ABSTRACT
On 18 June 1763 Sara van der Wegh, wife of Wijnand Reuseveld, then midwife in Rijswijk, following the departure of Margaretha Perks, was appointed midwife to the small harbour town of Delfshaven, ‘to serve the women folk, who in their need looked to her’. She was to reside in Delfshaven and help poor and indigent women as well as the rich ‘with all friendliness and care, and further to follow herself the rules and ordinances that existed’. Her salary was to be 60 guilders per annum, and for this sum she was, together with the other town midwife in Delfshaven, to deliver women and to care for infants in their first days of life.1
