The Long History of Old Age

Abstract

This superbly illustrated collection of essays covers the history of old age in the West from antiquity through to the twentieth century. Pat Thane has brought together a group of well established scholars, all of whom have already made significant contributions to the history of ageing: Tim Parkin, Shulamith Shahar, Lynn Botelho, David Troyansky, Thomas Cole, and Claudia Edwards. The essays are bound together in a compelling but not restrictive fashion around pivotal questions about old age in the past. What proportion of a given population was ‘old’? How were the elderly portrayed in the visual and written arts? What were medical views and actions regarding old age? And what was the nature and quality of life, within the household and in society at large, for the aged? Although each essay succinctly but subtly answers these questions, the most valuable contribution of the collection as a whole comes from the ways in which the book presents the ‘long history’ of old age in such a manner that we can finally begin to see clearly key elements of change and, more strikingly, continuity across Europe (and, in later periods, North America). An overarching theme in these essays is the great variety of images and experiences of old age in any given culture. Old age was experienced in dramatically different ways not merely over time, but even more importantly, according to class, gender, region of habitation, family circumstances, personal health and personality. At the same time, however, an older person's attitudes and opportunities were fundamentally determined by the historical moment in which he or she lived. Four main areas of change over time emerge in the volume, all pivoting on the era of industrialisation and modernisation from the later eighteenth century. One of the most important innovations of the modern period was the introduction of pensions—first among civil servants in the eighteenth century, and later, in the early twentieth century, by national pension plans. Such schemes not only revolutionised thinking and practice in regards to retirement, but also they altered the entire ‘economy of makeshifts’ that had characterised the lives of all but the well-to-do elderly throughout the previous centuries. Surprisingly, vicious ageist stereotypes in art and literature appear to decline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As we move away from the many allegorical and symbolic representations of old age in the medieval and early modern eras, we generally see more sympathetic, individualistic and accurate depictions of older people from the nineteenth century onwards. This later period also witnessed the abandonment of humoural conceptions of the physiology of old age (the notion that people become colder and dryer as they age), the medicalisation of old age, and the emergence of geriatric medicine. Finally, this collection clearly acknowledges the marked disconnect in old age history that occurred with the extension of the lifespan in the twentieth century. These elements of change notwithstanding, areas of continuity tend to stand out very prominently here. Old people from classical Greece to twentieth-century America valued their independence and generally worked into their later years as they sought to retain their autonomy. Reciprocal obligations among family members have been consistently important to the elderly, but community ties were also essential to the wellbeing of the aged throughout the course of history. While the last two centuries may have toned down the level of scorn directed towards older people, the aged have always been derided and mocked by some elements of society, and intergenerational tensions have been constant. There was no ‘scarcity value’ in being old, since Western society has always contained a significant number of the elderly, and no true gerontocracies have existed in Europe's past. Perhaps most poignantly, we can see that old age has always rendered people particularly vulnerable to isolation. Indeed, the images and anecdotes regarding older people abandoned in institutions are undeniably powerful—from the reproduction of Pio Albergo Trivulzio's haunting painting, Those Left Behind at Christmas, in the introduction, to the ‘chilling’ photographs from nineteenth-century British workhouses in the chapter by Thomas Cole and Claudia Edwards. This collection of essays manages to capture such facets of life with deep empathy, while still presenting the essential elements of a narrative history of old age in a crisp, concise and accessible manner, with brilliantly chosen and helpfully annotated images.