I have a few other references to swaddling at the turn of the century in
Italy, in cities. But I don't know how tight nor how long--it could be just
a few months and rather loosely bound. Does anyone else on the list have
anything on Italian swaddling at the end of the 19th century?
Lloyd
>Browsing some 1909 issues of the London-published Strand Magazine, I
>happened to find a photo of a tightly swaddled infant, submitted by an
>English amateur. Maybe this quote will interest a few of you:
>
>"HOW BABIES ARE DRESSED IN ITALY.
>This photograph of an Italian child about six months old shows the way in
>which all Italian babies are wrapped round with a kind of bandage many
>yards long, their arms and legs so tightly bound that they cannot move
>them. The Italian women say that if they were not bound thus the children
>would not grow up straight, and in a small village I visited, about forty
>miles from Genoa amongst the mountains, they were most astonished to see
>an English baby without any of these extraordinary wrappings."
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