Husvill i sekelskiftets Stockholm: en utforskande undersökning av kommunal fattigvård och hemlöshet

This is an explorative study of source material that has not been studied before, journals from Asylerna för husvilla in the beginning of the 20th century Stockholm. Asylerna för husvilla was a municipal organisation which was a part of the public poor relief in Stockholm at the time and offered temporal lodging, ”asyler”, for homeless people. The study is a quantitative study of the people who stayed at one of Asylerna för husvilla’s four asyler during the year 1902. The aim of the study is to explore homelessness in Stockholm in the beginning of the 20th century, and primarily who got prioritized getting support in their homelessness. Therefore the study explores factors of importance regarding who were homeless, but also regarding who the public poor relief thought of as worthy of support, such as gender, earlier migration and the homeless peoples’ position in their life cycle. The most evident result shows that 70 % of the people who got support through Asylerna för husvilla 1902 were children, around 80 % of the adults had migrated from other parts of Sweden (and a few from other European countries), and 88 % of the adults were women. The men were extremely few and almost all of them were married. These findings could be explained partly by the widespread migration from rural to urban areas that took place at the time, where the majority of those who migrated were women, and also by the gendered regime with its different expectations on men and women when it comes to supporting themselves and their family members. Lastly, it is argued that more studies should be employed with material from Asylerna för husvilla as source material