The study uses examinations and other documents produced in the course of a large-scale investigation undertaken by the central authorities of the Austrian Netherlands in the 1760s on the transportation of about thirty children from Brussels to the Parisian foundling house by a Brussels shoemaker and his wife. It combines the rich archival evidence with sparse indications in the literature to demonstrate that long-distance transports of abandoned children were a common but historiographically neglected by-product of the ambiguities of foundling policies in eighteenth-century Europe and provides insight into the functioning of the associated networks and the motives of parents, doctors, midwives, transporters, and local officials involved.
Giovanna Da Molin, ‘‘Les enfants abandonnés dans les villes Italiennes aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles,’’ Annales de Demographie Historique (1983): 103-06; Volker Hunecke, ‘‘Les enfants trouvés: Contexte Européen et cas Milanais (18e-19e siècles),’’ Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 32, no. 1 (1985): 4-5; Roger Mols, Introduction à la démographie historique des villes d’Europe du 14e au 18e siècle (Louvain: Bibliothèque de l’Université, 1954), 255; David L. Ransel, Mothers of misery: Child abandonment in Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 45; Joan Sherwood, Poverty in eighteenth-century Spain: The women and children of the Inclusa (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 22-3; Louise A. Tilly, Rachel G. Fuchs, David I. Kertzer, and David L. Ransel, ‘‘Child abandonment in European history: A symposium,’’ Journal of Family History 17, no. 1 (1992): 14-5.
2.
Claude Delaselle, ‘‘Les enfants abandonnés à Paris au XVIIIe siècle,’’ Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 30, no. 1 (1975): 200-1, 212; Olwen H. Hufton, The prospect before her: A history of women in Western Europe. Volume I: 1500-1800 (London: HarperCollins, 1995), 274; Ingrid Matschinegg, Verena Pawlowsky, and Rosa Zechner, ‘‘Mütter im Dienst - Kinder in Kost: Das Wiener Findelhaus, eine Fürsorgeeinrichting für ledige frauen und deren kinder,’’ Homme: Zeitschrift fur Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 5, no. 2 (1994): 61-80; Isabelle Robin and Agnès Walch, ‘‘Les billets trouvés sur les enfants abandonnés à Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,’’ in Enfance abandonnée et société en Europe, XIVe - XXe siècles. Actes du colloque international (Rome, 30 et 31 janvier 1987), Collection de l’école française de Rome 140 (Rome, 1991), 983; Tilly, Fuchs, Kertzer, and Ransel, ‘‘Child abandonment,’’ 8-9.
3.
See for instance Cissie Fairchilds, ‘‘Female sexual attitudes and the rise of illegitimacy: A case study,’’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8, no. 4 (1978): 627-67; Tim Hitchcock, ‘‘Unlawfully begotten on her body: illegitimacy and the parish poor in St Luke’s Chelsea,’’ in Chronicling poverty: the voices and strategies of the English poor, 1640-1840, ed. Tim Hitchcock, Peter King, and Pamela Sharpe (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), 70-87; Peter Laslett, The world we have lost: further explored (Taylor & Francis, 1983), 158-9; J. Van Bavel, ‘‘Family control, bridal pregnancy, and illegitimacy: An event history analysis in Leuven, Belgium, 1846-1856,’’ Social Science History 25, no. 3 (2001): 449-50.
4.
Delaselle, ‘‘Les enfants,’’ 212; Hunecke, ‘‘Les enfants trouvés,’’ 5-6; Alysa Levene, ‘‘The origins of the children of the London Foundling Hospital, 1741-1760: a reconsideration,’’ Continuity and Change 18, no. 2 (2003): 219-22; Tilly, Fuchs, Kertzer, and Ransel, ‘‘Child abandonment,’’ 8.
5.
Jean-Pierre Bardet, ‘‘l’Enfant abandonné au coeur des interrogations sociales,’’ Histoire, Économie et Société 6, no. 3 (1987): 294; Delaselle, ‘‘Les enfants,’’ 212; Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly, Poverty and capitalism in pre-industrial Europe (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979), 187-8; Robin and Walch, ‘‘Les billets,’’ 983-4.
6.
