Rio de Janeiro Wet Nurses Dataset: Enslaved and Free Women in Rio de Janeiro, 1850

The “Rio de Janeiro Wet-Nursing Database” (RJWND) comprises all advertisements for wet nurses for the year of 1850 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, extracted from the city’s main commercial newspaper, Jornal do Commercio. “Mercenary” wet nursing, what contemporaries called the practice of paying for other women to breastfeed their children, was a thriving market throughout the nineteenth century. Enslaved women comprised most wet nurses, with freed women of color and white immigrant women also working in the trade. More rarely, white Brazilian women whose newborns had died advertised their milk. We can draw several conclusions from this data. Most importantly, RJWND demonstrates the ubiquity of wet nursing in urban Brazil. All women participated in this activity, whether as elite mothers not breastfeeding their own children, or as free, freed, freed African, and enslaved women breastfeeding other women’s children. It also sheds light on how enslavers valued wet nurses both for their reproductive labors (wet nursing) and their productive outputs (cleaning, cooking).「里约热内卢乳母数据库（Rio de Janeiro Wet-Nursing Database, RJWND）」收录了1850年巴西里约热内卢市所有乳母招聘广告，数据源自该市主流商业报纸《Jornal do Commercio》。当时人们将付费雇佣其他女性代为哺乳的行为称为「有偿乳育」，这一行业在整个19世纪都极为兴盛。绝大多数乳母为被奴役女性，获得自由的有色人种女性与白人移民女性也参与该行业。极少数情况下，新生儿夭折的巴西白人女性会刊登自身可提供母乳的广告。通过该数据集可得出若干结论。最为重要的是，RJWND证明了乳育行为在巴西城市地区的普遍性。所有女性都参与了这一活动：要么是选择不亲自哺乳的精英母亲，要么是自由女性、已获自由的非洲裔女性以及被奴役女性，她们为他人哺乳。该数据集还揭示了奴隶主如何同时重视乳母的生育劳动（哺乳）与生产劳动（清洁、烹饪）。