Infanticide and the mid-Victorian conscience (II): the milk of human kindness

A related area of heightening social conscience was the economic plight of the first-time lapser, the ‘ruined maid’, reduced to unemployability with her infant burden. As mentioned in Chapter 3, there was to be an upsurge of philanthropic rescue mission activity from the 1850s. However, on the whole its priority was to rehabilitate the ‘fallen woman’, not to preserve her illegitimate infant.