The Situation of Orphaned Children in the World of Serfs and Peasants

Abstract

The present study, authored by a legal historian, examines the relationship between legal history and legal folklore through an investigation, centered on the market town of Szentes, one of a distinctive group of market towns in Hungary's Southern Great Plain, of the legal folklore that emerged at the end of the 18th century as a result of historical antecedents as well as demographic, economic, and social changes. The system of norms and values, the customary law, and the wealth of legal folklore that developed in these towns in the 18–19th centuries in the process of the emergence of the local middle class subsequently influenced the development of civil law at central level. The present study analyzes regulatory practice concerning orphans in the wills of the serfs and peasants living in the market towns of Hungary's Southern Great Plain, preserved primarily in local sources, based on entries in the “Book of Agreements” of the market town of Szentes. It seeks to identify the specific characteristics of guardianship customs in the world of the “lower class,” including how the position of widowed women and their responsibility for their children evolved, as well as expectations concerning stepfathers in the absence of guardianship. It also investigates how it became common practice in the market towns of the Southern Great Plain for the inheritance of the orphans of serfs not to be preserved in kind but rather sold, and, in an effort to preserve its value, the money was loaned out and the resulting interest was used to provide the bare necessities for the orphans.