How on earth did they cope...

[Theyshallnotgrowold]

I've been researching my family tree and looking at the 1841 census got me thinking. The woman at home, seven kids under 10 crammed into two rooms, husband out all hours scraping a living. No accessible healthcare, heating, bathroom, electric, running water, modern appliances, convince food - the list goes on. I'm in awe of them.

What a lovely post @Ocampa

I also agree with a pp that people had more support from their families, the wider community and the church. It wasn't all about "my little family" in those days.

One of my ancestors gave birth to twins three times and triplets twice.
’Only’ nine survived.

That really isn’t true, either.

Thank you. They were very loving people.

@Shunkleisshiny 'She survived by her own means'.

I've been thinking about this a lot and while some did have to resort protitution I don't think it meant that for everyone, I believe its because she probably did many things and not have a constant job. So she probably took in bits of washing, minding a baby every now and then, bartering for goods, collecting firewood to sell, etc. A bit here, a bit there but no regular wage. It really is heartbreaking to read though.

Isn’t it? How so?

I think that "cope" is a contextual word. I sometimes wonder how people today "cope" with things. They don't know it's "coping" - it's just their life. If you were poor in the past there's no reason they would have wondered how they coped. They literally didn't know what they were missing. Most will have lived like everyone else they knew. And their lives were the same mix of sorrows and joys that ours are today.

Looking at the past through the eyes of today is like looking at another culture in a country you've never visited and comparing their lives to your UK one. I recall once overhearing a group of UK tourists going through a township in Equatorial Africa, and commenting on the abject poverty they could see around them. They were actually walking through a rather affluent middle class area where people had high levels of disposable income! They couldn't "see" the wealth because they focused on the wrong things. So yes, many of our ancestors would have been dirty poor and struggled, but they probably weren't aware of it in the way we are because that was the life they lived.

Interesting. I've always assumed that when the census says "living on own means" it means there was some kind of independent income. It's quite often seen in people whose parents had small businesses, and sometimes they have live-in domestic help.

The parish records presumably are making it clear that this elderly disabled widow nevertheless didn't require any of the Parish Relief (unlike many of the census entries I've seen where occupation is given as "Pauper").

Gosh, you really don't have to go that far back. An elderly aunt lived in a tiny victorian terrace that didn't look like it had been modernised since. Open fire, scullery (no proper kitchen) loo in the back yard. Still talked of siblings lost early to preventable diseases. She moved out in the 1980s.....

My grandmother had 14 children (2 died in early childhood from diphtheria). They lived in a 3 bedroom cottage with no indoor running water (a well outside), one fireplace for heating, only one wage from my Grandad who was a manual labourer. They were poor, but almost everyone around them was too. This was in the 40s/50s/60s in rural Ireland.

They did manage. But it was hard. My grandmother was an incredibly tough woman, mentally and physically. My Dad says she used to get up at dawn every day to make bread for the family breakfast. They only had meat on Sundays, usually rabbits they’d shot in the fields. Sue spent her whole day from dawn until late at night cooking, cleaning, washing, mending things, growing vegetables and raising her children.

Even in old age, when she had mod cons and no responsibilities, she was up at 5am baking bread and scrubbing floors. Hard domestic labour was her way of life.

She told me shortly before she died “, when I was a teenager, to take the pill and go to university! And that of shed had the choice (which sue didn’t being poor and from a devoutly Catholic country) sue would not have had a big family and would have travelled and worked with horses ❤️

I think the grief was as strong as any grief, but there was a certain acceptance, even an expectation, especially among the poor, that young children would die, of disease, malnutrition, cold, 'failure to thrive'. Unbearable to go through the death of a child over and over again. To have a child and be terrified each and every time that the odds of being able to raise them to adulthood are against you.

DGF joined up in 1914 in one of the pals brigades and used to say most of them signed up because they'd get 3 square meals a day for the first time in their lives.

