A history of wet nursing with Liz Lee-Smith

 We’re doing something a little bit different this week, as you may have guessed from our title. I'm talking to Liz Lee-Smith, who is @‌thebirthhistorian on Instagram. She's an antenatal educator,a breastfeeding peer supporter, and she's a history nerd as well. And we’ll be discussing wet nursing, by looking at the lives of a handful of women through history. 

One note of warning, we will be talking about a story that involves baby death, and we do note that it’s coming up so that you can skip if you need to.

My new picture book on how breastfeeding journeys end, The Story of Jessie’s Milkies, is available from Amazon here -  The Story of Jessie's Milkies. In the UK, you can also buy it from The Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill, London. Other book shops and libraries can source a copy from Ingram Spark publishing.

You can also get 10% off my books on supporting breastfeeding beyond six months and supporting the transition from breastfeeding at the Jessica Kingsley press website, that's uk.jkp.com using the code MMPE10 at checkout.

Follow me on Twitter @MakesMilk and on Instagram  @emmapickettibclc or find out more on my website www.emmapickettbreastfeedingsupport.com

Resources mentioned - 

https://spectrumlactation.org/

https://kimberlysealsallers.com/books/

This podcast is presented by Emma Pickett IBCLC, and produced by Emily Crosby Media.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Emma Pickett: I'm Emma Pickett and I'm a Lactation Consultant from London. When I first started calling myself Makes Milk, that was my superpower at the time because I was breastfeeding my own two children. And now I'm helping families on their journey. I want your feeding journey to work for you from the very beginning to the very end.

And I'm big on making sure parents get support at the end too. Join me for conversations on how breastfeeding Breastfeeding is amazing and also sometimes really, really hard. We'll look honestly and openly at that process of making milk and of course, breastfeeding and chest feeding are a lot more than just making milk.

Thank you very much for joining me for today's episode. As you will have seen from the title, A History of Wet Nursing, it's a little bit different today. I'm not going to be grilling my guest about her own breastfeeding journey, although I'm sure we could do another hour on that. She's wearing her historian hat.

I'm trying to work out what a historian hat would look like. I'm sure it would be very, very creative. You can pick your historian hat in a minute, Liz. So I'm talking to Liz Leesmith, who is the birth historian on Instagram. She's an anti natal educator. She's a breastfeeding peer supporter, and she's a history nerd as well.

And I'd like to call myself a history nerd. So we're going to nerd out together. We're going to talk about the history of wet nursing and this story does include some sad moments because, you know, wet nursing is partly about exploitation, but there is also a story that includes a baby dying as well, just to let you know about that.

Um, we'll also flag that up just before we get to that story too. Thank you very much for joining me today, Liz. 

[00:01:41] Liz Lee-Smith: Hello, thank you for having me. I think my history hat would have to be one of those wonderful medieval tall headdresses. 

[00:01:49] Emma Pickett: Pointy princess hat. I'm thinking of my Lady Bird Cinderella book where she's got a pointy princess hat with a veil attached to the top.

Did anyone wear pointy princess hats? Was that actually a thing? It was a 

[00:02:01] Liz Lee-Smith: thing, yeah, it was a thing. Um, yeah. I don't think they're 

[00:02:06] Emma Pickett: very practical. If I'm allowed to have a historian hat as well, which I don't think I've got a bit of a history degree. I did American studies at university. So I've got a bit of history.

I think I'll have a big feather plume if that's okay. So, so excellent. So we're going to talk about. wet nursing and the history of wet nursing. And before we start, it goes without saying that wet nursing has been happening ever since there were mammals with breasts and boobs and lactation. So we're talking, going back to the very, very, very early days of, of lactation.

And I'm also aware that People who did wet nursing through history weren't the people that wrote stuff down. They weren't the people that had access to documentation. I mean, what's your thinking around that? 

[00:02:47] Liz Lee-Smith: Yeah, I mean, exactly. Humans are capable of feeding another person's baby, which means it's clearly something that nature has intended that could happen.

Um, so we are going right back. If we talk about the full history, we're going back into the caves and beyond that. Um, and absolutely about the people who write things down. So history tends to come to us from one of two ways. Either somebody thought it was worth recording in some way, and then worth preserving.

And by somebody, when we talk about Western European history, we tend to be talking about white men. Not very interested, usually, in women's bodies or how they worked. Or things arrived to us by pure accident. So they just happen to survive, which does mean that information about breastfeeding in general tends to come from that by accident survived, but there's a few bits where people have written things down on purpose.

to keep them. So we've got a mixture of both types today. 

[00:03:48] Emma Pickett: So when you say by accident survive, you mean just because the blokes that tend to be in charge of curating documentation will be throwing away stuff that doesn't refer to breastfeeding if they knew it was there. And if, if it, if they didn't even realise what was in it, it's more likely to get preserved and kept and, and Do women write about breastfeeding because in an open way or is there any sense of sort of privacy and, and, you know, struggling to talk about bodies and we've got that kind of, because we, for example, we have very rarely hear people talking about menstruation in history.

People don't talk about what, what anyone was doing in the sort of 15, 16 hundreds, we're guessing. Um, was there that, was there that sort of shame around breastfeeding and bodies and lactation in the same way? 

[00:04:30] Liz Lee-Smith: Not so much in the same way, so it is written about, more often than not, the phrase nursing is used rather than breastfeeding, um, and depending on, on the time, but women do actually talk about it.

And one of the women we talk about today wrote. in her letter about it and about her experience and another one wrote a whole pamphlet about child rearing and breastfeeding. So it is absolutely written about, um, but always comes through. 

[00:04:56] Emma Pickett: Tell me about your very earliest source that we're going to talk about today.

Where are we, where are we traveling to first? On our little time machine that I'm going to imagine if that's okay. And our time machine, we're going to decorate that our own way as well, but we won't get into plumes and princess hats any more than we have already. Tell me about our first So 

[00:05:12] Liz Lee-Smith: our first source is actually one of these accidental sources.

We are going all the way back to 187 A. D. And we're also going back to a place called Oxyrhynchus, which was in Egypt. And at the time, that was under Roman control. Now, Oxyrhynchus is a really interesting place for us because by pure accident, a load of papyri survived. And these papyri have details about people's ordinary life.

So these aren't the things that people wrote down great literary works. These are things like contracts, receipts, shopping lists, laundry lists, all sorts of real daily life information, which means it is a fantastic source for what life was like under the Romans in Egypt. 

[00:05:57] Emma Pickett: Wow. So, so it's the Roman Empire, but we're in Africa.

We're in Egypt. Um, and And gosh that's an amazing thing to find. Was it discovered in a cave like the Dead Sea Scrolls? How was it come across? Do you know? 

[00:06:10] Liz Lee-Smith: I'm not actually sure how they found it. I think they just dug them up. I think they survived because it was further down the Nile, so it's near, sort of, quite a bit further down from Cairo, so quite a bit further down.

