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Collections for the poor: monetary charitable donations in Dutch towns, c. 1600–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2012

DANIËLLE TEEUWEN
DANIËLLE TEEUWEN
Affiliation:
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.
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Abstract

In many localities in the Dutch Republic, charitable collections were the single largest source of income for relief institutions for the outdoor poor. This article takes into account both the role of the authorities organising collections and the role of the city-dwellers making charitable donations. It is demonstrated that people from almost all layers of urban society contributed to the collections. By means of thorough planning and exerting social pressure, religious and secular administrators of poor relief tried to maximise Dutch generosity. They presented making charitable donations as a duty of the rich as well as of the less well-off. In the Dutch Republic, not only the elites, but also the middling groups of society, who approximately constituted almost half of the urban population, were of vital importance in financing poor relief.

Collectes pour les pauvres: donations charitables dans les villes hollandaises, c. 1600–1800

Dans de nombreuses localités de la République hollandaise, les quêtes à but caritatif étaient la plus grande source de revenu pour les institutions charitables en charge de pauvres vivant à domicile, à l'extérieur de ces institutions. Cet article prend en compte à la fois le rôle des autorités organisant des quêtes et le rôle des habitants de la ville faisant des donations charitables. Il ressort que presque toutes les couches de la société urbaine contribuaient aux collectes. Grâce à une planification minutieuse et à la pression sociale exercée, les administrateurs religieux et laïcs de l'aide aux pauvres essayaient de toujours faire croître la générosité hollandaise. Faire don aux institutions caritatives était présenté comme un devoir des riches aussi bien qu'un devoir des moins aisés. Dans la République hollandaise, c'était non seulement des élites, mais aussi des classes moyennes (ces dernières formant approximativement la moitié de la population urbaine), que dépendait le financement vital de l'aide aux pauvres.

Sammlungen für die armen: geldspenden für wohltätige zwecke in niederländischen städten, ca. 1600–1800

In vielen Orten der Niederländischen Republik bildeten wohltätige Sammlungen die größte Einkommensquelle der Fürsorgeeinrichtungen für die nicht in Armenhäusern untergebrachten Armen. Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich sowohl mit der Rolle der städtischen Obrigkeit bei der Organisation von Geldsammlungen als auch mit der Rolle der Stadtbewohner, die Geld für wohltätige Zwecke spendeten. Es zeigt sich, dass Leute aus beinahe allen Schichten der städtischen Gesellschaft zu den Geldsammlungen beitrugen. Die geistlichen und weltlichen Verwalter der Armenfürsorge versuchten, durch gründliche Planung, aber auch, indem sie sozialen Druck erzeugten, die niederländische Großzügigkeit zu maximieren, und stellten es als eine Pflicht der Reichen, aber auch der weniger Wohlhabenden dar, für wohltätige Zwecke zu spenden. In der Republik der Niederlande waren nicht nur die gesellschaftlichen Eliten, sondern auch die Mittelschichten, die annähernd die Hälfte der städtischen Bevölkerung ausmachten, für die Finanzierung der Armenfürsorge unerlässlich.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 27 , Special Issue 2: Special Issue: Giving in the Golden Age: Charity in the Dutch Republic , August 2012 , pp. 271 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

ENDNOTES

1 See, for example, van Leeuwen, Marco H. D., ‘Logic of charity: poor relief in preindustrial Europe’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24 (1994), 589–613CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abraham de Swaan, In care of the state: health care, education, and welfare in Europe and the USA in the modern era (New York, 1988).

2 Van Leeuwen, ‘Logic of charity’, 608.

3 Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The first modern economy: success, failure and perseverance of the Dutch economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge, 1997), 60–1.

4 Marco van Leeuwen distinguishes five social groups: the elites (less than 10 per cent of the population), the upper middle class (over 10 per cent of the population), the lower middle class (over a third of the population), lower social groups (a little less than a third of the population) and the lowest social group (over 10 per cent of the population), see Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, De rijke Republiek: gilden, assuradeurs en armenzorg 1500–1800 (The Hague and Amsterdam, 2000), 40–3.

