Fallen women and fatherless children: Jewish domestic servants in eighteenth-century Altona

Abstract

Records covering a brief period in eighteenth-century Altona reveal a pattern of behavior within the Jewish servant class that was widespread among non-Jewish neighbors. Jewish maidservants bore a significant number of children out of wedlock. These children came to the attention of communal authorities because of the dispute over who was responsible to bury them should they die. The unique arrangement that existed between the three communities Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek caused these disputes to be recorded; ordinarily the matter would have remained shrouded in silence. Both the pattern of pregnancy and childbirth out of wedlock, as well as the tendency of community or magistracy to place the sole responsibility on the mother, were characteristic of non-Jewish European society in the eighteenth century. A notable departure from the non-Jewish norm was that none of the Jewish mothers in these records was charged with infanticide.