Am 13.05.2017 um 12:59 schrieb Thomas de Groot:

> All joking aside, the wealth is what remains tangible I think, more than
> poverty and decrepitude which are rapidly erased by the wear and tear of
> history and age.
> 
> Interestingly, in that respect, there has been a book published recently
> of letters from wives to sailors on the Dutch ships during the wars we
> fought against each others. Those letters were intercepted by English
> privateers and so never reached destination. It is amazing to see how
> literate those humble women were in those days; reading and writing was
> rather common and especially the reading of gazettes, which were also
> sent alongside the letters.

I would be wary of sampling bias when assessing the literacy of a group
of people by such a sample of letters sent.

For example, people of poor literacy might have tended to send fewer
letters than their more literate peers, causing them to be
underrepresented in the sample; and illiterate people will be excluded
from the sample entirely for obvious reasons.

Also, the letters might not necessarily reflect the literacy of the
purported authors, as there is at least the possibility that they might
have been dictated into the hand of a more literate member of the
household or neighborhood.

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