The Wet Nurse

Emma Condick sat quietly in the nursery, silently watching onwards as a child suckled hungrily from her breast. The child seemed content, while oblivious to the fact that this woman was not his mother. Emma thought of her own children at home and her husband John. Her husband had many jobs during his lifetime to support their ever-growing family, but his endeavors were never enough to make ends meet. By 1861, Emma employed herself as a wet-nurse to the Harris family, taking care of the youngest child, William.[1] Like many women in the mid-nineteenth century, Emma supported herself and her family by nursing another woman’s child for wages, but her personal story has been lost to history.

I began to be interested in wet-nursing after one of my professors noted a woman being listed as a wet nurse in an English census record. I was curious as to why a woman willingly nursed another woman’s child for money, while her own child was nursed by another, creating a economic milk dependency. I have done extensive research on multiple women and their families to see if trends can be seen in their lives which would help expand our knowledge of the life experiences of women who worked in a trade so foreign to us today.

The purpose of this blog is study and analyze the experiences of women who were employed as wet-nurses between 1851 and 1861 in England. A study like this is only possible because of advances in genealogical studies and the digitization of original English records, which were consulted for this study. By studying wet-nurses and their employers from mid-nineteenth century England, individual experiences, as well as common trends in households, this blog will contribute to the gap in wet-nursing scholarship concerning real women. By analyzing the lives of who these women worked for and the women themselves, the real experiences and trends in the occupation come to life.

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[1] Thomas Willis Household, Greenwich West, Kent, 1861 England Census, Class RG 9, Piece 399, Folio 55, Page 15, GSU Roll 542630, Page 16 of 49. http://www.ancestry.co.uk, accessed 29 August 2012.