Ode to Anna van Rijswijk | Surviving in a 19th-century dwelling

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Dear Anna,

You were an Amsterdam woman like so many have been; in that sense you were one of a dime a dozen. My grandfather told about a woman whose husband boozed away his money, who had ten children (though that will soon prove to be an exaggeration), three of whom survived, and who kept her family alive by selling vegetables from a squalid cellar. 

You lived without relatives in the basement of 92 Haarlemmerstraat since May 1872, and in October your sister Anna Maria (from your father's next marriage; your mother apparently died after your birth) moved in with you. Your unmarried sister Cornelia, who was a servant, lived across the street at number 89 from 1874 to 1877; between 1905 and 1909 she lived with your family. In 1875, you married Jo (Johannes) Mons, child of a bargee's servant. Anna Maria married a twenty-year-old Swedish sailor, and moved to Binnen Brouwerstraat, around the corner from you.

There was no running water in your cellar (you got that from the pump at Herenmarkt), and used a bucket as the toilet. At night, the house was locked by closing the cellar hatch. Jo was a bargeman; he boomed attic barges between the harbour and the canals. He spent most of his weekly wage on gin. Your great-granddaughter Lida said, when she was approaching ninety, leaning on her cane in your cellar, ‘Well. If you weren't an alcoholic already, you would become one here.’ You went early every morning to the Haarlemmerplein, where gardeners from the area brought in their vegetables, and sold them from your cellar. In 1876, Sam was born, and the following year Jan. In September 1879, you had a daughter, Anna Cornelia Maria, but she died in May 1880. In October 1880, you moved to the basement of Haarlemmerstraat 96, on the corner of Buiten Brouwerstraat. To me, that seems a better cellar, as there are narrow windows facing the street on the side. In March 1881, Cornelis was born there, but he died in July. In 1883, you had a daughter, Anna, and she survived. After the birth on 2 March 1885 of your sixth child, Jacob, you were in the Binnengasthuis from 16 March to 21 April; your registration states ‘abcessus 7’. Since Jacob does not otherwise appear in the marital records, I assume that he soon died.

Apparently, you didn't stop there. In November 1889, you moved to Tweede Spaarndammerstraat (now Houtrijkstraat). From that cellar (where, after you moved in, your sister Anna Maria too moved in with her husband and children), it was a huge improvement. There were windows, there was running water, I think there was also city gas (and thus lighting). You took this step when your eldest son Sam was 13, and his little brother Jan 12 - so when the boys could work. I can't prove it, but it can only be that you were behind this. It wasn't to come from Jo. Did you still make money, there in the Spaarndammerbuurt? Or did you pay the rent from what the boys earned? Did you manage to get your husband off the booze?

You moved very often, in the twenty years after Tweede Spaarndammerstraat. To two other addresses in Tweede Spaarndammerstraat, to Houtmanstraat (a home of Piet van Eeghen's Vereeniging ten Behoeve der Arbeidersklasse, where better-paid workers could live - you had that going for you). From 1894 to six different addresses in the Jordaan - did you slip up again, especially when the boys left in 1895 and 1896? For a while they did well financially with a small bicycle tyre factory, but had to stop when Dunlop patented their process. 

In 1910, you and your husband move to Hilversum, where Jo is listed as a workman and later as a vulcaniser. Your son Jan also lives there, and apparently father and son start repairing bicycle tyres together, just like Sam does on Haarlemmerweg in Amsterdam. I imagine your husband went to work for your son - a bit of the upside-down world. You received benefits under the Old Age Act 1919, Jo under the Invalidity Act 1901. You died on 20 January 1922, aged eighty. Jo moved around some more in Hilversum and died in 1938.

Like a lot of Amsterdam women, you managed to survive the sordid nineteenth century by insisting that your children should have a better life. And you succeeded. You will have done so together with your sisters. Cornelia was unmarried, Anna Maria's husband was at sea, and yours was drinking. Your late girl's name combined those of you and your sisters. You lived near each other, and sometimes your sisters lived with you. In that way, you supported them. In my imagination, Sam, Jan and Anna have two aunts besides a mother who see what they have in them and encourage them to make something of it. I cannot find any later records of Anna Maria's three children; they must have died young. How would your children have fared if, like your own mother, you had died in the Binnengasthuis after Jacob's birth? Of course, you did not live in a vacuum: you were given opportunities at a good time by progressive policies. Your grandchildren were born in hygienic homes and received education that wasn't there for you. They even went to extended primary school. Their children went to university. And that started with you and your sisters.

You didn't get much credit for that. I think Sam, who never drank a drop of alcohol, remained angry with his father all his life. When his wife Greetje died of tuberculosis in 1908, your grandchildren did not come to live with you, nearby, on Korte Prinsengracht (number 40, 'insteek' (inset) - wasn't that another slum?), but went to Jisp, where Greetje came from. One of those children, my grandfather Piet, did tell in his old age what he had heard from his father about that cellar on Haarlemmerstraat, Jo's booze and your wheelbarrow of vegetables. But while he talked endlessly about his second mother's family, he had no experiences about his father's family, about you. Yet he was fine with what you accomplished. I suspect Jo's drinking cost you the bond with your grandchildren.

Through the archives, almost nothing can be found about you, while at least the Military Register still has your husband's description (you already knew it, but: he was 1 Amsterdam ell and 709 stripes, which is 1.71 metre (67,3 inch) if I understand correctly, and he had brown eyes and blond hair). I can also find a picture on the internet where a man is booming a loft barge through the Korte Prinsengracht, but a picture of a woman running a trade from her cellar on the Haarlemmerstraat: just stop. Nevertheless, with your sisters and the other ten in the dozen, you had the resilience, enterprise and perseverance, and you also had it in you to give your three surviving children a lot.

My other grandfather wrote childhood memories. These show that his posh family did not always have it easy either. But, Anna, fair is fair: they didn't have to put up with what you had to put up with. Because I loved his stories as a boy, I asked your grandson to write down his childhood memories too. These are not self-published like the others. It is a handwritten disintegrating notebook. In archiving and memory, you come off as shabby as when you were alive.

Every week I cycle past that basement of yours a few times. You can buy 300-euro jeans there now. I imagine you are satisfied I could afford them, but you would appreciate me doing something more sensible with my money. It's that I don't wear a hat, but otherwise I would take it off for you every time I pass by - and for your sisters, and for those other ten.

Your great-great-grandson Thomas Spijkerboer,

With thanks to your great-great-granddaughter Judith Kraamwinkel and my partner Margriet Kraamwinkel.

Sources

Childhood memories of Piet Mons

Stadsarchief Amsterdam

Archief Gooi- en Vechtstreek

www.svb.nl

Laura van Hasselt, Geld, geloof en goede vrienden. Piet van Eeghen en de metamorfose ban Amsterdam 1816-1889 (Amsterdam: Balans 2023)