Life was certainly grim for the poor. My late mother was born in 1916, one of eight children, and four of them died in infancy, of diphtheria and scarlet fever.
They had no flush toilet, just a bucket in an earth midden outside, which was emptied weekly by a man with a horse and cart - the human excrement was just piled on the open cart and trundled through the village. There was no electricity in the house, just gas lamps and a coal fire. Granny would knead 14lbs of flour at a time to make bread for the family. There were no commercially produced sanitary towels - mum used rags that had to be pounded with a poss stick in a wash tub and reused.
Modern “ period poverty” campaigners would be horrified!
My father’s granny was an untrained, unofficial midwife in the slums. Nobody could afford the real thing, let alone a doctor, so she helped as best she could. Apparently she smothered any malformed babies and told the mothers they were stillborn - she knew they wouldn’t be able to manage a disabled child as well as their six or more existing children, and regarded it as a mercy. Shocking to modern sensibilities, but a harsh reality of life in 19th century slums.

My husband's great aunt died two years ago, and all her life she lived in a two up two down terrace which still had an outside toilet as the only one. She refused in later life to have more modern facilities, and was really happy with her life - her husband died before I knew her but I remeber her baking, jam making, and singing in her little kitchen, and we miss her very much.

babdoc thank you for sharing your family story with us. Your poor grandma having to make choices like that as a midwife. My granny was also an unofficial midwife in a poor very rural area and delivered lots of babies in lots of big families, some of the descendants we still know today. I wonder if she made difficult decisions like your granny did? It breaks my heart to be honest.

Every time I go past I think about the trauma for that poor family.

In a different life I worked in an archive

a volunteer showed me a burial register, the parents buried a child on Monday Wednesday and Friday, all died of small pox

Some of the sadest records were the children homes and the asylum

ivykaty44 I truly think that’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever read on here. That poor family.

I am 61. My Gran had 10 children. When my Dad was born he only weighed 2 lbs and 6 Oz's. He was 2 weeks early. Doctor came to house and told my Gran he was the runt and to leave him at bottom of bed as he is would die an DC he would pop around to certify next to day. My Gran breast fed him every 3 hours and kept him warm and he lived and grew. He apparently fitted into a milk jug they had at the time. He was lucky as as well as his Mum he had 2 older sisters who looked after him. As children left school at 14 they went to work in local factory and when got paid handed over all wages to parents and in turn got pocket money. This continued until they got married.

I would assume the same thing. Informal work, or an annuity from the deceased husband. Widows were in a better position than single women, as they had been married. I don’t think they were shy of labelling people living through prostitution, were they?

In many many countries in the world this is still the current reality for many families. Children are still dying from malnutrition in Africa.

In spite of all the poverty my Dad said they were happy. Contented with simple things. My Aunties, Dad's older sisters never had children of their own and I asked one of them why once. She said I did my share of child care when I was still a child. She actually as an adult married and helped my Mum and Dad bring up me and my sister's.

Thank you for that Pixie, it did bother me that someone thought straight away that she turned to prostitution. I did not know her, but she was my relative.

I also agree that "survived on her own means" does not necessarily mean selling her body. I would interpret it as no fixed profession but doing a bit of this and a bit of that as the opportunity arose. The gig economy if you like.

I think people survived because it was expected or normal - my grandad was born in 1917 as the youngest of 11. He was not close to his oldest siblings as they were 16 and 17 when he was born and already left home to work away. That appeared very common in my (working class, Borders farming) family. As soon as you're 13 or 14 you're away from the family home working as an agricultural labourer if you're male, domestic service if you're female.

Child and infant mortality was never "accepted", and people always felt the pain of losing a child. But back in the 19th century it was SO common, like 10% of all children before their 5th birthday, that it was something almost every family experienced. You'd easily be able to get support from sisters, neighbours, friends because they'd all lost children too.

My GGGM did end up in an asylum. She had two children before her husband deserted her, then six more while living with a man as his 'housekeeper'.

A relative of mine ended up in some sort of institution too. By chance I live very near it (now a cafe!) and it still has the old sign saying it was a ‘home for distressed gentlewomen who have seen better days’.

I agree. Literature from the past confirms this. Shakespeare's words on the loss of his son Hamnet from plague for instance.