Problems of the foundling. The Enlightenment mentality of the 18th century was extensively concerned with the problems of the foundling. The sharp increase in the number of foundlings throughout Europe meant that, on the one hand, new foundling homes were being opened, while the living conditions of the children in them deteriorated and their mortality rates far exceeded the already very high infant mortality rates of the time. The population theories so much in vogue meant that the loss of so many human lives was felt as an impoverishment of nations which had to be contained, but a new view of the human being and the development of a sense of childhood meant that a remedy was sought.
Foundlings died at rates sometimes close to 100 %; while infant and child mortality in the Ancien Régime amounted to 50 % of children overall, among the children in the Incluses it can be put at 80 and 90 %. Even before their admission to the institution, many of them died during their transfer to the institution. Most of the time the drivers were men carrying several children they picked up in the villages they passed through on their way to the Inclusa. The newborns, exhausted, almost without food for several days, under the sun, the rain and the cold, often died. The Inclusas reported that almost all of them arrived dead or died immediately. The Hospital of Zaragoza informed the Royal Council of Castile in 1792 of the conditions in which Basque children were transported there and the knowledge of this report, published by D. Pedro Joaquín de Murcia in his ‘Discurso político sobre la importancia y necesidad de los hospicios, Casas de expósitos y hospitales’ (Madrid 1798) alarmed the authorities of the Country who were then studying the organisation of the foundling service in the three territories. Most of the children arrived moribund; it was stated, for example, in the report, that of the last consignment of 7 children that had arrived from Calahorra, 3 were already dead, 3 with no hope of life and only one with hope of being saved. In order to avoid these transfers, the Royal Decree of 1796, which ordered the observance of the first Regulations promulgated in Spain on the subject, stipulated that foundlings should be nursed in the villages where they were found or as close as possible to them.
Once the child had arrived at the Inclusa, another series of difficult tests awaited him there. There were wet nurses in the establishment to breastfeed them. They were usually few in number and each one had to take care of several children, so their nutrition was very poor. Some children arrived sick, usually with scabies and syphilis. Through breastfeeding, these diseases were spread to children and wet nurses. The wet nurses were very poorly paid and were women who accepted to work in the Inclusa because it was the last resort: Uriz, in his aforementioned book, refers that when reforms were attempted in Pamplona, it was decided that the wet nurses should take the children out of the Hospital to get some fresh air. Well, the women refused because they were ashamed to be seen and it was known where they worked. In fact, after having carried out this task, no family would have hired them as wet nurses for their children. In Pamplona, almost all of them were single mothers who found a solution for themselves and the children they brought to the establishment. But they were separated and the children were sent outside to breastfeed, probably so that they would not receive too much attention, neglecting the other foundlings. The children were usually crowded into the cradles; in Pamplona the number was 4 per cradle, but in Spain there were some Inclusa in which up to twelve were placed. In this way all the children fell ill, as those who had arrived healthy became infected and weakened. They were overcrowded, dirty, hungry, totally neglected. Those who had a chance of survival were those who were taken to the countryside as soon as possible by wet nurses from outside to raise their young. The rest, in Pamplona during the 18th century, all died within no more than three months of being admitted.
In the last decade of the century, a series of reforms began to be implemented which soon proved to be an effective remedy to the situation. They consisted basically of hiring more wet nurses, paying them and feeding them better. The foundlings were placed under the direct care of the Hospital surgeon, who visited them every day, maintaining a strict separation healthy and sick children. New clothes were made for them, they were taken out in the sun and air and ed trials were made in the field of artificial feeding to suppress contagions. In 1801, the improvements achieved were set out in a leaflet that was sent from Pamplona to all the Inclusas in Spain in case it could serve as a guide and example for them. While in the five-year period 1791-95 the mortality rate of children in the Inclusa still reached 992% (the Inclusas were considered by many writers of the time simply as centres for the extermination of children), in the following five-year period 1796-1800 it fell to 560%, which brought the mortality rates of the Pamplona establishment closer to those of general infant mortality.
