In August 1328 Beatrice, a citizen of Furches, which is a city in Southern France, entered with her husband’s permission into service as wet nurse for Perpignan skinner Berengarius Sesmates. Beatrice agreed to wet nurse the two children of Berengarius, Petrus and Johanna for an entire year.
The payment Beatrice received was quite good, about 50 sous. A woman could make more money nursing than in any other profession. The terms were usually long, from one to four years. The wet nurse of a highborn family was a respected person.
There were strict laws to regulate the work and behaviour of a wet nurse. If she got sick, she was supposed to notify it immediately to the parents of the nursed child. Moreover, the wet nurse was supposed to have healthy eating habits. Under no circumstances was she allowed to lie with a man, not even her husband, because intercourse would ruin the milk and poison the child. A wet nurse had to preferably share the same religion with the family, because a Christian wet nurse might sing the wrong songs in a Jewish family or tell inappropriate tales for Muslim children.
Everyone who could afford it used a wet nurse: the King of France, the Perpignan skinner, and the merchant from Florence. If the mother was healthy in Scandinavia, the wet nurse was not really used.
There is a lot of information available on mother in the 15th Century Florence. They were in their teenage years by the time they had their first child. After that they bore children about twenty times, one every 1½ or 2 years. Nursing would have lengthened the intervening time. The most important task of a family in Florence was to produce offspring for a family. Others could nurse the children but the wife was the only one who could deliver them. In the middle of the 15th Century a 57-year old woman died, after having given birth 36 times. Nine of her sons were still alive when she died and 28 of the children had been taken care of by a wet nurse. It is probable that the others died before they were given over to the wet nurses.
Berengarius Sesmates hoped his children would turn out kind and good-hearted. He saw the same qualities in Beatrice. It was believed that the child would receive the qualities from the milk.
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