Home Thievery and the Modernization of Rural Finnish Society 1860-1900

Authors

• Laura Stark, PhD, Professor University of Jyväskylä http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3342-1712

Keywords:

agrarian, farm, gender, women's rights, consumption, inheritance, newspapers

Abstract

ln the early l860s, newspapers began to provide a new forum for debate and discussion in the Finnish language, and in the course of these discussions, family relations within farm households came under public scrutiny for the first time. Among the many issues discussed in the press was the practice of home thievery (kotivarkaus), in which farm women secretly pilfered and sold farm products - butter, grain, meat, cheese, milk, and wool - behind the farm master's back. These women either sold the pilfered goods to local shopkeepers in order to obtain things that the farm master would not buy for them, or gave them as payment to lower-class women who gathered information - or spread gossip - on their behalf.