The Working Population and the Disadvantaged in Turku after the Great Fire – an Unexplored History

Authors

• Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen University of Turku
• Topi Artukka University of Turku
• Taina Saarenpää University of Lapland
• Noora Viljamaa University of Turku

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37456/tvt.125516

Keywords:

Turku, työläiset, 1800-luku, köyhät, huono-osaisuus

Abstract

In the 19th century, the majority of the inhabitants in Finnish cities were poor and disadvantaged. Such a reality also prevailed in Turku, which was destroyed in a great fire in September 1827. The workers of the city were quite a heterogeneous group of journeymen, apprentices, outside workers, servants, sailors and self-supporting working women. Together, they made up 60 percent of the households in the city in 1835.

Of the sources of the period, the official documents provide the best understanding of the life of the workers. The experiences of the poorest inhabitants from the time after the Great Fire of Turku were certainly passed down as oral stories from one generation to another, but these stories have been forgotten over the years. However, it is possible to study the life of the poorest inhabitants and their survival from the Great Fire by focusing on the church records and census lists.

Most of the workers in Turku fit within the definition of poor, but for some, social changes offered opportunities to improve their socioeconomic status. Such a change was the reconstruction of Turku in the 1830s, when many outside workers were offered good employment opportunities. Ten years later, however, many of the carpenters and bricklayers, who had participated in the reconstruction and had been subsequently unemployed, were in distress.