ABSTRACT
There is much discussion in both popular and academic literature about the presumed dependency “burden” of elders upon public resources. This chapter addresses two questions: who were the “old” in the preindustrial society and how grave of a dependency burden did they pose?; and what were the prevailing attitudes toward old age dependency and how were these reflected in elderly support? It is important to note that relief was provided at the local level throughout these centuries, and because the proportion of elders could become much greater in some communities than others, dependency burdens could be very serious. One of the most striking aspects of English poor relief between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries was its fairly consistent approach to old persons; the English acknowledged and communally provided for elderly dependency from the medieval period onward.
