Baby-farming
Baby-farming was a term used in late-Victorian Britain (and, less commonly, in Australia and the United States) to mean the taking in of an infant or child for payment. Some baby farmers "adopted" children for lump-sum payments, while others cared for infants for periodic payments. Though baby farmers were paid in the understanding that nursing care would be provided, the term "baby farmer" was used as an insult, and improper treatment was usually implied. Illegitimacy and its attendant stigma were usually the impetus for a mother's decision to put her children "out to nurse" with a baby farmer, but baby-farming also encompassed foster care and adoption in the period before they were regulated by British law.
Particularly in the case of lump-sum adoptions, it was more profitable for the baby farmer if the infant or child she adopted died, since the small payment could not cover the care of the child for long. Some baby farmers adopted numerous children and then neglected them or murdered them outright. Several were tried for murder, manslaughter, or criminal neglect and were hanged. Margaret Waters (executed 1870) and Amelia Dyer (executed 1896) were two infamous British baby farmers. The last baby farmer to be executed in Britain was Rhoda Willis, who was hanged in Wales in 1907.
Spurred by a series of articles that appeared in the British Medical Journal in 1867, Parliament began to regulate baby-farming in 1872 with the passage of the Infant Life Protection Act. A series of acts passed over the next seventy years, including the 1908 Children Act and the 1939 Adoption of Children (Regulation) Act, gradually placed adoption and foster care under the protection and regulation of the state.
The Gilbert and Sullivan operetta HMS Pinafore was a satire that used baby farming to poke fun at class hierarchy and the Royal Navy. More recently, the term has been used to describe the sale of eggs for use in in vitro fertilization.
Baby farming in literature
The main character in Perfume, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was orphaned at birth and brought up by baby farmers.
Categories
Infancy | Population