TY - JOUR
T1 - Travelling without risks? Itinerant entertainers in the Duchy of Brabant and their uses of passports at the end of the eighteenth century
AU - Vanruysseveldt, Vicky
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - This article examines the uses of passports among itinerant entertainers travelling through the Duchy of Brabant. Making their living with public performances ranging from singing, making music, acting and puppetry to acrobatics and bear dancing, they travelled on a daily, weekly or monthly basis over short and long distances with their shows. Their high level of mobility met with multiple restrictions imposed by the authorities. Travellers with little or no means were often arrested for vagrancy or begging on the charge of having no fixed residence or a steady job. Passports could help itinerant entertainers preventing their possible arrest. This article addresses the question how ambulant entertainers made use of passports for their travels. To this end I used passport registers on the one hand and vagrancy files of arrested itinerant entertainers on the other hand. The passport registers (available for the cities of Brussels and Antwerp) provide insight into who applied for a passport. Meanwhile, the vagrancy files shed light on entertainers travelling without a passport or with invalid ones. As such, this body of sources provides us with an exceptional insight into the variety of uses of passports by itinerant entertainers in Brabant at the turn of the century.
AB - This article examines the uses of passports among itinerant entertainers travelling through the Duchy of Brabant. Making their living with public performances ranging from singing, making music, acting and puppetry to acrobatics and bear dancing, they travelled on a daily, weekly or monthly basis over short and long distances with their shows. Their high level of mobility met with multiple restrictions imposed by the authorities. Travellers with little or no means were often arrested for vagrancy or begging on the charge of having no fixed residence or a steady job. Passports could help itinerant entertainers preventing their possible arrest. This article addresses the question how ambulant entertainers made use of passports for their travels. To this end I used passport registers on the one hand and vagrancy files of arrested itinerant entertainers on the other hand. The passport registers (available for the cities of Brussels and Antwerp) provide insight into who applied for a passport. Meanwhile, the vagrancy files shed light on entertainers travelling without a passport or with invalid ones. As such, this body of sources provides us with an exceptional insight into the variety of uses of passports by itinerant entertainers in Brabant at the turn of the century.
KW - Duchy of brabant
KW - Eighteenth century
KW - Itinerant entertainers
KW - Passports
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84991038721&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/14780038.2016.1237449
DO - 10.1080/14780038.2016.1237449
M3 - Article
SN - 1478-0038
VL - 13
SP - 437
EP - 450
JO - Cultural and Social History
JF - Cultural and Social History
IS - 4
ER -