5 On the Dutch ‘bourgeois’ society, see, for example, Prak, Maarten, ‘The Dutch Republic as a bourgeois society’, BMGN 125, 2–3 (2010), 107–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J.L.Price, Dutch society 1588–1713 (London, 2000), especially ch. 4, ‘A bourgeois society?’.

6 Leo Noordegraaf and Jan Luiten van Zanden, ‘Early modern economic growth and the standard of living: did labour benefit from Holland's Golden Age?’, in Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen eds., A miracle mirrored. The Dutch Republic in European perspective (Cambridge, 1995), 410–37.

7 Lee Soltow and Jan Luiten van Zanden, Income and wealth inequality in the Netherlands 16th–20th century (Amsterdam, 1998), ch. 3. See, also, van Bavel, Bas, ‘The medieval origins of capitalism in the Netherlands’, BMGN 125, 2–3 (2010), 45–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Manon van der Heijden, ‘De spanning tussen gemeenschap en individu: sociaal-culturele ontwikkelingen’, in Karel Davids and Marjolein 't Hart eds., De wereld en Nederland: een sociale en economische geschiedenis van de laatste duizend jaar (Amsterdam, 2011), 143–4.

9 Tine de Moor and Jan Luiten van Zanden, Vrouwen en de geboorte van het kapitalisme in West-Europa (Amsterdam, 2006), 77.

10 Maarten Prak, ‘Armenzorg 1500–1800’, in Jacques van Gerwen and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen eds., Studies over zekerheidsarrangementen: risico's, risicobestrijding en verzekeringen in Nederland vanaf de Middeleeuwen (Amsterdam, 1998), 49–90, here 71–5.

11 Lindert, Peter H., ‘Poor relief before the welfare state: Britain versus the continent, 1780–1880’, European Review of Economic History 2 (1998), 101–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 McCants states that the middle classes in particular contributed to excise taxes: Anne E. C. McCants, Civic charity in a Golden Age. Orphan care in early modern Amsterdam (Urbana and Chicago, 1997), 9.

13 However, several studies were conducted on the financing of poor relief within individual cities; see, for example, Kruif, José de, ‘De prijs van de armenzorg. De financiering van de armenzorg in Den Bosch 1750–1900’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 20 (1994), 24–51Google Scholar; van Leeuwen, Marco H. D., ‘Amsterdam en de armenzorg tijdens de Republiek’, NEHA-Jaarboek 95 (1996), 132–61Google Scholar (for an English version, see Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, ‘Overrun by hungry hordes? Migrants’ entitlements to poor relief in the Netherlands, 16th–20th centuries', in S. Hindle and A. Winter eds., Migration, settlement and belonging in Europe, 1500–2000: comparative perspective (forthcoming)).

14 For a map of the Dutch Republic and the location of the cities discussed here, see Figure 1 in Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘The will to give: charitable bequests and community building in the Dutch Republic, c.1600–1800’, in this issue of Continuity and Change. Delft is situated in the province of Holland, to the southwest of Leiden.

15 On religious as well as secular motivations behind charity, see Henk Looijesteijn, ‘Funding and founding private charities: Leiden almshouses and their founders, 1450–1800’; Van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘The will to give’; and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, ‘Giving in early modern history: philanthropy in Amsterdam in the Golden Age’, all in this issue of Continuity and Change.

16 The system of letters of surety (‘actes van indemniteit’), guaranteeing that the municipality or a poor relief institution in a migrant's former residence would pay for assistance if he were to fall into poverty within a specified number of years had, however, been initiated by provincial legislation.

