Why I Taught the Source

In early modern France, discussions about the ideas relating to childhood can be found readily, but documents revealing the actual experiences of children are rare. In an effort to overcome these obstacles, some historians of early modern France have studied orphanage records. The records serve as important resources because they provide small glimpses of the silent masses of children who lived at the margins of society.

Orphanage records allow teachers to integrate an analysis of poor children and charitable institutions into history courses, and teach historical methods for analyzing, organizing, and interpreting quantitative data. Students can use their examination of orphanage records to explore broader themes related to the history of early modern families, populations, and institutions. In the process, students will have a chance to experience, first hand, the interpretive challenges, frustrations, and joys of studying early modern social history.

Most orphanage documents are unpublished and lie preserved in public archives throughout France. But important samples have emerged in published collections of primary documents and in larger monograph studies. Moreover, since the 1970s scholars have published the results of their research about the abandoned children who ended up in orphanages. Much of this research is quantitative, and the results are presented in tables and charts.

This essay outlines a three-stage project designed to allow students to work together on individual sources and then to derive historical questions from them. Once students frame their questions with the initial documents, other sets of primary or secondary documents allow them to expand their historical window and to make some preliminary conclusions about the lives of these children and of the society in which they lived. Those preliminary conclusions can then provide the catalyst for lectures, discussions, research assignments, or even creative writing exercises on broader themes in early modern social history.

How I Introduce the Source

To give the students a feel for the nature of the documents, I provide them with a series of mini-biographies compiled and translated from orphanage records located in Dijon, France. Crucial to any study of welfare and charity in the 18th century are records from the urban Hôpitaux Généraux, or general hospitals. The hospitals were products of charitable work by the French Catholic Church and institutional responses to poverty and vagrancy by state officials. Charged with helping those in need, the hospitals cared for the sick and housed orphans, vagrants, and the elderly. These institutions were financed by alms, by local, privately funded bureaus of charity, and to some extent by the crown.

For this exercise, we have included translations of 20 entries from two different sources (10 boys and 10 girls). These entries are derived from registers that focused on older abandoned children (generally in their teens) who for one reason or another spent time in the orphanages.

Reading the Source: Stage 1

Students are placed in groups of two to examine each brief biographical document. In essence, they are assigned an orphan. I then ask them to identify specific facts about the child. After a brief discussion about their sample entries, students might indicate, for example, that they could identify the birth date to estimate the age of the child upon entry. Parental information, including the father's profession, could be noted so that students could gain a clearer picture of the familial and economic situation of the child.

Other information can emerge from the documents. In some instances, students could record the child's native village. Dates of entrance and exit could inform the students about the child's length of stay. Some entries allow students to record where, when, and for what purpose the orphans left the institution. A notation that the child died is a somber reminder of the fate that met many.

As an example of the introductory exercise, we could review entry numbers one and twelve. In entry one, we can identify the child's name, his father, and his father's occupation—a butcher. After living in the orphanage's nursery for an unspecified number of years, 12-year-old Simon advanced to the Bonnets Rouges (the red hats) in 1705, the name of the room for the adolescent orphans who wore red hats as a sign of their orphaned status. He left the orphanage in 1712, at approximately age 19. His sister took him out of the orphanage. That is all the entry tells us.

In entry 12, we find 13-year-old "Margueritte," an orphan since birth. Her record shows that, like many children, she spent time in and out of the orphanage. After two years at the orphanage, a local, presumably wealthy, resident, Mr. de Bourbonne, sponsored a foster contract (a pension) with a village family. Under these arrangements, Barbe Villat, a laborer's wife in a nearby village, would presumably receive a monthly stipend for her care of Margueritte, now 15-years-old. In return, Margueritte would contribute to her new foster-family's household economy through her labor. We do not know anything else about Margueritte after she left for her foster family in 1755 at age 15.

When we combine entries one and twelve, for example, students will understand that different information emerges from each entry. But even these two entries share common aspects. Both children were orphaned very young, both probably spent time in different rooms of the orphanage, having finally arrived in the adolescent sections. Both children left in their teens. In one case, kin came to assist the orphan, in another the orphanage set up a fosterage system. In both cases, the orphanage served as a social axis where adolescent orphans could hope to become members of reconstituted households at a time when the children's ages permitted them to contribute to the household economy.

