Continuity and change among the Rhemish proletariat

History of the Family 6 (2001) 167 – 185

Continuity and change among the Rhemish proletariat: Preindustrial textile work in family perspective Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux* EHESS/CRH, 2 rue Emile Faguet, Paris 75014, France

Abstract Textile workers formed a major part of the population in Rheims at the end of the Old Regime. Traditionally, many pieces of cloth were woven both in urban and rural families for Rhemish manufacturers (fabricants). With economic changes during the 18th century, the French cottage protoindustry was in crisis. Unemployed textile workers, young males and females, moved to town. Family workshops had difficulties surviving in Rheims. One of the sons inherited the family loom, but he rarely kept his independence. Family histories presented in this study show how weavers relied on their family network in and outside the city in order to deal with irregular demand. The market required that production be diversified. At the same time, a concentration of the workforce developed in new, larger family enterprises. The role of female workers in textile production was often elusive. Single women and widows, women alone without a spouse, worked hard to survive and could rarely keep their children at home. D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Textiles; Cottage industry; Intergenerational work

1. Introduction This article focuses on the specific modalities of transmitting skills and responsibilities within the family enterprise. Various types of small, preindustrial commodity production in a European urban context will be examined. The focus is on textile workers and the division of work according to gender in Champagne at the end of the Ancien Re´gime. 2. Rhemish production of ordinary woolen cloth The town of Rheims is now famous for its sparkling wines. In early modern times, leading up to the end of the 18th century, the region was more famous for its textile products; the * Tel.: +33-1-453-96473; fax: +33-1-454-38927. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Fauve-Chamoux). 1081-602X/01/$ – see front matter D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. PII: S 1 0 8 1 - 6 0 2 X ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 6 7 - 7

168

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

celebrated woolen muslin (estamine) of previous centuries had been sold throughout the world. Estamine cloth could be commonly found in Mediterranean markets: ‘‘in Greece, Turkey, Barbary, Rhodes, Candia, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sicily, and Germany. . . The best cloth comes from Rheims and is used in all hot-climate countries for wearing, separating flour from its bran, or purifying drugs and liquors’’ (Nicolay, 1573). Rhemish traditional e´tamine (estamine or tammy) was a fine, open-texture, lightweight worsted cloth of Italian origin (stame), more or less transparent, but strong. The wool was combed and not carded, giving it a nice finish. 2.1. The putting-out system and cottage industry These pieces were above all village products. As a matter of fact, the cottage industry required only rudimentary techniques, since it used just a simple, two-treadle loom. Rural and urban fabrics were all produced in family workshops, mostly by male weavers. The finished local Rhemish product was white, not dyed. Later, when production diversified during the 18th century, some of the e´tamine pieces were woven with stripes (see Tables 1 and 2). This kind of textile was used for bed and window hangings, ladies’ dresses, and linings for men’s coats (Montgomery, 1990). The finest material was reserved for making nun’s habits and veils. The thicker sort of estamine was called buratin (e´tamines burate´es), a coarse medieval cloth with a long nap, used to clothe the poor. When pounded, this material was very comfortable.

Table 1 Rheims textile production: the royal manufacture in 1741 of wool and silk cloth, made both in town and in villages Name and type of textile pieces

Number of looms

Wool cloth Sheets White burat Dauphines Druggets E´tamines ordinary E´tamines burat E´tamines white, trodden E´tamines striped E´tamines for religious voile Flannel Flannel smooth, English style Flannel twilled Serges ordinary Serges morroco, rashes Serges twilled, imperial Perpetuanas Wool and silk cloth Total

6 220 1400 220 321 50 25 360 6 48 25 6 410 843 12 2 25 3979

Source: Official Inquiries, inspection of Rheims textile manufacture, AD Marne, C472.

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

169

Table 2 Rheims textile production: the royal manufacture in 1764 of wool and silk cloth made both in town and in villages Name and type of textile pieces Wool cloth Sheets, fine, Silesian style Bluteaux (bolting cloth) Blankets yellow, green, and white Dauphines tinted in wool Dauphines white Druggets Druggets English style Sheets, Silesian style E´tamines E´tamines royal, sheet style E´tamines fine, second and ordinary E´tamines burate´es (burat style) E´tamines burat E´tamines striped and squared E´tamines for religious voile Flannels Flannels smooth, English style Flannels smooth, ordinary and fine, with nap Flannels twilled, English style Flannels twilled, fine and second Serges Serges imperial Serges morroco, rashes, ordinary, tinted in wool Serges morroco, rashes, first, second and ordinary white Serges morroco, twilled, ordinary, tinted in wool Serges morroco, twilled, first, second and ordinary white Perpetuanas Silk cloth Silk bluteaux Duroys (royales a` la dauphines) Figured silk Watered silk Total

Number of looms

Number of textile pieces

7 10 17 80 240

35 1000 6089 890 4304

65 182

742 2500

9 281 170 130 200 6

106 3546 1323 1263 2703 65

21 31 14 30

140 386 113 350

48 13 416 25 658 10

639 44 6455 417 8247 42

10

75

99 3 2787

434 5 42,902

Source: Official Inquiries, inspection of Rheims textile manufacture, AD Marne, C472.

