ABSTRACT
This poem is placed in the middle of letters to the editor from charitable institutions and ragged schools begging for donations to help feed the children of the poor. It also alludes to the extension of the vote to more members of the working classes. Like many other poems about starving families, this one illustrates the rationale for infanticide as a means to save the child from suffering. The poem also deals with State institutions avoiding the use of the phrase ‘death by starvation’ in official records.77
