Foundlings and notes of abandonment

V Welcome and bounding

In some Spanish 17th century parishes up to 14% of the baptized children were foundlings, left in the care of charity; they were either handed over to the institution by the midwife, who assisted at birth, or received anonymously through the baby hatch. Famines and plagues produced foundlings, and even more so anxieties about family reputation; most of the foundlings were born out of wedlock. 

Foundling homes were sustained by alms and provided the children with mercantile milk from a nurse. Most of the children, however, died a very short time after their admission.

FamilySearch gives access to the Registers of admission kept by the foundling home in Granada at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. These are extraordinary testimonies to the material culture of the time, recording the objets whith which a baby was abandoned with when left at the mercy of strangers: cloths, baby blankets, swaddles [… ] if it did not just come «wrapped in rags».

Some children wore attached Caravaca crosses, jet figs, or a note, the content of which was copied word-for-word by the administrator. Thus, we are able to imagine a background of complicated family relations and uncommon births: we are informed, for instance, that a child was born prematurely and had killed its mother in chilbirth; that it was an orphan and had been fed precariously with pap so far; that is was of good parents who had abandoned it «for fear of great damages» —a case of honour?—, that it was to be taken back from the institution after some days and that it therefore wore a «sign on the right ear», that it «did not have water» (that is, it had not been baptized), that «the parents were of old Christian blood and clean of any bad race». Some notes even provided the baby with a voice which begs «for a breast» («deme la teta») and assures that God would pay back the favour. [Wolfram Aichinger and Lisa Heilig]