Commenting on his visit in 1764, the royal inspector, M. Vaulthier, summarized the textile proto-industrial system of production, a system strictly controlled by the state in Northern Champagne, as in other regions: Plain white e´tamines, burats, burate´es (buratin) and religious veils — which are amongst the most famous products of this manufacture — are mostly woven in the countryside and not in the town of Rheims; rural textile workers are therefore members of the urban manufacture and local guilds; they are allowed to buy all necessary tools and raw materials for each specific product they want to weave. Once finished, they have the privilege of offering for

170

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

sale their textile pieces to urban merchants and fabricants who control this labeled trade (Manuscript, Archives, Marne, C472).

Royal inspectors conducted diverse inquiries in 1741 and 1764, which provide precious information about production and products in Rheims and the surrounding area. During the 17th century, serge, a twilled cloth with worsted warp (peigne´e) and woolen weft, woven on a four-treadle loom, supplanted the traditional Rhemish e´tamines that had been easily manufactured. By the middle of the 17th century, the more commonly used dauphines and marocs (morroco serges) were woven on a more elaborate loom. Production of all textiles, as elsewhere, was more strictly regulated (Deyon, 1967; Goubert, 1968) by the royal government, above all in 1669 by Colbert, who was born in a Rhemish merchant family (Bourgeon, 1973; Markovitch, 1976). The number and wide variety of textile products of this manufacture during the 18th century is described in Diderot’s entry on Laine (wool) found in his Encyclope´die: It is no more e´tamine, but a serge Aumale (Norman) type, if the loom has four treadles (and not just two), the weft-yarn is of fine worsted (combed) wool which has been spun loosely on a small spinning wheel, and it is woven twilled. If the weft-yarn is much finer, then it will be a London (fac˛on de Londres) or Saint-Loˆ type serge (Norman). If both the warp and the weftyarn have been spun on a large spinning wheel, as it is done for sheets, then this thick cloth will be called a ratine´, or strong serge (serge forte). If the weft-yarn is of fine spun wool and has been carded (and not worsted), then it makes a beautiful maroc. If the weft-yarn is not so fine (and carded), it makes a bayette or sempiterne (perpetuana). If the worsted weft-yarn is used, it makes a revesche. If the weftyarn is very fine, it may be twilled (maroc double croise´). With a quite ordinary weft-yarn that is not twilled, but has been carded and is still greasy, a dauphine is made. If the weft-yarn is Segovia carded wool woven on a fine warp, it makes the famous Rhemish espagnolette (Diderot, 1762 – 1772).

The latter textile, espagnolette, made of the best imported Spanish wool, carefully cleaned, washed, and carded by the poor workers of Rheims, was clearly included in a 1741 official report (see Table 1). Classed as dauphine, a direct derivative of the traditional e´tamine, it had been woven on a classic loom since medieval times (Desportes, 1979). Of 3979 looms in 1741, 1400 were used specifically for dauphine cloth. The production of linen cloth was not indicated in these tables. Familiar bolts of woolen cloth, bearing an official stamp, were sold on the European market, but traditional linen sheets became available on the local market only gradually and therefore were disregarded by state regulations in 1741: ‘‘A great quantity of linen cloth and of flax of all widths is produced in Rheims. Nearly fifty master weavers are busy at it, but they only work for the local middle class [les bourgeois et leur usage]’’ (Archives, Marne, C472). Textile production had long been in the hands of the cottage industry in Rheims, as in other regions, such as Beauvaisis (Goubert, 1968), Picardy (Deyon, 1967), Cambresis (Terrier, 1996), and Normandy (Bardet, 1983; Gullickson, 1986). Many changes occurred in the European textile sector. Manufacturers tried to follow British models and new techniques, but French protectionism, along with excessive regulations, could not stop the competition

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

171

(Fauve-Chamoux, 1983b). In 1710, the British e´tamine sold in Mexico was said to be of much better quality than the French. In Central America, this cloth was accepted only if its color was musk, or tinted brown, known as ‘‘Saint Franc˛ois’’ color (Berthe, 1992). We know that the French sempiterne (perpetuana) was of good quality, but it lacked the brightness and perfect beauty of the English product imported there. The putting-out system of textile production relied on an a posteriori control by the fabricant. It is difficult to tell whether the fabrics produced on urban looms were better than those produced on rural ones. In fact, the weavers living in towns used to submit their products for inspection once they were finished. No control seems to have been imposed during the weaving process. The exact power of the artisans’ guilds in this region is still be analyzed. Each guild protected both the masters and journeymen in its sector against the state. The merchants — who retained municipal power — played the guilds off against royal regulations. We shall not discuss here how family economy interacted with merchant capital nor the tensions that existed between local (provincial) power and royal power. Needless to say, these interactions played an important role during the French pre-Revolutionary period and probably had a substantial effect on economic and social troubles. 2.2. Diversification and concentration of textile production When comparing production and the number of looms for Rhemish manufacture in 1741 and 1764 (see Tables 1 and 2), we may say that production diversification in the 18th century went hand in hand with the disappearance of linen sheets and village muslin. A great effort was made in the middle of the 18th century to develop silk products: 25 looms for silk weaving in 1741 and 112 looms in 1764. In light of varying production figures, the rural exodus impelled by a change in production techniques and market relations is easier to understand. It produced an urban influx of newly unemployed rural textile workers, both male and female, who had left villages where agriculture could not feed them. Demographic pressure occurred in Europe when economic conditions changed in many ways. Important historical debates still continue today about the agrarian European context and its complex mechanisms of household formation in connection with available resources (Kriedte, Medick, & Schlumbohm, 1981; Mendels, 1981; Ogilvie & Cerman, 1996). In the region under study, the cottage industry was not new. Rural protoindustry and the putting-out system were common in Champagne as early as the 14th century (Desportes, 1979). Rural merchants were ordering and collecting wool and linen products in farms for the urban market. Seventeenth- and 18th-century changes introduced new conditions for the peasant petty commodity production. The independence of the ‘‘industrial’’ family was precarious. In rural areas, young men and women preferred to leave their villages and migrate to town to escape the misery brought about by harvest failures and new wage– labor relations in a Malthusian context of subsistence crisis and demographic pressure (Fauve-Chamoux, 1995; Lachiver, 1992). Many tried to enter domestic service. Specialized textile workers had to learn new weaving methods or be content with carding, combing, or whatever occupation they could find. Lower-class women could never become independent weavers, but many helped by weaving at home on the family loom. All of them knew how to

