Old Age: From Antiquity to Post-Modernity (Routledge Studies in Cultural History, 1)

255 Pages·1998·2.82 MB·English

by  Paul Johnson

Old Age from Antiquity to
Post-Modernity
With the publication of Old Age from Antiquity to Post-Modernity historical
gerontology takes a major step toward maturity. Focusing on three critical issues —
participation, well-being and status—in defining continuities and changes in the
elderly’s place in society, this is the best collection of essays in this subfield
published to date.
W.Andrew Achenbaum, Institute of Gerontology,
University of Michigan
Ageing is fast becoming the outstanding issue of our time. All students of the
subject will find this volume illuminating, as will everyone concerned with social
welfare.
Peter Laslett, Trinity College, Cambridge
Based upon interdisciplinary themes such as status and welfare, Old Age from
Antiquity to Post-Modernity contains a collection of essays examining old age and the
elderly in past societies, and the problems of a rapidly ageing population in its
historical context.
From Ancient Greece to modern Germany and New Zealand, this book features both
methodological and empirical studies, and includes essays on:
(cid:127) ageing in antiquity
(cid:127) old age in the high and late middle ages—image, expectation and status
(cid:127) ageing and well-being in early modern England
(cid:127) balancing social and cultural approaches to the history of old age and ageing in
Europe
(cid:127) old age in the new world—New Zealand’s colonial welfare experiment
Old Age from Antiquity to Post-Modernity represents a substantial contribution to the
historical understanding of old age in past societies as well as to the discussion about
the application of different research methodologies to historical scholarship.
Paul Johnson is Reader in Economic History at the London School of Economics.
Pat Thane is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Sussex.

Old Age from Antiquity to
Post-Modernity
Edited by Paul Johnson and Pat Thane
London and New York
First published 1998
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1998 Selection and editorial matter, Paul Johnson and Pat Thane;
individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Old age from Antiquity to post-modernity/edited by Paul Johnson
and Pat Thane.
(Routledge studies in cultural history; 1)
1. Old age—History. 2. Old age—Social aspects. 3. Aged—History.
I. Johnson, Paul, 1956– . II. Thane, Pat.
III. Series
HQ1061.0377 1998 98–20561
305.26–dc21 CIP
ISBN 0-203-02102-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-20840-4 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-16464-8 (Print Edition)
Contents
List of illustrations vii
Notes on contributors viii
Preface x
1 Historical readings of old age and ageing 1
PAUL JOHNSON
2 Ageing in antiquity: status and participation 19
TIM G.PARKIN
3 Old age in the high and late Middle Ages: image, expectation
and status 43
SHULAMITH SHAHAR
4 Ageing and well-being in early modern England: pension trends
and gender preferences under the English Old Poor Law
c. 1650–1800 64
RICHARD M.SMITH
5 Balancing social and cultural approaches to the history of
old age and ageing in Europe: a review and an example from
post-Revolutionary France 96
DAVID G.TROYANSKY
6 The ageing of the population: relevant question or obsolete
notion? 110
PATRICK BOURDELAIS
v
vi Contents
7 Old age and the health care system in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries 132
CHRISTOPH CONRAD
8 Old age in the New World: New Zealand’s colonial welfare
experiment 146
DAVID THOMSON
9 The family lives of old people 180
PAT THANE
10 Parallel histories of retirement in modern Britain 211
PAUL JOHNSON
Bibliography 226
Index 241
Illustrations
Figures
4.1 The elderly in the English population, 1541–1981 70
6.1 The age of old age 121
6.2 Proportion of elderly people: two measures 122
7.1 Number of deaths in hospital in Prussia, 1900 and 1929 139
7.2 Rate of persons treated in a general hospital 140
7.3 Hospital expenditure in the German workers’ health
insurance system 141
Tables
4.1 Living arrangements of persons aged 65+, England and
Wales, sixteenth to twentieth century 66
4.2 Numbers of kin at later ages, England 68
4.3 Pensioners per head of population 71
4.4 (a) Poor relief expenditure categories, (b) Costs of benefits
in kind 72–3
4.5 Proportion of pensioners in various age groups, 1663–1742 75
4.6 Age groups of adult pensioners by sex, 1663–1742 76
4.7 Pension payments, 1650–1700 76
4.8 Pension payments, 1700–50 77
4.9 Pension payments, 1750–1800 84
4.10 (a) Proportion of pensioners in various age groups and
(b) Age group of adult pensioners by sex, 1745–1800 85
4.11 Age groups of pensioners: sex 86
4.12 Sex ratios of pensioners 86
6.1 A synthetic indicator for the age of old age 121
6.2 The chronological ages at which one becomes old 127
10.1 State pension payments in the UK, 1910–93 213
10.2 Main components of pensioner incomes 220

vii
Contributors
Patrice Bourdelais is Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales in Paris. He is author of Le nouvel age de la vieillesse. Histoire du
vieillissement de la population (1993).
Christoph Conrad is Managing Director of the Centre for Comparative
History of Europe, Free University of Berlin. His research interests include
the history of welfare states, the development of opinion and market
research, and current debates in historiography. His publications include
Vom Greis zum Rentner. Der Strukturwandel des Alters in Deutschland
zwischen 1830 und 1930 (1994), and (with Paul Johnson and David
Thomson) Workers versus Pensioners: Intergenerational Justice in an
Ageing World (1989).
Paul Johnson is Reader in Economic History at the London School of
Economics. He has written on various aspects of modern British social
history, and on both the history and the economics of old age, including
(with Jane Falkingham) Ageing and Economic Welfare (1992). He is
currently working on the relationship between law and the economy in
Victorian England.
Tim G.Parkin is Professor of Classics at the University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand. He completed a D.Phil, at the University of
Oxford, and has published on various aspects of Roman social history,
including Demography and Roman Society (1992). He has a book on
Roman old age forthcoming, and is currently working on a study of
methodological approaches to ancient social history.
Shulamith Shahar is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at Tel Aviv
University. She is author of The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the
Middle Ages (1983), Childhood in the Middle Ages (1990), and Growing
Old in the Middle Ages: ‘Winter Clothes Us in Shadow and Pain’ (1997).
Richard M.Smith is Director of the Cambridge Group for the History of
Population and Reader in Historical Demography, University of
Cambridge. His books include Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle (1984) and
viii
Contributors ix
(with Zvi Razi) Medieval Society and the Manor Court (1996). His current
research focuses on the demographic correlates of welfare practices in
England c. 1550–1834.
Pat Thane is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Sussex.
Her publications include The Foundations of the Welfare State (1982,
revised second edition 1996) and (with Gisela Bock) Women and the Rise of
the European Welfare State (1991). She has just completed a study of the
history of old age in England which will be published by Oxford University
Press in 1999.
David Thomson is Professor in History, Massey University, Palmerston
North, New Zealand, and Research Associate, Cambridge Group for the
History of Population. His Cambridge Ph.D. on ‘Provision for the Elderly
in England, 1834–1908’ began a long interest in how societies meet the
income needs of their elderly. Recent major projects include Selfish
Generations? How Welfare States Grow Old (1996) and A World Without
Welfare: New Zealand’s Colonial Experiment (1998).
David G.Troyansky is Associate Professor of History at Texas Tech
University. He is author of Old Age in the Old Regime: Image and
Experience in Eighteenth-Century France (1989) and co-editor of The
French Revolution in Culture and Society (1991). He is currently writing a
book on the retirement of French magistrates in the first half of the
nineteenth century.