ABSTRACT
Child abandonment has not received much attention from legal scholars. The absences of children from history have been commented on by many historians. As Laslett reflects, ‘these crowds and crowds of little children are strangely absent from the written record’.11 Although there have been valiant attempts to rescue children from silence and absence, like other unknown peoples of history, they are hard to recover.12 Their absences can be attributed to the power of those who were recorded and the attitudes of those who made the records. This is not an accident of history, but a reflection of perceived unimportance.