172

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

spin from an early age, the poorest had a simple distaff while the better-off used a small spinning wheel. Large spinning wheels were reserved for male workers. The way men, women, and children cleaned the wool, prepared the thread, combed, or carded it, as well as the way women spun the wool with a distaff or spinning wheel, was of critical importance to the quality and style of the required yarn. All the work was done on request. The fabricants paid for yarn and textile pieces when they were finished and correctly made (quality and size), according to orders and deadlines. Such a system of proto-industrial production suited familial enterprise and family work, where female work was crucial. European commodity production in the textile sector did not differ from that found in the Orient, such as the Japanese organization observed in Kyoto (Hareven, 1993). Children could find work, but they had to be strongly disciplined and carefully controlled because fabricants refused to pay for low quality or deficient products. Older family members also participated in the family enterprise. In terms of gender differences, female work was of considerable importance at all stages in textile ‘‘manufacture’’ in the past. Women cleaned the wool (ouvie`re en laine, e´plucheuse), carded (cardeuse), combed (peigneuse), spun (fileuse), balled the thread, prepared the warp (ourdisseuse, trameuse), wound bobbins (bobineuse), helped in weaving (tisseuse), cleaned, finished, and dressed the textile pieces (e´pinceteuse, tondeuse, appreˆteuse). Female work was at the same time very difficult to quantify, since women often played a discrete complementary role subordinate to a man — her father, brother, or husband — working in a family group. Any professional structure established on the basis of the listings of tax collectors gives a false impression, underestimating and masking female work (Table 3). In the family workshop, female workers could be very skilled (Hafter, 1995). From the capitation tax roles, the following data for the town of Rheims concerning 1750 and 1789 were established. Only the work of male or female household heads is taken into account, with a distinction made between independent textile masters and textile workers. Table 3 does not take into account the work done in Rheims by members of the family other than the head, since in this period, manufacture still relied mostly on individual and familial work. Weavers worked at home. Some workrooms already existed in the 17th century (see Table 4). In 1685, master weavers rarely employed more than one declared journeyman in a family enterprise (62% had only one extra male hand). During the 18th century, few intown weavers were independent (398 independent masters in 1746 compared to 1500 in 1685). Many highly skilled weavers were impoverished and had to work for a manufacturer (fabricant) and follow strict orders. In the middle of the 18th century, familial work was still very important in Rheims: 25% of the masters weaved ‘‘alone’’ at home on the family loom without a companion, but they certainly had household and family help. Already in 1746, 40% of textile production units was organized in workrooms of at least five workers. Clearly, concentration of production favored the biggest family business in the town. In the 1789 tax list, only 28 women can be found among the 1048 weavers (omitting the 240 master weavers and the 37 serge makers). These women were heads of households, mostly widows who controlled a loom with some male help (a son or a journeyman). At the same time, spinning was a major activity for poor young women. It was different around 1685 when there were at least 1500 master weavers, but they were more modest employers than

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

173

Table 3 Socio-professional structure of the textile proto-industry in the town of Rheims (comparing number of masters and number of workers who are household heads in 1750 and 1789) Textile masters Manufacturers (fabricants, fabricantes) Master weavers of serge (sergers) Estaminiers Mantiers (blanket makers) Wool weavers (tisseurs) Linen weavers (tisserands) Master dressers Total Textile workers Male companions Wool workers Combers Carders (men and women) Spinning person Warp makers Total Combined

1750

1789

17 262 651 26 1203 16 64 2242

240 37 2 42 1048 7 60 1436

130

180

152 625 651 69 1627 3869

130 750 410 120 1590 3026

Source: Nominative tax lists.

their 18th-century successors. This represents the state of decline that occurred in the Rhemish textile industry by the end of the Ancien Re´gime (Fauve-Chamoux, 1983b). Small manufacturers were often in debt. Adding both the production in the countryside and in town, the number of looms appears to have declined from 4000 to 3000 between 1740 and 1765, producing, in 1764, 43,000 lengths of woolen cloth, including 6000 blankets and 600 lengths of silk (Table 2). After the failure of Colbert’s restrictive economic policy, Necker’s efforts to liberalize the trade came too late and could not rescue the manufacture. Thus far, historians have largely concentrated their attention on upward social mobility. But for the circumstances at the end of the Ancien Re´gime in particular, downward mobility was perhaps just as common for poor

Table 4 Master weavers, companions and size of workroom staff, city of Rheims without the countryside, comparing 1685 and 1746 Size of workroom staff Rheims, 1685 Rheims, 1746

Number of masters

Number of companions

Total

0 (%)

1 (%)

2 – 4 (%)

5+ (%)

1500 398

2000 2565

3500 2963

7 25

62 12

30 22

1 41

Source: Nominative tax lists.