Instructors might also augment these sources with published notarial documents that also allow a glimpse into the fortunes of individual children. One document, dated 11 November 1540, is a contract for the adoption of an orphan. The other, dated 25 July 1542, is an apprenticeship contract. These documents illustrate typical success stories and the positive role that the hospitals could play in the lives of these children.

Once the students appear comfortable with the types of information available in their individual sources, I then ask them to compare and contrast with two or three other groups of students, and for someone in the group to begin organizing the information while the discussion ensues. The purpose of this activity is to get students to consider what a combination of multiple sources might reveal about the orphaned children. I ask them what larger issues they might be able to identify through the combined factual information in the entries.

After the students have located facts, compared documents, and identified issues that the comparisons raise, I encourage them to raise any historical questions that emerged from the examination of the sources. Here, instructors are guiding students toward understanding that a combination of entries raises questions that allow the students to move beyond a literal description of the texts themselves.

Some students question why parents might abandon a child in the first place. Others wonder how long they remained at the orphanage, and what happened when they left. Some ask about the gender distribution of abandoned children. Students also ask about the institutions that existed to help the poor and destitute. The teacher can record all of the questions, and the students themselves can make a hierarchical list of the questions they deem most significant.

By the end of this stage, the class will have created two tangible products of their work. First, they have created a chart, or table, that compiles the data they extracted from all of the primary sources. Second, they have created a hierarchical set of historical questions that launch potential investigatory roads of interest to the class. The professor should then make photocopies of the chart and the questions for each student as the class begins the second stage of analysis.

Reading the Source: Stage 2

Now stage two of the exercise can begin. In this stage, I provide sets of quantitative data that historians have developed from orphanage records, both from within France and then, for comparative purposes, from other parts of Europe. 1

In the final years of the Ancien Régime, roughly 40,000 children were left to the care of society in France every year. Paris alone had four institutions in the 18th-century that existed primarily to help aid abandoned children. The sheer numbers of abandoned children astonish students.

Quantitative data derived from hospital records indicate the rising number of abandoned children in 18th-century Paris, the geographic origins of the children (both within and outside of Paris), the age of the abandoned children and the occupations of their parents, and the relationship of abandonment trends to wheat prices over the century. This specific type of data about abandonment in particular might be augmented by broader data about household composition, fertility, and mortality.

At this point, the instructor should encourage students to compare specific types of data, and point out where the data might reveal some meaningful relationships. With this approach, students can examine data about abandonment and be introduced to early modern demographic characteristics at the same time.

Reading the Source: Stage 3

While the charts and graphs allow students to see trends in the abandonment of children over time and across Europe, student interest in the combinations of documents can then lead to the third stage of the exercise: drawing initial hypotheses about patterns of child abandonment and adding contextual explanations.

This last stage can be achieved in a number of ways, and each depends on the goals and methodology of the instructor. If the instructor utilizes the primary documents in one or two class sessions, for example, he or she could augment the student-led generation of facts and analysis with a short series of lectures on poverty, the family economy, sexuality, or institutional responses to child abandonment. On the other hand, instructors who have more time to devote to the subject, or who want to use the history of childhood as a larger theme in their courses, could use the exercise as a launching point for student research into the broader social issues and questions that arose through their initial analysis of the mini-biographies.

Reflections

A number of important issues readily emerge from the study of child abandonment. For example, some students could research poverty and the early modern family economy, while others could research infanticide patterns and early modern reactions to it. Investigations into the life-course of the family, and especially the fragility of family because of parental death, could also prove fruitful.

Some students might want to investigate the options available to a single woman who became pregnant before marriage. Others are fascinated by the concept of wet-nursing and the circulation of children through foster and apprenticeship contracts. A vast number of secondary studies allow students to explore the various institutional responses to poverty, infanticide, and abandonment over the course of the early modern period.

After conducting further independent research on abandonment, instructors could encourage the students to return to the orphan biographies originally assigned to them and create short fictional "biographies" about the orphans. With the aid of the secondary material, the students could present their historically plausible life-stories about the orphans in the form of short vignettes to one another as a means of bringing the exercise to a conclusion.

Throughout the exercises, instructors should encourage students to return frequently to the individual orphan biographies, connecting an otherwise anonymous individual child to larger sets of quantitative data and broader social or economic themes. Students thus give voice to people who didn't have much opportunity to leave their thoughts and aspirations to posterity during their own lifetimes.

