suckler

Updated: May 13, 2025

Unfortunately the rhythm is so closely associated with Browning's love-poem, that these lines sound like a parody: Mrs. Murphy, timidest of spectres, You who were the cheeriest of charers, With the heart of innocence and only Torn between a zest for priest and porter, Mrs. Murphy of the ample bosom, Suckler of a score or so of children.

William Lyon Phelps - The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century

They return three times a day until their children are eight months old in the middle of the forenoon, at noon, and in the middle of the afternoon; till the twelfth month but twice a day, missing at noon; during the twelfth month at noon only...The amount of work done by a suckler is about three fifths of that done by a full hand, a little increased toward the last...Pregnant women at five months are put in the sucklers' gang.

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips - American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime