Like so many others in eighteenth-century Swedish towns, the burgess Hans Ekelöf and his wife Catarina Trång had several sources of income. Not only did they run a public house; Hans also held a public office and Catarina was engaged in meat-hawking. Selling meat was, however, illegal for anyone other than butchers. What was more, excise had to be paid for home-slaughtered meat. While hawking of meat, bread and beer was far from uncommon, when discovered, the perpetrator would inevitably be prosecuted. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Hans was summoned in front of the Excise court in Örebro at some point in the 1740s, to answer for his wife Catarina who was said to have sold meat to burgess Israel Hult.Footnote 1
Hans denied the accusation, claiming that one of the two women appearing as witnesses for the accuser (the customs administration) was his ‘enemy’. Consequently, she had an interest and should not be accepted as an impartial witness. This was a common way of trying to invalidate testimonies but it was unsuccessful in this case. The woman, Catarina Jeansdotter, was allowed to tell the court what had taken place. She claimed to have been asked by Hans’ wife to assist their little son in carrying a quarter of a cow to burgess Israel Hult. Unfortunately, Catarina Jeansdotter and the boy had run into one of the butchers on their way to Hult and the butcher had confiscated the meat. The following day, however, Hult sent his maid servant to pick up another quarter of a cow from Ekelöf, and Hult's wife now paid Ekelöf's emissary Catarina Jeansdotter for the meat.
This case shows us how the husband was held responsible for something his wife had allegedly done; at first glance, therefore, the case seems to disclose how a married woman of the middling sort contributed economically to her household. It soon transpired, however, that it was actually the couple's son, the purchaser's maid and a wife with no apparent connection to the Ekelöf–Trång household who had been in charge of the exchange of meat against payment. These three persons were the ones who had actually carried meat and money on their bodies and who had run the risk of being caught in the street; Israel Hult, Hans Ekelöf and their wives were merely acting through them. Thanks to the elaborate character of the source in this case, the sale of the meat is not hidden behind the heads of household – Hans Ekelöf and Israel Hult – but appears in all its complexity.
Finding out who actually did what is a major challenge for historians of early modern society. Very often, and for a number of reasons, the sources present the past as if practically everything was done by heads of households (usually men). The fact that the household was the main unit of taxation tends to overemphasize its importance in Swedish fiscal sources, and so does the role ascribed to ‘household order’ in most early modern normative sources. According to the law, Swedish married men were regarded as more legally competent than their wives; even if coverture did not exist and even if the actual meaning of wives’ legal (in)competence is currently under debate, it nevertheless remains true that married women's activities were screened by their husbands and tend to be overlooked.Footnote 2
It is against this backdrop that the ‘verb-oriented method’ has been developed. Use of this method involves, first, that information on actual work activities, usually in the form of a verb-phrase, is culled systematically from the sources and, second, that large amounts of such verb-phrases are stored in a specially constructed database.Footnote 3 Thus, the verb-oriented method seeks to circumvent the biases inherent in many early modern sources. As the example given at the inception makes clear, however, trying to find out who actually did what often leads into complicated networks of social relations that must be understood in terms of both hierarchy and of co-operation. Admittedly, even with the verb-oriented method, the historian is sometimes left with the information that somebody ‘had’ or ‘let’ someone else do something, but who that someone was remains frustratingly unclear. The attractiveness of the Ekelöf–Trång example is that it allows us to see who did what and, even more importantly, how some people were able to act through others.
Being able to act through others may have been one of the main benefits of being head of household in early modern society. Acting through others allowed masters and mistresses to be in several places at the same time: in the public house serving beer and, simultaneously, in the street selling meat. It also allowed masters and mistresses to avoid unpleasant work tasks, for which one might also get caught. Acting through others provided masters and mistresses with fairly credible excuses, allowing them to say, for instance, ‘I did not do this; it was the fault of my maid servant.’
The roles allotted to persons in subordinate positions were often those of emissaries – think of Catharina Jeansdotter and the little boy – but also of allies, accomplices and even enemies. By looking at the activities of people in subordinate positions as enactments of such roles, a more nuanced picture emerges of what a ‘household’ was but also of married women's work opportunities in urban settings.
The way in which historians think of ‘the early modern household’ has changed in recent years. For instance, Naomi Tadmor has stressed that the English household was not experienced as a nuclear family by those who belonged to it but, rather, as an extended family consisting of those who lived and ate together. Amanda Vickery has pointed to the inadequacy of the distinction ‘private’ and ‘public’ if we want to make sense of what a household was. Julie Hardwick has shown how gender hierarchies within French households were much more unstable than often assumed. Joachim Eibach has underlined the fluid and permeable character of household boundaries in early modern Europe, suggesting that we think of households as ‘open houses’ (offene Häuser).Footnote 4 These important interventions all point in the same direction, namely, that the notion of the household as a closed, immutable and well-defined unit, headed by a man who was the unquestioned master of everything, is unhelpful. This article will provide additional arguments for this conclusion by pointing to the importance of activities that happened in the interstices between households, activities that suggest that ‘network’ is perhaps a more useful conceptual model than household.
Swedish historians’ views on early modern women's work, and particularly married women's paid work, have also started to change. Realizing the importance of looking beyond the legal structure (according to which only widows enjoyed full legal competence) and beyond the ‘closed household’, micro-practices of survival have come into focus.Footnote 5 Results from, e.g., British and Dutch societies have been important sources of inspiration. Here, historians have shown that married women in the middling strata were more active as income-earners in these countries than previously thought, especially in business. Late eighteenth-century occupational specialization has also been shown to have involved middling women.Footnote 6 Results from Baden-Württemberg (southern Germany), on the other hand, show a much more regulated society with fewer options for women, particularly those who were unconnected to a man.Footnote 7 While early modern Britain and the Netherlands were much more urbanized and commercialized than Scandinavia, and southern Germany possibly less commercialized, these results unanimously point to the importance of studying urban settings and market relations.
The focus upon the urban environment is not incidental. First, the sort of ‘casting’ and networking that can be found in eighteenth-century Swedish towns and cities was a consequence of the uneven distribution of economic possibilities in urban areas. Dominated by corporatist structures such as merchant and crafts guilds, the towns were ruled by the community of burgesses and, in particular, by the elite within the community. This left those outside the ranks of burgesses in a vulnerable and dependent position, especially so as there were very few places of manufacture at this time. The options left to those who needed to find ways of supporting themselves consisted, broadly, in legal and illegal retailing, and in responding to the various other needs that presented themselves in, e.g., Örebro. The several fairs, for instance, created jobs for musicians, who beat the drums, for constables and customs officials, who tried to uphold order, for those who had rooms to offer and for those who had coffee and food to sell. In these contexts, it was somewhat easier for those outside the community of burgesses to earn income, but under ordinary circumstances, eking out a living could be very difficult.Footnote 8
Second, some of the sources produced in urban contexts are, by comparison, unusually rich in information about the actions of people other than heads of households. Here, the records from the Excise court (and to some extent the Magistracy and the Kämnärs court) will be used. In 1672, a royal statute had laid down that all towns and cities in Sweden had to have Excise courts. It was their brief to settle disputes and punish crimes in respect of both excise and customs; these two types of state income were usually treated as one and ‘customs officials’ were responsible for the levy of both.Footnote 9 This means that attempts at evading payment of customs and excise (such as smuggling) figure prominently in the records while many other aspects of life are left out. However, these records are perfectly suited for the present purpose since they often provide insight into the minutiae of everyday life: into the difference between ‘ordering others to do’ and ‘doing things oneself’, and into the many networks that bound urban dwellers to each other.
In 1749, the size of the population of Örebro was reported to be 2,147, rising to 3,250 in 1780. By Swedish eighteenth-century standards, this was a middle-sized town. There were 995 men and 1,152 women in 1749, 719 of whom were married. As for widows and widowers, the sex ratios were clearly skewed, with three times as many widows as widowers recorded.Footnote 10 The hub of state administration, with a regional governor (landshövding),Footnote 11 a regional state administration, and a regiment, the town was crucial in many ways. Its situation on the road between Stockholm and Gothenburg and between the food-producing areas in southern Sweden and the iron-producing region just north of the town also conferred a considerable economic importance.
Acting through other members of the household
One of the great advantages of being master or mistress was precisely that one was able to use all the human resources of the household and to shuffle tasks and responsibilities around. This was what a bachelor accused of illegal trade alluded to when he defended himself in front of the court in Örebro. Being unengaged and without household and property, he was, he said, utterly unable to carry out any forms of trade.Footnote 12 Obviously, his words only make sense if one assumes a common understanding in society that certain activities presuppose the joint efforts of several persons.
Consequently, the varied deployment of servants and children as workforce was a regular part of household dynamics in early modern society. Certain types of tasks tended to be given to servants and children, such as carrying things and paying smaller amounts of money. These tasks often had some characteristics in common. They were heavy, repetitive, boring, unpleasant, risky (although seldom dangerous), time-consuming and involved spatial mobility. The initial example showed us a little boy and a lower-status wife carrying a large piece of meat in the street and, subsequently, being caught by a butcher who probably thought they had encroached on his rights and who may not have been too amiable to them.Footnote 13
This example was typical. Several other cases show us how men and women who were heads of households used their powers as master or mistress to send subordinate household members around on unpleasant or risky errands. Thus, a customs scribe sent both his subordinate and his maid servant to a carpenter to claim 12 daler. Sending a colleague to collect a sum of money that was due to the state was in accordance with rules, but sending one's private maid was more questionable. Moreover, since the scribe and the carpenter were involved in a dispute, it is unlikely that the two emissaries were greeted as friends when they arrived at the carpenter's.Footnote 14 Likewise, the widow Maja Dam on one occasion sent two of her servants to the local mill. After a while, she sent a third servant to find out if the customs official was at his post in the mill. Upon hearing that he was not, she immediately sent the third servant back, ordering her to grind more flour than Maja Dam had paid excise for. Unfortunately, the official then turned up, catching the servants in flagrante.Footnote 15
It is striking how often the persons caught in the streets by customs officials were maid servants, acting on orders of their heads of household. One maid servant was caught in the market place with some textiles. The customs official claimed that she had been on the point of selling the cloth, while her master argued that she had been asked by his wife to take the cloth to the dyer.Footnote 16 Another maid servant was spotted by a customs official when she took a goblet from one house to another. The official claimed that the goblet contained beer and that it had been illegally sold by her master to the neighbour. The master, by contrast, claimed that the beer was payment for services rendered.Footnote 17 A third maid servant was spotted when she took a dish of meat into the house of her master. The customs official followed her into the house, suspecting that her mistress had slaughtered an animal without having paid duty for it.Footnote 18 The fact that the court records give the impression that maids were often attacked is worthy of note. It may mean simply that maids were more often carrying food in the streets than their mistresses,Footnote 19 and excise was levied precisely on food and beverages. Thus, the impression may be a trick of the sources. But the sources may also tell us something about the relative impotence of lower customs officials, forcing them to attack others who also lacked power. Lower customs officials were often the subject of scorn and even violent attacks; we know that they refrained from patrolling the streets on their own for fear of being beaten up.Footnote 20
While these tasks were risky but adventurous in a way, many other servant tasks were simply boring. They involved waiting more than anything else. For instance, masters and mistresses seem to have preferred sending their servants to the Excise Chamber to pay the excise, rather than going there themselves and waiting their turn. With all servants coming at the same time, there would be queues, clamour and vociferous complaints.Footnote 21 Meanwhile, the masters and mistresses could be engaged elsewhere. They were paying their dues, as they should, but did this through their servants. Interestingly, this was precisely how it was described at the time in the court records: ‘Madame Bagge, through her man servant, had had the malt brought from the mill yesterday evening after dusk.’Footnote 22 Likewise, baker Timan acted against the orders of the magistracy, ‘letting bread be carried around in town through his maid servant and offered for sale’.Footnote 23
Blaming errors or, even, illegal acts on servants was probably common. In 1748, a number of people who were accused of not having paid excise in due order were rounded up. Of these, three wives, Catharina Malmberg, Jöns Alm's widow and Johan Noraeus’ wife, all blamed their maid servants. The first maid had allegedly been given excise money but forgotten to pay; the second maid had also been ‘faulty’ but it remained unclear in what way; the third maid had, her mistress argued, acted behind her back.Footnote 24 Thus, in all cases, the fault rested with the servant, their heads of household claimed.
One reason for the practice of blaming servants was surely that they were occupationally highly mobile.Footnote 25 When a case was eventually brought in front of court, the servant could very well have moved on, and people claimed not to know where they had gone. Whether this was true may have been another matter, of course, but it was a frequently used argument and the courts seldom seem to have been interested in following up on what had actually happened. Consequently, it was often impossible to confront the servant with the accusation. This in its turn meant that the servant could not provide evidence that questioned the truth of the master's/mistress's account of what had happened. Therefore, former servants were ideal scapegoats: they carried the sins on their shoulders but did not confer bad conscience on the accusing master/mistress since the servants were no longer there to be punished.
Even the less well-off had servants and used them in the ways described. When summoned to appear in front of court, baker Timan declared that he had been away for some time in the countryside, helping his relatives during harvest, and he had therefore been unaware of what had happened at home. Upon his arrival back in town, he found that his wife had recently given birth and that she had needed to buy some milk during her illness. She had then sent out the maid servant to sell some bread and the maid had been caught as an illegal hawker. Timan argued that his household did not have ready cash, and so this unlawful selling of bread, through the maid, was an act of urgency.Footnote 26 The well-off used servants in the same way. When slottsbokhållare Magnus Hansson, who had a substantial fortune in the form of real estate,Footnote 27 was accused of not having paid his excise in due order, he claimed to have sent it through his stepmother's maid servant Maria Björk. She testified that her mistress had given her a silver spoon to use as a pawn but said that the customs official had refused to accept excise in any form other than cash.Footnote 28 While it is clear that the mistresses had given the orders, the maids were the ones who carried and ran and who were, eventually, caught.
In a number of respects, then, eighteenth-century servants in Swedish urban settings resemble their brothers and sisters in France, as analysed by Sarah Maza. In both countries, servants were highly mobile and were looked upon as outsiders; their work involved a lot of running and carrying but could also entail long spates of waiting (that could be used for one's own ends, for instance by knitting); they were used as shields against surrounding society and were the targets of aggression directed against their employers.Footnote 29 But they also shared traits with children.
Children were also used as go-betweens and to run errands. They could do this together with an adult but they could just as well act on their own. As we have seen already, these practices have left traces in the sources primarily when something went wrong. Thus, when the burgess Jöns Alm was accused of not having paid the right amount of excise for the quantity of spirits that had been found in his house, he told the court how his wife had sent their neighbour's daughter to pay the excise. The girl, whose age was between 11 and 12, took the coins to the excise scribe and, since she did not know what sort of brew Alm's wife was preparing, a misunderstanding occurred as to how the receipt should be phrased.Footnote 30 A similar misunderstanding happened when Margareta Langberg sent her little boy to pay excise for a young swine. Apparently, when speaking to the excise scribe the boy had used the wrong word – pig – since this was how the people in the household used to refer to the animal. In fiscal terms, it was a swine, however, and should be taxed accordingly, that is, higher than a pig.Footnote 31 In both cases, the fact that the error could be ascribed to the agent's low age made the court take a benevolent view of the incident.
Thus, servants and children could be used in similar ways and for similar purposes. Indeed, they may have been looked upon as a coherent group sharing many if not all qualities. Linguistic usage supports this interpretation. The Swedish (and Danish) word piga (pige) referred both to a young girl and to a maid servant. This reminds us of how in ancient Rome, puer was used not only to designate a boy or a child (the original meanings of the word) but also to refer to servants and slaves.Footnote 32 Swedish servants and children resembled each other in their lack of independence and authority – a consequence of their subordinate position within the household – and in their (alleged) lack of knowledge.
Acting through women from other households
Acting through others was not, however, restricted to the household. Masters and mistresses also acted through persons who were not members of their household and, therefore, not formally subjected to their domestic power. Such practices were probably much more widespread than hitherto acknowledged, partly because they have not put a clear imprint in the normative sources. The ad hoc uses of the services of people from other households were not a matter of detailed legal regulation. Such uses are particularly worthy of note, however, since they show us an arena where married women interacted in ways that allowed them to earn income and to forge social relationships.
The initial example has already acquainted us with one of these married women who acted on behalf of another married woman. Catarina Jeansdotter and the young boy were the instruments through which Catarina Trång attempted to sell meat. It was an unregulated and therefore probably insecure job, but it was a job, nevertheless, and it must have been important to Catarina Jeansdotter. But Catarina Trång benefited too: being able to act through Catarina Jeansdotter, she could be in two places at the same time, avoid heavy carrying, did not have to face the unpleasantness of being apprehended in the street and still got her meat sold. The two women with the same first name co-operated, although not of course on equal terms.
Catarina Jeansdotter was the wife of Petter Glantsberg who worked as a besökare, the lowest type of customs official (cf. English ‘searcher’). Besökare were not well paid and needed extra income. By ferreting out customs evaders and confiscating goods for which customs or excise were due, besökare could earn a share in the goods and thus increase their incomes. They were often involved in, to us, futile disputes about very small amounts of money but, of course, these sums meant a lot to them and to the persons whose goods had been confiscated.Footnote 33 But the income from windfalls such as confiscations was probably not sufficient. Households of besökare also needed the incomes of the wife. Consequently, wives of besökare were often active in the makeshift economy that linked household to household. For instance, Brita Stina Berg, also married to a lower customs official, earned extra income by baking bread for her neighbours in their homes. At one point, it transpired that Brita Stina had saved up no less than 34 silver daler, about half of her husband's annual salary.Footnote 34 Both Catarina Jeansdotter and Brita Stina Berg stood in for other women: running their errands and baking their bread.
There are many other examples of wives of poorly paid men who contributed economically to their household by acting as extensions of other women. They could, for instance, sell goods on commission. This was what Malin Westman, married to besökare Nils Lundius, did: she sold cloth on commission for Mrs Lenbom and handkerchiefs on behalf of Mrs Reincke. The relationships between the three women were unveiled when Malin was caught and charged for selling unstamped cloth.Footnote 35 In this case, too, it was obvious that all three women gained from the co-operation: Lenbom and Reincke got their goods sold without having to run through the streets themselves, and Malin Westman secured additional and much-needed income for her household.