Students should be able to link these orphan biographies to the longer-term trends and characteristics of early modern social life and to create plausible conclusions for their original questions and working hypotheses. In the process, the students will have learned much about early modern orphans and their wider social contexts, and about integrating primary documents with a wide variety of secondary sources. At the end of the exercise, students will also have gained an understanding of how social historians go about their daily work.

Additional Resources:

See: Monica Chojnacka and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, eds., Ages of Women, Ages of Man: Sources in European Social History, 1400-1750 (New York: Longman, 2002), pp. 28-35 for primary sources on orphans.

See: Kristen Elizabeth Gager, Blood Ties and Fictive Ties: Adoption and Family Life in Early Modern France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 125-126 for primary sources on orphans.

A good introduction can be found in John Henderson and Richard Wall, eds., Poor Women and Children in the European Past (New York: Routledge, 1994).

Adoption of an orphan, France 1540

Guillaume Percheron, day laborer living on the rue de Copeaulx in the dwelling of the Carmelites [an order of friars] of Paris, and Jehanne Goret, his wife, she authorized in this matter, affirm that, for the great love and attachment that they have and declare for Batiste Bernard, aged three years or so, they have taken and retained him and by this contract take him in their custody, to raise him.

[Batiste Bernard is] the minor son of the late Symon Bernard, who while living was poor and a day laborer living in the said street, and [the late] Catherine Corbillon, his wife, the two previously the father and mother of the boy, who were natives of Saint Martin d'Étampes, and who died, it is said, at the [poor relief hospital of] Hôtel Dieu of Paris after Saint Jehan Baptiste past.

[Percheron and Goret] have promised and promise to supply and deliver what he needs in terms of drink, food, fire, bed, lodging, and light, as much in health as in sickness; to instruct him in good morals; and to maintain him in all his clothing and other necessities whatsoever, all well and duly as appropriate and as if he were their own child.

And [they also promise] to provide for him in marriage or otherwise as appropriate to his standing and according to the ability and property of the said Percheron and his wife.

And in consideration of the things said here, they give him all and each of their possessions that they may have at the time of their passing on, to take as if he were their own child and rightful heir.

Present for this [was] Estienne Papillon, plowman of vines, living at Bonyeres les Cellees, near the said Étampes, uncle of the said minor through Martine Bernard, his wife, who was the sister of the deceased [father] of the said minor; and Audrye Papillon, wife of Jehan Gaillard, living at Saint Michel in Paris, rue du Puys de Fer, cousin of the said minor, who have given and give the said minor to the said Percheron and his wife as is stated; and they affirm clearly that this is for the benefit and welfare of the said minor, who has no possessions or kin who are able to provide for him.

Promising, etc., obligating, etc., each in his own right, etc., renouncing. Done in duplicate and passed, that is by the said Percheron and Estienne Papillon and Audrye Papillon on Thursday the 11th day of November, the year 1540, and for the said Jehanne Goret, wife of the said Percheron, on the day of [blank], 15 [blank].

Apprenticeship of orphans, France 1542

Jacqueline Parisot, hosier [maker of stockings] and wife of Anthoyne Gougneulx, day laborer, the said Jacqueline living in the rue Anemairet in the building whose sign is the seal of France, in Paris, affirms that the Commissioners appointed on the matter of the poor of this city of Paris have given her, as apprentice, from today for two years, Marguerite Massarpe, impoverished child aged 8 or 9 years, orphan without mother or father.

Jacqueline has taken [Massarpe] as her apprentice, to whom she has promised to show and teach her the profession and trade of hosier well and duly; and during the said time will well and honorably provide her with what she needs in terms of drink, food, fire, bed, lodging, light, clothing, footwear of linen, body linen, and similarly all her other necessities whatsoever; however, she will be paid by the said Commissioners 100 sous tournois for each of the said two years.

To do this is present the said Marguerite, apprentice, who has promised, promises, and guarantees to serve the said Jacqueline in the said profession and learn well and duly the said trade, obey all [Jacqueline's] lawful and honorable commands, work to her benefit, avoid losses to her; without fleeing or serving elsewhere during the said time.

Promising, etc., obligating, etc., event he said Marguerite renouncing body and possessions, etc., Done and passed in duplicate in the year 1542, Tuesday, the 25th day of July.

