Home, Urban Space and Gendered Practices in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Turku

This chapter explores the relationship between houses, homes and other forms of shared urban space, with the help of some cases featuring the crime of violent invasion of a home in mid-seventeenth-century Turku. Women are usually present only as mistresses of the houses or as maids or tavern-keepers. This shows very clearly how the nightly practices in urban space were gendered and how the houses at night time were mainly open for men. Urban space has most often been studied from the perspective of what is conceived public space, that is, civic and religious buildings, streets, taverns and market places. The cases of violent invasion of a home in Turku bring to the fore another site of interpersonal violence, one that lends a new perspective to personal and shared honour. Home is easily equated with a house. However, particularly in towns, homes could also be rooms or even parts of rooms.