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Maurits van Vollenhoven

1860–1885

Born
5 Oct 1860, Amsterdam
Country of birth
Netherlands
Died
27 May 1885, Driebergen
facts
7
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

A life in time

  1. Born · Amsterdam

    Birth, Amsterdam

  2. Child born: Maurits Willem Raedinck van Vollenhoven

    Birth

  3. Died · Driebergen

    Death, Driebergen

What was it like?

The world around Amsterdam, 1860: who ruled, who else was alive, how people lived. This is general history, not a record about the family, and every item shows where it comes from.

Maurits was born around the same time as Infanta Marie Anne of Portugal, Rabindranath Tagore, and Giacomo Puccini.

Born around the same time

  • Infanta Marie Anne of Portugal

    1861 · Grand Duchess consort and regent of Luxembourg (1861-1942)

  • Rabindranath Tagore

    1861 · Bengali poet, philosopher and polymath (1861–1941)

  • Giacomo Puccini

    1858 · Italian opera composer (1858–1924)

  • Claude Debussy

    1862 · French classical composer (1862–1918)

  • Charles Scott Sherrington

    1857 · English footballer, neurophysiologist and Nobel Prize recipient (1857–1952)

  • Theodore Roosevelt

    1858 · 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909 (1858–1919)

Fashion

Hidden pockets under daily skirts

Women kept belongings like money and handkerchiefs in a linen or cotton bag, measuring 15 by 30 centimeters, which they wore tied around their waist under their skirts. Access to this pocket was through slits in the skirts, and it allowed them to carry personal items discreetly.

Stuffed rolls for fashionable hips

To achieve the fashionable wide-hip silhouette, women of the working class and rural areas wore a stuffed roll called a beuling or wijvenspek tied around their waist. Wealthier women sometimes used reed or horsehair structures called paniers instead to achieve the same effect.

Getting around

Railway competition and travel affordability

When steam railways appeared, they could crush competition by setting third-class tickets to match the price of the much slower trekschuit. For example, a worker earning one guilder a day could travel about 40 kilometers in the lowest class of a canal boat or significantly further using the new, faster rail connections.

Transition from canal boats to steam trains

In the mid-19th century, common people typically traveled between towns using horse-drawn canal boats (trekschuiten), which cost about one guilder per day for a worker, or by diligence on paved roads. By 1850, steam trains were rapidly replacing these older methods, offering faster travel at competitive prices, such as the 2-hour-and-45-minute journey between Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Daily life

Children worked instead of schooling

Education was not compulsory, and many working-class children worked in factories or on farms; around 450,000 children were recorded as working daily in 1859.

Living in one room

Working-class families often lived with six to ten people in a single room, which served as kitchen, bedroom, and living space. Generation after generation slept together in a wooden bedstead.

Food

Jenever used to alleviate hunger pains

To ease the hunger sensation caused by a monotonous potato-based diet, many workers drank jenever, which was relatively cheap and consumed by both men and women.

Coffee used to replace contaminated water

Urban workers often drank coffee or a black liquid passing for it to replace polluted well water, as public wells in poor neighborhoods were frequently contaminated.

Prices and wages

Typical worker diet consisted of potatoes

For many workers, the daily diet consisted mostly of potatoes with vinegar and mustard, as bread was often too expensive and meat was a rare luxury.

Around 1850–1850

Cost of clothing and footwear

Around 1850, a pair of shoes cost 2.50 guilders, and a man's suit cost 4 guilders.

Work

Common jobs for ordinary people

The majority of people worked in agriculture or as manual day laborers, often living at the edge of subsistence. Other common roles included small-scale craftsmen such as bakers, tailors, and weavers, while many women worked as domestic servants or agricultural laborers.

Grueling working days and child labor

Working days were exceptionally long, often lasting 12 to 16 hours, and started early in the morning. Children as young as eight or ten were frequently employed, working alongside adults in exhausting conditions for minimal pay.

News and letters

Frequent daily mail deliveries in cities

In large Dutch cities, mail carriers could deliver mail six to seven times every 24 hours.

The introduction of postage stamps

The postage stamp was introduced in 1852, changing the system so that the sender, rather than the recipient, paid the costs. Recipients were initially suspicious of prepaid mail, sometimes feeling insulted as if the sender thought they could not afford the postage themselves.

During their lifetime

  1. 1860

    1860 Railway Law Passed

    The government passed the Railway Law in 1860, which provided the funding to expand the railway network to reach every location in the country.

  2. 1872

    1872 Epidemic Diseases Act

    The 1872 Epidemic Diseases Act introduced compulsory smallpox vaccination and monitoring systems, which helped eradicate the disease by the end of the century.

Family

Spouses

Children

Ancestors and children

Open the full tree

Four generations back to the right, the children to the left. The number beside a child counts the generations of descendants known after them.