Lampernisse: economy and household structure

Lampernisse is a small village in the canton of Pervijze (see fig. 12.1, p. 383). Before the French occupation in 1796 it was one of the villages of the region known as Veurne-Ambacht. Its population under the Ancien Régime was quite stable at around 210 persons, but after the French occupation which ended in 1815 the number of inhabitants rose steadily from about 350 to a maximum of 462 in 1846. According to van der Maelen, writing in 1836, the same range of crops (wheat, rye, oats, barley, oil-producing plants, vegetables, and fruit) was to be found in Lampernisse as elsewhere in West Flanders.

Studies by Dalle have illuminated certain structural elements of the West Flanders society of which Lampernisse forms a small part. Dalle found, for example, that the majority of servants outside the town of Veurne were male (sex ratio 144). Male children over 12 outnumbered female children, although not to such a marked extent (sex ratio 107). But we know nothing of the role of kinship in the household beyond the nuclear family, nor has it been possible to throw any light on the process by which offspring succeeded their parents as heads of households. One list on its own may show the place of the old and of the young in the household, but it cannot tell us how individuals moved from one position to another, nor what other opportunities they might have taken up had they wished or the occasion demanded.