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Abandoned and illegitimate, a double mortality penalty? Mortality of illegitimate infants in the foundling hospital of Madrid, La Inclusa (1890–1935)

This paper examines the existence of a mortality penalty for illegitimate abandoned infants in the Foundling Hospital of Madrid, La Inclusa, during the period 1890–1935, in the context of the mortality experience of the city. A rich dataset on the life histories of all infants abandoned in the city of Madrid (almost 60,000 children), nominally linked to births, has allowed the study of the determinants of mortality of foundlings, newborns in the city, and the study of the determinants of abandonment. Contrary to previous findings, our results for La Inclusa show no evidence of an illegitimacy penalty among foundlings and, in some cases, show even better prospects for them. However, this situation did not reflect the circumstances of the city, as illegitimate infants were both more likely to suffer a neonatal death and to be abandoned. The explanation proposed in this paper is that the health of infants born of wedded couples that ended up resorting to abandonment was possibly poorer than that of those born of single or migrant mothers, as the situation triggering abandonment meant that infants were under very hard conditions, possibly worse than those single women faced in the event of a pregnancy.