See, for example, Abbé de Malvaux, Les moyens de détruire la mendicité en France en rendant les mendiants utiles à l’Etat sans les rendre malheureux. Tirés des Mémoires qui ont concouru pour le Prix accordé en l’année 1777 par l’Académie des Sciences, Arts et Belles Lettres de Châlons-sur-Marne, Seneuze ou Paindavoirne (Paris: Delalain, 1780), 255; On the differentiation between deserving and undeserving poor: Robert Jütte, Poverty and deviance in early modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 145.
7.
Philippe Aragon, ‘‘L’enfant délaissé au Siècle des lumières,’’ Histoire, Economie et Société 6, no. 3 (1987): 394-5; Baron de Gérando, De la bienfaisance publique (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1839), 166; Léon Lallemand, Histoire des enfants abandonnés et délaissés: études sur la protection de l’enfance aux diverses époques de la civilisation (Paris: Alphonse Picard et Guillaumin, 1885), 163; Malvaux, Les moyens, 556; Otto Ulbricht, ‘‘The debate about foundling hospitals in enlightenment Germany: Infanticide, illegitimacy, and infant mortality rates,’’ Central European History 18, no. 3 (1985): 246-7.
Aragon, ‘‘L’enfant délaissé,’’ 391-2; Jean-Pierre Bardet, ‘‘La société et l’abandon,’’ in Enfance abandonnée et société en Europe, XIVe - XXe siècles. Actes du colloque international (Rome, 30 et 31 janvier 1987), Collection de l’école française de Rome 140 (Rome, 1991), 14-6; Muriel Jeorger, ‘‘Enfant trouvé - Enfant objet,’’ Histoire, Economie et Societe 6, no. 3 (1987): 374-5; Ulbricht, ‘‘The debate,’’ 219-25.
10.
For a contemporary controversy over the existence of a foundling ‘‘tour’’-where children can be deposited anonymously-in the Belgian city of Antwerp, see for instance ‘‘Michael De Kleine,’’ Flanders Today, July 29, 2009, 16.
11.
See for instance Anne Winter, ‘‘Caught between law and practice: Migrants and settlement legislation in the Southern Low Countries in a comparative perspective, c. 1700-1900,’’ Rural History 19, no. 2 (2008): 138.
12.
Paul Bonenfant, Le problème du pauperisme en Belgique à la fin de l’ancien régime (Bruxelles: Académie Royale de Belgique, 1934), 127-9; Lallemand, Histoire, 108-15; Sherwood, Poverty, 20; K.D.M. Snell, Parish and belonging. Community, identity and welfare in England and Wales, 1700-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 85.
13.
Bonenfant, Le problème, 130-1; Hufton, The prospect before her, 268-9; Snell, Parish and belonging, 67, 137-43.
14.
J.F. Terme and J.B. Monfalcon, Histoire statistique et morale des enfants trouvés, suivie de cent tableaux (Paris, 1837), 100.
15.
Bonenfant, Le problème, 129-30; Da Molin, ‘‘Les enfants abandonnés,’’ 107; Lotte van de Pol and Erika Kuijpers, ‘‘Poor women’s migration to the city: The attraction of Amsterdam health care and social assistance in early modern times,’’ Journal of Urban History 32, no. 1 (2005): 44-60.
16.
Bardet, ‘‘l’Enfant,’’ 294-5; Jean-Pierre Bardet, Corinne Martin-Dufour, and Jacques Renard, ‘‘La mort des enfants trouvés, un drame aux deux actes,’’ Annales de Demographie Historique (1994): 45-7; Alysa Levene, ‘‘The estimation of mortality at the London Foundling Hospiral, 1741-99,’’ Population Studies 59, no. 1 (2005): 92-3; Ransel, Mothers of misery, 45-7.
17.
In addition, small numbers of children were also cared for in the Salpêtrière, Pitié or other Hôtels Dieu: Léon Lallemand, Un chapitre de l’histore des enfants trouvés: La maison de la couche, 17e-18e siècles, Extrait d’un mémoire couronné par l’académie des sciences morales et politiques (Paris: H. Champion, 1885); Isabelle Robin and Agnès Walch, ‘‘Géographie des enfants trouvés de Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,’’ Histoire, Economie et Societe 6, no. 3 (1987): 344-7; Terme and Monfalcon, Histoire, 96-103.
