Differences in mortality patterns between infants and foundlings in early 20th century Madrid: age and cause of death

In early 20th century Madrid, foundling mortality more than tripled that of other infants in the city which was itself already very high for European standards, 205‰. While there was a general consensus among contemporaries that both their condition at admission and the difficulties of feeding so many infants were both responsible for the high mortality rates, the former reasons were privileged in the explanation. Foundlings were considered to be the "offspring of vice", "the debris of society" and, in most cases, born "with no will to live". Abandoned babies shared with other urban infants a difficult start in life due to the unhealthy urban environment which, even before birth, had adverse effects on fetal development and health. They also shared the adverse pregnancy conditions in the same way parts of the population did, maybe constituting a subset of them: single women, recent widows, abandoned women and poor married women. However, while abandonment was a clearly selective process identifying a very vulnerable population, the very particular circumstances affecting them once at the institution - feeding by wet-nurses, treatment and eventual placement in the countryside- definitely separated them from the rest of urban infants:.
This paper will focus on the unique foundling mortality experience, as a result of the two processes of selection and treatment, in order to shed light on the combination of their changing environments and risk factors across their lives. Thus, the aim of this paper is to assess the full impact of abandonment on foundlings’ lifecourses by comparing their age and cause of death mortality patterns with that of regular infants born and raised in the city. To do that, I will use the longitudinal dataset of La Inclusa de Madrid for the period 1890-1912 and the Madrid Longitudinal database (1905-1906) which offer individual-level data on infants lifecourses and cause of death information.