This case shows us how wives of lower civil servants could increase their earnings by helping the wives of somewhat higher-placed civil servant wives with the latter's businesses or households. Another example is Magdalena Florin, the widow of a customs scribe, who used the widow of a town servant to carry a piece of meat. Since the meat was subsequently confiscated and subject to dispute, it is hard to know exactly what Magdalena Florin's intentions had been; she claimed that the meat had been intended as a gift to a city councillor, while Ulrica Hellström testified that the emissary had offered the meat for sale in Ulrica's tavern. The meaning of such transactions – was it a gift or a sale? – was often obscure. Still, it seems clear that the town servant's widow worked for Florin in some way.Footnote 36
The need for extra income was pressing on many households. Thus, Lena Ahlberg, whose husband was a private soldier (ryttare), was commissioned by Sara Wittfot and Mr von Aken to purchase two sheep for them in the countryside. Sara Wittfot was married to a wealthy merchant and Mr von Aken was the town pharmacist. Their transactions were disclosed when Lena was caught and charged with not having paid customs and excise in due order. Evidently, Wittfot and von Aken preferred to have someone else purchase the sheep for them.Footnote 37 Wives of shipmasters were a category of women who also seem to have needed extra income and who were thus available for those who did not have the time for, or preferred to avoid, certain tasks. Shipmaster Lundin's wife sold spirits and other beverages on behalf of public house keeper Christina Hybbell, and Olof Wiström's and Lars Ekberg's wives produced spirits for other households; in the case of Wiström's wife it was explicitly said that she did this job for the wife of farrier Hedde.Footnote 38
In all these cases, we have seen examples of households from which some tasks were outsourced and given to married women from other households. From the point of view of the latter, who were all of modest means but not destitute, these opportunities must have been immensely valuable. The examples point to the importance of mutual help, and to the sometimes indistinct borderline between mutual help and market transactions. On a more general level, they support recent historiography, mentioned at the beginning of this article, which argues, in Margaret R. Hunt's words, that almost all women worked and many worked for pay.Footnote 39
It is still true that fewer opportunities were open to married women within the lower middling strata than to married men within the same social group, and that the ones that were open to women were less well paid, less well respected and did not offer a career. A major reason for this was that public and civil service was rarely a field in which women could work. Another reason was that the market was more restricted than in England and Holland. Some of the tasks that married, middling women in Swedish towns could carry out were not even thought of as occupations, and they did not confer occupational titles or social esteem. Hanging around in the street, as Catarina Jeansdotter was probably doing that day in the 1740s, these women may simply have been asked to run an errand of one kind or another, and it brought income but probably little more than that. Other tasks were less ad hoc, however, such as baking or doing laundry for other households. In any case, if the alternative was no income at all, or criminal activities, these jobs were probably very valuable to those who performed them. It is not possible to gauge the value in all cases, but the fact that for instance Brita Stina Berg's savings equalled the value of half of her husband's annual salary suggests that her income was far from insignificant – that she had been able to save everything she earned seems implausible. Indeed, when on a later occasion Lars Staf was described as very poor, the description was substantiated with the information that his wife was now bedridden.Footnote 40
The reason why these activities have not been given more attention in historiography is partly the fact that they crossed and transcended the boundaries of the arguably most important organizational unit in early modern society: the household. In Swedish sources at least, the fact that the household was a fiscal unit tends to overemphasize its role as economic unit. It is easy to assume that all forms of economic activities were located inside households. While this may often have been true, there were nevertheless many exceptions, not least in urban environments. This is particularly pertinent for households that were land-poor or lacked other resources. As Susan Amussen has argued, early modern household ideology implicitly presupposed that households were relatively independent units; but they could only be independent if they had sufficient resources.Footnote 41 Less prosperous households – such as those of lower civil servants in towns – were more dependent on co-operation and exchange between households. For these, it is crucial to observe what went on in between households.
Uneven alliances
Needless to say, the kinds of jobs that married women like Catarina Jeansdotter and Malin Westman did for other households placed them in relations of dependence and even subordination. The fact that it is at all meaningful to compare them to children and servants could be seen as a strong argument for looking at their work experiences as shaped by clear and unequivocal hierarchy. This would, however, be too simplified a conclusion. While there were similarities between these women and servants and children, there were also significant differences. The tasks given to the former were entangled in social relations that were, if not completely bereft of dominance and subordination, still somewhat more balanced. They were forms of co-operation, although not based on equality. Of course, not being formally hired can also be seen as a disadvantage; mistresses and masters were, after all, expected to take care of their servants.Footnote 42 Still, it is useful to think of these forms of co-operation as uneven alliances, linking the somewhat less well-off to those somewhat better-off in ways that allowed both parties to earn income without involving formal hiring of one by the other.
Evidence for this more nuanced picture is provided by how people acted when one of them got caught and dragged in front of court. In order to put these cases into perspective, it is useful to remind ourselves first of how common it was for spouses to blame each other, or servants, in such cases.