18.
Robin and Walch, ‘‘Géographie,’’345.
19.
Bardet, ‘‘l’Enfant,’’ 294-5; Delaselle, ‘‘Les enfants,’’ 212; Robin and Walch, ‘‘Les billets,’’ 345-8.
20.
Lallemand, Histoire, 159; Robin and Walch, ‘‘Géographie,’’ 345-8.
Da Molin, ‘‘Les enfants abandonnés,’’ 189, 192-3; Gérando, De la bienfaisance publique, 154; Lallemand, Histoire, 159-61, 238; Ernest Semichon, Histoire des enfants abandonnés depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Plon, 1880), 134; Terme and Monfalcon, Histoire, 100.
23.
Delaselle, ‘‘Les enfants,’’ 189, 191. See also Louis Henry, ‘‘Le volume de l’immigration à Paris de 1740 à 1792,’’ Population 26 (1971): 1083-4; Robin and Walch, ‘‘Géographie,’’ 353.
24.
Da Molin, ‘‘Les enfants abandonnés,’’ 106-7; David I. Kertzer and Michael J. White, ‘‘Cheating the angel-makers: Surviving infant abandonment in nineteenth-century Italy,’’ Continuity and Change 9, no. 3 (1994): 458; Alysa Levene, Childcare, health and mortality at the London Foundling Hospital, 1741-1800 (2007): 26-7. For the case of London, the evidence pertains to the period of the ‘‘Great Reception’’ (1757-1760), when a temporary liberalization of entry conditions-previously restricted by a ballot system and a screening for health-allowed for a surge in the number of children admitted to around 4,000 per year (as against between 20 and 200 in the preceding years).
25.
Like the description by Louis-Sebastien Mercier of a voiturier to Paris, ‘‘it is a man who carries on his back the newborn children, in a padded box that can contain three of them (...) The man stops only to eat and to give them a bit of milk. When he opens the box, he often finds one is dead; he continues his long voyage with the two others, impatient to drop them off at the depot. When he has deposed them at the hospital, he returns immediately to resume the same trade which is his living’’, cited by Delaselle, ‘‘Les enfants,’’ 193. See also Kertzer and White, ‘‘Cheating,’’ 458; Lallemand, Histoire, 162; Levene, ‘‘The origins,’’ 216-7; Robin and Walch, ‘‘Géographie,’’ 358.
26.
Antoinette Chamoux, ‘‘L’enfance abandonnée à Reims à la fin du XVIIIe siècle,’’ Annales de démographie historique (1973): 264; Etienne Hélin, ‘‘Une sollicitude ambiguë: l’évacuation des enfants abandonnés,’’ Annales de démographie historique (1973): 225-9; Lallemand, Un chapitre, 33-4, no. 2; Robin and Walch, ‘‘Géographie,’’ 352-53.
27.
Chamoux, ‘‘L’enfance abandonnée,’’ 264-5; Nicole Haesenne-Peremans, ‘‘Le sort des enfants trouvés et abandonnés dans la région liégeoise au début du XIXe siècle,’’ Bulletin de l’institut archéologique liégeois XC (1978): 7; Abbé Charles Le Clerc de Montlinot, Observations sur les enfants trouvés de la généralité de Soissons (Paris: Imp. Royale, 1790), 50; Robin and Walch, ‘‘Géographie,’’ 353.
28.
Delaselle, ‘‘Les enfants,’’ 193; Gérando, De la bienfaisance publique, 154; Levene, Childcare, 38-40; Sherwood, Poverty, 20-1.
29.
The registre des délibérations du bureau de l’hôpital général observed in December 1772 that the ‘‘barbarian treatment’’ of imported children on their long journey to Paris caused many to die a premature death along the way or after arrival, so that ‘‘on top of the overburdening of the Parisian hospitals and the depopulation of the provinces (...) also public order and humanity suffer (from these transports),’’ cited by Lallemand, Un chapitre, 36-7, no. 2.
30.
Chamoux, ‘‘L’enfance abandonnée,’’ 266; Delaselle, ‘‘Les enfants,’’ 189, 194; Lallemand, Un chapitre, 36; Le Clerc de Montlinot, Observations.
