Wet Nursing

If one believed that the lower and labouring classes were unclean, immoral, and animalistic, one had to ask why a healthy woman capable of breast feeding would turn to a wet nurse. During the Victorian Era, there appeared to have been the practice of breast feeding of infants by other members of the family other than the mother. Wet nursing mostly occured between upper-class women. A wet nurse was an outsider hired to breast feed. There is no doubt that wet nursing had been widely practiced in a many cultures especially Victorian England. Wet nursing was popular around this time because it was during the era that nude paintings were painted and women felt as if their breast would become disfigured. The safest way to acquire such an employee was through a Lying-in Hospital. The Times regularly carried advertisements. Typically, Queen Charlotte's Lying-in Hospital advertised in March of 1888 stated that "wet nurses  promptly supplied on application to the Matron," and the General Lying-in Hospital in York road, Lambeth advertised in the last year of the century, on 4 September, that "Wet Nurses ... can always be obtained on application to the Matron." In addition wet-nurses were sometimes available through the workhouses. According to The Times of 15 October 1836, in some workhouses, when a woman was admitted and gave birth, the parish officers would, after the birth, recommend them as wet nurse, which is their usual mode of providing for unfortunate persons of this kind.