"How to Teach Children"

(Kyôshi hô)

In the education of children, there is a difference between young children (yôshô) and adults (seijin). When children are very young, they learn from the beliefs and behavior of their parents, wet nurses, and so on.

In order to avoid stimulating bad ideas in a child so that he does not become a bad person, it is most important to take care to leave childish behavior such as playful mischief up to the child himself, and not to force your own opinions on him. No matter what happens, childish behavior is resolved with age and disappears on its own. Even they who understand a little about teaching children still do not know how to teach the heart, and by making a very young child exhibit adult behavior, they may make the child become bitter and depressed.

Seeing that this happens, some parents are reluctant to lecture their children, thinking it wrong, and as a result, they give their children too many favors, or let them have their own way in everything, indulging in pleasure. To do so is to allow them to learn to be vulgar, careless, and loose. That is a mistake in raising children. Leave childish things and playful mischief to the child in question, but warn them about the depravity in our hearts.

This way of teaching requires parents and nurses to be cautious about everyday jokes . . . . When parents line up and compare brothers, they joke that this one is my child and that one is not, and thus they instigate quarrels and jealousy between brothers.

Or else, when giving out food and clothing, adults say jokingly, "You may have it, you may not," which stimulates avarice.

Or else, when a child shows resistance to an adult and yells and cries, the parents try to stop his crying by taking his side no matter what, and by blaming the other party. This rewards an attitude of blaming other people, and stimulates a twisted attitude that leads to picking quarrels.

Or else, they readily deceive him, which stimulates in him the idea of opportunistic cheating.

Or else, they readily make up scary stories, which fosters a cowardly personality that is intimidated by threats and scare tactics.

In this way, without being aware of it, parents and nurses stimulate bad attitudes that will cause children to lose their innate virtue.

There are countless cases of this. Understand the reasons why and make it your number one concern not to let children learn avarice, excessive patience, a twisted mentality, and an aggressive, competitive attitude, or a tendency to cheat and degrade others. Even unintentional teasing should involve some kind of teaching, such as how to serve older family members with respect and to nurture the virtue of humility.

Why I Taught the Source

At the beginning of a lecture on the daily life of townsmen in Edo (Tokyo), I first presented an image of Tokugawa-period (1600–1868) Japanese children. This detail from an ink painting by Hanabusa Itchô (1562–1724) shows a childhood experience common to both sexes: watching a puppet show. From this unusual starting point, I aimed to address the issue of social class.

In my history of Japan course, which partially fulfills foreign culture or world history requirements for non-history majors, I later discuss how attitudes towards children and their education changed with Japan's modernization. I believe this source would also work well in a world history class on East Asian social history in the 18th century. In such a class, I would discuss women, children, and the family in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan, making occasional comparisons with a Western country, such as France.

I decided to use an image rather than a text because Edo-period paintings and woodblock prints portray both boys and girls from the commoner classes. Texts on children were mainly Confucian treatises on education, health, and wet-nursing. Fiction and autobiographical writing of that era typically did not dwell on childhood. Therefore woodblock prints provide more opportunities for discussion.

How I Introduce the Source

Of course, images from Japan are difficult to introduce without some kind of background knowledge. Before presenting this image, I emphasize that Tokugawa society was divided into four official classes: warriors (samurai), peasants, craftsmen, and merchants. Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616), founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, made all family heads register as one of the four classes in the official census. Landowners who chose to register as warriors (samurai) gained status, but they had to give up their hereditary lands in exchange for a stipend and move to a castle-town. Intermarriage between classes was officially forbidden, although by the end of the 18th century, marriage and adoption between classes was not uncommon. In fact, rich merchants were able to buy samurai status.

Young people grew up with a strong class consciousness, but children of all classes enjoyed play and games, songs and folktales, traveling entertainers and shrine festivals (selling sweets and paper toys), and celebrations for children, such as Boys' Day (Iris Festival or Tango no sekku, May 5) and Girls' Day (Doll Festival or Hina matsuri, March 3). Finally, all children did house chores or learned the family trade in the manner of an apprentice.

Reading the Source

I asked my students to start by describing the scene. They immediately noticed the puppeteers on the right before turning their gaze to the children running towards them. From the postures of the children, we recognize eager anticipation. Are they boys or girls? It is hard to tell, although an obi (belt) with a long sash usually indicates a girl. My students decided that the child closest to the puppeteers is definitely a girl. For one thing, she has more hair. Students also asked why the other children were bald with small tufts of hair. I explained that it was a Chinese fashion (believed to minimize lice and skin ailments) made popular in Japan through art depicting Chinese children at play.