31.
The correspondence, investigations, and other documents produced in the wake of the Bassanet case are kept in the National Archives in Brussels (Algemeen Rijksarchief-ARA), Conseil Privé Autrichien- Cartons (T460), 951.
32.
ARA, T 460, 951, Letter of Charles Alexander to the Conseiller Fiscal of Brabant, 29/11/1761 and Letter of Charles Alexandre to the Conseil Privé 29/11/1761.
33.
ARA, T 460, 951, Informations prises par le conseiller procureur général de Bruxelles ensuite des ordres de SAR du 15/03/1762, and Letter of the Procureur Général to Charles Alexandre, 10/05/1762. A mainly descriptive discussion of some of the evidence produced in the course of the Bassanet case was published by Paul Bonenfant, ‘‘Une entreprise d’exportation d’enfants à Bruxelles au XVIIIe siècle,’’ Annales de la Société Royale d’Archéologie de Bruxelles 35 (1930): 6-30 and reconsidered by Anne Winter, ‘‘Ongewenste kinderen op transport naar het Parijse vondelingenhuis. Een opmerkelijke transportonderneming vanuit Brussel in het derde kwart van de achttiende eeuw,’’ in Tussen dader en slachtoffer: Jongeren en criminaliteit in historisch perspectief, ed. Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly (Brussel: VUB Press, 2001), 169-94.
34.
One louis d’or was the equivalent of 12.99 Brabant guilders: Horace Doursther, Dictionnaire universel des poids et mesures anciens et modernes, contenant des tables des monnaies de tous les pays (Amsterdam: Meridian, 1965), 299, 318-9. Antwerp accounts for the 1750s and 1760s mention twenty-four and fourteen stivers (twenty stivers make one guilder) as the modal day wages for journeymen masons and unskilled building workers respectively, of which at least one stiver was retained by their employers: E. Scholliers, ‘‘Prijzen en lonen te Antwerpen en in het Antwerpse (16e-19e eeuw),’’ in Dokumenten voor de geschiedenis van prijzen en lonen in Vlaanderen en Brabant, Deel II, ed. C. Verlinden (Brugge: De Tempel, 1965), 660-2, 1014, 1020-24, 1044-45.
35.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examinations of Elisabeth Quoquidez, 24/03 and 02/04/1762; Examination of Jean-Baptiste Bassanet, 27/03/1762.
ARA, T 460, Examinations of Elisabeth Quoquidez, 24/03 and 02/04/1762; Examination of Jean-Baptiste Bassanet, 27/03/1762.
38.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Doctor Guillelmis Rogge, 27/03/1762; Examination of Sr Jacques François Tricot, 27/03/1762.
39.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Charles Godecharles, 27/03/1762; Examination of Josephius Godecharles, 28/03/1762; Examination of Marie Catharina Joseph Gillis, 05/04/1762.
40.
Chamoux, ‘‘L’enfance abandonnée,’’ 264; Hélin, ‘‘Une sollicitude,’’ 225-9; Lallemand, Un chapitre, 33-4 no. 2; Robin and Walch, ‘‘Géographie,’’ 352-3.
41.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Elisabeth Quoquidez, 24/03/1762; Examination of Guillelmis Rogge, 27/ 03/1762; Examination of Elisabeth Gaillard, 27/03/1762; Examination of Josephius Godecharles, 28/03/ 1762; Examination of Charles Godecharles, 27/03/1762; Examination of Sr Jacques François Tricot, 27/ 03/1762; Examination of Philippine Genau, 03/04/1762; Examination of Maria Catharina Joseph Gillis, 05/04/1762.
42.
Hélin, ‘‘Une sollicitude,’’226.
43.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examinations of Elisabeth Quoquidez, 24/03 and 02/04/1762; Examination of Jean-Baptiste Bassanet, 27/03/1762; Examination of Joseph Bassanet, 03/04/1762.
44.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Charles Godecharles, 27/03/1762.
45.
ARA, T 460, 951, Letter of Conseiller Fiscal De Cock to Charles Alexandre, 10/12/1761.
46.
Delaselle, ‘‘Les enfants,’’187.
47.
