Old age and menopausein rural women of early modern suffolk

Women and Ageing in British Society since 1500

Volumn , Issue , 2014, Pages 43-65

  Botelho, Lynn ^a  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

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EID: 85082731667     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Chapter

References (47)

1. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Issurei Bi'ah, ch. 9 (5).
2. Michael Signer, 'Honour the hoary head. The aged in the Medieval Jewish community', in Michael Sheehan, ed., Aging and the Aged in Medieval Europe (Toronto, 1990), pp.42-3.
3. K.M. Weiss, 'Evolutionaryp erspectiveso n humana ging', in P.T. Amoss and S. Harrell, eds, Other Ways rif Growing Old: Anthropological Perspectives(Stanford, CA, 1982), p.32.
4. For example: Shahar, Growing Old, pp.12-35; R.M. Smith, 'Some issues concerning families and their property in rural England 1250-1800' in R.M. Smith, ed., Land, Kinship and Life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984), p.84
5. Tim Wales, 'Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle: some evidence from seventeenthcentury Norfolk', p.371.
6. E.A. Wrigley and R. Schofield, The Population History rif England 1541-1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, 1989, 2nd edn).
7. A notable and important exception to these criticisms is Joel Rosenthal's study of medieval England, Old Age in I/tte Medieval England. Yet, his study of ageing is largely an investigation of male old age. He claims that 'matriarchy and the culture of old women, whether on their own or in extended family households, is mostly a lost topic, worth investigation, but hard to treat otiier than anecdotally'. Joel T. Rosenthal, Old Age in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 1996), p.30.
8. John Smith, The Pourtract of Old Age (London. 1666), p. 18. A more recent reiteration of this view is found in Ronald Blythe's The Vieiv in Winter (London, 1979), p.226, when the aged schoolmaster remarks, 'old age doesn't necessarily mean that one is entirely old-all old, if you follow me'. Henry CuiTe, The Differences of the Ages of Man (London, 1607), p. 120.
9. Haim Hazan, Old Age: Constructionsa nd Deconstructions(Cambridge, 1994), pp. 63-68.
10. Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modem England 1550-1720 (Oxford, 1998), pp.76-7.
11. L.W. Simmons, The Role of the Aged in Primitive Society (New Haven, CT, 1945), p. 15
12. J. Roebuck, 'When does old age begin? The evolution of the English definition', Journal of Social History 12 (1979), p.426; Rosenthal, Old Age, pp.10, 17, 37, passim.
13. E. Muir, 'Observing trifles', in E. Muir and G. Ruggiero, eds, Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe, trans. E. Brandi (London, 1991), p. ix.
14. L.A. Botelho, 'Provisions for the elderly in two early modern Suffolk communities', unpublished PhD thesis (University of Cambridge, 1995), pp.96-123.
15. M. Tfiesele and N. Howell, '"The old people give you lite": aging among IKung hunier-gaihcrv, in Other Ways of Growing Old, p.79
16. J. Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society: A Imdon Suburb in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 163-4
17. Hazan, Old Age, pp. 13-27
18. M. Pelling, The Common Lot: Sichiess, Medical Occupations and the Urban Poor in Early Modern England (London, 1998), p. 155.
19. Peter N. Stearns,' Old women: some historical observations' Journal of FamilY History 5 (1980), p.44.
20. L.A. Dean, Jones Women's Bodiesi n ClassicalG reek Science(Oxford, 1994), pp.103
21. Dean Jones Women's Bodies, p. l07; Mendelsona nd Crawford, Womeni n Early Modem England, p.23.
22. Winnifred B. Culter and Celso-Ramon Garcia, Menopause: A Guidef or Women and Yhose who Love Yhem, rev. edn (London, 1993), p.47.
23. D.W. Amundsen and CJ. Dyers, 'The age of menarche in medieval Europe', Human Biology 45 (1973), pp.363-9
