CREECA Lecture Series

By Keely Stauter-Halsted, University of Illinois at Chicago. The Polish lands at the end of the nineteenth century saw intense social turmoil as thousands of villagers moved to the burgeoning cities in search of jobs. Among these was a cohort of young women hired as housekeepers, nannies, and wet nurses in bourgeois households. Here they were expected to act as paragons of middle class propriety and yet, low wages and lack of support networks prompted many to turn to part-time prostitution.