While most recent historians agree that wet nurses were common in early- to mid- Victorian England and that they played an important role in discourses of maternity and of childcare, it is impossible to determine the exact prevalence of the practice due to the
terminology used in census data. The same word, “nurse,” was used to describe both wet nurses and dry nurses, an ambiguity that “has led to a lack of reliable census data and some
disagreement over the regularity with which wet nursing was practiced” (Klimaszewski
“Examining” 325). As a result, it is impossible for present-day scholars to determine the exact prevalence of wet nursing in the Victorian period. This vague phrasing sometimes leaves readers uncertain of nurses' duties in literature, as well. While the novels I discuss here clearly include wet nurses, the context, not the terminology, generally separates them from dry nurses. Thus, while I note various works of Victorian fiction that depict wet nurses, it is possible that more women who nurse infants in literature do so from their breasts.
Although census data did not separate wet nurses from dry nurses, opponents of wet nursing certainly made a clear distinction between the two in their outcries against the practice in their own writing. While only a small portion of period fiction and nonfiction are available
today on digital sites like Google Books, the sample size of digitized publications is growing. What is available can provide important insights into historical trends in print literature. An inquiry into the prevalence of the phrases “wet-nurse” and “wet nurse” throughout the nineteenth century in all British works available through Google Books indicates that the phrase shows a fairly steady increase in usage beginning around 1842, reaching its highest peak in 1870.27 This
trend supports what my own research suggests, that wet nursing was a prominent topic of debate during the early- to mid-Victorian period. A closer look at the literature that discusses wet nursing, such as conduct manuals, women’s magazines, and medical pamphlets, suggests that it was an important topic because it was becoming a popular practice among middle-class mothers, although not all scholars have historically agreed with this assertion.
While my research indicates that wet nursing was, to an extent, a “fashionable” middle and upper class practice during the early- to mid-Victorian period, the lack of reliable data previously caused some major historians to disagree with this suggestion. Jonathan Gathorne- Hardy contended in 1972, for example, that the wet nurse virtually disappeared in the nineteenth century, citing diminishing ads for wet nurses in The Times as the basis for this claim.28
27 Although the limitations of the Google Ngram viewer prevent me from discovering the actual
number of texts in which the words appear, I am able to determine the percentage of books in which they can be found each year. Of course, the percentage out of every book published is nominal, but from 1842 to 1870, the phrase “wet-nurse” increased in prevalence in British English texts available on Google Books by a margin of 146%.
28 Gathorne-Hardy does note that wet nurses were more prevalent in the early decades of Queen
Victoria’s reign than in the later years of the nineteenth century, but he suggests that wet nursing was never the common practice that much literature of the time indicates.
Similarly, Patricia Branca noted in 1975, “It seems fairly clear that middle-class mothers did not resort to wet-nurses extensively at any point during the nineteenth century, despite the pattern that has long been assumed. The considerable discussion of wet-nurses as the only alternative to nursing in the [conduct] manuals was almost completely irrelevant to the middle-class situation” (103).29 Although wet nursing did become a less common practice near the end of the Victorian
period, my research suggests that wet nurses not only still existed in mid-nineteenth century England, but that they formed an immensely controversial topic.
Although “the incidence of private wet nursing steadily decreased as the century progressed,” this decline did not occur until bottle feeding improved very late in the century (Fildes 204). More recent historians believe that wet nurses were far more prevalent in mid- Victorian England than either Gathorne-Hardy’s or Branca's research suggests. Only a year after Branca’s study, Ann Roberts made a contrary claim that coincides with my analysis and with mid-Victorian assertions about wet nursing. “It has been suggested,” Roberts notes, “that the practice of substitute breastfeeding, or wet-nursing, was past its heyday in 1850; certainly as a common resort in any class of society its days were numbered. It nevertheless remained for another twenty years a more or less flourishing practice” (279). Similarly, Jules Law has
indicated that, while wet nursing was “not the dominant mode of infant feeding,” it still remained
29 Although Branca articulates a clearly formulated opinion that wet nurses were not common in
middle-class Victorian practice, she includes no citations or footnotes to support this claim. This issue is especially troubling because most of her text is heavy with references, as well as because she herself admits that there is no clear data regarding the regularity with which wet nurses were employed. As Branca has explained, “No clear statistical evidence on the number of wet-nurses is available at any point during the century” (101).
“a significant cultural practice in Victorian England” (23). The reason Gathorne-Hardy offers a skewed understanding of the decline of the practice stems from the source of his analysis. Although advertisements for wet nurses in The Times may have decreased earlier in the century, this decline occurred largely because families began to employ wet nurses directly through lying- in hospitals, negating the need for public appeals in newspapers. While advertisements
decreased, an 1859 letter in The English Woman’s Journal notes that London’s lying-in hospitals were “besieged by applications for wet-nurses” (MAB 212).
An early letter to Queen Victoria written upon the birth of her first child, discussed in chapter 1, demonstrates a social anxiety that wet nursing would become a common middle-class practice if Victoria were to hire a wet nurse for her own children. While I cannot claim that the increased popularity of employing wet nurses arose directly as a result of Queen Victoria not nursing her own children, there does appear to be a correlation between the birth of the Princess Royal and the increased popularity of wet nursing. The Princess Royal was born at the end of 1840 and, to the extent that we can rely on the Google Ngram Viewer, print usage of the word “wet-nurse”30 begins to steadily increase between 1841 and 1842. Further, outcry against the
number of mothers hiring wet nurses for their infants arose in the 1850s, clearly suggesting that wet nursing appeared in at least somewhat popular form during the early years of Victoria’s reign, regardless of the cause of this trend. Notably, Victoria herself was not heavily criticized, at least in print, for her decision to have wet nurses suckle her infants. Of course, the queen was largely immune to much public maternal scrutiny, as we saw in chapter 1 how print publications aimed to depict her as the ideal English mother. Additionally, it took time for the negative
effects of wet nursing that led to public outcry to become apparent, and by this point, Victoria was largely past her childbearing period.31