Widow and Administratix’: Petitioning for relief in nineteenth century maritime communities.

This paper explores naval widows’ pension petitions in the nineteenth century. Access to a pension, whilst a popularly advertised benefit to naval families, was in practice a discretionary and competitive form of relief. Widows could find themselves disqualified due to rule changes and their fates were subject to the whims of officials. These officials used their discretion to distinguish who was a ‘proper object’ of support and made examples of those deemed undeserving. Petitionary evidence highlights the agency that lone women exercised to negotiate and access the relief they saw themselves as entitled to as naval widows and mothers. These petitions reveal that women relied on a mixture of strategies to access relief and manage the constant threat of poverty, particularly as they aged, in a society which privileged the work opportunities of male breadwinners. 
 
To explore this challenging period in a maritime woman’s lifecycle, this paper will draw on a case study of petitioner Catherine Lamburn, who wrote thirty-four appeals over a twenty-eight-year period, 1819 -1847. It will chart Lamburn’s practical actions and the evolving linguistic strategies within her petitions, demonstrating the way in which her experience of widowhood changed over the course of her lifecycle. The paper also considers the power relations between Lamburn and the different institutions she interacted with, their responses to her negotiations, and how she changed her demands over time. Wider social and cultural attitudes towards charity and perceived ‘deservingness’ in the nineteenth-century will also be explored through Lamburn’s discussions of her age, nationalism, motherhood, and gender. 
 
Carrie Long is the IHR Pearsall Fellow in Naval and Maritime History (2023-2024). Her current project focuses on Greenwich Hospital School during the nineteenth-century, exploring how naval institutional charity shaped familial welfare and maritime communities on shore. Carrie has recently completed her collaborative doctoral partnership PhD entitled ‘Yours Humbly, Sincerely, and Obediently’? The Social Agency of Lone Women’s Petitions c.1789-1850, at Durham University, partnered with The National Archives and Royal Museums Greenwich.

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