setting. The distinction between ‘maid’ and unmarried woman is not clear in Scandinavian languages with the result that assumptions have often been made about all young women being in domestic service. The reality is that ‘servant’ tended to mean ‘being in the employ of somebody’ without defining the type of work. 61 On the other hand, there is ample evidence that a ‘maid’ in eighteenth-century urban Finland in many cases was equal to a shop assistant. 62 However, this does not exclude the possibility that some time was used for milking, animal care and textile work as these were part of the female domain upon which men did not enter. 63 Out of 27 households of merchants and tradesmen in 1762, 7 had no maids, 6 had one maid, 11 had two maids, 1 had three and 2 had four. Among the mayor and the councilmen, three households were devoid of a maid, while one had as many as 6, two had 4, one had 3, one had 2 and the last three households had 1 maid. The craftsmen had one or no maids, the fishermen, pilots and tobacco workers had no maids. The pharmacist had two maids. Of the nine innkeepers, three had one, two had two and two had one maid. The builders and transport workers rarely employed maids and when they did, only one (Table 10). 64
Maids in Households of Different Occupational Groups 1762 (Tax Records).
Sources: Helsinki tax register 1762, National Archives, Helsinki.
That the women in a household employing a maid would be idle is contradicted by a description by Sara Wacklin in her memories from life in the town of Oulu in the late eighteenth century. A farmer visits his host in town to deliver goods. He enters the private side of the house, a combination of kitchen and living room, where the wife of the merchant is spinning together with her daughters, while a cousin is busy churning butter. The description of the room includes the presence of a loom and a wide variety of equipment and utensils related to the production of various milk products and a large barrel filled with milk. 65 We therefore have one more confirmation of the engagement of women of the merchant class in domestic production.
‘Knitted My Grey Stockings’
While information about female engagement in housework is a subject that is not as well documented as one would desire, information is not altogether missing. In some cases, women of the upper classes wrote down cooking recipes and advice on health care and household remedies, demonstrating that a housewife was expected to take an active role in the household economy. 66
In the last years of the eighteenth century, a teenage girl decided to keep a diary that has been preserved for posterity. The girl Jacobina was the daughter of a nobleman and civil servant. The family lived at a manor, fairly close to a small town in the southeast. As Jacobina was too young for Society engagements in most cases, she documented her everyday tasks and those of her sisters in great detail. Therefore, she gives insights into what the life of a young upper-class girl could be. Those unfamiliar with Scandinavian life might be surprised at the level of activity in the textile sector of these young women. She knitted her socks and stockings for everyday use; shop-bought silk stockings were for parties. She made her own undergarments, she made her aprons and her dresses. Ball gowns were borrowed from friends. She made straw hats, starting with cutting and plaiting the straw. She heckled flax, spun yarn, wound yarn and dyed it; she repaired her clothes and gloves. She made necklaces and earrings for herself and her sisters. She washed ribbons and ironed her dresses. She tended a garden with her sister where they grew carrots, beans, radishes and peas. She grew soft fruit, picked wild berries and mushrooms, and went fishing, usually together with her sister. When they caught decent fish, it was eaten for dinner. She made butter, baked bread and made sweet bread and cakes for her grandmother's funeral. Her mother was mostly supervising the household work, but she also took on kitchen tasks, particularly baking and cake and candle making plus textile work. Heavy tasks like cleaning and washing down floors fell on the female servants. 67 However, the impression one gets is that it was considered important for young women, even of the upper classes, to master the female skills related to housework, cooking and textile work and not only learn but exercise ones skills.
The opportunities for outside activities like gardening were of course better than in an urban environment. However, one should remember that the urban yard in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century towns generally was spacious enough for some cultivation. The opportunity for kitchen garden production was, for example, exploited by the wife of the poet Runeberg in the small town of Borga in the 1850s. In a house with a cellar, stables, cowshed, bake house, woodshed and storage buildings, with the assistance of two maids, the mistress of the house, engaged in baking, brewing, salting, candle making, sausage making, etc. All the clothes, including her own, those of her six boys and those of her husband for everyday use, were made at home. Most provisions were bought in bulk apart from some produce from the own garden. 68
In an autobiography from 1830s Helsinki, the son of a civil servant and nobleman described his home in the following manner: The main building had one floor and was made of wood. It contained the rooms for my parents and sisters, the governess and the female domestics, the office of my father and the reception rooms. Another building had rooms for me and my brothers, the tutor, two-three footmen, the coachman and stable hand. It also contained a wash house, a bake house, a woodshed, a coach house, the stables for four horses and a cow house for three cows, some calves and sheep. The buildings were surrounded by a garden with fruit trees. There was a well with good water. Such a property was like a farm, making its owner independent of market availability and prices. Everything that was needed, wood, hay, horses, cows and food of all kinds, like butter, flour, potatoes, vegetables, salted meat, candles, jams and fruit, was brought by boat from our property in the countryside. Apart from clothes, wine and spices, nothing was bought in town. A good housewife would keep an eye on everything from slaughter to washing and baking to making cakes and desserts. This made demands on the mistress, space and a lot of servants. However, in your own house, you paid no rent and the servants were brought in from the country estate and basically served for food and clothes; the cash part of the wages was tiny. Most of the families of our social status lived like this. 69
This indicates that the mistress of the house, being part of the nobility, was particularly engaged in housework in a managerial capacity. On the other hand, it would seem that even in the upper strata of society, the acquisition of female skills was viewed as a necessary part of bringing up young women.
