Elderly widows and widowers and their coresidents in late 19th- and early 20th-century England and Wales

Abstract

This article examines the family and household patterns of widowers and widows in England and Wales between 1891 and 1921 in terms of the proportion of widowers and widows who lived with never- or ever-married children, servants, or inmates, with nonrelatives only, or on their own. The absence of marked change between 1891 and 1921 in the frequency with which elderly widowers and widows lived with a married or never-married child are in line with the Laslett [J. Fam. Hist. 12 (1987) 263.] expectation that family patterns evolve only slowly, certainly much slower than the forces of political and economic change. Where changes can be detected, as in the decline in frequency of coresidence with servants or inmates, these changes were experienced by the younger as well as the older widowed and by married people. Apparently, the residence patterns of the elderly widowed changed due to the introduction of means-tested old-age pensions in 1910. A second investigated is the extent to which the socioeconomic environment influenced the residence patterns of the widowed in a given time period. The effect in general proves to be weak with little difference between one environment and another in the frequency with which widowers coresided with their children and evidence of gender balancing of the household (relatively more widows living with sons and more widowers with daughters) visible only in agricultural environments.