Lallemand, Un chapitre, 32-4.
48.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Elisabeth Quoquidez, 24/03/1762. A demi-couronne de France was worth 1.5 guilders: Doursther, Dictionnaire universel des poids et mesures anciens et modernes, contenant des tables des monnaies de tous les pays, 299, 318-9. For wages, see above note.
49.
Although clerk Waegemans did receive six stivers and two pots of beer in return for the travel documents provided.
50.
Bonenfant, Le problème, 128-9.
51.
Bonenfant, Le problème, 212-4; A.-M. Bonenfant-Feytmans, ‘‘Le problème des enfants trouvées à Bruxelles au 17e siècle,’’ Bulletin de la Société Royale d’Archéologie de Bruxelles (1950): 19-20; Alexandre Henne and Alphonse Wauters, Histoire de la ville de Bruxelles (Bruxelles: Culture et civilisation, 1968), III, 285.
52.
Bonenfant, Le problème, 211, no. 2. Bonenfant-Feytmans, ‘‘Le problème,’’ 9; Henne and Wauters, Histoire, III, 132-3; Fernand Vanhemelryck, De criminaliteit in de ammanie van Brussel van de late Middeleeuwen tot het einde van het Ancien Régime (1404-1789) (Brussel: Paleis der Academiën, 1981), 169.
53.
Bonenfant, Le problème, 130, esp. no. 3.
54.
ARA, T 460, 951, Letters of Conseiller Fiscal De Cock to Charles Alexandre, 10/12/1761 and 07/05/1762. Compare with Aragon, ‘‘L’enfant délaissé,’’ 394; Bardet, ‘‘La société,’’ 13-14.; Hélène Bergues et al., La prévention des naissances dans la famille. Ses origines dans les temps modernes, Travaux et documents 35 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1960), 170-80.
55.
ARA, T 460, 951, Extrait de protocole du Conseil Privé, 14/06/1762. In fact, the 1292 landcharter of the ammanie Brussels did provide some prohibitive measures in this direction: Vanhemelryck, De criminaliteit, 172.
56.
Recueil des ordonnances des Pays-Bas Autrichiens, série 3, vol. VIII (12/1/1756-28/12/1762), 501-502: Ordonnance de l’Impératrice Reine décernant la peine du fouet et du banissement contre les parents qui feront transporter leurs enfants hors de la domination de l’Impératrice, pour s’en défaire, 20/12/1762
57.
Although Elisabeth once refers to a maidservant who she believes was in service with a gardener living outside the city, and another time to a girl who was staying in the inn ‘‘Le Vieux Loup,’’ suggesting that some lodging networks for rural girls might have been in place: ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Elisabeth Quoquidez, 24/03/1762.
58.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examinations of Elisabeth Quoquidez, 24/03 and 02/04/1762.
59.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Joseph Godecharles, 28/03/1762.
60.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Charles Godecharles, 27/03/1762.
61.
This was most explicit in the case of the six ‘‘girls or servants who had been deceived during the passage of the French’’ (during the Austrian War of Succession, AW) whom Elisabeth Quoquidez said she had assisted on their childbed: ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Elisabeth Quoquidez, 24/03/1762. On the image of passive female sexuality: Tanya Evans, ‘‘Unfortunate objects: London’s unmarried mothers in the eighteenth century,’’ Gender and History 17, no. 1 (2005): 128-31; Tim Hitchcock, English sexualities, 1700-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), 100-9; Hitchcock, ‘‘Unlawfully begotten,’’ 70-87.
62.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examinations of Elisabeth Quoquidez, 24/03 and 02/04/1762; Examination of Jean-Baptiste Bassanet, 27/03/1762.
63.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Sr Jacques François Tricot, 27/03/1762; Examination of Maria Catharina Joseph Gillis, 05/04/1762.
64.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Sr Guillelmis Cremmens, 05/04/1762.
65.
See for instance ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Elisabeth Quiquidez, 24/03/1762.
66.
Data for an Antwerp household in 1758/59 mention yearly remunerations of forty and fifty guilders for a maidservant and kitchen maid respectively: Scholliers, ‘‘Prijzen en lonen te Antwerpen en in het Antwerpse (16e-19e eeuw),’’ 1042-3.