Many men were brought to the Excise court in Örebro on the accusation that they had produced more spirits than they had paid excise for, or alternatively that they were not entitled to produce any spirits at all. Almost invariably, the men answered that they had not produced the spirits themselves. It was their wives’ doings, they said, and their wives had committed the error in good faith, not knowing that it was unlawful. This was, for instance, how Daniel Larsson, answered.Footnote 43 In another case, a man was accused of having produced more spirits than he was entitled to. He referred the court to his wife, who claimed that it was the maid servant who had started the production behind her back and without her knowing anything. The maid, in her turn, claimed to have used a special but legal technique she had picked up while working in the town of Norrköping. In the end, and despite these obvious prevarications, nobody was convicted.Footnote 44
Against this backdrop, it is interesting to notice that the tactic of blaming the one who got caught seems to have been used less frequently when the household had used the services of a person from another household. For instance, when Malin Westman was caught for selling unstamped cloth, Mrs Lenbom did not wash her hands but gave a written account of how she had come by the cloth and why she had decided to commission Malin to sell it. Likewise, Sara Wittfot and Mr von Aken testified that Lena Ahlberg who was accused of unlawful selling of mutton had purchased the sheep in question on their behalf. Yet another woman testified that her daughter, Christina Hybbel, had commissioned shipmaster Lundin's wife to sell some beverages on her behalf. Farrier Hedde's wife told the court how she did not have the facilities at home to produce spirits and this was why she had asked Olof Wiström's wife to do the job for her. It would have been possible to disavow these women who got caught in the legal net, but evidently this did not happen. There was a flavour of solidarity involved in these instances of uneven alliances.
Of course, there was an element of self-interest involved too: it was useful to be able to act though others, to extend one's scope of action beyond one's own household members. If one did not support and protect the ally, it would probably not be possible to use her again. It needs to be borne in mind that these people were neighbours and that they had to stick together in order to avoid conflicts that might rupture local society. Moreover, they all seem to have shared a profound dislike of the customs officials and their overzealous fulfilment of their duties. Consequently, the fact that the Excise court records, on which I rely here, focus on payment of excise may exaggerate the degree of solidarity within local society. The evidence of the Excise court records should be used with caution.
Still, the many instances of co-operation between persons from different households are worthy of note, and so is the fact that many of these persons were married women. Moreover, these findings are supported by Sofia Ling's results that various forms of economic co-operation between married women were common in eighteenth-century Stockholm.Footnote 45
While most people needed to co-operate across household borders at times, some may have needed it more often than others. Town inhabitants who were not burgesses and did not belong to any of the town corporations were particularly vulnerable and in need of mutual help. Their reduced or complete lack of economic rights barred them from many sources of income, and even if such rights could sometimes be extended to them after a special petition, the need to submit such a petition nevertheless made them dependent upon the good-will of the burgesses. This group of outsiders included the urban proletarians, but more importantly it also included those who belonged to the middling sort. For instance, lower civil servants petitioned for the right to grow tobacco, to set up a small spinning ‘manufaktur’, or to sell beer.Footnote 46 This socially heterogeneous and negatively defined group of outsiders – it was defined by the fact that its members did not belong to an acknowledged estate – is particularly interesting since it often seems to have been characterized by uneven alliances across households.
Malin Westman, who sold goods on commission for Mrs Lenbom and Mrs Reincke, had little wealth and low social status; Lenbom, by contrast, had a house which allowed her to rent out rooms.Footnote 47 She also had the economic resources required to set up a stall from which she could sell textiles. Malin Westman could not do any of this. All three did, however, have one thing in common (apart from their sex) and this was the fact that they were all married to lower civil servants. Malin was married to a lower customs official, Catharina had been married to the town clerk and Mrs Reincke was married to a cavalry official.Footnote 48
Lenbom and Reincke found Malin useful since they probably did not have the time to do everything themselves. Delegating the task of selling to her, they could contribute to their own households (getting the merchandise sold) while at the same time helping her contribute to hers – perhaps out of compassion and solidarity. In this way, they probably gained good-will and social capital in the local community. It is also possible that they found it attractive not to have to appear in the streets selling things,Footnote 49 but there is no explicit evidence to support this interpretation.
Being married to customs inspector Hans Wigardt, Greta Lotta Richter was more socially elevated than the wives of customs scribes, besökare and town clerks. A customs inspector was treated with respect and had an annual salary of 350 silver daler.Footnote 50 Nevertheless, Greta Lotta and her husband were not members of the burgess community and she must have been closer to these lower civil servant wives. On one occasion, she lent a silver bowl to Mrs Lenbom, so that the latter could use it as a pawn and pay off some of her debts to the local pharmacist Frantz Michael von Aken. It was probably no coincidence that when Mrs Lenbom needed help herself, she sought it from another civil servant wife.Footnote 51 At this stage, it is impossible to tell exactly how common such provision of loanable objects was, but this is not the only example from Örebro.Footnote 52
These alliances were part of a structured division of labour, where everybody got something out of it but where it was the person of lowest standing who had to do the running about and the heavy lifting. This is patently clear for lower civil servant wives, as some of these examples show, but if we move further upwards the social ladder, we also find wives of very wealthy civil servants who used other women to facilitate and extend their economic activities. For instance, from a litigation case in Örebro in 1690, it transpired that both Anna Gyllenharnesk (married to the lanträntmästare Footnote 53) and Beata Klingstierna (daughter of nobleman Casten Otter) had used two non-noble women as their intermediaries, sending them with large sums of money.Footnote 54
Accomplices and enemies
While these forms of co-operation were important strategies for survival for many women, they could also entail risk. Loyalty was crucial, and any disloyalty could have serious consequences. This is the light in which we should view Hans Ekelöf's efforts to cast doubt on the veracity of Catarina Jeansdotter's story by depicting her as his enemy. The word he used was actually ‘persecutor’. It is not entirely clear why he used this particular word, but it probably had something to do with the fact that Catarina was married to a besökare.
