As mulheres e as famílias na assistência aos expostos. Região de Coimbra (Portugal), 1708-1839

Abstract

Women were the mainstay of assistance to foundlings, but not always this obvious reality is emphasized. This article focuses on them, trying to figure out who were the wet nurses of the Wheel’s Foundlings of Coimbra. To this institution travelled thousands of women coming from an extensive territory to receive and take with the babies, who assured them a monthly income. But the Wheel, because it did not meet the salary obligations, burdened with children, whose creation did not pay, the poorest farmers and their families. Thus, after characterizing the Portuguese legal system for help foundlings, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and typify the nurses, what this article is intended to highlight is the role of these women and their families as true care agents, not only as indispensable instruments of the beneficial and charitable public system, but also as redeemers of this system, since they corrected gaps and ineptitudes, including in financial terms