Um, and they just happened to survive. It was quite a dry area in the sand and these papyri just were there. 

[00:06:27] Emma Pickett: Okay, so what have we got? What does it tell us about breastfeeding when we're nursing? 

[00:06:30] Liz Lee-Smith: We're going to meet a lady called Serapius. And in A. D. 187, she was enslaved. She was a slave in Oxyrhynchus. Um, but we have the receipt for her wet nursing services.

[00:06:46] Emma Pickett: Wow, okay. So, okay, Daft Question. She's a slave, but she's still writing an invoice. So does that mean someone was paying her in addition to the fact that she was enslaved? 

[00:06:59] Liz Lee-Smith: So we know about her because she's mentioned in this receipt, but the receipt is between her owner 

[00:07:04] Emma Pickett: and 

[00:07:05] Liz Lee-Smith: the mother of the baby. But the receipt gives us quite a lot of information about her, or at least about the arrangement that was made.

So we don't know a lot about Serapius. We don't know where she was from. It's unlikely that she was ethnically Greek, just because at that time in that place, that was the ethnicity of the ruling elite. So she's unlikely to have been that, but she could literally have been from anywhere within the empire.

[00:07:35] Emma Pickett: Okay, so you say Greek rather than Roman. So there were Greek people living in the Roman Empire. Getting complicated. In Egypt. Okay, so we've got a Greek elite, it's part of the Roman Empire in Egypt, and her owner, in inverted commas, is leasing her out for her wet nursing services. What else does the receipt tell us?

[00:07:54] Liz Lee-Smith: Well, it tells us the name of the baby. So she was, um, nursing a baby girl called Helene, a very Greek name. We know that Helene's mother was called, and I'm going to butcher this name, I really apologize to her. You've done very well 

[00:08:07] Emma Pickett: with names so far, so if you butcher one, I think we can forgive you. 

[00:08:11] Liz Lee-Smith: It's Tannin Terris.

[00:08:13] Emma Pickett: Okay. 

[00:08:14] Liz Lee-Smith: Is her mother's name. We know Serapios was owned by a man named Chosion. Butchering the name. Um, but we also know that the contract had been for two years. Wow. Okay. So we know that she had breastfed this baby for two years, which is actually interesting because I don't know if you've seen, but very recently there was a new study released about teeth.

[00:08:38] Emma Pickett: Roman teeth. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us about that for anyone who didn't see it. 

[00:08:42] Liz Lee-Smith: So if anyone doesn't know this, everything that we eat and drink leaves a mark on our teeth and on our bones. So archaeologists can look at skeletons and they can tell what a diet consisted of. Which is amazing. And some recent research has looked at teeth and has been able to tell how long somebody had had breast milk for.

And this is really interesting because before, a lot of evidence for breastfeeding in the ancient world was looking at the graves of children. Whereas this is looking at adults. So we're actually seeing those people who'd survived infancy in a gung through. And it came out and showed that the average duration of breastfeeding in urban centers was two years and then slightly less, no sorry, it was for rural areas it was two years and slightly less in urban areas, but still we're looking at this two year, which also marries up with medical writing at the time suggesting two years.

[00:09:44] Emma Pickett: Okay. Wow. Okay. So for two years she was breastfeeding this little girl. It's kind of, I'm just trying to imagine what their daily life must have been like. I mean, obviously if you're breastfeeding a two year old, you're not necessarily breastfeeding all day long like you are with a newborn. I mean, was she sitting twiddling her thumbs and, and plaiting someone's hair waiting for the two year old to toddle across?

I'm guessing that she was probably given other services as well towards the end. 

[00:10:10] Liz Lee-Smith: I should think so, yeah. She had other duties. We do know because the receipt tells us how much was paid. So it says that they received 400 drachmas of silver in imperial coin, which I think was probably quite a lot of money.

Um, but that also went towards oil and clothing and other expenses. So we know a lot about then not only what she was paid, but also that they were providing clothing, I'm guessing for Sarah Pierce and the baby. Um, and oil, which was used for lighting, food, and also for cleaning, so cleaning the skin. 

[00:10:47] Emma Pickett: Okay.

And presumably you want to have a nice clean wet nurse. So cleaning and bathing would have been extra important for your wet nurse. Gosh, I'm just thinking what that must be. I mean, one of this is a theme throughout the conversation with wet nursing, imagining saying goodbye to that child. And the child saying goodbye to you and the complexity of that relationship, which is a professional relationship, but yet surely there must be an emotional connection that you can't necessarily control and account for and never seeing that child again and the child never seeing you again and how very, very odd that must be for everybody concerned.

Yeah. Um, we don't have any reason, don't have any knowledge as to why. That mother wasn't breastfeeding, do we assume it's a little bit like in other cultures where an elite woman may not necessarily have breastfed, um, to regain fertility? Do you think that theme would be true for them as well? 

[00:11:38] Liz Lee-Smith: Absolutely, yes, absolutely.

We have another document, this isn't from Oxyrhynchus, it's from Britain, I think. I think it's from Vindolanda, but I'm not sure. I might be wrong about that. Where a mother has written congratulations to her son in law on the birth of their baby and has said, I hear you forced her to breastfeed. I don't want my daughter to do that.

[00:11:58] Emma Pickett: So 

[00:12:01] Liz Lee-Smith: yeah, elite women would have had this pressure to not breastfeed their own babies. It could have been that the mother wasn't able to breastfeed, that it's a possibility, but it could also just been a wider social expectation that elite women didn't do it. 

[00:12:18] Emma Pickett: Yeah. So even back on the, from the very earliest documents, we've got enslaved women who are involved in wet nursing.

And I guess, you know, obviously we've got enslavement when we talk about sort of 19th century and 18th century wet nursing as well. But I suppose. I mean, when someone's not technically enslaved, but they're still required to be a wet nurse because of economic pressure, I guess it's difficult to unpick what is a free choice and what is not a free choice.

Exactly. 

[00:12:46] Liz Lee-Smith: Yeah. And we, we don't know what happened to Sarah Pierce's baby. That's not recorded. Yeah. So we don't know whether she was feeding another child or whether or not. And we don't have that information. 

[00:13:01] Emma Pickett: So when somebody is a wet nurse, they, they're, they're going to have been pregnant first. People are not inducing lactation in the same way you might in the modern era.

So they've, they've had their own baby. Presumably that baby needs to be relatively new and young to get, have that volume of milk supply. And, and I'm guessing even in those days they would have known that, you know, early milk would have been better for a very young baby. Were people able to take their own children on a wet nursing job?

Was that happening? 

[00:13:29] Liz Lee-Smith: Oh, it depends on the time. It massively depends on the time. Um, and interestingly enough, actually, for some times, and in ancient Rome they believed this bit as well, is that they believed colostrum was bad milk, and so there should be a wet nurse to begin with anyway, because colostrum wasn't very good.