174

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

individuals and families with less and less work. In this sector of preindustrial textile manufacture, the most deprived women are found (Fauve-Chamoux, 1990). How many persons and families were involved in textile production and suffered from its crisis?

3. Around the family loom: intergenerational work An estimate of the population involved in textile work at the end of the Ancien Re´gime in this region can be found in Me´moire des gens du Conseil et e´chevins de Reims (1787): ‘‘The community of Rhemish fabricants consists of 350 masters, controlling 3000 looms and producing around 72,000 pieces (town and country). We consider that each loom provides work for ten workers; therefore, this manufacture all in all provides employment for 30,000 persons.’’ This very pessimistic report of 1787 provided some interesting details concerning the low economic situation of local textile workers: ‘‘The local manufactures are divided into many branches; in Rheims, manufacturers are numerous but they may not be compared to big large textile fabricants of other royal manufactures, such as Sedan, Louviers, Lyon, or Lille. In this royal manufacture, they are usually poor, very poor, they live on credit: they owe debts on their houses, and on the wool they use. They pay much later after they have sold their textile pieces, which means, with delay, and with expensive charges’’ (Archives, Rheims, 1787). The textile business in Rheims remained a family affair for a long time. The histories of some families were traced in local archives, and genealogies were established, using vital events, censuses, and tax records.1 The Bruyen family, like others, experienced the dramatic change in the production system. Jean and Poncette were married in 1664 (Fig. 1). They had been weavers of traditional white estamine. Of their 13 children, three boys and three girls survived.2 Jean II, Jacques, and Antoine got married in Rheims and shifted from estamine- to serge-weaving at the turn of the century. Jean II, the first born, had a hard life, and married twice. His sons stayed single. Jacques’ marriage was sterile. Antoine’s family enterprise was successful: his first son, Jean Baptiste, became a fabricant and the business passed into the hands of his daughter and son-in-law. But Jean Joseph, Jean Baptiste’s brother, was an ordinary serge weaver. The economic situation in this family seems to have been controlled by the small number of children born. Some couples used elementary contraception, which allowed each branch to stay above the poverty line (Fauve-Chamoux, 1993).

1

The Rheims data bank, created by Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, includes nominative detailed vital events from parish registers (births, marriages, and deaths) concerning individuals having a patronymic beginning with B in the 14 parishes of Rheims (1668 – 1802) and in the hospitals, together with family reconstitution forms. Tax list and census information was added to family histories and may be studied separately. Genealogies were traced for the present study using family data found in local sources. 2 The number after the name refers to the rank in the genealogy: Franc˛ois III is the third Franc˛ois in the family genealogy under study.

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

175

Fig. 1. Genealogy of Jean Bruyen’s family, Rheims, 1664 – 1802.

In comparison, the descendants of Jean Baptiste Bruyen and Elisabeth Robert, poor weavers in St. Timothe´e parish (Fig. 2), experienced deteriorating living conditions. They had adopted serge-weaving early on, and Nicolas, their son, inherited the four-step loom. He worked with his wife, Nicole, who bore him 11 children. His sister-in law, Elisabeth Doriot, was also at home for awhile, and Nicole accepted her sister’s bastard, Daniel. In those days (1701), at Hoˆtel Dieu, a woman had to declare the father of her illegitimate baby, and no family secret could be kept: baby Daniel was said (whether it was true or a way to protect someone) to be the son of the household master, Nicolas. This strange situation could also be an administrative error due to some homonymous father. When Nicole died in 1710, the weaver remarried immediately, but not his sister-in-law. Lienard, Marie, and Nicolas Antoine, the legitimate children from his first marriage, were aged 14, 12, and 9 years. Soon, Nicolas and his new (weaving) wife, Elisabeth, had five other children, none of whom survived the poor urban environment beyond infancy. Infant mortality was very high in this group. Proper breastfeeding, child care, and a conjugal life were incompatible for women working in the textile industry. Children from Nicolas’s first marriage, Lienard and Marie Bruyen, married neighbors’ children, but they seem to have left town after their ‘‘remarkable weddings’’ (i.e., their

176

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

Fig. 2. Genealogy of Jean Baptiste Bruyen’s family, Rheims, 1655 – 1802.

spouses were born in the same family). They probably went to Paris. The younger brother, Nicolas Antoine, stayed in the local textile sector as a serge weaver. He married in 1728, but his family became very poor and his wife lost at least five of their 11 children, one after the other. Half of them were born in a hospital because the parents could not afford a midwife. Six of the children have unknown destinies. They may have died at country wet nurses or emigrated. In the textile sector, mothers did not always succeed in raising families. In any case, this generation died out locally. No children survived the economic and demographic problems of this Rhemish family, which specialized in producing local textiles. Family transmission failed. Some families were a little more successful in their reproductive strategy, even if they lost many children in infancy. Fig. 3 shows how the descendants of Pierre and Elisabeth F. got through major difficulties. Their son, Jean, married the daughter of a modest baker. Anne B. was a carding woman, born in 1672, and she worked hard. Eight of their 12 children died. Jean Baptiste was the only child to stay in Rheims and marry. He was a weaver, and his wife, Anne Marie, was a textile worker who specialized in finishing cloth (e´pinc˛eteuse). She gave birth to 11 children, five of whom died in infancy. Traces of the last children have been lost. They probably died at wet nurses. Three children survived; two girls and one boy. Philippe, their only living son, decided to leave the family loom and became a shoemaker. This was not such a good choice because it did not allow him to feed his family in the pre-Revolutionary period. He lost four young children and his wife, Barbe. Jeanne, his older sister, married, but Nicole, his other sister, did not, and she became a spinner and led a precarious life. She died single at the age of 54. In most of the textile families studied, it appears that only one branch was able to pass on the occupation of weaving to the next generation. This is even clearer in the following case of the Blaviers.

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

177

Fig. 3. Genealogy of Pierre Bruyen’s family, Rheims, 1660 – 1802.

Didier Blavier came from Rethel and settled in Rheims in 1730, when he married. In the records, he was variously referred to as a day laborer (manouvrier) or a serge weaver, sometimes exempt from taxation as he struggled to keep his family together (Fig. 4). His wife, Elisabeth R., of humble Rhemish origins, could neither read nor write, but knew how to spin wool perfectly. Four of their children died. They had two sons who lived. The eldest, Nicolas Louis, was born in 1733. He became a serge weaver like his father. Later, when work was scarce and his loom stayed silent, he turned to carding to feed the family. His son, Remi, inherited the loom. Didier’s youngest son, Nicolas, was born in 1735. He also became a weaver in the rue de Venise. At the age of 35, he married Suzanne, a widow who died 3 months later in 1770. After living alone for 4 years, he married another widow from the same quarter, Marie Henry, who was already 40 years old and would give him an only daughter named Marie Anne. She was 13 years old in 1790 when her mother died in a hospital at the age of 58. Nothing more is known about her father, Nicolas, except that he died before 1798, probably on a battlefield while serving in the Revolutionary army. We assume that he was never an independent weaver. His only child was an orphan. Marie Anne Blavier’s distaff was her only means of supporting herself decently. Born in Rheims in 1777 of the second marriage of Nicolas, a very poor weaver, she lived in the parish

178

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

Fig. 4. Genealogy of Jean Blavier’s family, Rheims, 1690 – 1802.

of St. Etienne. She never left the textile working quarter of the town, which was situated between the basilica St. Re´mi and the small river called the Vesles. Marie Anne, however, lived in five different houses. (The annual tax lists allow us to follow her life course.) Despite the presence in neighboring parishes of close relatives, all of whom were combers, carders, or serge weavers (see Fig. 4), Marie Anne drifted from one place to another, which must have been a miserable existence. But was it a lonely one? She lived from hand to mouth in her lodgings in rue Flechambaut, where she became pregnant at the age of 19. She spent her confinement at Hoˆtel Dieu (an almshouse) in October 1795, where she gave birth to little Franc˛oise, whom she almost immediately abandoned to charity. Three weeks later, the child died in the house of a wet nurse recruited by the hospital administration. Marie Anne gave birth to two other illegitimate daughters in 1798 and 1799, who died under the same circumstances. She never saw them again after giving birth in the hospital. Marie Anne was a spinning girl (fille fileuse) without savings, and there was no way

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

179

she could raise her illegitimate children. At the end of the 18th century, no one asked whom the fathers of such children were. A century earlier in the same almshouse, she would have had to submit to an interrogation, as Elisabeth Doriot had done (Fig. 2). If we consider all illegitimate births before 1750, 70% of the fathers were named; but for the period between 1779 and 1792, only 0.4% were known. Illegitimacy became so common that paternity was no longer questioned. Asking the father for financial support was out of date. In this period, abandoning bastards became a common practice (Fauve-Chamoux, 1985). For Rheims, more than 50% of these infants died in the care of badly paid wet nurses (Chamoux, 1973a, 1973b). The proportion was higher in Paris and Rouen. Whether Marie Anne’s pregnancies were due to occasional prostitution or to concubinage is not known (Laslett, 1977). A 26-year-old spinner in 1802, she could be found in the home of a wool carder, a textile worker of the lowest rank. In her uncle Nicolas Louis’s family, a loom was active and produced serge cloth until the beginning of the 19th century when, finally, pauperization commonly occurred. Marie Simone, Marie Anne’s cousin, also bore an illegitimate baby. The family stopped weaving. Like other modest families, they came from rural origins. They had been affected previously by the economic crisis of the early modern period in the textile sector. One or two generations earlier, many weavers left the Sedan region, a center of another famous antique textile manufacture. They had expected to find better living conditions in Rheims. The majority of migrant workers who came to Rheims, however, were from nearby regions. 3.1. The migrant working class and rural roots Among the many immigrants who came to Rheims was young Franc˛ois Bruyant, born in 1735 (Fig. 5). He immigrated from Annelles, a village in the middle of the proto-industrial textile region, not far from Rethel and controlled by Rhemish fabricants and merchants. He was already a weaver, who specialized in serge woolcloth, which meant that he did not belong to the lowest proletariat. Apart from his service in the militia in 1759, this man stayed with his wife Perette, the daughter of a Rhemish baker. She was 5 years older than her husband and gave birth to six children. Only two survived, Franc˛ois and Hubert (born in 1764 and 1765). Franc˛ois did not pay a penny of taxes for years. He was a typical ‘‘crypto-inhabitant’’ of Rheims, as was his father, Etienne, before him. They were part of a mobile, laboring population of textile workers who survived despite the xenophobic hostility of the local worthies (Coquault, 1870; Fauve-Chamoux, 1988) mainly because they filled the gaps left by natural demographic accidents in the towns of the Ancien Re´gime. They offered an elastic work force, generation after generation, even when their social integration was unsuccessful. They might have been soldiers for many years who came home to procreate. At the same time, they clearly kept family ties with the native village while even though their own families were in town. This male mobility model differs from the classic seasonal type, i.e., when a rural day laborer would leave his farm for a temporary activity. This model was more complex, since a skilled worker, who failed to settle as an independent artisan, was frequently absent. His wife and children stayed in town, under the protection of the maternal family network. The husband was making money in the army, or, perhaps, helping his own parents

