Off The Record
Alan Crosby reveals the ways parenthood has changed since the early 18th century
How parenthood has changed in 200 years
Family history research often prompts intriguing questions. I’ve recently been discussing with a class how babies were reared in the early 18th century. Evidence is hard to come by for the ordinary folk, but we explored how the gentry raised their children by looking at the diaries of a Lancashire squire.
Nicholas Blundell (1669–1737) was lord of the manor of Little Crosby near Liverpool. A devout Catholic, he married late, when he was 32. His bride, Frances Langdale, was rich, Catholic and only 17 years old. It is no exaggeration to say that they disliked each other from the start, but this was a union designed for one purpose – to carry on the family line. Nicholas was one of 14 children, and Frances was expected to secure the succession with a comparably large brood. Her failure was that they only had two daughters – a dynastic calamity.
The elder, Mary (or ‘Mally’), was born in 1704. Frances apparently suffered from acute morning sickness – she was given “Purging Salts” and “Phisick” almost from the beginning of her pregnancy. In early June when six months pregnant
‘Nicholas was a loving father and very hands-on by contemporary standards’
she was “ill in her Belly and her Sides”; and on 13 June Nicholas wrote that his wife was “extreamly sick”. The baby was born on 22 September, and christened three days later.
Nicholas records that after the birth “Many Crosby Wives came to see my Wife” (these were the wives of tenant farmers and other ladies of the village, paying their respects even though Mrs Blundell was already notorious as a difficult and disagreeable woman). Nicholas escaped this domesticity by showing off his new black cattle to his brother-in-law! However, marital duties had to be resumed: on 20 October he recorded laconically that “My Wives Month being now out we lay together”. Marital relations were an obligation, not a pleasure, even more so for Frances.
Sometime in October Mally was sent out to a wet nurse in the village. A lady was not expected to breastfeed her child – that Frances apparently did so for at least a couple of weeks was perhaps slightly unusual. Instead, the baby would be suckled by a reliable, healthy, respectable and clean woman who had just given birth herself and so was producing milk. Mally stayed with Mrs Radcliffe until 7 July the following year, living in the village and only occasionally seen by her parents when they were out visiting. Mrs Radcliffe received wages of £1 a quarter for feeding the heiress to the estate.
But Mally was only back home for two days, for on 9 July she was sent out to be dry nursed with Ellen Harrison, and did not return to Little Crosby Hall until late October. Dry nursing was looking after a weaned infant, which might more commonly be the job of a nursemaid living in the big house. The little girl took her first hesitant steps on 10 January 1706, and three days after her second birthday her sister Frances was born.
At a month old Frances, too, went to be wet nursed by Margaret Newhouse in Great Crosby, and her father only notes four visits to the baby in the next seven months. That may not be the full total, but it’s very clear that parent and child bonding was not seen as important! Nevertheless, Nicholas was a loving father and very hands- on by contemporary standards. He shaved Mally’s head (she probably had nits or lice), took her with him to church and even to a funeral when she was four, went for long walks with her, took her with him when he went around on estate business, and meticulously recorded the expenditure on her shoes, buckles, coats, stockings and other clothes.
He loved his girls, but must have longed for a son. Eventually, in his old age, came tragedy and joy. Mally died young and childless, shortly after her marriage, but Frances had a son, destined to be Nicholas’ heir – a little boy who lightened and enlivened his grandfather’s last years.