Citizenship, Poor Relief and the Politics of Gender in Swedish Cities and Towns at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

Poverty and poor relief were historically defined in different ways. ¹ Who were considered to be in need of societal support was relative, and what support was given was also relative. The aid given to poor people had different aims—it could be a matter of relieving immediate distress, or it could be a matter of providing aid by different means over a longer term. The responsibility for maintenance and care for individuals in poverty always lay primarily with the family, but this was seldom sufficient. In the eighteenth-century various systems were introduced for certain groups in order to secure their future in case of loss of spouse, illness or old age. ² In this period Sweden was an estate society, where peasant proprietors, burghers, clergymen and nobility had seats in the Swedish Riksdag [Parliament]. At the same time great social shifts were going on. In the cities and towns this implied that those who belonged to the burghers, the domiciled inhabitants who carried on trades and crafts, paid tax and had political influence, decreased in number in relation to both a growing lower class and a middle class.