Working as a Wet Nurse: Was It More Than Just an Extra Income? A Case Study in Nineteenth-Century Rural Spain

One of the largest groups of workers in hospitals historically has been external wet nurses. They are responsible for raising abandoned children during their early years of life. However, we know little about them, only what the records of foundling homes tell us. In this article, we have combined information from the foundling hospital in the city of Zaragoza, Spain, with parish records of all wet nurses from 16 rural municipalities in the province throughout the nineteenth century (170 women who took care of 215 foundlings). From the data, we have studied their family profile, reproductive success, and motivations for volunteering as wet nurses. Did they only do it for the necessary extra income? Our results indicate that wet nurses had greater reproductive success than their contemporaries, using the care of foundlings as a means to space out their own marital fertility.