24. J.B. Post, 'Ages of menarche and menopause: some medieval authorities', Population Studies 25 (1971), pp.83 7. Sec also Culter and Garcia, Menopause, p.39; Dean-Jones, Women's Bodies, p. 106;
25. J. Delaney, MJ, Iupton and E. Toth, 'The Curse: A Cultural History of Menopause (New York, 1976), p. 178. Mendelson and Crawford, in their Women in Early Modern England, p.25, estimate the onset of menopause to be between 45 and 50 years of age. Although controversial, there is some evidence to suggest that 'the length of die reproductive phase of the life course has expanded and contracted during various periods of history'. Jane B. Lancaster and Barbara
26. J. King, 'An evolutionary perspective on menopause' in In Her Prime: New Views on Middle-aged Women, 2nd edn, Virginia Kerns and Judith K. Brown, eds (Chicago, 1992), p.11.
27. Germaine Greer, The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause (New York, 1991), pp. 140-59; Stearns, 'Old women', p.45.
28. P.T. Amoss with the Salish Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest in 'Coast Salish Elders', in Other Wqys rifGrowing Old, p.230; Biesele and Howell, 'The old people', p.79.
29. Lucinda McCray Beier, Suffirers and Healers: The Experience rif Illness in Seventeenth Century England (London, 1982), p.147.
30. Dean-Jones, Women's Bodies, pp. 105-9; I. Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Women: A Study in The Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge, 1980), pp.36, 52, 61.
31. I. Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Women: A Study in The Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge, 1980), pp.36, 52, 61.
32. David Gentilcore, 'The fear of disease and the disease of fear', in William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts, eds, Fear in Early Modern Society (Manchester, 1997), pp. 184-208.
33. Sir Hugh Piatt, The Accompliskt Ixuiys Delight in Preserving, Physick, and Cookery (London, n.d.), pp.80-98.
34. Luoto Riitta, Jaakko Kapro and Antti Uutela, 'Age at natural menopause and sociodemographic status in Finland', American Journal of Epidemiology 139(199i), no.1. pp.64 76, csp. p.65; Culter and Garcia, Menopause, p. 109.
35. J. Norden, The labyrinth of Mans Life. Or Vertues Delight and Envies Opposite (London, 1609).
36. Anon, A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen, or, The Art of Preserving, Conserving, and Candying (London, 1608); L.A. Botelho, 'English housewives in theory and in practice, 1500-1640', unpublished MA thesis (Portland State University, 1991), pp.46-8, 59-60.
37. 'Managing menopause: an update', Harvard Women's Health Watch 5 (1998). no. 5, pp.2-3; Richard A. Posner, Aging and Old Age (London, 1995), p.24.
38. Richard A. Posner, Aging and Old Age (London, 1995), p.24.
39. M.J. Dobson, Contours of Death and Disease in Early Modem England (Cambridge, 1997), p. 17
40. M.J. Dobson, Contours of Death and Disease in Early Modem England (Cambridge, 1997), p. 17
41. Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England' pp.22, 187
42. J. Thirsk, The Agrarian History of England and Wales. Vol. IV: 1500-1640 (Cambridge, 1967), p.47. Cf. Susannah Ottaway,' "The decline of life": aspects of aging in eightccnth-ccntury England', unpublished PhD thesis (Brown University, 1998), pp. 17-81.
43. A.B. Appleby, 'Diet in sixteenth century England: sources, problems, possibilities', in C. Webster, ed., Health. Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 105-8.
44. According to an eighteenth-century French text, 'bad nourishment' and 'excessive labor' were two of the leading causes of premature ageing. D.G. Troyansky, 'Medical thought on aging in eighteenth-century France', Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 13 (1986), p.83.
45. Keith Thomas, Age and Authority in Early Modern England (London, 1976).
46. Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modem England, pp. 187-9
47. Troyansky, 'Medical thought', p.84; idem, Old Age in the Old Regime: Image and Experience in Eighteenth-century France (Ithaca, NY, 1992), pp.116-17.