Puellæ et pueri : aspects of the lives of children and young people in eighteenth-century Malta (c.1740s-1790s)

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on five main aspects in relation to the study of young people in eighteenth-century Malta: historiography, the dynamic of the court room, the street, abandonment, and guardianship. While it ranges chronologically, across the century, the core of the dissertation focuses on the years c.1740 to 1790. The first chapter is an analysis of the historiography on children and adolescents, which serves as a basis from which this dissertation will seek to provide a more holistic understanding of this particular section of eighteenth-century society in Malta. The second chapter, the dynamic of the court room, seeks to place the child within the legal system and the relevance of studying the way young people have been described and perceived by their adult counterparts in criminal records. It also seeks to discover how they were viewed within the social reality they lived in via witness accounts, and how young people’s voices were heard and portrayed in criminal records. The third chapter, the street, is an analysis of space not through a geographical and architectural lens, but as a stage where young people’s stories to unfold. It aims to provide a glimpse of young people’s activities, movements and behaviour, including acts of violence and criminality on the street. It discusses the public and private, as well as night and day, aspects of the street in relation to what happened among young people, and their interactions with adults. Finally, this chapter explores the motivation behind crime and violence and the neighbourhood’s and family’s contribution in discipline and care for young people in moulding them into future adults. The fourth chapter, child abandonment and guardianship, explores the idea of abandonment in eighteenth-century society, the process of abandonment and rescuing, the care and upbringing by the state, charitable institutions and families to provide for an abandoned child. This is done within an explanation and analysis of the legal framework of the time. Additionally, this chapter explores the idea of care, love, and obligation towards helping the unfortunate, and provides an overview of how typically an abandoned child’s life unfolded, their work, education, payment and change of households.