And in Shudder times, they believed that once the milk had got to nine months, it would start to go bad. So your wet nurse shouldn't have a baby over nine months. So some women would have been allowed to continue to feed their babies, uh, have their own babies. And actually there's a document from the 19th century where a woman talks about how her own mother had been the wet nurse for the local vicar's wife, and the older children took it in turns to take their sibling to their mum to go and be fed.

[00:14:15] Emma Pickett: Okay. 

[00:14:16] Liz Lee-Smith: Sometimes, sadly, the wet nurse's own child might have passed away. 

[00:14:21] Emma Pickett: Presumably that was quite common in an era, you know, pre vaccination, pre modern medicine. We've got obviously a very high level of infant mortality and, and that's, that must be quite a common scenario, I'm guessing. Yeah. 

[00:14:31] Liz Lee-Smith: And unfortunately in Sarah Pearce's case, because she was enslaved, And she might have had no choice over the fate of her baby.

Her baby could have been sold straight away. 

[00:14:45] Emma Pickett: Gosh. Yeah. Gosh is the understatement of the century. I mean, it's just. It's just impossible to imagine what, you know, hormonally is going on and psychologically is going on for someone in that situation. And, and almost feeling that this new baby is replacing your old baby and, but yet is, well, you just can't get your head around it, can you?

Yeah, say goodbye, yeah. Yeah, and all these little, little tiny babies just, you know, having this connection with this, this woman that they may not ever get to see again in their lives is so hard to understand. So, ancient Rome, we've got wet nursing happening, um, throughout the empire. Yeah. standard, not surprising.

What comes next? Tell us about your next document. 

[00:15:26] Liz Lee-Smith: So the next one, we're coming forward in time quite a lot, and we're coming back to England and we're heading to 1622 where we are going to meet Elizabeth Clinton, who was the Countess of Lincoln. So actually in 1622, she was the Dowager Countess of Lincoln and her husband had already passed away and she had been married quite young when she was about 14.

And she'd had around 18 children. Okay. Quite a few. It actually was about 10 years before she had her first child. So they were married for about 10 years first. That's 

[00:16:01] Emma Pickett: unusual, isn't it? Yeah, 

[00:16:03] Liz Lee-Smith: it kind of is, but kind of not. She was 14 when she married. I 

[00:16:07] Emma Pickett: think they held off having relations. I'm just thinking about, uh, Henry the, who's it?

Henry the seventh's mum, who was Margaret Beauford. She was giving birth at like 13 or something, wasn't she? I mean, I was super young, so not everyone was holding off, sadly. But, but sometimes they would if it was a very young bride. 

[00:16:26] Liz Lee-Smith: It was interesting about Margaret Beaufort because even at the time her husband was widely condemned for actually consummating his marriage with her.

So it certainly wasn't accepted that that was something he should have done. But yes, so Elizabeth Clinton was given a good 10 years to grow up. So she was 24 when she had her first child. And yeah, so she had 18 children, and she was a writer. She was very literate, and in 1622, she published a pamphlet called The Countess of Lincoln's Nursery.

[00:17:00] Emma Pickett: Aww. 

[00:17:02] Liz Lee-Smith: And she published this leaflet, she published this pamphlet, and she dedicated it to her daughter in law, Bridget, who was the current Countess of Lincoln, and who had just had a baby. 

[00:17:14] Emma Pickett: Gosh, can you imagine the mother in law pressure? I've had 18 babies. So what I say really is going to matter quite a bit here.

Um, and presumably, you know, if you carry on, if you start at 24 and have 18, you know, you're having babies, you know, quite into quite late in life. So, um, I'm guessing she over, almost overlapped, not far off overlapping with, with her daughter in law. So tell us what the pamphlet said. I'm hoping it's going, by the way, 18 babies.

I'm assuming that they didn't all survive through childhood and adulthood. How many did did survive? Do we know? 

[00:17:44] Liz Lee-Smith: About four or five. I'm not entirely sure how many. We've got marriage records for about four of them. So another couple might have survived into adulthood and just not married. Okay. So yeah, she, she writes this pamphlet and it was a mixture of her own experience, but also, um, writings on parent, like, literature at the time that was out around sort of parenting.

And, um, on the plus side, she absolutely praises Bridget for breastfeeding her children. 

[00:18:11] Emma Pickett: Okay. So, so this is a Countess. So we don't have this kind of elite women don't breastfeed thing happening here at all. 

[00:18:18] Liz Lee-Smith: We do have some. We do have some. And uh, Bridget has come forward and said, I'm going to breastfeed my children.

And her mother in law says that's absolutely wonderful. But what she also says in this pamphlet is just how much pressure that Elizabeth had been under to not breastfeed. Okay. And all of her children were wet nursed. 

[00:18:36] Emma Pickett: Oh, okay. 

[00:18:38] Liz Lee-Smith: And this is quite interesting in what she writes. Because one thing that comes up quite a lot when you look at wet nursing is that grief from both parties, the mother and the wet nurse, around what this means.

And with Elizabeth Clinton, we really hear the grief that she wasn't her choice. And some of what she says is just, oh, it's heartbreaking. 

[00:19:05] Emma Pickett: Okay, read us a bit. Let's break our hearts. 

[00:19:07] Liz Lee-Smith: So it's just one word, one sentence where she writes, I should have done it. But she had been overruled by another's authority.

[00:19:19] Emma Pickett: I'm guessing that the other was authority was a bloke and was probably the count at this point. Um, so this is men making decisions about their wife's bodies, about their children's upbringing. Um, and she's just not in a position to be able to fight against that. So. I mean, I think that's, that's really valuable to hear that story.

Cause when we talk about wet nursing, we so often assume that the wet nurse is the victim. Don't we? The wet nurse is oppressed and exploited and the system's exploiting her and our sympathy goes for the wet nurse. And there's this, you know, posh lady gallivanting around not breastfeeding, but we actually forget that the person who's not breastfeeding, the birth mother can just be exploited in a completely different way.

And. And squashed by, you know, the system and patriarchy almost as much as the wet nurse. 

[00:20:04] Liz Lee-Smith: Exactly. Yeah. And she, the way she talks about breastfeeding in this pamphlet, you can hear how she felt and her own trying to come to terms with this, this grief around this. Because she puts some of the, uh, she, she talks about some of the objections that people would have to breastfeeding, and she writes, um, common objections such as, that it is troublesome, that it is noisome to one's clothes.

That it makes one look old. 

[00:20:38] Emma Pickett: Well, maybe that might make you look a bit older if you're in the middle of breastfeeding a toddler, but that's, uh, that's toddler parenting as much as anything. 

[00:20:46] Liz Lee-Smith: But then she also says, All such reasons are uncomely and unchristian. To be objected as they argue unmotherly affection, idleness, desire to have liberty, to gad from home, pride, foolish, finesse, lust, wantonness, and the like evils.

So she's really laying into women who, who put out their babies to nurse. 

[00:21:11] Emma Pickett: Wow. So that's kind of interesting that she writes this. I guess she can only write this because she is the Dowager Countess. I mean, if she was not the Dowager Countess, there's no way she's going to be producing this document. This is what happens when women are liberated from, from that sort of patriarchal control.

Um, but her, her son isn't stopping her writing this. So presumably. He was able to empathize on some level and presumably the son was the head of her household now because she's the dowager countess, but he's able to let this go ahead. I'm just trying to think the grief that must come from obviously goes without saying losing so many children, but wanting to breastfeed and not being allowed to.

I just, I'm just picturing her kind of. Trying to sneak in a feed or her milk coming in or, you know, the day the wet nurse arrives, feeling angry towards the wet nurse, just, just such a complex series of feelings that she must have been going through. So she wrote this document, you think, for her daughter in law, really, that was what was behind it?

[00:22:09] Liz Lee-Smith: That's who she dedicates it to. Um, And I suspect it, daughter in law choosing to breastfeed and her daughter in law having children gave her the excuse to write it and to publish it. I think she probably had all these emotions that she needed to process and she sort of put them out there. And she also talks about what happens to the wet nurse's baby.

Yeah, she writes here. Uh, be not accessory to that disorder of causing a poorer woman to banish her own infant for the entertaining of a richer woman's child, as it were, bidding her unlove her own to love yours. 

[00:22:48] Emma Pickett: Wow, that's hit the nail on the head, hasn't it? Gosh. Yeah, that's, that's really astute. Do we know how many children her daughter in law had or her son and daughter in law had?

[00:22:57] Liz Lee-Smith: Um, probably, but I don't. I'm 

[00:23:00] Emma Pickett: guessing more than one, if not necessarily 18, okay. Yeah. Gosh. So that, that document has been kept by somebody. Was it formally published or was, we're talking about a letter, was it actually published as a pamphlet? It was 

[00:23:13] Liz Lee-Smith: published, yeah. It was a pamphlet that was 

[00:23:14] Emma Pickett: published.

But she wasn't necessarily turning the tide of anything. We're still seeing through the 1600s, elite women still using wet nurses, very much expected to use a wet nurse. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And tell us a bit about why that was. Why were the upper classes encouraged to use wet nursing in, in, in Western Europe and in England?

[00:23:35] Liz Lee-Smith: So lots of patriarchal systems. The way inheritance was set up in England, the fact that it was the oldest son, so not necessarily the oldest daughter, influences of the rates of maternal and infant mortality. meant that these great families needed sons, ideally more than one. Um, because we're in a situation where it is one husband and one wife, you have only one woman who's producing the legitimate children.

So these families need this fertility to come back. And right from ancient times, people have understood that breastfeeding can impact on fertility, and it would space babies out. So interestingly Beep. You know, normal everyday Tudor woman, James Smith, who was a farmer's wife, would probably not have married until her mid twenties and would probably have not had so many children spaced out around about two years because she would have been breastfeeding in between.

Whereas these elite women would have been. popping them out very quickly. And particularly if we think about Elizabeth Clinton, the fact that some of her children didn't survive infancy meant it was probably even quicker. 

[00:24:54] Emma Pickett: Yeah. So that pressure to return to fertility is what's behind it all and, and producing the spares.

Um, yeah, yeah, that's intense. I'm going to ask you a question about someone slightly prior to, um, this particular Countess of Lincoln. Uh, Amberlynn. Oh, yes. Is it true that Amberlynn did breastfeed Elizabeth I? Is that, is that something? I've heard people say that. Do you know anything about that? 

[00:25:19] Liz Lee-Smith: I've heard it.

I would need to go and look it up to be absolutely sure. I think she possibly did for a little while, but even then her pressure would have been so intense. Even more, I was 

[00:25:30] Emma Pickett: going to say, if anyone's got pressure to be, to be producing another child, it would have been her. Yeah, so it's just really interesting that this is a very, it's interesting to hear Elizabeth's reference to Christianity because this is a very Christian time and you know, Madonna and Jesus is a big image and obviously there are lots of images around her breastfeeding But yet that still was overridden by that desire for for more children and and you know, not having that fertility So, how did the family go around, go about choosing a wet nurse and what, what did we need a wet nurse to be, to be the right kind of wet nurse?

[00:26:06] Liz Lee-Smith: There were so many advice books about how to choose your wet nurse and depending on the time, they were slightly different, but they all kind of had similar themes. So first off, there was a belief that a person's personality came through the breast milk. So you were looking for a wet nurse who had that personality trait that you would be looking for for your child.

So you would want them to be clean, respectable, you would want them to be quiet, measured, not fiery in any way. Um, and interestingly, they even went down to hair colour as to being important. And it was advised to not have a redhead wet nurse, 

[00:26:53] Emma Pickett: because redheads 

[00:26:53] Liz Lee-Smith: were fiery. 

[00:26:55] Emma Pickett: Okay, and this is, this is an era where we're talking about humours, aren't we, and the balancing of the humours, so if somebody has got that fiery side, that's going to cause that imbalance, I'm guessing.

So, so maybe that's quite handy to be a redhead in the 60s, if it means you get to keep your babies and not have to be farmed out to be a wet nurse and your husband's not selling you off to be a wet nurse. 

[00:27:15] Liz Lee-Smith: Yeah. Well, even then there was always restrictions. We do have various contracts as well. And, um, so from ancient Rome, we've got contracts for wet nursing.

And it often includes the fact that the woman should not have any sexual relations with her husband or anybody else and should not get pregnant again during the period of the wet nursing. So there's even those sort of restrictions on their lives. 

[00:27:38] Emma Pickett: Okay. So she's coming from her family home to live in this other home where this baby is.

And presumably there are kids back at home being looked after by sisters? By friends? It's not, I'd like you to be the husband, I'm guessing, doing sole child care if he's also got to tend to a, you know, a small holding or, you know, create food and do other things. So there's this whole network of people back at home looking after the wet nurse's family.

And people would have been a wet nurse more than once. Was it, is it a profession that someone would have done multiple times? 

[00:28:11] Liz Lee-Smith: Yeah, some people absolutely did. Some people absolutely did. And sometimes it would lead to a longer term position as well. So we have the details. So Henry VII, we have some details about his children.

And we have the details of the wet nurse of his daughter, Elizabeth of York. Unfortunately, Elizabeth didn't survive toddlerhood. But her wet nurse we know was a local gentry woman, so quite well off, um, which the royals would have taken someone from the gentry. They would not have taken a village lady.

They would have had somebody quite wealthy. Um, her own child was about nine months old and she had an older child who she left at home to come and be wet nurse for Elizabeth of York, the baby princess Elizabeth. And through doing that, not only did she get paid a lot of money, she got paid about 10, I think, which is a lot.

But it could also lead to a long term position in the nursery of the princess. So she could end up spending her entire life in royal service. Okay. Which was a path to money, influence. 