180

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

Fig. 5. Genealogy of Franc˛ois Bruyan’s family, Rheims, 1685 – 1802.

in the village. Franc˛ois Bruyant must have experienced this situation, since, like his father, he did not pay taxes in Rheims. His father, Etienne, was certainly an example of this pattern. Etienne Bruyant was a day laborer (manouvrier), born in Annelles in 1691. He maintained his residential status in the village, but worked in Rheims, where, in 1734, he married Catherine, already a widow. At the age of 43, he was not in the first flush of youth. He probably came to town looking for work (any work) and for a wife. Certainly, he managed to escape taxation all his life by maintaining the fiction that his place of residence was in the countryside. Franc˛ois, his son, was born in the village, but later the family lived mostly in Rheims. When Etienne lost his second wife, Marie T., he decided to spend his last days in the almshouse of Rheims, where he died at the age of 72 in 1763. He did not ask his children to care for him. At least two children could have welcomed him in town during his old age: his son, Franc˛ois, a mobile weaver but safely married, and a daughter, Marie Madeleine, an unmarried working girl who died at the age of 27, 2 years after Etienne, her father, died in misery. As for the next generation, Etienne’s grandchildren, Hubert and Franc˛oise, brother and sister, lived together in Rheims, at 9 rue Tour du Puits and wove serge as their father, Franc˛ois, did before them when he was in town. Their celibacy was the price they had to pay to be independent weavers. Without a wife or female servant, a single man relied on the devotion of a sister, a member of the same conjugal family unit. The closest female sibling maintained his household. She fetched water, made the fire, prepared food, made sure bread was always in the house, and kept wine and salt on the table. And she also worked as a weaver. At the turn of the 19th century, for this reason, the weaver Hubert Bruyant, aged 36, still lived with his sister Franc˛oise, who was 2 years his senior. Here were a brother and sister living together for better

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

181

or worse, unmarried, both born in Rheims of an immigrant, as well as their four brothers and sisters who all died at a very early age (Fig. 5). 3.2. Ursule’s enterprise: professional chain migration and family network Etienne I Bruyant, a workman from Annelles born in 1691, had a younger brother Franc˛ois II, a day-laborer born about 1700, who had married Marie Anne, the younger sister of Etienne’s wife from his home village. Certainly, the two households were strongly allied, with children and first cousins sharing the same grandparents, reinforcing the family alliance. The rural–urban permanent movements reveal a subtle and mysterious strategy that benefits from alliances of this kind. There were reciprocal exchanges of services, but seemingly also a fundamental respect for the independence of each household. Franc˛ois’ five sons — Nicolas, Etienne II, Amant, Antoine, and Jean Baptiste — were drawn to town and set themselves up in Rheims. The oldest son, Nicolas, died in town, still unmarried at the age of 39 in 1779. Etienne II, the second son who was probably the godson of his uncle (they had the same first name), was married in Rheims in 1776. He was a weaver. His wife, Ursule Thomas, 35, was born in Juniville and had already worked in Rheims for a long time, possibly as a domestic servant. When her husband died in 1792, Ursule identified herself as a ‘‘fabricante,’’ but the modest tax of two livres and 10 sols that the couple paid annually suggests that she may have run a small domestic workshop (with how many companions, having no children alive?) on the long street rue du Barbaˆtre. Lined on both sides by small houses of textile workers, it was a thoroughfare that separated the rich from the poor sector, the traders from the urban laborers. Maps of the spatial distribution of textile workers reveal a considerable concentration around St. Re´mi, in the parishes of St. Timothe´e and St. Julien. The upper middle class, merchants, and their servants lived far away in the old town surrounding the cathedral. The quarter situated south of the Roman town, the parishes of St. Jacques and Ste. Madeleine, formed a middle-class zone (Fauve-Chamoux, 1990). Ursule seems to have had fairly good business sense. As a widow without a son, she managed her textile trade quite well. The nearby presence of her brothers-in-law must have helped. She was in the center of the Rhemish textile quarter, in the heart of her large family network, and she was born in the middle of the putting-out region. She had a basic education, and a better knowledge of writing, reading, and counting than her sisters-and brothers-in-law. Throughout the 18th century in this part of town, women were usually unable to write, particularly if they came from the country. In the Bruyant family and its many branches, the sisters-in-law came from three neighboring villages northeast of Rheims, a region with intensive textile activity of the proto-industrial type. Unfortunately, nothing is known about Ursule’s own siblings, who could also have been living in town and working with or for her. Franc˛ois II’s third son, Amant, was a poor weaver. On September 8, 1787, his first wife, Jeanne Lacaille, died in the hospital at age 44. He probably married her in Saulx Saint Re´mi, in the bride’s parish. In 1789, he is noted as being absent and exempt from paying tax. On June 12, 1789, their only son, Etienne III, died at age 7 while living in St. Timothe´e. The

