Abandoning Babies Is an Old Story in Europe

The Hebrew prophet Moses, perhaps the most famous abandoned baby of all time, was left in some bulrushes, where he was found by Pharaoh’s daughter.

Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome, were set adrift in a basket on the river Tiber, where a she-wolf found and suckled them.

Oedipus, the tragic king of Greek legend, was saved after being abandoned on order of his father. But he then unknowingly married his own mother.

“Children were abandoned throughout Europe from Hellenistic antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages in great numbers, by parents of every social standing, in a great variety of circumstances,” historian John Boswell says in his new book, “The Kindness of Strangers.”

The frequency perhaps accounts for the prominent role of child abandonment in ancient literature, myths and fairy tales.

Often in these stories, abandonment was a stroke of good fortune, with the babies being saved by someone kind and raised to be great men. But in reality, Boswell found they often became slaves, servants or prostitutes.

Boswell’s study of abandonment was an outgrowth of an earlier study of Christian sexual mores, he wrote. He was perplexed by the reason given by early theologians for not consorting with prostitutes: that “in doing so they might unwittingly commit incest with a child they had abandoned.” He began to investigate, he said, whether abandonment was common enough for that to be possible.

Not only was the practice widespread, but Boswell also found that there were no legal or moral sanctions against it until the 13th Century, when laws against abandoning children first came into being in Norway. At the same time foundling hospitals were set up, first in Italy, then elsewhere in Europe.

These early homes often contained “a revolving door in a niche in the wall,” Boswell wrote, “which allowed a parent or servant to deposit a child safely without being observed.”

Oddly, he found that while most children survived abandonment in ancient times, they fared less well in the foundling homes. “A majority of the children died within a few years of admission in most areas of Europe,” Boswell noted.

By the late 18th Century, Boswell found, a high percentage of children born in some European cities were abandoned. Records from Toulouse, for example, show that 15% of the children born in wealthy sections and about 45% in poor areas were abandoned, along with 20% to 30% of babies born in Paris and 25% of those born in Milan.