An Investment in Education

Upon widowhood, Hanna Tamminen bore the sole responsibility for taking care of her three children, who were all minors at the time. This section discusses the practical arrangements Hanna made to preserve the cultural and social capital the family had accumulated over the preceding years.

As a Finnish-speaking family of modest origins, the Tamminens did not belong to the old elite of Mikkeli.6 However, because of their relatively high level of education and Juho’s position in the city administration, they could not be counted among the common people, either. During the period of 1878–1887, the family sought to integrate into a new kind of social network—the rising intelligentsia of Mikkeli. This network was partly attached to the old elite but also partly independent of it, especially when it came to nationalistic Fennoman activities.

It is likely that the integration process was eased by the fact that Hanna had lived in the city for twenty years as the daughter of a respected cantor and as a pupil of the most prominent girls’ school in town. The school was originally intended for the daughters of the Swedish-speaking elite, but Finnish-speaking girls like Hanna were also admitted to make up the numbers (Kuujo 1971, 304, 369; Tamminen 2007a). The Swedish school provided her with the ability to cross the local language barrier. As such, she became the perfect passport into the local community for her husband, who was a newcomer to the city.7

Becoming a part of the network of the rising intelligentsia meant acquiring a certain lifestyle and the habits typical of it (Ollila 1998, 28–32, 2000). The Tamminens bought a site downtown and had a lofty house built next to an older building already located on the site (Kuujo 1971, 220; Mikkelin Sanomat 1887, 1889a; Pellervo 1882c).

The Tamminens engaged themselves in numerous local activities for the public good. Juho was a member of the voluntary fire brigade, a board member of the Savings Bank, and the secretary of the Association for Craftsmen and Manufacturers. Moreover, he was the secretary of the City Council from 1884 to 1887 (Mikkeli City Council 1884; Mikkelin Sanomat1886; Suomalainen Wirallinen Lehti 1884). Hanna held a prominent position among the women of the city: for example, in 1883, she was a member of a committee8 that organised a fund-rising lottery for the fire brigade (Pellervo 1883). The actions of the Tamminen couple resonate with Jürgen Kocka’s (1993, 7) observations on the German Bildungsbürgertum: certain practices of bourgeois culture were associated with having an economically secure life with enough space and time.

Another example of this networking is the Tamminens’ relationship with the Krogerus family. The wives had attended the same school in the 1860s (Antell 1905, 86–87). The husbands befriended each other, most likely as they were both working in the county administration in the early 1880s. As the chair of the City Treasury, Mr Krogerus probably had an influence in the appointment of Hanna’s husband as the treasurer in 1882 (Mikkeli City Treasury 1881a, 1881b, 1882). It is probable that Mr Krogerus also acted as a role model to his younger colleague in terms of integrating into the local network: the former was a long-standing member of the very same voluntary associations the latter joined in the 1880s (Mikkelin Sanomat 1889b, 1890).9 Moreover, the Krogeruses were godparents of two of the Tamminens’ children (Mikkeli Birth Records 1880–1889).

In June 1887, Juho Tamminen was suspended from duty because of irregularities in the city accounts of Mikkeli. He died seven weeks later. After a thorough inspection conducted after Tamminen’s death, a deficit was found in the accounts for which he had been responsible (Folkwännen 1887; Mikkeli City Council 1887a, 1887b, 1889). Juho’s proceedings cast a dark shadow over both the material and social accomplishments of the family, and it is likely that they were no longer considered as aspirational in a positive sense but rather as social climbers in a negative sense. The diary entries of Juho and Hanna’s son, Yrjo Tamminen, hint that as a struggling widow, Hanna drifted away from her former network; people were talking ill of the family or abandoning them altogether. ‘I know how it feels to hear people scorn your own mother,’ Yrjo stated in an entry written on 6 June 1898. In another entry, dated 12 January 1899, he remembered his nanny, whom he referred to as one their ‘few true friends’ (Diary of Yrjo Tamminen).

The first couple of years as a widow were economically difficult for Hanna, and it became challenging for her to live up to the standards of the rising intelligentsia. She resorted to survival techniques that were typical of poor widowed women both in Finland and in Northern Europe in general at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Moring 2008). Hanna took on more lodgers, which nearly doubled the number of people living in the two Tamminen houses (Census List 1888). Moreover, she turned to needlework, making socks and other woollen garments to order (Mikkelin Sanomat 1888b).

While knitting at home was a relatively easy option for the mother of small children, earning a living from handiwork was hardly considered a suitable occupation for a woman of the rising intelligentsia. Even more humiliating, according to a newspaper advertisement, the orders were to be placed at the Krogerus house (Mikkelin Sanomat 1888b). The arrangement was probably made because Hanna was in danger of losing her own home; the estate of her husband was declared bankrupt in 1888, and the two houses had to be auctioned off the following year (Mikkelin Sanomat 1888a, 1889a).

However, the help from the Krogerus family indicates that the young widow was not completely abandoned, despite the family’s decrease in social capital. Moreover, at the time of the most acute crisis, intrafamilial help proved crucial. At the auction held in 1889, Hanna’s father volunteered to buy the two houses, and Hanna’s parents moved in with her the same year (Mikkeli Communion Book 1880–1889; Mikkelin Sanomat 1889c). The arrangement provided Hanna with both practical assistance and continuity, which may have contributed to the fact that the family was able to restore some of their social capital as the most acute memory of the scandal faded.

As Yrjo Tamminen turned ten in 1892, the question of entering a grammar school became an urgent one for him. At this point, Hanna had to make the decision of whether to fight for the cultural capital of the family or to give up altogether. Hanna chose the former alternative: it appears she was determined to guarantee her children the same level of education they would have received had their father still been alive. Yrjo entered grammar school that year, followed by his sister in 1893 and his younger brother in 1895 (ML 1948, 478; Laatunen 1954, 323).

To be able to pay for her children’s education, Hanna Tamminen took a job as a workhouse matron. Her choice sheds light on the occupational opportunities available to women of the rising intelligentsia and the gendered ideals associated with these occupations.

During the ten years that had passed since Juho Tamminen had worked as the deputy master of a workhouse, the qualifications for workhouse directors had been clarified by the state officials of poor relief. In the 1890s, workhouses were to serve as both shelters for the poor incapable of work and as corrective institutions for the poor capable of work. According to the state officials, the double goal of a workhouse was best achieved if the director was a woman because care and education were considered feminine pursuits.

The state officials of poor relief gladly accepted Hanna Tamminen as a workhouse matron, first in Korpilahti in 1892 and then in Janakkala in 1895. What mattered most was her educational background, her experience as the wife of a workhouse master, and the cookery course she had attended in 1892. Her prospects were particularly good because there were few suitable female director candidates available in the early 1890s (Annola 2011, 95). For Hanna, being a workhouse matron became a socially acceptable means of supporting her family. Because the occupation was linked with upper middle-class ideals in Finland, Hanna was able to secure herself a steady income without actually sacrificing her social status as a potential member of the rising intelligentsia (Annola 2018b).

Hanna’s salary at Janakkala workhouse was 600 Finnish marks per year, which was higher than the usual salary of a female director of a small rural workhouse (FWA 1894, 188; Janakkala Parish Council 1896).10 In addition, she was allotted private quarters in the workhouse, with free lighting and heating. Consequently, she did not have to pay for her accommodation, and she could keep her children close by—in theory, at least. According to official records, the entire family moved to Janakkala in 1897 (Janakkala Communion Book 1896–1905), but the diaries of Yrjo Tamminen show that the children only spent their summers at the workhouse with their mother. Because of their schooling, they were otherwise living in Mikkeli with Hanna’s father.

There was nothing unusual about splitting up the family during the school year.

The arrangement was exceptionally favourable for the Tamminen children because Hanna’s father regarded the accumulation of cultural capital as a joint effort of the extended family. On 14 May 1900, Yrjo mentioned in his diary that the grandfather was eager to help his grandchildren, even if it meant ‘giving away [his] last pair of trousers’ (Diary of Yrjo Tamminen). In addition, the arrangement was convenient because the children were able to remain within their old network and system of mutual help. For example, according to the diaries, Mrs Krogerus kept an eye on the Tamminen children, even though she, too, had become a widow in 1890 (Mikkelin Sanomat 1890).

It can also be argued that as the children were raised as members of the community they had been born into and as the community was familiar with their tragic background, it was easy for them to get a free place at the grammar school at some point during their studies. Yrjo Tammi-nen’s diary entries indicate that both Yrjo and his younger brother were granted free years at their grammar school, albeit not simultaneously. Moreover, Yrjo was allowed to borrow school books from the school library.

Nevertheless, both Hanna and her children suffered from their separation because, despite the good will of the children’s grandfather, conditions in his household were hardly favourable. Hanna’s mother had died in 1895 (Saimaa 1895), and, according to the diaries of Yrjo Tamminen, the household was being managed by a young and arrogant maidservant. Moreover, the children’s grandfather had developed a drinking habit. Although the diaries do not depict the grandfather as being violent, the home environment was chaotic and stressful. That no attempts were made to change the existing arrangement points to the limited economic means of the family but also to the fact that getting a grammar school education was prioritised over temporary hardships. It was not until 1899, when the maidservant fell pregnant and became a walking indication of the decadence that prevailed in the house, that Hanna Tamminen felt compelled to place her children in a boarding house.

In the end, the Tamminen family managed to preserve and even increase their cultural and social capital by investing in a grammar school education. The three children found a place among the rising intelligentsia by graduating from grammar school and continuing their studies at college or university. Yrjo Tamminen took a degree in law in 1909 (Student Register 1817–1901) and was appointed treasurer of the National Board of Railways in 1919. He retired as the chief inspector of the National Board of Railways. His brother, in turn, became an agronomist in 1906 and served as the city agronomist of Helsinki from 1922 onwards. Both sons married and started a family. Their sister became an elementary school teacher in 1905. At that point, Hanna Tamminen resigned from her post at Janakkala workhouse and moved to live with her daughter (Laatunen 1954, 323; ML 1948, 478; Tamminen 2007a, 2007b).11