[00:29:21] Emma Pickett: I'm thinking of Romeo and Juliet here, and Juliet's nurse, who's clearly no longer wet nursing her, but was in the text, we know that she did, but she stayed with the family.

She stayed almost as a companion to Juliet, looking after her. So if you're a wet nurse, you're not scrubbing out chamber pots. there's something a bit special about that. So people, so even if the mother's breast milk isn't valued, breast milk is valued. And the sort of cleanliness and the status of that breast milk is something that we, we want to look after a little bit and pay attention to.

Okay, so Elizabeth Clinton, we like her, big thumbs up. I'm so sorry she had that horrible experience of not being able to breastfeed her own children. But what's lovely to hear is that she kind of broke the cycle, as it were, she wasn't somebody who was traumatised by her own experience and therefore wanted to make sure that everyone else had her experience.

She was looking to change that, which is really, really something admirable.

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Tell us who else we've got, who comes next in your list of sources. There are so many you can choose from, but you've very kindly only chosen a few that we can focus on today. Who are we going to talk about next? 

[00:31:15] Liz Lee-Smith: We are going to move forward to Georgiana or Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire. So another very elite woman.

And this is, uh, she was born in 1757. So we're in the Georgian era now. 

[00:31:28] Emma Pickett: Okay, so I've got a Keira Knightley film in my head. So there's she's, I don't think she did a lot of breastfeeding in the Keira Knightley film, but, but that's who we're talking about. And she, she wrote about her life. How do we know about her life?

[00:31:40] Liz Lee-Smith: We know so much about her because she was. She was probably the most famous woman of her age. So she was born Lady Georgiana Spencer. Of those Spencers, she is a direct ancestor of Princess Diana. 

[00:31:55] Emma Pickett: Okay. 

[00:31:56] Liz Lee-Smith: Um, and their lives have got quite a few parallels. When Georgiana was 17, she married William Cavendish, who was the Duke of Devonshire.

And in that moment, went on to become the most fashionable and famous woman of her age. Everybody knew who she was. If she turned up to a party with a big feather on her head, the next week, every lady turned up to a party with a big feather in her head. She was that influential around. So there was a lot written about her.

Lots of gossip columns about her. Lots of, like, just basic writing about her. But also she wrote letters herself until we had her own words and her own documentation because she wasn't educated. Okay, 

[00:32:42] Emma Pickett: so from what I remember of the film, she was married to Ray Fiennes who was a bit of a prat. Yeah. Didn't love her very much.

Yeah. And she, and she shagged a sexy young politician, who I've forgotten who that was, and got pregnant by sexy young politician, if I recall, so had an illegitimate child, which gosh, in those days, when you are a The Duchess of Devonshire is presumably the absolute most outrageous thing you could do, having a legitimate pregnancy.

Um, how does breastfeeding come into her life? 

[00:33:13] Liz Lee-Smith: You're right. She was, she and William were not a happy marriage. They were absolutely trapped in this marriage. I think it was written at the time that the Duke of Devonshire was the only person who didn't love his wife. 

[00:33:25] Emma Pickett: Oh, because everyone else in the world loves her.

And oh, that's really sad. 

[00:33:29] Liz Lee-Smith: Um, and they also lived in this sort of. Menage a trois, a relationship with his mistress who was Georgiana's best friend. And it took Georgiana a long time to have a baby, after they were married. So they were married in 1774, and it wasn't until 1783 that she had her first child.

And you can probably guess what happened. It was not the son and heir that everybody needed. She had a beautiful little girl, who she named after herself, called Georgiana. Even when it was reported in the newspapers about her having this baby, people were reporting that it was a shame it was a girl. 

[00:34:03] Emma Pickett: Okay.

[00:34:04] Liz Lee-Smith: Georgiana herself, despite being incredibly fashionable and very, very famous, was also a bit of a people pleaser and really struggled psychologically with people not liking her. She always wanted to do what people wanted her to do. But she stood up massively to the conventions of the time and she decided to breastfeed her own children.

So she breastfed her three legitimate children with William Cavendish. So the two girls who were born first and then her third one, William. 

[00:34:32] Emma Pickett: I mean, that is really standing up to convention. You've got two girls and you're saying, no, I'm sorry, I don't care about my fertility returning. I'm going to breastfeed them.

I mean, that takes an enormous strength of character when you've got that immense pressure on you to produce another son. 

[00:34:46] Liz Lee-Smith: And she writes about it. She writes when her baby's just a couple of months old, um, she writes to her mother about her husband's family and she says, what makes them abuse suckling is their impatience for my having a boy.

And they fancying, I shan't soon if I suckled. I should not have minded this, but the Duchess of Portland said she wanted me to drink porter to fatten the little girl, and Lady Sefton and the Duchess of Rutland said that Lady Lincoln's child was fatter. So she's aware of all this pressure, people somehow thinking the wet nurse's milk's gonna be better than hers, and make her baby fatter.

Um, and her family, her husband's family want her to have a boy, and to stop. I mean it was so, um It was so unusual for a woman of her class to breastfeed that it was actually reported in the newspaper. Wow. Can you imagine? 

[00:35:39] Emma Pickett: Wow. She 

[00:35:40] Liz Lee-Smith: opens the Morning Post one morning and she finds that females in high life should generally be strangers to the duty of a mother as to render one instance to the contrary so singular.

[00:35:51] Emma Pickett: Writing about her. So, if people are copying her wearing a feather, does that mean breastfeeding becomes trendy as a result of her? Do we see any impact of that? No, no, 

[00:36:03] Liz Lee-Smith: I have a personal theory as to why I think she was able to stand up to pressure and as a piece of water This was personal to me She was very very good friends with somebody else who insisted on breastfeeding their own children who also had a daughter first Against what everybody else wished 

[00:36:22] Emma Pickett: and that was Mary Antoinette Oh, I didn't know they were friends.

Wow. Okay. 

[00:36:26] Liz Lee-Smith: They were near contemporaries. They'd met, um, and very suitable friendship for each other. Um, you know, the Duchess of Devonshire, she wasn't a royal duchess, but she was only about a step or so below that. Um, and they corresponded. And I think the fact that she knew that Marie Antoinette had insisted on breastfeeding her children.

And that her first child was a girl. My personal theory is that it would have given her some strength. Yeah. 

[00:36:57] Emma Pickett: Knowing someone else is going through that and what that can do. So there are probably some amazing letters that have been lost in history where they're chatting about block ducts and how often their babies are feeding and wouldn't that be amazing to come across one of those letters between them?

Wow. 

[00:37:12] Liz Lee-Smith: We always need Horrible Histories to do like a little sketch of them chatting about it. 

[00:37:18] Emma Pickett: Gosh that's amazing. But we don't know how long she breastfed for? What's our impression on that? 

