Silence Dogood Essay 10 - Insuring a Widow's Future

In her tenth letter to the New England Courant, Silence Dogood turns her sharp eye to a problem colonial society preferred not to discuss: what happens to a woman when her husband dies and takes the family's security with him. Her proposal — a fund women could pay into during marriage, to protect against poverty in widowhood — was a strikingly modern idea for 1722. What her readers didn't know was that "Silence" wasn't a widow at all, but the pen name of sixteen-year-old apprentice Benjamin Franklin. Join us as we explore this early glimpse of financial foresight, hidden identity, and a teenage boy's surprisingly progressive take on women's economic security.

Learn more about The Spectral and Literary Summit at our website - www.spectral-summit.com.  We offer historic and literary videos and podcasts that make the past and literature come alive.  This is a production of Creative Actors Lab . Check out our Instagram page here. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the Spectral Summit where the past speaks and the present listens. I'm your host, Kelly Cody Grimm, and in this podcast, we examine history and literature, and we work to make it fun and approachable. In the spring of 1722, a series of anonymous letters began appearing in the New England Current, signed only as Silence Dogood. Their author claimed to be a widow with a sharp opinion and no patience for polite silence, and her tenth letter, Silence Turns to a problem few in Boston dare discuss openly. What happens to a woman when her husband dies and takes the family security with him? Her answer, a proposal for something like insurance for widows, was decades ahead of its time. What her readers didn't know was that Silence Dugod wasn't a widow at all. She was the invention of a sixteen-year-old apprentice secretly slipping his essays under the print shop door at night. His name was Ben Franklin. August thirteenth, seventeen twenty two to the author of the New England Current Sir, discoursing lately with an intimate friend of mine on the lamentable condition of widows, he put into my hands a book, wherein the ingenious author proposes, I think, a certain method for their relief. I have often thought of some such project for their benefit myself and intended to communicate my thoughts to the public, but to prefer my own proposals to what follows would be rather an argument of vanity, and me than good will to the many hundreds of my fellow sufferers now in New England. We have, says he, abundance of women who have been bred well, lived well, and ruined in a few years, and perhaps left young with a house full of children and nothing to support them, which falls generally upon the wives of inferior clergy or shopkeepers and artificers. They marry wives with perhaps three hundred to a thousand pound portion, and can settle no juncture upon them. Either they are extravagant and idle and wasted, or trade decays or losses or a thousand contingencies happen to bring a tradesman to poverty and he breaks. And the poor woman maybe has three to four children and is driven to a thousand shifts while he lies in the mint, or friars, under the dilemma of a statue or bankrupt. But if he dies, then she is absolutely undone, unless she has friends to go to. Suppose an office be erected to be called an office of insurance for widows upon the following conditions two thousand women or their husbands for them, enter the names into a register to be kept for the purpose with the names, age and trade of their husbands, with the place of their abode, paying at the time of their entering five Brit cash down with one Brit cash per quarter, which is to the settling up and support of the office with the clerks and all proper officers for the same. They receive every one of them a certificate sealed by the Secretary of the Office, signed by the governors for the articles hereafter mentioned. If any one of the women becomes a widow at any time after six months from the date of her subscription, upon due notice given, and claim made at the office in form, as shall be directed she shall receive within six months after such a claim made the sum of five hundred pounds in money, without any deductions, saving some small fees to the officers which the trustees must settle, that they may be known. In consideration of this, every woman so subscribing obliges herself to pay as often as any of the members of the society becomes a widow. The due proportion or share allotted to her pay allows the five hundred pounds for the said widow, provided her share does not exceed the sum of five pets. No seamen or soldiers' wives can be accepted to such a proposal as this, on account before mentioned, because the contingency of their lives are not equal to the others, unless they would admit this general exception, supposing they do not die out of the kingdom. It might also be an exception that what if the widow that claimed had a bona fide estate left to her by her husband to her own use to clear all debts and legacies. Two thousand pounds she should have no claim, the intent being to aid poor and not the rich, but there lies a great many objections against such an article as one, it may tempt some to forswear themselves, and two, people will order their wills so as to defraud the exception. One exception must be made, that is, either very unequal matches as when a woman of nineteen marries an old man of seventy, or a woman who have infirm husbands. I mean I've known publicly so. To remedy this two things are done. One, the office must have moving officers without doors, who shall inform themselves of such matters, and if any such circumstances appear, the office should have fourteen days time to return their money and declare their subscriptions void. two No woman whose husband has any visible distemper shall claim under a year after her subscription. One grand objection against this proposal is how will you oblige people to pay either their subscription or their quarterage? To this I answer by no compulsion, though that may be performed too, but altogether voluntary, only with this argument to move it, that if they