Several students wondered about the half-hidden figures watching from a casement window in a gated building and offered different ideas. One suggested that the figures represented upper-class girls who were perhaps more sheltered than the children in the street. The fine gate suggests a well-to-do merchant house.

Reflections

Following our discussion of the image, I provided some further context. I explained that this kind of "old-fashioned" scene led Harvard Zoologist Edward Sylvester Morse (1838–1904) to describe the Japan he visited in the 1870s as the "paradise for children." Pointing to the boy carrying a baby on his back, I remarked that Morse thought it healthy for babies to be taken on rides by older brothers and sisters, instead of being left to cry alone in cribs. Yet Morse was unaware that the children carrying babies could be servants from poor families, entrusted with baby care and house chores in exchange for room and board (so that the master's wife could assist in the shop or the fields). These baby-sitters (komori) had their own mournful songs complaining of abuse and neglect. I also pointed out that itinerant puppeteers were generally social outcasts.

At this point, one may ask whether everyone enjoyed childhood. In this picture, the artist conveys a pleasure of childhood that transcends class, gender, and time period. Some students can relate to the scene. However, when students learn about komori, they begin to see the image in a different light, becoming aware of class inequities that may lurk beneath the surface of an innocent childhood scene.

Why I Taught the Source

The story of colonialism in the early modern era is generally told as one of adults—and primarily adult men—exploring, conquering, and transporting goods and ideas. Historians of women have made it increasingly clear that women are also important actors in this story, but children and adolescents have received little attention. They were also involved, although primarily as members of families, so it is difficult to find much information about them. Orphans were a different story, and they offer an unusual opportunity to see how children fit into the plans and realities of colonial expansion.

The source included here is a suggestion for handling orphans, devised in 1655 by Manoel Severim de Faria, an official for the bishop of Evora in Portugal. In this source he speaks specifically about the role orphaned children could and should play in the Portuguese empire. The source links to many issues in the early modern world, including maritime expansion, gender norms, and changing patterns of poverty, and through these to contemporary issues as well. It provides insight into attitudes toward one particular group of children in an era of competition for wealth and dominance among European powers.

How I Introduce the Source

I have used this source in several different courses: world history, European history, and the history of women and gender. I provide students with guidance and pose a series of questions as we read the source together. It is important that students have the source in front of them, so that every time they answer a question they can point to the specific part of text from which they are drawing information. It is sometimes helpful to have students read the source sentence by sentence until they become more familiar with the official bureaucratese in which it is written. I have found that this can be a useful technique any time a class—even an advanced undergraduate or graduate class—is stuck interpreting materials, for it allows the group to work together as it puzzles through difficult passages.

Students showed better understanding of the source if they were first provided with some background about the way orphans were handled in early modern Europe, which I did orally in some cases and through a written introduction to the source in others. I began by noting that many children in early modern Europe lost one or both parents while they were still young. Most children whose parents had died were taken into the home of a relative, but for some this was not a possibility, and they were placed in a public or church orphanage. Occasionally children who had lost only one parent were placed in orphanages when the surviving spouse determined he or she could not care for them. Children were also left anonymously at the doors of convents or orphanages; most of these foundlings were probably born out of wedlock to poor mothers who could not care for a child while they worked as servants or day-laborers. Many students have heard about children abandoned at church doors and a few have read novels or seen movies about foundlings, so it is useful to discuss the generally dismal circumstances for most children born out of wedlock, and dispel the students' sometimes romantic notions.

Students gain from knowing a bit about the institutional context surrounding orphans, although this does not have to be extensive. The earliest public orphanages in European cities opened in the 14th century, sometimes as parts of city hospitals, and sometimes as independent institutions. Orphanages were supported by church donations, private endowments, and public funds, but the funds provided were often not sufficient to cover all expenses. Thus Severim de Faria's proposal includes much discussion of how to provide financial support for his plans.

