Genealogy Chat

Can anyone throw any light on the meaning of this please? Jean

Today's equivalent would be a foster child....... The person bringing up the child would be being paid. Merry

For me too!!! I've got one who was just 9 years old - in a non relatives household 50 miles from her home - i still worry about her! (sorry to piggy back on your thread Jean - hope you dont think I'm rude xx) Cheers Jenx Ah Merry - thank you! Jenx

Thanks Ann and Merry......'cause not Jennifer, more the better!! Those poor children ... there's three living with one of my families age 12, 7 and 1. I suppose it is bettter keeping the kids together.......but one year old!!. Jean

I was just thinking....probably where the word 'nursery' came from. Jean

Jean, not so poor kids really, as if they had been abandoned or whatever then they would have been in the local work house - I dare say some kids were fostered out to local families as nurse children - but often, if you have a look around, you will find these kids belong to another member of the same extended family - who has perhaps died or are working away etc. Look forward in time to see if the nurse child is still with the same family.

Just adding a little more info on the nurse child. Amongst the genuine carers, there were unscrupulous people who used to take on nurse children as a way of making quick money. They would take the child in on a permanent basis and a substantial sum of money would be agreed between them and the parent/relative, which was paid upfront. The 'carers' would then dump the nurse child on the street or at the doors of the local workhouse and do a quick change of address, living off their ill-gotten gains for the next month or two, repeating this cycle as and when more cash was needed!

Sad lives some people have led.

Thanks Heather and Athena,......hope this family were not one of those,,......I have a feeling they were extended family members. Will have to check to see what happened to the the children... Jean

And of course, there were the even worse 'Baby Farms'. Illegitimate babies were given to the care of a woman, who promised to look after the child. She insured its life and then made sure it didnt survive - some of these women had 30 babies or more at any one time. Luck of the draw, really, just as it is today. OC

On a more humorous note, to take my mind off the horrific mental picture of baby farms: Has anyone read the Para Handy Tales (published about 1925 and a BBC TV series long before some of you were born). One story has someone setting up a Pensioner farm, to look after oldies on the cheap and draw their brand new Lloyd George pensions for them.

Nurse children were often the babes of mothers who couldn't feed them so they were taken by another mother who had an older baby and enough milk for the two.Just as the rich brought a wet nurse into the family when the mother had insufficient milk, so the poor had their own way of doing things in the time before feeding bottles and baby formula when a rag dipped in cow's milk(unpasteurised) was the only alternative. When the child was weaned he/she was returned to his/her own family or if the mother had died the child was sometimes kept. Nurse child was a term covering several situations. Baby farms were a different thing entirely. There you would get several babies/ children whereas nurse children were usually singletons or, very occasionally, occasionally siblings. Marie

Thank goodness for the Welfare State eh! even tho its got its problems at least we dont have to resort to all this, Thankyou this has been really interesting - from one who hated history at school!! Jen