ABSTRACT
Early modern Spaniards would not have been surprised to see a group of children, somberly dressed and carrying candles, participating in a funeral cortege. In Seville, as in many other cities throughout Spain and elsewhere in early modern Europe, orphans regularly marched in funeral processions and performed other roles within their communities, such as drawing lottery numbers. To this day, every year on December 22, Spaniards gather to watch and listen to the broadcast of students from Madrid’s San Ildefonso School, formerly an orphan school, drawing and “singing” the numbers of the national Christmas lottery, as generations of San Ildefonso students have done since the eighteenth century. Yet orphanages also are well known as places that segregated resident children from broader urban contexts, and scholars have long recognized that institutions like charity homes contain both people and dangers. But did institutions keep risks in or out, or both? Who was risky, and who at risk? And how did perceptions of risk affect the degree to which institutionalized populations were marginalized from “outside” communities?
