Wet nurse

The yummy mummies of Instagram were far from the first to capture photographs of themselves breastfeeding, as these portraits of Victorian women in America demonstrate.

wet nurses

Diane Victor " Wet nurse"

Portrait of Comtesse d’Herbouville and Her Children 1804-1806

Breastfeeding or nursing with wet nurses in the eighteenth century was a common occurrence. That was because by medieval times the idea of breastfeeding

More than 150 years ago, enslaved black women were forced to feed and raise the children of their masters. Under strict guidelines black slaves were required, unwillingly, to wet-nurse these [white] children giving them priority over their own. The alternative, of course, was to be beaten or whipped. The black and white babies were not allowed to share the same breast as it was compared to whites not being able to drink from the same water faucet. The infant mortality rate during this time…

The history of wet nurses

This naughty nurse is going viral.

“o man can justly doubt, that a childs mind is answerable to his nurses milk and manners.”