TY  - BOOK
AU  - Brunet,Guy
TI  - The Judge and the Orphan: Guardian Assemblies and Family Councils in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
PY  - 2012///.
							
N1  - 39
N2  - Right to the middle of the nineteenth century, the pond-covered part of the province of Dombes ( Dombes des étangs) suffered from very high death rates, in adults as in children, while constant immigration from neighboring provinces made up for this phenomenon. Thus a large number of children became orphans and had to be provided with a guardian. Older practices (second half of the eighteenth century) have been studied and analyzed in relation to the instructions given in the 1804 civil code. Many families apparently faced difficulties, or were sometimes actually unable to cope under the Ancien Régime, and friends or neighbors were usually appealed to, to take part in the assemblies summoned by the judge, and even to act as guardians. However, it took time for some of the instructions given in the civil code to be applied. In the 1820s for example, while many families systematically chose a guardian after a child’s father’s death, they ignored the instruction on choosing a guardian after the child’s mother’s death. Using real family examples, this paper finally delves into the motivations of the people who were to become guardians. On the whole, families–and the society of the Dombes region as a whole–seem to have been particularly vulnerable on account of the area’s specific demographic regime
UR  - https://shs.cairn.info/journal-annales-de-demographie-historique-2012-1-page-225?lang=en&redirect-ssocas=7080
ER  -