Your views on the magazine and the world of history
LETTERS
The woes of wet-nursing
I read with interest Eugene Byrne’s
LETTER article on wet-nursing (Miscellany,
OF THE July). Having been a voluntary
MONTH breastfeeding counsellor for 36 years,
I remember being fascinated by
Valerie Fildes’s books on wet-nursing
and infant feeding, published in the 1980s.
Dr Fildes referred back to the ancient
doctors Soranus and Galen, who believed
that breast and womb are joined by a
mythical vein, given the Latin name vasa
menstrualis. It was surmised from this that
semen could travel up the vasa menstrualis
and foul the milk of a nursing woman. This
rubbish drove the wet-nursing industry for
nearly 2,000 years! Ordinary lower-class
women breastfed for centuries, though, and
it was used as a method of contraception.
Dr Fildes also tells that, before the 19th
century, a baby born to a wealthy family
would be sent to a wet nurse’s home to be
breastfed while she continued to look after
her own family. At that time the wet nurse’s
Questions on power
I found some of your panel of historians
rather pessimistic regarding Brexit
(The Historians’ View, August). Dominic
Sandbrook claims that “historians will
look back on 23 June as the day the
United Kingdom died.” Helen McCarthy
foresees the possible rise of the far right.
David Abulafia alone sees Brexit as a
golden opportunity to make connections
across the globe without having to ask
the EU’s permission.
I remember in 1975 campaigning
alongside the late Tony Benn to leave the
Common Market. When voting this
time, his questions still rang in
my ears. If people have power,
he said, you should ask: who
put you there? To whom
are you accountable?
How can I get rid of you?
If the answers include:
“you can’t get rid of me”
and “I’m accountable to
virtually no-one”, then
we have a problem. It’s a
recipe for discontent and for
treating laws with contempt,
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youngest child would be at least a toddler
whom she was supposed to have weaned.
However, by the 19th century rich
parents wanted the wet nurse to live in
their home, and to have a baby of her own
of a similar age to theirs. Because the
wet-nurse would not be expected to bring
her own tiny baby to her wealthy employ-
er’s house, it would be sent instead to one
of the infamous ‘baby farms’, where before
long death was likely to follow. It was this
trade of the life of the wet nurse’s baby for
that of the rich family’s child that sparked
campaigns against wet-nursing.
Gillian Smith, Halesowen
쎲 We reward the letter of the
month writer with our ‘History
Choice’ book of the month.
This issue it is Martin Luther:
Renegade and Prophet by
Lyndal Roper. Read the
review on page 69
and I would argue that this partly
explains the growth of the far right in
Europe. I believe that Benn’s points apply
far more today than they did in 1975, as
Brussels continues to make inroads into
the sovereignty of member states.
David Simmonds, Woking
A popular revolt?
The article on the EU was very
fine. I thought the event was summed up
well in a description of the result I saw
elsewhere as “a 21st-century
peasants’ revolt!”
William Ballantine, West Lothian
Wishful thinking
I very much enjoyed the
piece, which set out the
different viewpoints and
showed that the UK’s
perceived sense of
exceptionalism was
Tony Benn and Roy Jenkins (with
David Dimbleby) debate the EEC
in a 1975 BBC Panorama special
p name and which, had the battle of Actium
at the heart of the decision to vote to
leave the EU.
However, I think David Abulafia lets
wishful thinking get the better of him
when he predicts the disintegration of
the EU and calls the euro a failed
currency. The pound has been devalued,
forced out of the Exchange Rate
Mechanism, and lost over 10 per cent of
its value against the euro after the Leave
vote, prompting the Bank of England to
consider a 0 per cent interest rate. Is the
pound a failed currency?
Graeme Preston, Cyprus
Black history in schools
I assume Stephen Bourne knows little
about state education in this country
(Letters, August). Black History Month is
taken very seriously; by the time they left
the primary school where I taught, most
of the children would have known about
the achievements of (for example) Walter
Tull, Mary Seacole and John Archer, the
first black mayor in London. In fact, the
children probably knew more about
these lives than those of leaders or heroes
such as Churchill, Attlee, Nightingale,
Nelson, Elizabeth Fry and so on. This is
the case at secondary schools, too – and
not just ones with a majority of children
who are of Afro-Caribbean descent.
We also taught history modules such as
ancient Egypt and Benin alongside the
Vikings and Tudor England. If there are
few black history students at university,
it is not because black historical figures
have been ignored in schools.
K Healey, London
Advocating for Alexander...
I was amused but not surprised by the
views expressed by your correspondent
Christopher Bryant about Alexander the
Great (Letters, August).
While it is true that Alexander had
many faults – the murder of old comrades
opposed to his pro-Persian policies
springs to mind – to dismiss him as “no
more than a...successful gang leader” is
ludicrous. This is a man who had a vision
of the fusion of the best of Greek and
GETTY IMAGES
Persian ideas into a new, hybrid culture.
The greatest expression of this multicul-
tural ideal is the city that still bears his
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