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Thomas Coram had been appalled at the infant corpses abandoned in London gutters because the parents could not afford the burial cost (even in 1900 one in five people had a pauper’s burial). This led him to established the Foundlings Hospital in 1741 in Guilford Street, London. It was impossible for the facilities to cope with the all the children requiring help. Mortality rates at this and similar institutions were very high: only 4400 of the 15000 (29%) admitted in the first four years lived to adolescence. Of about half a million foundlings christened in workhouses after 1728, only 40% survived to the age of two.
Extract from The British Population by Colman and Salt
In the parishes studied by Wrigley and Schofield, the infant mortality rate declined from about 160 in the first half to about 130 in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Mortality of the babies of aristocrats fell from about 160 to about 100 at the same time. In a group of Shropshire villages, infant mortality fell from about 200 in 1661-1710 to about 100 in 1761-1810 (Jones 1980). Brownlee (1925) used the London Bills of Mortality to show that the death-rate of children under two fell by 40% from 1730 to 1800. Infant survival improved during the eighteenth century, but it is not obvious why.
Many historians believe that "there is a tremendous change in attitudes towards children from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries" (Plumb 1976). Historians themselves have "rediscovered childhood" in the last three decades (Aries 1962). Before the eighteen century, literature, diaries, monuments, art, and the law indicate a coolness towards children (Stone 1977). Many early child-rearing practices were barbarous by modern standards. Children were swaddled (wrapped to prevent free movement) shortly after birth, to keep them out of mother’s way. Medical opinion believed that early breast milk (antigen-rich colostrum) was harmful, and that feeding should be delayed until the passage of the first stool. Early medications and purges were recommended, and unsuitable solids for early weaning, not to mention spirits and laundanum (preparations containing opium) to keep the baby quiet (Fildes 1980). Medical advice, like wet-nursing, was only followed by the wealthy, and may explain their inferior infant mortality rates.
Extract from The British Population by Colman and Salt
But there was a darker side in attitudes to children. Unwanted babies were frequently abandoned in the streets, particularly in the great towns. Many but not all the mothers were unmarried: prostitutes and servant girls made pregnant by their masters. Overlaying, often recorded in the Bills of Mortality, was a cover for infanticide. Babies were often sent away to be nursed in rural parishes where they were ill fed, overcrowded, and quietened with opiates (opium based sedatives). Few returned as their parents would well know. In England the practice was not nearly as widespread as in France (Langer 1972), where "only the middling poor, probably a substantial proportion of rural society …. nursed all their infants" (Flinn 1982). Legislation to control baby farms in Britain was not introduced until 1872.