17 Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk and Griet Vermeesch, ‘Reforming outdoor relief. Changes in urban provisions for the poor in the Northern and Southern Low Countries (c. 1500–1800)’, in Manon van der Heijden, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Griet Vermeesch and Martijn van der Burg eds., Serving the urban community. The rise of public facilities in the Low Countries (Amsterdam, 2009), 135–54, here 138–43. An exception is the province of Frisia, where in some towns, charity funds were centralised in the first half of the sixteenth century: Spaans, Joke, ‘De gift aan de armen in Friese steden in de zestiende, zeventiende en achttiende eeuw: toegelicht aan het voorbeeld van Sneek’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 22 (1996), 375–93Google Scholar, here 375–7.

18 On the poor relief provisions in different localities in the Dutch Republic, see Van Nederveen Meerkerk and Vermeesch, ‘Reforming outdoor relief’, 143–8; Charles H. Parker, The reformation of community. Social welfare and Calvinist charity in Holland, 1572–1620 (Cambridge, 1998), 157–87. On the city of Utrecht, see Daniëlle Teeuwen, ‘ “Vande groote swaricheyt der armen deser Stadt”. De reorganisatie van de armenzorg in Utrecht, 1580–1674’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht (2010), 48–65.

19 On the income structure of the House of Giving and the Blocks, see De Kruif, ‘De prijs van de armenzorg’.

20 Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, ‘Histories of risk and welfare in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries’, in O. P. Grell, A. Cunningham and R. Jütte eds., Health care and poor relief in 18th and 19th century Northern Europe (Aldershot, 2002), 32–66.

21 On Utrecht, see Teeuwen, ‘ “Vande groote swaricheyt der armen deser Stadt” ’, 61–2; on Delft, see Ingrid van der Vlis, Leven in armoede. Delftse bedeelden in de zeventiende eeuw (Amsterdam, 2001), 60–1.

22 Historical Centre Overijssel (hereafter HCO), City Archives, inv. no. 85, 13 November 1739; HCO, City Archives, inv. no. 88, 6 February 1756. On the Catholics, also see Hilde van Wijngaarden, Zorg voor de kost. Armenzorg, arbeid en onderlinge hulp in Zwolle, 1650–1700 (Amsterdam, 2000), 78–9.

23 Van Nederveen Meerkerk and Vermeesch, ‘Reforming outdoor relief’, 142.

24 In Delft, Zwolle and Utrecht, for example, fees paid to the city council to allow a couple to be married outside the city were given to the public charities; see, for example, Archives Delft (hereafter AD), Chamber of Charity, inv. no. 289; HCO, City Archives, inv. no. 10125; Utrecht Archives (hereafter UA), Almoners' Chamber, inv. no. 1827 part 32.

25 This poor tax also existed in Schiedam. It was possible to pay this duty off in cash: Van der Vlis, Leven in armoede, 326–40; van der Vlis, Ingrid, ‘“Hebben wij niet schade genoech geleeden?” Zeventiende-eeuwse Delftenaren over armenzorgbelasting’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 22 (1996), 394–416Google Scholar.

26 UA, Almoners' Chamber, inv. no. 1825 part 8, 17 October 1628.

27 De Kruif, ‘De prijs van de armenzorg’. Orphanages, hospitals and other organisations caring for the ‘indoor poor’ often had substantial endowments as well. It would have been too hazardous to rely too much on charitable donations, for these institutions could not so easily cut back on their expenses: McCants, Civic charity in a Golden Age, 152.

28 In Utrecht, there are no financial data available for the Reformed diaconate for the seventeenth century, but in the eighteenth century, more than half of the income came from the proceeds of collections and this proportion is unlikely to have been lower in the century before.

29 AD, Chamber of Charity, inv. nos 287–290. The money put into alms boxes as a share of the total amount collected per year in the city has been calculated for the sample periods 1641–1650, 1671–1680, 1701–1710, 1731–1740, 1761–1770 and 1791–1800.

30 HCO, City Poor Chamber, inv. no. 91; HCO, City Archives, inv. nos 10105–10106 and 10124–10125. The money put into alms boxes as a share of the total amount collected per year in the city has been calculated for the sample periods 1661–1670, 1751–1760, 1771–1780 and 1791–1800.

31 AD, Old City Archives I, inv. no. 17.8, 29 January 1778. The municipality donated 125 guilders to Giesendam.

32 AD, Old City Archives II, inv. no. 1.8, 26 November 1800.

33 HCO, Roman Catholic Poor Chamber, inv. no. 6, 29 November 1739.

34 See for this, and other determinants of giving, Lex Heerma van Voss and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, ‘Charity in the Dutch Republic: an introduction’, in this issue of Continuity and Change.

35 In Delft, for example, two or three services were held on Sundays and one or two during weekdays in the Reformed church. See AD, Chamber of Charity, inv. nos 373–384.

36 This was, for example, the case for the Mennonites in Amsterdam: S. Groenveld, ‘ “Geef van uw haaf een milde gaaf ons arme weesen”: de zorg voor wezen, tot 1800, als onderdeel van de armenzorg’, in S. Groenveld ed., ‘Daar de Orangie-appel in de gevel staat’: in en om het weeshuis der doopsgezinde collegianten, 1675–1975 (Amsterdam, 1975), 9–52, here 37. The Mennonites in Zwolle presumably also did not collect during service, see: HCO, Mennonite Church, inv. no. 155.

37 For the frequency of collections, see the financial records of the charitable institutions: UA, Almoners' Chamber, inv. no. 1827; AD, Chamber of Charity, inv. nos 287–290; City Archives 's-Hertogenbosch (hereafter CAH), Blocks, annual account books Blocks A to I; HCO, City Poor Chamber, inv. no. 91; HCO, City Archives, inv. nos 10105–10111 and 10124–10125; HCO, Roman Catholic Poor Chamber, inv. no. 43; HCO, Reformed Church, inv. no. 323.

38 CAH, Old Archives 's-Hertogenbosch, inv. nos 8289–8413; CAH, Roman Catholic Orphanage, inv. nos 187–205.

39 CAH, Poor prisoners, inv. nos 30–59.

40 In 's-Hertogenbosch, permission to organise extra collections was granted several times because of extreme winters, see, for example: CAH, Reformed diaconate, inv. no. 7, 21 January 1767.

41 The number of poor boxes are sometimes mentioned in the account books of the charitable institutions: CAH, Blocks, annual accounts Blocks A to I; CAH, Reformed diaconate, 257–94. For the alms boxes in Amsterdam, see Van Leeuwen, ‘Giving in early modern history’.

42 On charitable bequests in the Dutch Republic, see Van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘The will to give’.

43 Van Leeuwen, ‘Amsterdam en de armenzorg’, 141. Also, see Spaans, ‘De gift aan de armen’, 383.

44 A ‘day of prayer’ is a Dutch Protestant day of contemplation, announced by provincial or national authorities, on which gratitude to the Lord is expressed and prayers are said to victims of wars, famine and disasters.

45 AD, Old City Archives I, inv. no. 1.10, 8 June 1749.

46 See, for example, CAH, Reformed diaconate, inv. no. 1, 7 January 1689.

47 Donating to collections was sometimes called a ‘plicht’ meaning ‘duty’, see, for example: AD, Old City Archives II, inv. no. 29.1, 13 November 1796.

48 For an example where the wealthy were especially urged to give, see: UA, City Archives I, inv. no. 121, 8 February 1740. For a charitable appeal in which every inhabitant of Zwolle was asked to donate, see, for example: HCO, City Archives, inv. no. 805, 6 February 1699.

49 See, for example, AD, Old City Archives I, inv. no. 1.6, 19 December 1621. Joke Spaans notes that in Haarlem, if the collectors found no one home, they tried again at a later time: Spaans, ‘De gift aan de armen’, 382.

