This Article - "A Short History of English Nurseries" is a paper on how nurseries came about.
"When it comes to nurseries two things become immediately apparent: there were very few indeed before the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century, and if there was a nursery then the family it belonged to was a wealthy one. The preceding centuries had seen little specifically for children apart from a cradle, a baby walker and maybe a small size high chair. Babies shared their parents' room until the next one came along or until they became old enough to have a bed, at which point they moved in to share a room with other relatives: an aunt, maybe, or a grandmother. No child ever had a room of their own for there was always at least a servant to share it and it was just another bedroom."
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