[00:37:23] Liz Lee-Smith: Well, we do know how long she breastfed her son for. So, you're right, she, um, shortly after, um, her son was born, she began an affair with Charles Gray, who was the politician, the sexy politician.

That resulted in a pregnancy, um, a little girl called Eliza Courtney, who was born in 1791 or two, I'm quite sure. Georgiana was sent to France to go and give birth, and it was put out in all the press that she was holidaying on the continent. 

[00:37:51] Emma Pickett: You know, 

[00:37:51] Liz Lee-Smith: very weird. And, um, Georgiana was absolutely convinced she wasn't going to make it through this birth.

She was convinced. And so she wrote letters to her children, um, in the event that she didn't get through, get through it. And I, I, I kind of get the impression that she felt that if she didn't survive this childbirth, that was a just punishment, 

[00:38:12] Emma Pickett: you know? Golly, okay. 

[00:38:14] Liz Lee-Smith: You know, you kind of got that sense. But in her son's letter, she writes that she nursed him for nine months.

[00:38:20] Emma Pickett: Okay. 

[00:38:21] Liz Lee-Smith: So she tells us how long she'd fed him for. 

[00:38:25] Emma Pickett: Just trying to imagine her in France, sort of two years after the French Revolution. It's not the most relaxing holiday in the world, is it? Your friend has had a head cut off and you're there. And, you know, I mean, I can't remember my history, but it's a sort of funny old republic at that point.

Very much anti aristocracy. So I hope she's able to hide in a little fishing village somewhere and have her pregnancy. So that, that child that she had with Charles Gray, she, she had to give that child away, presumably, and presumably was not breastfeeding that child because they were squirreled away in a carriage in the middle of the night and given to another family.

[00:38:57] Liz Lee-Smith: Yeah, well, that's exactly that. Um, the child was taken from her pretty much immediately, and it was wet nursed by a foster mother, and then went to go and live with Charles Gray's family. So, she was raised by her father's family, but was given the surname Courtney, which had no connection to either family to try and hide who she was.

[00:39:16] Emma Pickett: And she didn't have any children after that with, back with Cavendish? No. Okay. So, I mean, really positive to hear about her standing up to the convention, but also I'm kind of disappointed that she didn't start this great fashion for breastfeeding. It just shows how, how ingrained the, the wet nursing convention was that even she, the most fashionable influential woman in Britain could not start a trend for, uh, for, for breastfeeding your own child.

Who comes next? 

[00:39:46] Liz Lee-Smith: Next we're coming all the 19th century and we are going down the social scale quite a lot, quite a lot, and we're going to meet a lady called Jane Pay, who again we don't know very much about her, and just as a little warning I think this one does involve the death of her, her child, just a warning there.

So Jane, um, Okay, we know she was a domestic servant, that's about all we know. And we know that, um, at the end of 1868, somewhere at the end of that year, she gave birth to an illegitimate daughter called Bessie. So we know that about her. Um, and we know that Bessie was put into the care of a lady called Mary Waters.

And Jane herself went to go and be a wet nurse. So in this, I think we get the sense that Jane, as an unmarried mother, is a domestic servant. I'm assuming, given that it doesn't sound like Mary Waters was related to her, that Jane had no family. Because Bessie wasn't put with a relation, um, was put with somebody else.

And so likely, one of the only options available to her was to sell her breast milk. She was no longer respectable, because she'd had an illegitimate child. Chances are if she was employed when she got pregnant, her employers would have just dismissed her with no reference. So how has she got the wet nurse job?

I'm not sure. There was possibly some, um, fabrication of who Bessie was. Maybe even that Bessie already hadn't survived. There was a husband somewhere. 

[00:41:31] Emma Pickett: Yeah. 

[00:41:33] Liz Lee-Smith: But she goes off to be a wet nurse, and tragically, uh, baby Bessie dies at the age of nine months old. And how we know about Jane is because in August 1869, there was an inquest.

And so we have the coroner's report. And it's noted in the coroner's report that Mrs. Mary Waters, the woman who was caring for the child, said that she was often in poor health, that she had sickness and diarrhoea. But Jane, the mother, reported that her charges, so the baby she was feeding, was fine and healthy.

And because she uses the word children, it suggests that she might also have been caring for an older child as well. And this is where it gets really sad. Because the coroner basically decides that Little Bessie probably would have lived if she had not been deprived of its natural food. 

[00:42:28] Emma Pickett: That's such a painful thing for Jane to hear, I'm guessing.

So Mary Waters is presumably, you know, not lactating and would have been feeding Bessie, you know. bits of bread and water and animal milk if she could find it and whatever else she could find and, and it's the child of the wet nurse who's going to be suffering at the end of the day. 

[00:42:50] Liz Lee-Smith: And then the coroner, it just goes on, the coroner concludes that this was a typical case showing that young women having produced children put them out to nurse and sold their sustenance, that which was meant, which was sent by nature for their own children's support to the offspring of others.

They allowed their own to die whilst those they suckled lived. 

[00:43:15] Emma Pickett: Wow, okay, talk about blaming the mother there and blaming Jane. 

[00:43:20] Liz Lee-Smith: Yeah. No mention about the society in which she lived that would have made it near impossible for an unmarried mother to raise her child. It's her fault that she had that baby in the first place.

Which is a very Victorian attitude to illegitimacy. 

[00:43:39] Emma Pickett: That's a very sad story. Yeah, not only the death but then living with that huge burden of someone respectable, a judge, literally telling you it's your fault your baby has died. I mean that's just, just horribly painful to imagine. 

[00:43:52] Liz Lee-Smith: And it goes into a wider conversation that was happening at this time.

Um, there was lots more talk, um, in sort of newspapers and the media. Um, sort of Just talking general about the impact on the wet nurse's child. So very famously, uh, Queen Victoria had lots of babies. You know, she had nine of them. She hated being pregnant. She didn't really like babies that much. She didn't breastfeed any of her babies.

Which is one of those things from history, you wish you could go back and say, you probably wouldn't have had quite so many. 

[00:44:27] Emma Pickett: That's a good point. Let's go back in a time machine and tell grumpy old Queen Victoria, listen, if you want a gap, flip in breast feed, love. Yeah, that's, that's a very good point. 

[00:44:37] Liz Lee-Smith: Um, but when she got a wet nurse for her, um, for our oldest son, it says here, they express their anxiety that the wet nurse's baby should be taken care of and covered the expense of placing it with a wet nurse.

[00:44:51] Emma Pickett: Okay, so that baby went to a wet nurse, so the other wet nurse could come to her, to the royal household. Wow. I guess this is the era, isn't it, of much more awareness of child poverty and looking at labour laws and, and, you know, the, the reports into what was happening with the urban poor and, and Prince Albert was famously, you know, kept worrying about urban poor.

So people are getting a bit more of a conscience in this era, not to say that people didn't have it later, you know, earlier in life or early in history, but it's just more overt, isn't it? The awareness of how. poverty is affecting families and, and how rich may exploit the poor. So that makes sense that they're joining those dots, but people are still using wet nurses.

