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  • NURSING BABIES TO FIGHT POVERTY: WAGES OF WET NURSES OF SPANISH FOUNDLING HOSPITALS IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES

  • Carmen Sarasúa, Pilar Erdozáin, Ricardo Hernández
  • Journal:
    Revista de Historia Economica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History / Volume 41 / Issue 2 / September 2023
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    31 January 2023, pp. 243-271
    Print publication:
    September 2023
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  • Foundling hospitals spread across Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, taking in hundreds of thousands of children each year. In Spain, the hospitals of major cities had staffs of more than 1,000 external wet nurses, who worked mainly in rural localities. Their cash wages were key for the household economies of the poor rural and urban populations. This article presents a methodology to interpret wet-nurse wages and explains their utility with respect to other occupations for men and women. Our results include a series of nominal and real wages for wet nurses and a calculation of their contributions to family income. The level of wages these institutions could offer was a major determinant in the supply of wet-nurse labour.