67.
On the role of social networks and help in dealing with unwanted pregnancies: Evans, ‘‘Unfortunate objects,’’ 139-40; Leslie Page Moch and Rachel G Fuchs, ‘‘Getting along: Poor women’s networks in nineteenth-century Paris,’’ French Historical Studies 18, no. 1 (1993): 45-7. Some servants might even have been impregnated by members of their employers’ households, a common theme in literature and popular imagery of the time, also maintained by historians: Delaselle, ‘‘Les enfants,’’ 213; Herman Van Isterdael, ‘‘Arbeid en seksualiteit. Een onderzoek naar de seksuele agressie op het vrouwelijk dienstpersoneel in het Ancien Régime,’’ in Arbeid in veelvoud: Een huldeboek voor Jan Craeybeckx en Etienne Scholliers, ed. Guido Peeters and Magda de Moor (Brussel: VUB Press, 1988), 113-22.
68.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Josephius Godecharles, 28/03/1762; Examination of Charles Godecharles, 27/03/1762.
69.
ARA, T 460, 951, Extrait de Protocole du Conseil Privé, 16/12/1761.
70.
ARA, T 460, 951, Letter of Conseiller-Fiscal De Cock to Charles Alexandre, 07/05/1762.
71.
Georges De Ghewiet, Institutions du Droit belgique. Avec une méthode pour étudier la profession d’avocat (Bruxelles, 1758), vol. 2, 353; Vanhemelryck, De criminaliteit, 166.
72.
Bonenfant, Le problème, 129-131; Chris Vandenbroeke, Vrijen en trouwen van de Middeleeuwen tot heden. Seks, liefde en huwelijk in historisch perspectief (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1986), 209-10; Vanhemelryck, De criminaliteit, 167.
73.
Vanhemelryck, De criminaliteit, 167-9, 171.
74.
ARA, T 460, 951, Letter of Charles Alexandre to the lieutenant-amman of Brussels, 10/07/1771.
75.
ARA, T 460, 951, Letter of Charles Alexandre to the Magistrat de Bruxelles, 25/07/1771; Bonenfant, Le problème, 434-8; Vanhemelryck, De criminaliteit, 169. These arguments would also continue to dominate the discussion in the nineteenth century, when a system of liberal admissions by means of a tour had been established: Patricia Van den Eeckhout, ‘‘De geschiedenis van de ‘‘Vondelingenbak’’ te Brussel. Conflicten tussen moraliteit en administratieve zuinigheid,’’ Annalen van de Belgische Vereniging voor Hospitaalgeschiedenis 16 (1978): 57-87.
76.
In the closing decades of the eighteenth century, the Brussels authorities in vain undertook repeated attempts to have at least part of the costs for foundling care covered by the central authorities: Bonenfant, Le problème, 434-42, 484.
77.
Lallemand, Histoire, 109-120. See also Hufton, The prospect before her, 274-5.
78.
Bonenfant, Le problème, 216-7.
79.
Bardet, ‘‘l’Enfant,’’ 294-5; Delaselle, ‘‘Les enfants,’’ 212; Robin and Walch, ‘‘Les billets,’’ 345-48.
80.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Joseph Godecharles, 28/03/1762.
81.
It is worth pointing out that the Bassanets’ clients did not necessarily want to sever all ties with their abandoned child, as the certificates of delivery brought back by the Bassanets might have had the same function as letters and billets in allowing for a possible reclaiming of the child in the future: cf. Robin and Walch, ‘‘Les billets,’’ 984-5.
82.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Elisabeth Quoquidez, 24/03/1762; Examination of Jean-Baptiste Bassanet, 27/03/1762; Examination of Sr François Tricot 27/03/1762; Examination of Marie Catharina Joseph Gillis, 05/04/1762. The fact that Elisabeth Quoquidez herself originated from Valenciennes might have helped the establishing of transport links between Paris and Brussels.
83.
ARA, T 460, 951, Examination of Elisabeth Quoquidez, 02/04/1762.
84.
Although this might have been motivated by the fact that a baptismal record appears to have been required when delivering a child in Paris: Lallemand, Un chapitre, 34, no. 2, 36-7, no. 2.