We're talking right up and towards the end of the 19th century. That's still what's happening. 

[00:45:33] Liz Lee-Smith: Yeah, because it's an age, the Victorian age is a real age of contradiction because at this time you start getting this view that working class women are different, upper class women and middle class women and the upper class women and middle class women are delicate flowers.

They can't possibly do anything that's difficult. They must sit beautifully pristine and just be very meek, quiet creatures. Whereas working class women are hardy and strong and they can cope with working in these factories because they are somehow different. And you get this real narrative that these middle and upper class women should be like the Virgin Mary and devote themselves entirely to their children but at the same time shouldn't bother themselves by breastfeeding because that's too hard.

[00:46:21] Emma Pickett: Yeah. 

[00:46:21] Liz Lee-Smith: So they should use these wet nurses, but then also be careful because your wet nurse has a baby that you now need to also take care of. I don't know how as a woman you would navigate that. 

[00:46:32] Emma Pickett: Yeah, it's, it's difficult when you're also, I'm just wondering about corsets and clothing, but actually even, even poor women would be, would have been wearing corsets in those days.

So it's not just, it's not just richer women who would have been struggling with, with the clothing and restrictions of clothing. Um, wow. Okay. So I wonder if Queen Victoria had breastfed and been pro breastfeeding, what difference that would have made, but that was obviously not going to be happening.

[00:46:57] Liz Lee-Smith: Huge difference because the big reason why we actually have pain management and pain medication for labour is because Victoria used chloroform. She, and at that time, it was also felt that women deserved the pain of childbirth because of the sin of Eve. So women had to have painful childbirths to somehow clear that sin away.

And the fact the Queen used chloroform did loads to popularize that. So yeah, if she breastfed, it probably would have changed a lot of women's lives. 

[00:47:30] Emma Pickett: Yeah. So, so the royal family with breastfeeding, do we have 20th century royals breastfeeding? Did the Queen, well, I say the Queen, that's Camilla these days.

Did Queen Elizabeth II breastfeed her own children, do we know? 

[00:47:42] Liz Lee-Smith: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I think that's always quite. It kept a bit more private, I 

[00:47:48] Emma Pickett: think. Presumably we're not wet nursing in 1940s, but I guess there might have been formula use in the 1940s. So obviously this era that we're talking about, this sort of late 19th century era, you know, we quite often talk about wet nursing in the context of transatlantic slavery.

And what was going on in America? Um, what was the sort of typical set up in, in sort of the slave states in America at this point? 

[00:48:15] Liz Lee-Smith: I mean, we're going back to all those situations wherein slave women are removed any decision about this and very little, if any, concern for their own babies. And we have the stories of women having to not feed their own babies in order to feed their white slave owners babies.

And, um, there is a fantastic woman in America, um, called Kimberly Seals Allis, who has written about the experience of this wet nursing on the enslaved populations, but also the long reaching impacts on black and brown women today. 

[00:48:56] Emma Pickett: Yeah. 

[00:48:56] Liz Lee-Smith: And so she writes in a US context, but it is, um, It's important to know across the board because we still are hearing and seeing the disparities in care between white women and black and brown women.

[00:49:10] Emma Pickett: Yeah, I mean Kit Kimberley's writing is amazing. Which book are you looking at there? Is that, The Big Letdown? That's uh? 

[00:49:16] Liz Lee-Smith: It's nice. It's a, She's 

[00:49:19] Emma Pickett: quoting, Amy Brown quotes her as well, doesn't she? Yeah, I mean, she actually was a speaker at the ABM conference a few years back and came over to the UK to speak and we got to have her a couple of times speak on that day.

Her writing is so amazing, and, and, you know, for anybody interested in lactation, absolutely would recommend her books, um, and her writing, and the big letdown is, is particularly in must read, I think, for anybody in the lactation world. And I think, I think one of the things, and I know, I know you would agree with this, one of the things I think we need to be really careful about, you know, we are two pasty white women, no offense, um, And sometimes when it's Black History Month, you look on the Instagram accounts and there's the photograph of the, of the black woman feeding, you know, the slave owner's baby.

And that's, you know, that's Black History Month. I'm a lactation consultant. I've done it. Tick. And we've got to have those two things in our mind at the same time. They, you know, we must never forget the stories of enslaved women. And we must, as Kimberly talks about, acknowledge that that was not so long ago.

And when it comes to intergenerational trauma and, and, you know, the, the perception of what breastfeeding is and how you can control your own body and, and, you know, we're talking about someone's great, great grandparent who would have been enslaved and forced to breastfeed someone else. It doesn't take, it's, you know, it takes a while for that generational trauma to be, to be eradicated.

So we must hold that in our minds while at the same time, not that not being the only story we ever tell about black women and breastfeeding and, and, you know, there's been so much In terms of regaining empowerment and, you know, um, you know, black breastfeeding, we can so many things happening. But unfortunately, we sometimes still see lactation consultants who the only time they ever show black faces and brown faces on their accounts.

And when they talk about enslaved women and, and that intergenerational trauma and that's not okay. No, 

[00:51:09] Liz Lee-Smith: absolutely. Just to state the obvious. Yeah. And, you know, if I find a lactation spectrum. 

[00:51:16] Emma Pickett: You're talking about Spectrum Lactation, yes, thank you for mentioning Spectrum Lactation. So yeah, so this is a project that I've been involved with.

It's taken a long time because it's really difficult to, to get the resources up and running and help, you know, create a system in place. But what we're aiming to do with Spectrum Lactation is create a database of lots of different shades of skin tone when it comes to breasts and breast and breast complaints and breast conditions.

But yeah, we've, we've got the website in existence. We've got everything up and running. We now just need submissions, but we don't have money to do much promotion. So thank you for mentioning us because as soon as we get more submissions, we're going to be able to start publishing our images and getting the database up and running.

Yeah, this, this is a, I mean, you know, we're talking at a time when Donald Trump took power not long ago in America and the concept of diversity and equality is, um, being ripped out of federal government and the consequences of that are really scary. The idea that, um, you know, we don't have to make an extra effort to right historical wrongs and, and, you know, who knows where that will lead us in the years to come.

And, and let's just hope that there are strong, clever people who were going to be fighting the good fight. But certainly when it comes to the UK. Um, our context is a little bit different because we don't necessarily have quite the same relationship with enslavement. Although we do have people who, maybe their ancestors were enslaved in the Caribbean who've come over to the UK.

But our history is a bit different. So we must always make sure that we're not assuming our, you know, the black story of breastfeeding in the UK is the same as it is in the States. Um, so wet nursing happening throughout the period of slavery throughout in, in America. And then what happens in the 20th century?

