Angel Makers

Angel makers are women who agree to care for foster children for a fee but neglect them until the child dies. But historically two types of angel makers can be identified. The first type of angel makers were 19th-century wet nurses who, because of their poor health and lack of child-care education, often neglected the young children placed in their care by local foundling agencies. The second type were the female angel makers of Nagyrev, Hungary, who were responsible for the death of their husbands, other relatives, and children during and after World War I. Both types put the lives of innocents at risk, and these events serve as the basis for this discussion.

Angel Makers of Officially Sanctioned Foundling Homes

Until the 19th century, children were not accorded much social or family status simply because the concept of childhood was not valued as significant. It is in this context that the first type of angel maker is best understood. This angel maker refers to alleged killers of infants. More specifically, angel makers were either women who, for a stipend, took foster children into their homes, or they were indigent women who, having lost their own infants, stayed at foundling homes, which were intended to solve the infant abandonment problem that existed throughout Europe for hundreds of years. In France, the people hired to transport babies from their home village to a distant foundling home became known as faiseuses d'anges orangel makers. This name, angel maker, was to become a more common label because of the high mortality rate during this transition to the foundling institution. The label angel maker also was assigned to many rural, poorly educated wet nurses, under whose charge a high rate of infant mortality was thought to occur.

Whether intentional or owing to a lack of resources, most of the children placed into foundling homes or assigned directly to wet nurses died because of either being undernourished or neglected to the extent that death occurred. Despite this high mortality, such foundling homes represented a social experiment to thwart the total abandonment of infants and laid the foundations for the modern concept of infant and child foster home care. Before the early 19th century, abandonment of children was common practice, whether by unwed mothers or by two-parent families. However, for infants abandoned during the 1830s to 1870s and prior to [Page 53]the establishment of standardized child-care policies, placement into a foundling home represented a chance for survival. The placement also provided an economic opportunity for poor women who, for a fee, took abandoned infants into their homes for a short period of time. Along with wet nurses who resided in the foundling homes, these women became known as angel makers.

The motives of the individuals involved to address the infant abandonment problem were noble; they were attempting to save the lives of babies. Indeed, an officially sanctioned system for the abandonment of babies was under development in many Catholic countries, including Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Portugal. These series of foundling homes were intended to support anonymous infants who had been abandoned by unwed mothers or the children of indigent families, thereby protecting the good name and social standing of the birth parents. Although abandonment had occurred for many centuries, the foundling home for abandoned infants represented a civilized response to a social problem as well as presenting a more acceptable alternative to abortion and infanticide.

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