TRANSITIONAL-GENEALOGISTS-FORUM-L Archives

Archiver > TRANSITIONAL-GENEALOGISTS-FORUM > 2008-05 > 1212207779


From: "Christy Fillerup" <>
Subject: Re: [TGF] Nurse Child
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 22:22:59 -0600
References: <87F1BFD3CDFD421693DE552DBBD805B4@ChristyPC><004401c8c0f3$42d10680$c8731380$@net><C41C6AAAC5B440A7BF993681B347006A@ChristyPC><BAYC1-PASMTP10820467EAB6BE02BEAE1197B90@CEZ.ICE>
In-Reply-To: <BAYC1-PASMTP10820467EAB6BE02BEAE1197B90@CEZ.ICE>


To Alison and everyone else who has been such a help. Thank you very much. I must admit some embarrassment that I didn't think to take the steps mentioned by Alison below, or to research the term in the full Oxford English Dictionary. I will take some improved research techniques away from this discussion.

Alison, you are correct that Charles is two, which created part of the problem. He wasn't young enough to say with certainty he was nursing, but wasn't old enough to say with certainty that he wasn't. I should have written "toddler" instead of "infant" to be more precise.

I believe I will accept that Charles was a foster-child of Sarah and John in 1851 and that the existence of any biological children born to Sarah cannot really be inferred from the situation. I will move on to the Parish Chest and Poor Law records and hope that they mention Charles' placement, which they should.

Again thank you to everyone for such great help.

Christy


----- Original Message -----
From: Alison Hare
To:
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 9:45 PM
Subject: Re: [TGF] Nurse Child


Christy

I've been puzzled by this exchange for several days. You didn't give the child's age but you said the child was "an infant." The child was in Sarah's home. I kept thinking, if Sarah wasn't nursing the infant, then who was? If Sarah was fostering an infant but not nursing it then it would hardly be an efficient arrangement, or so it seemed to me.

Finally I went online to see if I could find the entry referred to. I wondered exactly how old this infant was. If this is the family in Derbyshire I see the age is two. If you're not satisfied by the definitions of nurse child, then it seems to me another recourse would be to research nursing practices. To what age were children typically nursed at that time? Although I have no idea as to current stats, I would guess two is beyond the average norm now. But there weren't a lot of other options in 1851.

Continuing to be curious I went to Ancestry and did a search in the 1851 census using the pull down tab for Relationship to Head. If you set it to "Nurse" (leaving everything else blank) you get nurses, of course, but also "nurse child" references. Just a quick glance finds Ann Alcock, age 6, in Turnditch, Derbyshire; Susan Aldous, age 7, in Camberwell, Surrey, and Joseph Addie, age 10, in Lee, Kent. I wouldn't want to conclude too much from three references but it does seem to suggest the term did not strictly refer to wet nurses.

Alison


----- Original Message -----
From: Christy Fillerup
To:
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 3:35 PM
Subject: Re: [TGF] Nurse Child


There would likely be no mention of the child except to note its burial. If the child was not buried in the churchyard then I suppose there would not be a record of the birth. This is just after Civil Registration was instituted in England, so although one would hope the death of an infant would have been registered, the birth of a still born child would not.

If "nurse-child" referred only to a child who was actually nursing, this would provide circumstantial evidence that a child was born to Sarah Oldham, however soon it died. If "nurse-child" can refer to any orphan child being cared for in someone's home at the expense of the parish I can't make any inference that Sarah gave birth to her own child.

Since the existence of a record of a still-birth or early infant death would possibly not appear in the parish registers, the definition of this term will help me begin to build a case for or against the existence of a child for John and Sarah. I should note that "family tradition" states that there were three infants born to Sarah, all before 1856, which died young. I simply can find no trace of them whatsoever.

Christy
----- Original Message -----
From: Elizabeth Shown Mills
To:
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 12:47 PM
Subject: Re: [TGF] [APG] Nurse Child


>My initial thought was that Sarah is acting as a wet-nurse for this child.
No record to date, however, has found a child living or dead for Sarah
Oldham around this time period. In order to be a wet-nurse she would have
to have given birth to a child of her own.

Christy, if a child were born dead or died so soon after birth that it was
not christened, would there be a record of that birth at all?


-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message
Christy Fillerup

Millenealogy Family History Research
Salt Lake City, Utah
www.millenealogy.com

This thread: