On Dutch thrift
An experiment using DBNL Ngram Viewer People from Zeeland are thrifty, people from Holland are misers. It is common knowledge that saving...
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Keeping up appearances... in an almshouse in Amsterdam
‘In winter I live in a room in a Protestant convent’, madam De Nerha wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This ‘Protestant...
Centenarian - Bon-vivant - Fraud?
In 1745 the directors of Job’s hospital in Utrecht commisioned an unknown ‘good master’ to paint a portrait of Jan Geritsz. Kuijper alias...
Wealthy children, poor parents? Lessons learned from two Renaissance stained glass windows
The image below shows a rather unhappy domestic scene. On the left a man and a woman are seated at a table, enjoying a meal. A child is...
The marvel of his time: the centenarian Zierick Florisz.
The portrait below, painted in 1551 by an anonymous painter, depicts an old man called Zierick Florisz. No effort was made to hide...
Getting caught in the rain: saving for old age during the Dutch Revolt
The past month many Greeks withdrew their money from banks, in anticipation of the collapse of the financial system and a ‘Grexit’. They...
Retirees or sweat shop labourers?
In this blog I intend to report on the living conditions of historical retirees. In large parts of Europe it was possible to pay a...
Video: how much money goes into a medieval piggy bank?
A small experiment to determine how much money goes into a medieval money box. The clip goes with the working paper entitled 'Breaking...
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