Women between Poverty and Norms

The Life of Wandering Women in Wurttemberg around 1800

Abstract

Taking the case of a wandering woman who was executed in a small south-western German town in 1817, the author analyses the way of life of non-settled women. This woman was accused of having murdered another wandering woman engaged in money-lending. Her evidence at court provides an insight into the self-understanding and practice of living of wandering women in the 18th and 19th centuries. Contrary to received opinion, it turns out that their way of life was by no means totally separated from that one of the settled population. On the contrary, there existed a functioning exchange between the settled and non-settled parts of the population. As late as the first decades of the 19th century, this exchange was apparently governed by social and moral rules, by a ,moral economy’.