Besökare were, as we have seen, poorly paid, but they could increase their incomes through shares in goods that they confiscated. In fact, the state seems to have preferred this arrangement to giving customs officials higher wages since it was thought to inspire diligence in the officials and also to prevent collusion between them and customs payers.Footnote 55 Not only the besökare himself but also his whole household would therefore have a strong interest in tracking down evaders of customs and excise. It is not too far-fetched, therefore, to construe the situation as one where Catarina had been double-dealing: she had both worked for the Ekelöf–Trång household and she had informed on them. While this could be a way of increasing income in the short-term perspective, it was no doubt a risky procedure that might entail greater problems later on. In fact, it could compound problems that were inherent in the position of customs official.
Customs officials were profoundly disliked. People resented their snooping behaviour and suspected them of extracting too much. This is patently clear from what happened in local scenes such as Örebro and Helsingborg,Footnote 56 but it was also true for those who were in charge of the customs administration on a national level. One of the first customs farmers, Mårten Augustinsson, is said to have left his office in 1641 because of the invidia (hatred) and pasquinades his job and position entailed.Footnote 57 Against this backdrop, it is easy to understand that wives of customs officials were often regarded as suspects too, that they needed alliances and support, and that it was particularly bad if they betrayed the trust of their allies and engaged in double-dealing. This would confirm and aggravate people's prejudices against them and their husbands. That a woman like Catarina Jeansdotter would nevertheless take this risk is indicative of the economically fraught situation in which she and her husband lived.
Another type of risk that married women could take was to engage in criminal activities. It could be argued, of course, that almost all activities that we have seen women engaged in so far were criminal. It was the fact that customs officials had detected and branded the activities as criminal that brought them to the attention of the Excise court and, consequently, to our attention. It could be argued therefore that instead of discussing in terms of alliances, we should speak in terms of complicity. While this is true, it is also obvious that production and sale of meat, beer, bread and textiles were criminalized because it served fiscal interests in this particular situation. To sell and produce these things are activities that have been accepted in most societies; indeed, the hatred directed toward the customs officials probably had to do with people's sense that their fundamental right to support themselves was infringed in an illegitimate way.
Some of the women did, however, also engage in activities that were criminal not only in the eyes of customs administrators but under the law. If we look closer at how some women had acquired the goods that they sold, we find cases of theft. This was, apparently, how Margareta Carlsdotter Ström, married to besökare Carl Öman, had come by some clothes and fabric. Before her marriage to Öman, Margareta had been working in the house of Colonel Ribbing, where she seems to have stolen some clothes and a silver chandelier for which she was brought to court in 1764. At the same time, she was also accused of having stolen some silk cloth. The latter theft was said to have taken place after her marriage to Öman. Margareta had come to the customs house in the company of a colleague of her husband (Strömbom) in search of hay to give to a confiscated horse. Outside the customs house they found the cart of two peasants who were detained inside the customs house, and, as Strömbom and Margareta admitted, they had taken some hay from the cart. But the cart also contained silk cloth which Margareta took ‘by mistake’, as she phrased it herself. Later on, these pieces of clothes and silk cloth were sold, partly with the help of Caisa Stielin, who was married to customs official Ammurin. Öman, Ammurin and their wives shared quarters, and it was in these quarters that the silk cloth was found, together with the silver chandelier and other pieces of cloth.Footnote 58
Despite protestations to the contrary, it is likely that these women were involved in criminal networks engaged in stealing and receiving clothes and cloth.Footnote 59 It is also worthy of note how closely the wives’ ‘jobs’ were entangled with their husbands’ jobs. Margareta was obviously assisting her husband and his colleagues when she tried to find something to give the confiscated horse to eat. To keep the horse alive and healthy was definitely in the interest of the confiscators and their households. But it was also because of her participation in their work that she had the opportunity to steal the cloth from the peasants. Living in the same room, Margareta and Caisa could easily share secrets (where the cloth was hidden) and divide the spoils between them.
