BRINGING UP BABY

Family history research often prompts intriguing questions. I’ve recently been discussing with a class how babies were reared in the early 18th century. Evidence is hard to come by for the ordinary folk, but we explored how the gentry raised their children by looking at the diaries of a Lancashire squire.

Nicholas Blundell (1669–1737) was lord of the manor of Little Crosby near Liverpool. A devout Catholic, he married late,