182

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

child was not born in Rheims, but probably at his mother’s parental house in the native village. Probably his Aunt Ursule, the ‘‘fabricante’’ wife of his godfather, Etienne II, looked after him for 2 years following the death of his mother while his father was absent. When Amant, now a childless widower, returned in October 1790 to live in Rheims, he remarried a woman of 50 (10 years older than he was), who was born in the village of Chigny and twice widowed. He took up residence in her house and went on weaving probably for Ursule, his sister-in-law. Antoine, the fourth son in this family, who was also a weaver, was the only one unable to write. He married a widow younger than he was. Born in Rheims, she was also illiterate (only very poor women born in the city at that time remained illiterate). The couple never left the parish, but lived successively in two houses. They had three children living at home in 1802, aged 15, 7, and 2, and five who had died in infancy. The last brother of this family, Jean Baptiste, also practiced the craft of weaving. In 1784, he married Jeanne Salmon, whose native village was Amagne. Being a wool worker (ouvrie`re en laine), this woman did not help her husband weave. He must have woven in a workshop because they were likely too poor to afford a loom at home. The couple occupied three different houses. Jeanne continued to work, and seven of their 10 children died between 1784 and 1802. In this type of very modest family, children were not given to wet nurses. On the other hand, because Ursule, their neighbor, considered herself a ‘‘fabricante,’’ she probably adopted the urban, middle-class practice of sending her babies to wet nurses in the countryside. This might explain why Ursule’s three daughters disappeared from Rheims soon after birth. In all branches of this large textile family, infant mortality was dangerously high. Cumulatively, the reasons for this low rate of survival could have been the poor nutrition of the mother, prematurity, low birth weight, absent or insufficient breastfeeding, and poor sanitary conditions (Fauve-Chamoux, 1997, 1998). No evidence has been found of women who worked in the textile sector explicitly, having been employed as domestic servants before marriage. Once again, Ursule could have been the exception. Domestic service provided new contacts, knowledge, and behavior (Fauve-Chamoux, 1997). This might explain why she succeeded in business, if not in keeping her children alive: she took advantage of her family workforce and network. The Bruyant family belonged to a specific migrant proletariat of specialized textile workers who faced unemployment in Champagne. They were not like those starving, unskilled beggars who periodically haunted the town. These small households of intermarried weavers did not live together in fre´reˆches, but they were close neighbors. Although they emigrated on different dates, they were mobile elements in the social fabric of the town; even if they were able to leave their parish, they tried not to leave their social circle or district. Only in the wealthier districts of merchants, officials, and bourgeois was it possible to find households of kinsmen in co-residence or in close proximity to one another. The rare extended family living together was usually due to an unmarried brother or sister, or widowed parent. Two couples never lived together. Parents and a married child could live in the same house, but separately, on different floors. Most households were small.

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

183

3.3. Broken families vs. family enterprise The urban family in 18th-century Rheims was small, averaging only 3.2 members per household. Mortality was high and there was a general surplus of women. In this context, a woman’s position was of considerable significance. If the number of single-person households was high in the large towns of the time, it was due to the number of households headed by women. Indeed, as many as 52% of households headed by females was mostly poor women living on their own. Many were spinning. Widowhood usually impoverished the household. The case of Ursule Thomas, who as a widow became a fabricante, appears to be exceptional for this proletarian social group. As the previous families of textile workers have shown, this class formed a majority in the working population of Rheims at the end of the Ancien Re´gime. Working widows were forced to send their children to be apprenticed and their babies to nurses. Thus, the more female-headed households that a town had, the smaller the average household size, and the poorer the population, the smaller the family unit. In Rheims, the average size of poor households headed by women was 1.4. Thus, an ordinary widow did not have the necessary means to feed her children from the income from her own work. She often had to close the family enterprise when she did not have a son or nephew to take over the trade, or a brother or brother-in-law to run the loom. Taxation registers allow us to confirm that women generally were poorly qualified and skilled, and were thus confined to the lowestpaid jobs. In a large town like Rheims in Champagne, where there was a general proletarianization, a woman headed one household out of four by the end of the Ancien Re´gime (Fauve-Chamoux, 1983a, 1986). We argue that this demographic and gender situation, with few notable exceptions (see Ursule’s case), worked against family enterprise in the lowest social group of textile weavers, in which strong male hands were required as highly specialized artisans. Given a high urban mortality and high immigration of young adults, the frequent absence of children, and the absence of old people in such families left many preparatory tasks to female hands, who were badly paid. This situation might have led to child neglect. In an urban context, having an heir was important when some patrimonial belongings could be transmitted to the next generation. Adoption was an alternative to not having children (FauveChamoux, 1996), but many proletarian families died out. The French economic crisis in the textile sector had dramatic consequences for Rhemish early modern families. Most of them did not succeed in maintaining the weaving occupation, although some major fabricants were able to benefit from more concentrated production. In the workshops of master weavers, one of the sons inherited the family loom, but rarely kept his independence. Facing underemployment, young men left for Paris or died in the Revolutionary or Napoleonic armies. Young women who did not aspire to domestic service or to emigration had to be satisfied with spinning and possibly abandoning their illegitimate babies to charity. The textile manufacture in Rheims failed to undergo mechanization. All important textile centers collapsed at the end of the Ancien Re´gime in Champagne; the hosiery in Troyes (the center of the famous medieval fairs) was the only textile success, thanks to new framework knitting machines. In Rheims, weavers had abandoned linen for wool and

184

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

estamine for weaving strong serge on big looms. They never shifted to cotton, however, and silk weaving was killed by the success of Lyon. Rhemish textile production was, as far as we can tell, virtually absent on the colonial trade scene, unlike Rouen, a larger town with a harbor and a more favored position in relation to Paris and the sea-borne trade. At the end of 18th century, Rheims had definitely lost the European and Mediterranean market for its textile products. But Rhemish merchants and negociants knew they could rely on their unique world-class wines for a long time.

