ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that baby-farming, as it is commonly called, is carried on to a large extent in London…as well as in other great towns… In its criminal character…in those cases where the children are put out for block sums of money, or small weekly payments, with an utter disregard as to what shall become of them, and possibly with the intention that their lives should be criminally soon brought to an end… There are…a large number of private houses, used as lying-in establishments, where women are confined. When the infants are born, some few of them may be taken away by their mothers; but if they are to be ‘adopted’, as is usually the case, the owner of the establishment receives for this adoption a block sum of money… The infant is then removed… to the worst class of baby-farming houses, under an arrangement with the lyingin establishments, by which the owners of the baby-farming houses are remunerated, either by a small round sum, which is totally inadequate to the permanent maintenance of the child, or by a small weekly payment…which is supposed to cover all expenses. In the former case, there is obviously every inducement to get rid of the child, and, even in the latter case…improper and insufficient food, opiates, drugs, crowded rooms, bad air, want of cleanliness, and wilful neglect, are sure to be followed in a few months by diarrhoea, convulsions and wasting away… The children born in the lying-in establishments are usually illegitimate, and so are the children taken from elsewhere to the worst class of baby-farming houses… Nobody except the owners of these houses knows anything more about them…some are buried as still-born children, some are secretly disposed of, many are dropped about the streets…the number of children found dead in the metropolitan and city police
districts during the year 1870 was 276…a very large number of these infants were less than a week old.1
