ABSTRACT
Widowers looking for housekeepers would first resort to daughters, who often became, as a result, ‘miniature wives’. This chapter focuses on survival strategies: how personal narratives of poverty and self-help are used by widows to strengthen their claims to poor relief in the difficult circumstances of early industrialization. In early modern England, to be poor, widows were by definition dependants, without substantial kin or connection. The provision of relief to the settled poor made possible the independent living circumstances of widows. The finding that fewer widows remarried is remarked on in case studies from across northwest Europe. Early modern English widows were often paid twice as much as married couples, and those who had been better-off before the death of their husbands were given higher levels of relief. Widows were more likely to remain widows, rather than remarry, because they received a measure of community financial support.