References Bardet, J.-P. (1983). Rouen aux XVIIe et XVIIIe sie`cles: les mutations d’un espace social. Paris: Sedes. Berthe, J.-P. (1992). Nouveaux Me´moires touchant le Mexique ou la Nouvelle-Espagne, du capitaine Jean de Montse´gur, 1707 – 1714. Revue de la Bibliothe`que Nationale, 45, 50 – 65. Bourgeon, J.-L. (1973). Les Colbert avant Colbert, destin d’une famille marchande. Paris: PUF. Chamoux, A. (1973a). Mise en nourrice et mortalite´ des enfants le´gitimes. Annales de De´mographie Historique (Paris), 418 – 422. Chamoux, A. (1973b). L’enfance abandonne´e a` Reims a` la fin du XVIIIe sie`cle. Annales de De´mographie Historique (Paris), 263 – 285. Coquault, O. (1870). Me´moires. Travaux de l’Acade´mie Nationale de Reims, 52. Desportes, P. (1979). Reims et les Re´mois aux XIIIe et XIVe sie`cles. Paris: Picard. Deyon, P. (1967). Amiens, capitale provinciale, e´tude sur la socie´te´ urbaine au XVIIe sie`cle. Paris: Mouton. Diderot, D., et al. (1762 – 1772). Encyclope´die (Paris). Fauve-Chamoux, A. (1983a). The importance of women in an urban environment: the example of the Rheims household at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In: R. Wall, J. Robin, & P. Laslett (Eds.), Family forms in historic Europe ( pp. 475 – 492). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Fauve-Chamoux, A. (1983b). Re´mois et re´moises d’Ancien Re´gime. In: Histoire de Reims ( pp. 193 – 228). Toulouse: Privat. Fauve-Chamoux, A. (1985). Innovation et comportement parental en milieu urbain (XVe – XIXe sie`cles). Annales (ESC), 5, 1023 – 1039. Fauve-Chamoux, A. (1986). La femme seule, une re´alite´ urbaine: l’exemple de Reims au de´but du XIXe sie`cle. Me´moires de la Socie´te´ d’ACSA de la Marne, 101, 295 – 305. Fauve-Chamoux, A. (1988). Les structures familiales en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe sie`cles. In: J. Dupaˆquier (Ed.), Histoire de la population franc˛aise, (vol. 2, pp. 317 – 347). Paris: PUF. Fauve-Chamoux, A. (1990). Destin de femmes et manufacture textile a` Reims avant la re´volution industrielle. In: La donna nell’economia secc. XIII – XVIII ( pp. 225 – 245). Prato: Le Monnier. Fauve-Chamoux, A. (1993). Household forms and living standards in preindustrial France. Journal of Family History, 18, 135 – 156. Fauve-Chamoux, A. (1995). Female mobility and urban population in preindustrial France (1500 – 1900). In: A. Eiras-Roel, & O. Rey Castelao (Eds.), Internal migrations and medium distance migrations in historical Europe ( pp. 43 – 71). Santiago de Compostela: CIDH. Fauve-Chamoux, A. (1996). Beyond adoption: orphans and family strategies in preindustrial France. The History of the Family, An International Quarterly, 1, 1 – 14. Fauve-Chamoux, A. (1997). Differential infant mortality in past Europe: main cultural factors. Nichibunken Papers, 13, 1 – 17. Fauve-Chamoux, A. (2000). Human breast milk and artificial infant feeding. In: K. F. Kiple, & C. K. Ornelas (Eds.), The Cambridge world history of food ( pp. 626 – 635). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

A. Fauve-Chamoux / History of the Family 6 (2001) 167–185

185

Goubert, P. (1968). Cent mille provinciaux au XVIIe sie`cle: Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 a` 1700. Paris: Flammarion. Gullickson, G. L. (1986). Spinners and weavers of Auffay. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Hafter, D. M. (1995). Women who wove in the eighteenth-century silk industry in Lyon. In: D. M. Hafter (Ed.), European women and preindustrial craft ( pp. 42 – 64). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hareven, T. (1993). Tisseurs en soie a` Kyoto: famille et travail a` travers une activite´ traditionnelle en pleine mutation. Revue de la Bibliothe`que Nationale, 48, 42 – 47. Kriedte, P., Medick, H., & Schlumbohm, J. (1981). Industrialisation before industrialisation. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Lachiver, M. (1992). Les anne´es de mise`re. Paris: Fayard. Laslett, P. (1977). Family life and illicit love in earlier generations. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Markovitch, T. (1976). Les industries lainie`res de Colbert a` la Re´volution. Gene`ve: Droz. Me´moire des gens du Conseil et e´chevins de Reims. (1787). Mendels, F. (1981). Industrialization and population pressure in eighteenth-century Flanders. New York: Arno Press. Montgomery, F. M. (1990). Textiles in America, 1650 – 1870. New York: Norton. Nicolay, N. de. (1573). Dictionnaire du Commerce (Paris). Ogilvie, S. C., & Cerman, M. (Eds.) (1996). European proto-industrialization. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Terrier, D. (1996). Les deux ages de la proto-industrie. Les tisserands du Cambresis et du Saint Quentinois, 1730 – 1880. Paris: EHESS. Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux is Maıˆtre de confe´rences at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2, rue Emile Faguet, Paris 75014, France, and General Secretary of the International Commission of Historical Demography.