Actor Perspective: The Inquirers

Due to the legal and administrative reforms of the late nineteenth century, a larger number of rural male tax-payers had been elected to manage administrative duties on the municipal and parish level.

We do not generally know the identity of those asking legal questions to the newspapers. However, the subscribers of the bourgeois and rural newspapers probably mostly belonged to the wealthier segments of society and the “middling sort,” and newspapers emphasised that they only answered questions of their subscribers.

Usually, the questions were completely anonymous or with initials or a pseudonym. There were certain particular types of pseudonyms that were repeated more often than others. One group referred to the need of knowledge—for example “Needing information” (“Tiedon tarvitsija”) or “Ignorant” (“ Tietamatorij,^[657] while another referred to the letter-writer’s position(s) or situation—for example “Landlord” (“ Wuokranantajrij or “Municipal citizen” (“Kuntalainerij.^[658] The former type of penname emphasised the status imbalance between the non-knowledgeable information-seeker and the legal expert. The latter types of pseudonyms indicate the instrumental and positional reason for the question: a person was in a certain role or had certain duties related to a task or job requiring such knowledge.

The questions printed in the Viborg Socialist newspaper Tyo were short and anonymous. Only 9 out of 25 questions had a pseudonym and the most common of these was “Ignorant” (“Tietamaton,” “Tietamatoiri^r) adopted five times, while one had “Wanting information” (“ Tietoa halu- awa”). Three referred to the writer’s situation, for example “Fooled” (“Narrattrij or “Itinerant” (“Kiertaja”). The tenth pen name actually may have been the querier’s whole name and village (Jalmari Ruokonen Typpola). If so, this was the only letter-writer who was identifiable.

The information on the law in legal Q&A columns could also be trans­mitted to other members of the household where newspapers were read aloud. However, they did not have as much entertainment value as the causerie-formed legal education in Keski-Suomi 1878-1881. These had left indelible memories on their audience that were remembered even when everything else about the newspaper was forgotten.^[659]

Although we do not have access to the identity of advice-seekers, it is fair to assume—based on the questions—that most of them were men who occupied positions of trust in municipalities, local government, and local courts as jurors. At least the writers of “rural correspondence” were nor­mally men, largely either belonging to the clerical estate (priests, sacris­tans, and teachers) or land-owning peasants. Even if the role of the latter grew in the later nineteenth century, landless men and women were grossly underrepresented. Under 2% of “rural correspondence” was penned by (peasant) women.^[660] However, occasional legal questions may have been posted by women as the questions relate to female activities or the status of women. Examples of such questions were, for example, whether wom­en’s nationality changed through their marriages to foreigners.^[661]

In some cases public visibility may have been one of the aims of the inquirers. The question may have been linked to a local controversy and airing it on the pages of a newspaper was a sort of trial by newspaper, “to excite a reaction of public opinion in their favour” as Roger Foster coined it in 1887.^[662] It may also have been an attempt to attract wider attention to a local dispute.

Few questions reveal the place that it dealt with, but some did. The pseudonym “Orimattilalainen” suggests the inquirer came from Orimattila, a rural commune close to the town of Lahti.^[663] The pseudonym “J.K.” gave many details such as the price of the farm (s)he had bought in Isokyro in Ostrobothnia two years previously. “J.K.” also named the agronomist who had surveyed the farm for the mortgage (s)he had applied for.^[664] A question suggesting a potential local ongoing conflict was published in Paivalehti in 1892. It dealt with the crown’s regalian fishing rights and how they were applied in practice according to the Statute of Fishing (kalastussaanto). The anonymous inquirer’s question on fishing rights identified a certain river (possibly Lieksanjoki) in Pankakoski in Lieksa (Northern Carelia) flowing into Lake Pielinen.^[665]

One example of such a local dispute was the wine money dispute in the rural parish of Korpilahti. Using the pseudonym “Several municipal citi­zens” (“Useat kuntalaiset”), a “humble question” was asked in Keski- Suomi in March 1892 regarding the proper procedure for increasing the “wine money” (wiiniraha), a sum paid for the communion wine by every parishioner attending communion. Was a vicar entitled to raise the “wine money” from the traditional six pennies to ten without communal con­sent? The question also raised another grievance that the vicar married couples on the vicarage porch, considered a mundane place for matri­mony, instead of one of the vicarage rooms.^[666] The relatively innocent­seeming legal question about the wine money masked a local conflict. The question received an ironical riposte in a letter from the public in Suomalainen. What was the point of such questions, the writer(s) asked, as no vicar in the whole country had done something similar and the ques­tion had an obvious monosyllabic answer.^[667] Keski-Suomi resented this attack against it in Suomalainen and requested that criticism towards it rather be levelled on its own pages.^[668]

Later, several letters and notices in Keski-Suomi discussed the dispute explaining its background and that it partly revolved around the question of whether lawful procedures had been followed in decision-making.