Historical background about orphanages can tie into other themes of a course. Not surprisingly, the number of children in orphanages grew dramatically during times of plague or other epidemic diseases, a common topic in world history courses. Orphanages also swelled during times of war. Textbooks often present religious conflicts in early modern Europe in rather abstract terms, as ideas battling ideas, and a focus on what happened to children allows students to better understand the actual impact of religious violence. (This can also be linked with contemporary examples of religious violence.) The same goes for discussions of inflation and other economic dislocations of the 16th century; helping students think about the impact of rapidly-increasing prices for food and land on children makes economic statistics less dry, and also helps them connect the economic issues of the early modern period with those with which they are familiar in their own lives.

Reading the Source

I begin the actual reading of this source with my students by noting that Monoel Severim de Faria sees orphans within the context of social problems and their solutions. We identify these as we work carefully through the text. What are the problems he identifies? We discover a series of these: the lack of "cabin-boys. . .swabbers. . .and sailors" for the Portuguese fleet; poor training for those sailors, so that ships wreck and cargo is lost; vagabonds and people who Severim de Faria thinks are pretending to be poor. (Here you may wish to discuss why he thinks this is so, and link the issue with more recent examples of rhetoric about those taking advantage of social support systems, such as the notion of "welfare queens.") Severim also returns several times to his worries that Portugal is underpopulated. In discussing why he worried about this, we look at maps and at charts about relative European populations in the 16th century.

Once we have identified the problems he cites, we examine the solutions he proposes. Students see right away that the solutions are gender specific: boys are to work on ships and learn how to sail them better, girls are to get married and have more children. This often leads to a broader discussion of gender differences, and I bring in additional information. I note that in terms of gender differences in their life experiences, orphans were not distinct from other children in early modern Europe. In both families and orphanages, children were trained in gender-specific tasks: boys learned to care for animals and make simple items, girls to cook and care for clothing and laundry. When they were old enough, which meant somewhere between seven and 14, children in both families and orphanages often left their parents and moved in with a master or employer, with whom they lived for most of their adolescence. Boys were apprenticed to artisans to learn a trade, while girls worked as servants and gained more domestic skills.

Girls were expected to provide a dowry upon marriage, an issue that students can easily see in the source in Severim de Faria's examples of the way cities such as Milan and Seville "solved" their orphan problem. I have found that my female students of European background are often outraged by the practice of dowry, seeing it—much as Jane Austen did—as "buying a husband." This can lead to a broader discussion of marriage as a means of retaining and transferring wealth, a topic that is often lost in world history classes where the emphasis is generally on less personal economic institutions such as wage labor and commercial exchanges. Based on their reading of any textbook, your students will not be surprised that Severim de Faria connects Seville's growth and prosperity to "commerce with the Indies." Your discussion of marriage can help them see why he links these to "the marriages that take place every year" in Seville as well.

Severim de Faria's proposal is just that—a plan, not a reality. Nevertheless, several early modern governments and private companies established policies based on proposals such as Faria's.This could provide a springboard for student research projects on such public measures as: sending orphans and Jewish children from Portugal to Goa, Brazil, and west Africa; "company daughters" sent by the Dutch East India Company to the East Indies; the filles du roi sent to New France; orphans and other poor children taken off the streets of London and sent as indentured servants to Virginia. Coerced migration is a central part of world history, and involved young people as well as adults.

Reflections

Reading Severim de Faria's proposal allows students to see one way that children were integrated into plans for colonization, and trace ways in which European class and gender patterns were carried around the world. Students gain skill in interpreting official language from an earlier period, and in assessing the underlying assumptions of the author, both of which are important tools of historical analysis. They recognize that Severim de Faria was a member of Portugal's upper classes, concerned about economic growth and deeply suspicious of the poor. Comparisons with contemporary opinion on the part of wealthy and middle-class Americans are easy to draw. How to handle orphans and children whose parents cannot or will not take care of them are important challenges today, both close to home and globally, and this source leads easily to discussions of contemporary parallels in the situation of children as well. This source could thus easily be combined with other documents about poor, abandoned, or otherwise marginalized children from different eras.

Students initially think of Severim de Faria as positive toward women (because he wanted, in their words, to "help" them), but on closer reading they come to see the values underlying his calls for protection and the provision of dowries. This helps students learn that first readings are not always accurate, and that close attention to the tone as well as the exact language of a document is important.

The original is a color ink painting on a paper scroll (that would be stored rolled up), showing two puppeteers entertaining children in the street.

