This is a sample of the runaway advertisements found in the Danish newspaper Copenhagen’s Intelligence Sheet (Københavns Adresseavis). It contains 925 advertisements of runaways published in a recurrent segment of the newspaper. It samples every other years from 1783 to 1793. The period saw a spike in the practice, but the advertisement of missing people in this manner persisted until the middle of the nineteenth century. The advertisement of runaways touched all layers of society, but generally we find masters advertising workers. In the advertisements we find descriptions of state workers: missing soldiers, and sailors of the Danish navy, as well as convict workers from the prisons. We also meet peasants and militia-reserves from the provinces, who were subjects of estate and land owners. As the newspaper is centered on Copenhagen it is, however, natural that the ads are dominated by apprentices, servants and sailors under private contract. Interestingly many of the sailors advertised were in Swedish service and advertised by the Swedish consul. Some entries deal with family members (mostly the wives) advertising missing other family members. The sample also contains a single person from Iceland, as it was believed he had fled for Denmark, especially Copenhagen.
The sample contains the name of the advertised, his/her advertiser, numbers of reprints of the advertisement, and the full-text transcribed in Danish. In a few cases, you will also see answers from the runaways (or their relatives) defending their actions in the newspaper, or changes or follow-up advertisements adding information. This information is preserved as separate data points when available.
The dataset is a sample of a work in progress undertaken by Anders Dyrborg Birkemose from Aalborg University, Denmark. The project aims to collect all runaways advertisements in early modern Denmark. This reflects in how only some entries contain the addresses of the advertisers.