One can therefore conclude that while in ordinary households the wife was in charge of milking, baking brewing, salting, animal care and textile production 70 ; those of an even higher rank did not solely have a decorative and reproductive role.
Conclusion
Thanks to the research originating in the efforts of scholars like Scott and Tilly 71 , starting the process of bringing the work of women out of obscurity, we can now re-evaluate the position of women in the past. An ever-increasing body of research has brought forward evidence about female activity within and outside the household. Despite the evidence, economic history is still burdened in some quarters by the notion of the male breadwinner family. Recently, Joyce Burnette has demonstrated that it is high time to rethink issues relating to the household economy and that the productive work of women within the household should find its place in such studies. While the situation in Britain points to the possibility of a smaller input than on the European continent, no wider comparisons can be fruitful unless the question of the female input is recognized.
The aim of this paper has been to show how a small Nordic town balanced between an urban and a rural economic system. The household economy was supplemented through primary production encompassing small-scale cultivation, animal husbandry and fishing. In addition, home consumption consisted to a considerable degree of products manufactured in-house, thereby making any calculation based on the price of finished products meaningless. Just like her sisters in the countryside, the housewife in eighteenth-century Helsinki milked cows, sheared sheep and slaughtered pigs. She churned butter, brewed beer, baked bread, spun yarn and made the clothes for her family. The contents of the inventories bear evidence to such activities. One third to one half of the households had animals, mainly cows, pigs or sheep and fowl. Like, for example, the wife of skipper Dorpp, Catharina Manne, who left a still, brewing equipment, buckets, barrels, a hand mill, a cow, a pig, four piglets, boats and nets. 72 The activities in which these women engaged were not market production but geared towards consumption within the house. As work with animals was seen as tied to the female domain, this was one of the ways that women supplemented the household economy. Objects like butter churns, brewing vats and dough pails present in the inventories demonstrate the prevalence of dairy production, home baking and the brewing of beer, all part of the female sphere. In addition, we find evidence of textile production, spinning wheels, looms and sewing equipment.
An examination of the contents of shops also supports the idea of an economy with animal care and acquisition of raw materials rather than finished products. Grain was supplied in bulk, hops for brewing, fish was sold per barrel. While luxury goods like coffee, tobacco and silk shawls could be bought, stocks of fabric and sewing equipment reveals the expectation of home production of clothes. However, carding and spinning equipment was also for sale as was products used for the care of domestic animals. The supplement to the inventory of the merchant Gronberg with the list of expenditure by his son gives additional support to the notion of urban families living a life not totally distant from that of their rural counterparts. The inventories record stables, cow sheds and buildings for the storing of hay and fodder. The town council minutes the employment of cow herds and pig herds.
It would appear that in the case of the wealthy burghers the possession of farms outside town could indeed have put them in the position of bringing in everything they needed. On the other hand, even for them, the products did not come in a shape ready for the table. While there were households with large numbers of domestics, this was by no means the rule.
The craftsmen, transport workers and lesser burghers might often not have had access to land, but animals are frequently found in their inventories. The evidence of home production is definitely there. We detect a household economy not based on the purchase of, for example, bread or beer, for money, which places the system outside the food basket calculations so dear to some economic historians. While the merchants might have thought like capitalists, they and the rest of the town lived in an environment where many thought like farmers. And the production of the wife of a farmer was essential to the household economy.
Footnotes
Ethical Considerations
The study is purely historical and does not involve any person who has been dead for less than 100 years.
Consent for Publication
All the tables, etc. have been generated by the author based on data available in public archives. No material subject to copyright has been included.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.