The Burden of Ageing: Old Age, Poverty, and Attitudes toward Social Issues in the 19th-Century Austrian Littoral

The paper examines attitudes toward ageing and the elderly in Istria and Trieste in the second half of the nineteenth century. It takes as its starting point the perceptions associated with old age, which in the nineteenth century inevitably included, on the one hand, the inability to work—often leading to the economic dependence of the elderly and to their being regarded as a burden on the family or the state—and, on the other hand, their physical frailty, whether biologically or socially conditioned, which could to some extent be both a cause and a symptom of their social deprivation. Elderly people can be traced among the residents of almshouses and recipients of poor relief, among patients in hospitals for infectious diseases, and among those who died of age related wasting. Medical imperatives directed at the elderly were tailored primarily to the bourgeoisie and stood in stark contrast to the actual experience of ageing among the lower classes, which could not be associated with rest and self care but rather with prolonged physical labour, bodily pain, and economic insecurity.