ABSTRACT
Women have always made up the majority of older people: this examination of the lives of elderly women in Britain in the period 1500 to the present reveals attitudes towards the ageing process. It sheds light on household structures as well as wider issues - including the history of the family, the process of industrialisation, the poor law, and welfare provision - and questions many common beliefs about elderly women, particularly that female old age was a time of poverty and want. An important book for students of history and sociology alike.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter Chapter Two|12 pages
Who Most Needs to Marry? Ageing and Inequality Among Women and Men in Early Modern Norwich
chapter Chapter Four|23 pages
‘I feel myself decay apace’: Old age in the diary of Lady Sarah Cowper (1644–1720)
chapter Chapter Seven|27 pages
The residence patterns of elderly English
women in comparative perspective