In this regard it is convenient and of great value to Portugal, given the great multitude of foundlings and [male] orphans that exist in this Realm, who could be of great utility to the Republic, [if] raised in proper doctrine and placed in trades. It is more expedient to use this remedy in maritime regions, such as Lisbon, Setúbal, Porto, Viana, and in the Algarve; for in these [places], orphans and the abandoned once taken into custody could supply ships with cabin-boys, and swabbers for vessels, and sailors, all of whom there is a great shortage in this Realm. The proper teaching and training would be of great profit to our navigations, for there is a common lack of breeding geared toward men of the sea, as we have seen in so many shipwrecks and losses, of which there are many complaints. With this remedy we will also stop many of those who pretend to be poor, or who are vagabonds in this Realm, and they will occupy themselves in honest work. This will be of benefit to the Republic, and with this the number of residents in those locations would increase, and the population in the Realm.

This way of recruiting the orphans is so well-known that already in 1641 the members of the Cortes [the Portuguese parliament] asked His Majesty with these words: "It would be greatly advantageous that in the amassing of young orphans we recruit many boys, and that an amount be applied for their sustenance, for they will be taught the art of seafaring, with which there will always be an abundance of mariners, of whom there is a great lack in this Realm." [They gave] the example of the hospital that the Queen of Castile set up in Madrid to train boys to be mariners due to the existing shortage of them. And the response from His Majesty is that he would order that which they asked of him.

The same that has been said for the relief and remedy of orphaned boys can be said of orphaned girls. This is better yet, [because] much more care must be given to them, for lack of support is a greater danger to them, for women have much less means of making a living than men. Thus it is appropriate that a remedy be found for them, by applying all the means that can exist to have these [female] orphans of the people get married: for besides the great service [this will provide] to Our Lord by removing the occasion for them to disgrace themselves, we will attain our aim of increasing the number of people with the multiplication of marriages. The City of Milan, which is the most populous in Europe, serves as an example of this; one of the reasons for its growth is the dowry it provides each year to 800 [female] orphans. The same can be seen in the increase that the city of Seville has had for some years; for whereas much of it was caused by the commerce with the Indies, we can also attribute it to the marriages that take place each year of a great number of [female] orphans. In that city there are chapels. . . founded exclusively with large endowments to marry many [female] orphans: besides this there are many hospitals. . . that each marry many young women, and there are many more [public and private charities] that with the surplus from their revenues carry out this act of charity.

To put this means to work: we say that some portion of municipal revenues could be used, where a surplus exists, or some revenue from the head tax could be assigned to this, which income could be used solely for this pious work. We would also ask all municipal judges and officials that whenever they find money or bequests left to spend on pious works that were not named by the testators, they order [this money] spent entirely on these weddings. And likewise other similar things could be found for this purpose.

The third they were charged with, was Stephen Arrowsmith for the Rape committed on Elizabeth Hopkins. . . .

The Girl that was ravished, being between 8 and 9, testified that he had had to do with her for half a year together every Sunday, that she was hindred from crying the first time, by his stopping her mouth, and that he gave her money afterwards; and she never discovered it, still some of her friends observing her to go as if she were very sore, examined her, and by telling her she would be in danger of hanging in Hell, got her to confess, that the Prisoner was her fathers Prentice. . . .

The Prisoner with a great many tears denied the Fact, and desired some Witnesses might be called. Among whom there was a maid that lived at the Doctors where the Girl was for Cure, who testified that the Girl upon Taxing her, why she did conceal it, said, she took Pleasure in it, and that upon Examination there were no Symptomes on the Prisoner, as the Doctor said, of any such disease as the Girl had, which was indeed the Pox; which was also attested by one Mrs. Rawlins: and the Prisoner protesting his Innocence, alledged that they offered a Composition. 1

All which notwithstanding, the Court with great detestation and abhorrence of so Horrid and Vile an Offence, told him the Matter was so plain against him, that he must have as great impudence to deny it, as he had wickedness to Commit it; that her consent would not save him, for the Statute provides, that a Child under 10 years of age, should not be abused with, or without her Consent. That the First Violence whereby he stop'd her Crying, made the Rape, had it been a Woman above 10; that if the Parents were so wicked, as to offer a Composition, yet that made not him innocent. . . .

