To clarify I'm envisioning a family on the level of for instance Bob Cratchit's in A Christmas Carol, i.e. as many of the older members of the family as are able having to work almost every day.
Is my mother losing out on getting a paycheck for several years at a time to keep me fed and dry, or am I more likely being passed around to whatever older siblings are able to get time off/entrusted to someone my parents would trust as a wetnurse/what have you?
If a mother was say a factory worker, they needed to make arrangements for their children, as staying at home was not an option. If an older sibling was not available, sometimes a 'nurse girl' of about nine or ten years old would be hired. If that too was not an option then an otherwise unemployed grandmother would help out caring for children and doing domestic chores around the house. Michael Anderson estimated that in 1851 around 11.5% of young children under ten living in Preston had mothers working in cotton mills and that 17% of factory working mothers in Preston had a grandmother at home. An alternative was paying neighbours or employing a child-minder. In the 1860's before factory legislation restricting child labour, some mothers, in particular widows or victims of desertion, took their children too work instead of paying for child care. However, most children did not have a mother who worked away from home, even in areas of England with high factory employment, such as Staffordshire, only 17 percent of children under 10 had mothers that were employed.
Source: Pamela Horn, The Victorian Town Child, Chap. 3: Working Class Home Life.
Follow-up: How old was "too young for work or school" at that time?
There was legislation in place from 1834 - the 1834 Factory Act which was supposed to restrict child labour in mills and such like, but as it's London you're asking about, Children often stayed at home and were involved with glove making, lace making and other cottage industries - working class children were seen as wage earners or contributers. This ties in with the original question, in so much that the baby would have been looked after by one of the children.
You have to take in to account the housing at the time, the working class had to endure cramped, often squalid living conditions. These are the days before the underground amd workmens trains, so the poor generally lived as close as they could to where they worked.
I do have have a good account of what it was like in 1857 in Lancashire and the Potteries; the women would feed and dress the infant before leaving home and doing a twelve hour shift; the younger children being left in the care of minders, who were often old women or youn girls. It wasn't unusual for a nine year old girl to be left in charge of a baby, amd she could well be more competent than the infirm who might be the only alternative.
If you want further reading on what it was like for the working class in London I can recommend 'The Blackest Streets' which goes into a great amount of detail of what slum and working class life was like.
Alright, many of you already know what I'll write right now but it seems to require repeating:
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