The Decline of Life

Susannah R. Ottaway is Assistant Professor of History at Carleton College, Minnesota.

• List of figures; List of tables; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction: old age in eighteenth-century England: no 'golden age of ageing'; 1. Who was 'old' in eighteenth-century England?; 2. The activities of the 'helmsman': self-reliance, work and community expectations of the elderly; 3. 'The comforts of a private fire-side'; 4. Independent but not alone: family ties for the elderly; 5. Community assistance to the aged under the Old Poor Law; 6. Continuity and change in community assistance to the elderly over the eighteenth century; 7. Within workhouse walls: indoor relief for the elderly; Conclusion: old age as a useful category of historical analysis; Bibliography; Index.

'Ottaway's book, however, does serve as a model for how to write a gendered social history … historians of demography, family, society, gender, and, of course, the eighteenth century, will find much in Ottaway's book to interest and instruct them.' H-Net