[The jury returned a verdict of not guilty] which Verdict Mr. Recorder, not conceiving it to be according to their Evidence, would not take from them without further deliberation, and labour'd to satisfie them of the Manifestness of the Proof. One of the Jury being an Apothecary, said it was his opinion, that a Child of those years could not be Ravished. Which the Court told him was to Elude the Statute, that having provided a Punishment, had done it in vain, if there were no offence, and so he did tax the Wisdom of a whole Parliament; Which ought not to be Others of the Jury, because the Girls were not sworn, doubted of the sufficiency of their Testimony, and they had nothing but hearsay from the other Witnesses. But the Court told them, in regard such Offenders never call others to be by while they commit such actions, they could expect no other Testimony than from the Party injured, which they had, and with it of an eye Witness, both whom they forbore to Swear, because of the tenderness of their Age; but if they insisted upon it, they should be Sworn.

[The jury deliberated again and found Arrowsmith guilty]

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record amasses over 1,200 images documenting the history of the Atlantic slave trade and the lives of slaves and former slaves in the Americas. The images document the history of enslavement in West and West Central Africa, the English and French Caribbean, Brazil, and the United States. Most of the images are watercolors, sketches, and prints from 18th and 19th century European and American texts, although a few pieces predate this era, or are digitalized versions of previously unpublished archival material. Finally, the site also contains a few newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves, such as this 1763 "Fugitive Slave Advertisement" publicizing the escape of four slaves, including one 15-year-old boy.

Viewers can search for images of children within this site by browsing the 18 broad subject categories by which the database is organized. Two categories that include many images of children are Pre-Colonial Africa: Society, Polity, Culture and Family Life, Child Care, Schools. Larger numbers of images involving children can be located by doing a keyword search from the general database for children (97 images), girl (26 images) and boy (33 images).

While the types of sources contained in this site pose some challenges to effective classroom use, instructors who think carefully about how to have students use these images will be rewarded with rich results. Both full bibliographic references and a clear indication of the geographic and temporal setting depicted are provided for each image. Also included are any relevant textual passages that might have accompanied an image in its original publication. However, as the site makes clear, its authors have made little effort to interpret the images or establish the historical authenticity or accuracy of what they depict, so much is required in this area by viewers.

There are several ways to approach this material. Instructors might point out to students that the images do not necessarily document slavery's history in a straight-forward and unmediated fashion, and in this case, they might design exercises for students that called for them to consider how the context and objective of an image's creator shaped the content of the image generated. This approach could be done by either restricting students to the use of material contained at the site, or by requiring them to do further research on the images’ creators.

Another option would be to explore the ways in which children are ubiquitous in images on this site, for example, as infants, strapped to the backs of women – presumably their mothers. Yet this depiction seems at odds with what we know to have been the extremely high rates of infant and childhood mortality that children experienced across the Americas under slavery. Young children in these images are also most often shown playing near, or sitting on the laps of their mothers, yet again, we know that it was common for slave children to be sold to others separately from their mothers. Instructors might therefore ask their students: Have these artists exaggerated the predominance of children's proximity to their mothers in these images? If so, why?

Instructors might start by encouraging students to formulate interpretations involving childhood and children in slavery from the images, and then moving to secondary source material to learn more. Or an assignment could begin with historical context and then look for patterns mentioned in the literature or for images that counter a historical narrative. A few secondary sources that would work well with this collection of images include: Digital History's entry on African American Voices and Annie L. Burton's 19th century slave chronicle, Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days.

One fascinating theme to explore would be inter-racial relations that childcare arrangements between slave and slave-owning families entailed. See, for example, Enslaved House Servants and White Children, South Carolina, 1863 and Black Nursemaid, New Orleans, 1873-74. Instructors might have students study these and other such images to consider how the relations they depict suggest ties of emotional intimacy and social proximity that contradict the more brutal relations between slaves and slave owners portrayed in so many other images at the site.

Instructors could also use images in this collection to examine the issue of gender, encouraging students to consider, for example, how the slave experience differently affected boys and girls. Students could analyze such images as George Cruikshank's pro-abolitionist drawing, "Punishment Aboard a Slave Ship, 1792" which depicts a 15-year-old girl who was tortured to death for her "virgin modesty" (she had refused to dance naked on the deck of a British slaving ship) or the similar scene illustrated in "Whipping a Slave in Surinam, 1770s". Such illustrations allow students to examine how slave owners and captors projected notions of heightened sexuality, or presumptions of sexual availability on female slaves, and contrast these with the experience of males.