The case was highly problematic to both Öman and Ammurin. Öman tried to give the impression that he knew nothing about his wife's dealings. A witness for the accuser did, however, tell the court that he had overheard the spouses talking to each other when Öman visited his wife in gaol. Öman was said to have told his wife that he would lose his position because of this incident, to which she was said to have responded ‘I will help you to get a new position in the place where I come from and where people know me, a position as forest ranger or something similar.’Footnote 60 Clearly, Öman was aware of how problematic his situation was. Ammurin, on his side, was reproached for not having questioned Öman about the clothes Margareta had kept in their common home and also tried to sell to Ammurin. In the end, neither Öman nor Ammurin and Strömbom were convicted; Margareta had already fled to Norway and could not be apprehended.Footnote 61
This case makes clear how intimately legal and illegal activities could be entangled, and also how difficult it must have been even for the involved parties to know exactly from where the merchandise had come. Ammurin's wife Caisa Stielin admitted to the court that she had received some cloth from Margareta, but said that Margareta had told her that she had received it on commission from the tavern keepers at Lerbäck, at some distance from the town. As we saw in the case with Mrs Lenbom, Mrs Reincke and Malin Westman, selling textiles on commission was probably quite common and, as long as the origin of the textiles could be accounted for, a legal activity. That the tavern keepers should give their cloth to Margareta, who would then give it to Caisa, was nothing that would arouse suspicion in itself. People were, however, aware of the risk of purchasing stolen goods. When Margareta had sold some textiles to a man at Lerbäck, she had told him, probably at his request, who she was and how she had acquired her merchandise: ‘in case he did not believe her, [she wanted to tell him that] she was the wife of a besökare in Örebro, living at the Northern customs entrance, and she assured him that she was an honest woman who had acquired the clothes in a lawful way’.Footnote 62
But while these women were sometimes crossing the border of what was defined as criminal, it is striking that they were not accused of illegal sexual activities in the way street sellers and ‘higglers’ seem to have been in many other parts of Europe. Margaret Hunt points out that almost everywhere ‘restraints on women selling things in the market were rationalized by the claim that women who sold things in the market were likely also to be selling themselves’.Footnote 63 In view of how disliked customs officials were, one would expect their wives to have been branded as sexually dishonourable persons, especially if they were in fact found out to be dishonourable in other ways (that is, thieves). This does not, however, seem to have been the case. While it is unsurprising that we do not find such claims and accusations in the Excise court records, the records from the city magistracy (rådhusrätten) and from the lower city magistracy (kämnärsrätten) do not contain such accusations either. Women's honour was linked to sexuality in Sweden, but maybe not as strongly as elsewhere in Europe.Footnote 64
Conclusion
In historical narratives, the household often looms large as the unit within which a wide range of functions – referred to as production, reproduction and consumption – were located in early modern society. Likewise, since the head of household is the one whose role, authority and activities are most conspicuous in the historical sources, he is a towering figure in much historiography. It is more difficult to spot the activities and interactions that took place in the interstices between households or, for that matter, the doings of members of the household other than the head, since, as Garthine Walker has pointed out, the head tends to screen the other members of the household.Footnote 65
The use of emissaries and allies reveals, however, that ‘doings’ were neither reserved for the head nor confined within the household. Tasks and responsibilities were shuffled between spouses and delegated to servants and children. More importantly, tasks and responsibilities were also outsourced to people outside the household – people who belonged to other households but who needed extra income. This means that at this time many urban households were both flexible and permeable units between which (mainly) women and children dashed on various errands. Acting through others was a way for masters and mistresses to juggle their many tasks, while at the same time it created jobs for those who had limited resources. It was also a way for many households to share and exchange services and resources, to offer each other mutual help although not necessarily on an equal basis.
The uneven alliances between wives of different social standing provide a particularly good example of this. In a small local society where many resources were monopolized by those who belonged to the privileged urban community, it was difficult for non-members to support themselves. Families that relied on the husband's salary incomes – such as civil servants – would find it problematic to make a living in times of inflation (as was the case in late eighteenth-century Sweden) and there was an acute need for the wives to contribute extra income.Footnote 66 The lack of formal occupations for women would at first glance seem to have prevented them from doing so. Helping other wives with various tasks could, however, be a solution that did not entail being formally subordinate to a mistress in the way maids and children were. Acting as emissaries and deputies for other women, these women force us to question our assumptions about the clear boundaries and closed character of early modern households. In their roles as allies and perhaps even friends, they force us to probe deeper into the meaning of social and economic difference; such differences were obviously not always insurmountable.
But some of these alliances were more than just economic partnerships and friendships. They have to be understood against the backdrop of the vulnerable position of lower civil servants in general and customs officials in particular. Detested because of their work and frequently exposed to violence, these officials had to stick together and so had their wives, in order to defend themselves and their homes. In some cases, these alliances were expressions of criminal networks. In other cases, it may even be apposite to think of them in military terms, as alliances of defence. Crime, complicity and double loyalties have to be understood against the backdrop of severe economic hardship but also of outright hostility. This was the complex matrix within which some married women's work was inscribed in early modern Sweden.