[00:52:58] Liz Lee-Smith: Well, I think by the end of the Victorian period, we start to get the perfect conditions for changing to formula and for formula to be a product that was usable. So we've got evidence all the way back of other forms of feeding for babies. So we've got a substance called PAP, which was a mixture of sort of water, milk, bread, which was used for dry nursing, trying to feed babies.

We've got baby feeding bottles from the ancient world. that had animal milk in. We've got stories of babies being literally held under a cow and milk being squeezed in. 

[00:53:37] Emma Pickett: I've seen a picture of a baby under a goat recently online. 

[00:53:41] Liz Lee-Smith: Yeah, um, and we've had stories, so Mary Wollstonecraft, I can never say her name.

No, 

[00:53:50] Emma Pickett: I can't either, so I'm not going to try. 

[00:53:53] Liz Lee-Smith: Um, we have the story from her, of her having puppies put on her to try and help her to breastfeed. 

[00:54:00] Emma Pickett: Oh, wow. So no breast pump to bring on lactation. So let's get a puppy going. Okay, interesting. 

[00:54:06] Liz Lee-Smith: Um, so we've had this all the time, but one thing that parents have always known is that babies who were fed this way did not do as well as babies who were by nest.

They didn't always know why, all that sort of information. But by the end of the 19th century, there's more understanding about germs. So this is a very important thing, so it's suddenly able to understand why these ceramic feeding bowls are going to cause a problem. We've got the processes to powder milk, to dehydrate milk, and to make it a shop stable, shelf stable product.

We've got all of this going on about the guilt and the concern of the wet nurse's baby, as well as all the pressure for women to not breastfeed because that's too difficult apparently. We've also got the economics. So back when Elizabeth Clinton was hiring servants, it was relatively cheap and it was affordable.

Um, in the Tudor period, we've actually got documentation of a grocer's wife hiring a wet nurse. It was something that was within their family budget, but by the 19th century, a grocer's wife wouldn't have been able to afford to, to employ somebody very easily. So we have all of these things coming together, which is a Monsieur Nestlé and people like him to start developing this project.

that allows families to feed their babies other than using breast milk. And it goes from there, really, with the marketing and feeding into all these things we've heard already. Oh, breastfeeding is too difficult on your clothes, or it means you can't go anywhere. All of these things have been said for centuries.

are still being said, but can now be used as marketing for this product, this alternative. And the 

[00:55:55] Emma Pickett: wet nursing that does exist today, because we've got breast pumps, you know, we're not, we can, you know, we can have human milk for human babies. We can have, you know, frozen breast milk zipping around. We can have milk banking and formal milk banking.

And, and I guess that's where wet nursing has gone as well, if that makes sense. So we've. Um, because of the breast pump, we don't have to use a puppy. We've got the ability to, uh, remove milk in a different way and transport it and store it in a different way. So, so there are lots of people using the milk of other women, whether it's because they have a premature baby in hospital and they're getting access from, you know, pasteurized donor milk that's come from a milk bank like Hart's Milk Bank.

But then we've also got this informal milk banking network. Which is something as, you know, as lactation consultants and peer supporters, we might talk about, but we can't recommend formally. But it's interesting, actually, when you look on the posts on some of those pages. People are still worried about where the milk's coming from.

We weren't, you know, does the person drink? Do they smoke? You know, what's in their diet? So we're still asking some of the similar questions that we would have been asking of actual wet nurses. I'm guessing that there are still actual wet nurses happening all around the world right now. Oh yes. But just not in, you know, North London.

No. But it must be pretty common. If, you know, your lactation fails, let's imagine you've given birth and you've lost an enormous amount of blood. Your sister is going to be breastfeeding your baby if, if you, you know, you have a lactation failure for whatever reason. So right now while we're talking there is wet nursing happening all over the place.

But not necessarily the people writing the documents or writing the pamphlets or, you know, being recorded in court histories. Yeah. So there's wet nursing and then there's dry, dry nursing. So, so the word nurse. As in the person that comes to the hospital and works alongside doctors. Is the origin of that word to do with breastfeeding?

Or did, did that word exist beforehand and we just moved it into a breastfeeding context? I'm gonna just Google while we're sitting here. Because I don't 

[00:58:03] Liz Lee-Smith: know. 

[00:58:03] Emma Pickett: Yeah, I'm just curious as to whether 

[00:58:05] Liz Lee-Smith: I suppose along with wet nursing is that concept of caring for the baby as well and nursing. 

[00:58:11] Emma Pickett: It does say here that the origin of the word nurse comes from the same source as the word nourish.

It is about food, and it is about nourishing at the end of the day. And so actually it does look as though the beginning of it is actually about feeding and breastfeeding. Um, and uh, yeah, interesting how etymology works. Thank you very much. For sharing all those stories, Liz, I'm aware we could go on forever and ever and just do a podcast just about wet nursing, but it's, uh, let's just take a moment to celebrate all the amazing women throughout human history that have given their bodies, whether it was necessarily with their consent or without their consent.

And, and what a difference they have made to so many families and babies and, and, and also I'm, I'm glad that you highlighted that the mother who didn't breastfeed is not necessarily the oppressor here, that she is also often a victim of a system which does not allow her to breastfeed and the, and the pain that exists because of that, you know, it must be tough.

I'm sort of imagining, you know, the, the British empire. Happened on the shoulders of wet nurses, if that makes sense, because all these little boys who had to say goodbye to their wet nurses and were presumably emotionally traumatized as a result, then went off and created the British Empire with their damaged personalities.

Is that a really odd thing to end on? That's why I'm, that's why I'm picturing all these little boys who, uh, you know, said goodbye to their wet nurse and never saw them again. And we had all this repressed trauma with then going off and lashing out. Inflicting their trauma around the world as a result of the British Empire, so I'm going to, I'm going to blame wet nursing on, on a lot of the damage that was done through the 18th and 19th century.

And if you don't mind me ending on that note, that's good. That's, uh, yeah. So wet nursing has amazing positives, but also damaging negatives associated with it as well. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you, you wanted to make sure we highlighted? 

[01:00:10] Liz Lee-Smith: Um, no, I mean, really for me, this is just a great way of talking about some of these women.

So like Sarah Pierce and Jane Payne. You'd never know who they were, had that not been written down about them, and we, we, there's so much we don't know about them, but at least their names are going to be mentioned now. 

[01:00:28] Emma Pickett: Yeah. 

[01:00:29] Liz Lee-Smith: They're going to be remembered. 

[01:00:30] Emma Pickett: Yeah, for sure. Thanks very much for your time today.

Really appreciate it. You're 

[01:00:34] Liz Lee-Smith: welcome.

[01:00:39] Emma Pickett: Thank you for joining me today. You can find me on Instagram at Emma Pickett IBCLC and on Twitter at makesmilk. It would be lovely if you subscribed because that helps other people to know I exist and leaving a review would be great as well. Get in touch if you would like to join me to share your feeding or weaning journey, or if you have any ideas for topics to include in the podcast.

This podcast is produced by the lovely Emily Crosby Media.