do not continue their payments they lose the benefits of their past contributions. I know it lies as a fair objection against such a project as this, that the number of claims are so uncertain that nobody knows what they engage in when they subscribe, for so many may die annually out of the two thousand, as may perhaps make my payment of twenty or twenty five pounds per annum, and if a woman happened to pay that for her twenty years, though she receives five hundred at last, she is a great loser. If she dies before her husband, she has lessened his estate considerably and brought a great loss upon him. First I say to this that I would have such a proposal as this be so fair and easy that if any person who had subscribed found the payments too high and the claims fall too often it shall be at their liberty at any time upon notice given, to be released and stand obliged no longer. And if so, everyone knows best what their own circumstances will bear. In the next place, because death is a contingency no man can directly calculate, and that all that subscribe must take the hazard, yet that a prejudice against this notion may not be built on wrong grounds. Let's examine a little the probable hazard and see how many shall die annually out of the 2,000 subscribers, accounting by the common proportion of burials to the number of the living. Sir William Petty, in his political arithmetic, to be very ingenious calculation, brings the account of burials in London to be one in forty annually and proves it by all the proper rules of proportion computation. And I'll take my scheme from thence. So if one in forty of all the people in England should die, that supposes fifty to die every year out of our two thousand subscribers, and for a woman to contribute five pence to everyone would certainly be able to agree to, let's say, twelve pounds per year upon her husband's life, to receive five hundred pounds when he died and lose it if she died first, yet this would not be a hazard beyond a reason too great for gain. But I offer some reasons to prove this to be impossible in our case. First, Sir William Petty allows the city of London to contain about a million people, and yet our yearly bill of mortality is never yet amounted to twenty five thousand in the most sickly years we have had. Plague years accepted, sometimes but twenty thousand, which is but one in fifty. Now it is considered here that children and ancient people make up one time with another, at least one third of all bills of mortality, and our assurances lie upon none, but the meddling age of the people which is the only age wherein life is anything steady, and if that be allowed, there cannot die by this computation above one in eighty of such people every year, because I would be sure to leave room for casualty, or allow one in fifty shall die out of our number subscribed. Secondly, it must be allowed that our payments falling due only on the death of husbands, this one in fifty must not be reckoned upon the two thousand, for 'tis to be supposed at least as many women shall die as men, and then there is nothing to pay. One in fifty upon one thousand is the most that I can suppose can claim the contribution in a year, which is twenty claims a year, which would be five hundred pounds each, and would be looking at that per annum. And if a woman pays for this twenty years and claims at last, she is the gainer enough and no extraordinary loser if she never claims at all. I verily believe any office might undertake to demand at all adventures not above six pounds per annum, and secure the subscriber five hundred pounds in case she comes to claim it as a widow. I would leave this to the consideration of all who are concerned for their own or their neighbour's temporial happiness, and I am humbly of the opinion that the country is ripe for many such friendly societies whereby every man might help another, without any disservice to himself. We have many charitable gentlemen who yearly give liberally to the poor, and where they can better bestow their charity than those who become so by providence, and for aught they know upon themselves. But above all the clergy have the most need of coming into some such project as this. They, as well as the poor men, according to the proverb, generally abound in children, and how many clergymen in this country are forced to labor in their fields to keep themselves in a condition above want? How then shall they be able to leave anything to their forsaken, dejected and almost forgotten wives and children? For my own part I have nothing left to live on but contentment and a few cows, and though I cannot expect to be relieved by this project, yet it would be no small satisfaction to me to see it put in practice for the benefit of others. I am, sir, your faithful servant, Silence Dougold. All right, well thank you so much for listening, and as we're getting to the end, here's some things to think about. Franklin was sixteen in male writing as a middle-aged widow. Why might he have needed her voice rather than his own to make this argument land? And Silence proposes a financial solution to a problem society treated as a private personal misfortune. Why does his reframing it as something that society needs to work show how Franklin saw economic vulnerability that women and particularly widows were going through at the time? And finally, nearly 300 years later, what would Silence Doogood say about how women's financial security is or isn't handled today? Thank you again so much for listening, and we hope to see you the next time at the Spectral Summit. Thank you for tuning in. And if you'd like to learn more, you can go to our website, spectral-summit.com, where we have additional literature and historical podcasts, including our series, in which a high school newspaper reporter named Sierra, who can see and talk to ghosts, goes to museums and historic places and asks those spirits questions from today's perspective. We have work and activity sheets along with quizzes to complement the learning, and subscription started as $10 a month. Thanks again, and remember, history likes to speak to us if we're just willing to listen.