50 Quoted in McCants, Civic charity in a Golden Age, 10.

51 Spaans, ‘De gift aan de armen’, 386–91.

52 On the debate, see Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, The culture of giving. Informal support and gift-exchange in early modern England (Cambridge, 2008), 83–4.

53 See Van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘The will to give’.

54 HCO, City Archives, inv. nos 11276–11279. The explanation that someone was too poor to donate was given for six per cent of the households, which was also the share of the urban population at the time that depended on poor relief: Van Wijngaarden, Zorg voor de kost, 86. According to the account books of the Holdehuis, some 11,000 guilders were collected; see HCO, City Archives, inv. no. 11280. However, the donations in the registers add up to a little less than 9,000 guilders.

55 Van Wijngaarden, Zorg voor de kost, 38–41.

56 N. D. B. Habermehl, ‘De bevolkingssamenstelling in Zwolle van 1628 tot 1748’, Zwols Historisch Jaarboek (1984), 73.

57 See, for example, AD, Old City Archives I, inv. no. 1.3, 25 November 1576.

58 On the residential segregation in Delft in the early nineteenth century, see Lesger, Clé and van Leeuwen, Marco H. D., ‘Residential segregation from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century: evidence from the Netherlands’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 42, 3 (2011), 333–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 350–5.

59 van Leeuwen, Marco H. D., ‘Guilds and middle-class welfare, 1550–1800: provisions for burial, sickness, old age, and widowhood’, Economic History Review 65, 1 (2012), 61–90CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, here 85–6.

60 van Zanden, Jan Luiten and Prak, Maarten, ‘Towards an economic interpretation of citizenship: The Dutch Republic between medieval communes and modern nation-states’, European Review of Economic History 10 (2006), 111–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden, ‘Tax morale and citizenship in the Dutch Republic’, in Oscar Gelderblom ed., The political economy of the Dutch Republic (Ashgate, 2009), 143–65, here 144.

61 Prak and Van Zanden, ‘Tax morale and citizenship’, 154.

62 P. H. A. M. Abels, Nieuw en ongezien. Kerk en samenleving in de classis Delft en Delfland 1572–1621. II: De nieuwe samenleving (Delft, 1994), 217.

63 Aart Vos, Burgers, broeders en bazen. Het maatschappelijk middenveld van 's-Hertogenbosch in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw (Hilversum, 2007), 321.

64 CAH, Reformed diaconate, inv. no. 5, 17 September 1750. The church members' protest was, however, unsuccessful.

65 UA, Almoners' Chamber, inv. no. 1827 part 41.

66 Th. F. Wijsenbeek-Olthuis, Achter de gevels van Delft (Hilversum, 1987), 27.

67 On the number of inhabitants in Zwolle, see Jan Lucassen and Piet Lourens, Inwonersaantallen van Nederlandse steden ca. 1300–1800 (Amsterdam, 1997), 83–4. On the collection revenues in the years 1670 and 1748, see HCO, City Archives, inv. nos 10106 and 10125.

68 HCO, City Archives, inv. nos 10106–10107.

69 UA, Almoners' Chamber, inv. nos 1827 part 7.

70 AD, Chamber of Charity, inv. no. 287.

71 AD, Chamber of Charity, inv. no. 290.

72 CAH, Blocks, annual account books block A to I.

73 AD, Old City Archives I, inv. no. 1231; AD, Chamber of Charity, inv. no. 288.

74 UA, Reformed diaconate, inv. no. 538.

75 See, for example, A. Buursma, ‘Dese bekommerlijke tijden’: armenzorg, armen en armoede in de stad Groningen 1594–1795 (Assen, 2009), 112–17.

76 CAH, Poor prisoners, inv. no. 59; CAH, Old Archives 's-Hertogenbosch, inv. no. 3110.

77 Vos, Burgers, broeders en bazen, 268–9.

78 CAH, Roman Catholic Orphanage, inv. nos 197–200.