In 1805, a new stage began with the inauguration of the Foundling Home, where orphans were also taken in and there was a section dedicated to educating girls up to the age of 12, where they learned all kinds of domestic work, as from this age they went out to serve. The entire government of the house was placed in the hands of the Sisters of Charity. During the 19th century, under the directives of the State, which promulgated the 1st Law of Charity in 1822, assistance to the needy, including foundlings, was organised, moving from a regime of religious and private charity to that of public state charity. Gradually, entering the Inclusa ceased to be tantamount to certain death. Some of the Incluseros survived, although they had to overcome more obstacles than the rest of the children. Still at a very late date, 1891, the Junta de Expósitos del Partido de San Sebastián ed its concern for the high mortality rate of the children received in the Casa-torno of the city and in their first days with the wet-nurses, commissioning the Hospital doctor, Galo Aristizabal to prepare a study and report expressing the causes of this and the measures to be adopted. This study ed that in the five-year period 1886-90, out of the 517 children admitted to the maternity home, 60 died there, plus 211 with their wet nurses, making a total of 271, that is, 52.4% of the children. Of the 4,473 children admitted to the Inclusa de Vizcaya 1807-1843, 1,196 died before the age of 7, equivalent to 26.3%. Despite the density of the figures, there is a clear difference with what has been described with respect to the previous situation. Advances in vaccination, sanitary control of the children, hygienic measures, the increasingly effective control of wet-nurses, both on their health and on their treatment of the children, were slowly having their effect. The opening of the Casa-Cuna de Fraisoro in Guipúzcoa in 1903, equipped with the most modern facilities and the gradual elimination of the turnstiles, represented another step forward in the upbringing of foundlings. Of the 259 children admitted to the Home in 1932-33, 49 died, 18.9%. Of the 2,855 admitted to the Inclusa de Vizcaya 1925-1932, 657 died, 23%.
Now, a not inconsiderable proportion of children were completing their life cycle as foundlings and we can get a closer look at their future. First of all, it was necessary to give them surnames so that they could be identified and function normally in society. From the 16th to the 18th century in Pamplona, it was customary to give the surname of Goñi to all children, in homage to Don Ramiro de Goñi, Archdeacon of the Cathedral Table and great benefactor of the General Hospital. As the vast majority of children died before adulthood, the atic repetition of the surname did not pose any problems, until, at the beginning of the 19th century, when the mortality rate fell, the surnames had to be diversified to avoid confusion. In Guipúzcoa, in 1819, the province considered the need to give children a surname and from then until 1884 they were designated with the place name of the town they came from: San Sebastián, Tolosa, Azpeitia and all the others. From 1884 onwards, it was decided to give them two Basque surnames, invented, i.e. not existing, but which were euphonious and easily assimilated. Few children were claimed and recovered by their parents or relatives.
Despite the fact that many times the notes given to the children when they were abandoned expressed the intention to pick them up when possible, when circumstances changed, very few parents did so, and they did not coincide with those who had expressed this wish in the notes. In addition to the notes, many children also carried all kinds of identifying signs: ribbons, stamps, cards cut in half, medals, gospels? Some, for safety's sake, burned the children's legs or arms with medals, coins, thimbles and other small metal objects. But such precautions were almost always unnecessary. In the Inclusa of Pamplona almost no foundlings were collected until the 20th century. The few recovered were legitimate, of known parents and who had been admitted to the establishment due to their parents' extreme need. In the five-year period 1900-04, 25 foundlings were collected, 2.8% of the admissions; in 1910-14 there were 43, 4.6%, and 48 in 1920-24, 4.8%. In Guipúzcoa the recovery figures were slightly higher during the 19th century: 1825-32, 2.3% of the abandoned children in the whole province were collected; in the decade 1850-59, 2.4% of those in the district of Bergara. In the five-year period 1886-90 in the district of San Sebastian 4.7% of the children were recovered. In the 20th century, the figures for Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa exceed those for Navarre: those recovered in the Inclusa of Bilbao in the period 1925-32 were 10.4% of those exposed and those recovered in Fraisoro in the years 1932-33 were 11.8%. In a large proportion of cases, the person who recovered the child was its natural mother. She was almost always still unmarried; sometimes she was married to someone else and they had no children, or it was the parents who claimed the child after they were married. Grandparents (the mother was dead or absent) and aunts of illegitimate children also appear among the reclaimers. Lastly, there are some recoveries of legitimate children who had been abandoned due to need and misery.
A larger contingent than the children who returned to their families were those who had been fostered by wet-nurses. These were usually integrated into the village where they lived; the girls, in Navarre, received a dowry from the Inclusa when they married, which facilitated their reintegration into society.
The third block of survivors was made up of the most unfortunate: among them, many children who were feeble-minded, paralysed, deaf and dumb or affected by other defects and illnesses were not taken out to be brought up or were returned by their wet nurses to the establishment (in Guipúzcoa to the 4 Misericordias). There were also other boys and girls who, due to various circumstances, either their own, such as unruly behaviour, or that of the wet nurse and her family, were not fostered and were re-admitted. These children could be fostered by other couples, but their fate was often very hard because these new foster parents, who were not bound to the children by the bonds of affection created by their upbringing, sought only to exploit them. It was often necessary to take away the foundlings, who eventually escaped from their hands and sought the shelter of their former wet nurses or the establishment. Girls were placed in domestic service and boys in a variety of occupations, all of them at the lower end of the socio-labour scale. Some, for meagre pay, took the place of those who could afford it, in military service.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)