BABY-KILLING AS IT IS PRACTISED.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 2499, 30 August 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

BABY-KILLING AS IT IS PRACTISED.

A. TERRIBLE INDICTMENT BY MB. WAUGH. (PALL MALL BUI. GET.) Mr. Ben j atninWaugh i.s the man who carried the Children's Charter, which has beer dealt with more than once in these columns. For some years he has been carrying on a quiet but deadly crusade against the baby-farmers of England. He speaks for the first time in the Contemporary. The article is terrible reading, as our readers will find from the samples given below :-rTHIS BABY FARMER. When found, the procurer is mostly of clean, genteel, respectable clothing and manners. She often professes that she has been married three, live, or seven years, has had “ no child,”and is “anxious to adopt one from the birth.” She wants something to compassionate and to love. For the receiving of the baby an appointment is usually made at a railway station, from which (when negotiations are successful) a wire to one of her receivers simply announces that she is on the way. Her business is to snare her receiver’s is to slay. A BABY FARM. Here is the goal to which one skilful and busy procurer hail conveyed five of her little victims. It was the back room of a tumbledown labourer’s cottage, scarcely fit for a coaj place, about twelve ieot square. Crouching and sprawling on the floor, in their own excrement, were two of them. Two were tied in rickety chairs, one lay in n rotten basinet. The stench of the room was so abominable that a grown man vomited on opening the door of it. Though three were nearly two years old, none of thorn could walk ; only one could staud up even by the aid of a chair. In bitter March there was no fire. Two children had a hand of flannel round the loins, one had a small shawl on, the rest had only thin, filthy cotton frocks. All were yellow, fevered skin and bone. None of thorn cried ; they were too weak. One had bronchitis, one curvature of the spine, and thu rest rickets, alt from their treatment. There was not a scrap of children’s food in the house. In a bedroom above was a mattress, soaked and sodden with filth, to which they were carried at night, with two old ooata for coveting. All the children’s clothes in the place were the handfuls of rags they won*. And a man and his wife sat watching them die -of filth and famine, so making their living. It was their trade. On one which had died a few months before was found a graceful memorial card, with the motto, “ He shall gather thoen in His arms,” which had been provided for the procurer who sent it. At the farm its mother was not known. These Jivo weary creatures were all removed into restorative oaro : all injured for years, some for life. Two never recovered, and died in hospital. AXOTIi.RU FARM. Feu* is it, alas ! from being always necessary to deceive mother* in order to secure their children’s charge. There aie infamous creatures, mca she-things, who look out- for foul and dishonour able people to consign their children to. .Suck wa* the following ;—The place one bedroom, l’n the bedroom was one bed for her two and thu two other children, and three adults. When the place was entered, the only children’s foods* it was a bowl of putrid bread and milk. Her children bad r.at daily in chairs till their thigh* were now horribly raw with the wood of ihe chair and their own filth. A chemise or nightgown was their only clothing. They were now ill, and bad lain for days unmoved on pillows, cold, wet, sodden with tilth, and creeping with maggots, a piece of sacking over .thorn. Twelve shillings a week the mother paid for them. She periodically visited thorn, and saw their deadly whiteness, their shrinking lips, their protruding teeth, the ury, hot, weary anguish in them. One died : still the mother visited and waw the other. She visited up to the last. Her children were in this place, wilfully put then* one after thy other, both being taken away from excellent care to be so. The price for the absolute disposal of a child varies greatly. On a shrewd guess as to the position of ike persons—father as well as mother, if possible—who have to escape disgrace, the procurer puts out feelers ana makes demands accordingly, from £5 for servants to £2OO for genteel people. It is incredible to what lengths of confidence she will go when she no longer doubts that she has found somebody as knowing and as bad as herself, and sees a round sum of money in it. One who advertised, “ A respectable married couple want charge of a baby, or to adopt.,” in conversation, with the greatest simplicity and straightforwardness refused £26 with child and £26 at death, uu the grnuud that alio had *• baiter offers than that.” She would toko £G(). .Shu had been able, she said, to refer to her clergyman till lately, but she had given up going to church and gone to chapel, because the curate hud asked if the last child she liud was not “ born in sin.” Another, who advertised, “ Happy homo for a little child, with every cure and attention : nice lmnse and very healthy,” the child' to bo dead hi three mouths, adding, “ The sooner I have >•♦■, the better.” Another who put her proper and full name and address is her advertisement, and, ta the paper she advertised in, gave her vicar ns reference, undertook that for £6O n lady’s child should wot be bora alive, adding. “it is easily done; the easiest thing iu the world.” BOMS BY ADVERTISING. freely used by the procurer. Judged from the extent of its advertisements nil over tho country (from which wo selected haphazard for our investigation), this baby procuring is now a- prodigious business. Wo have found tho same pei-son’s advertisements a* fur north as Sunderland, and as fur south as F.ustbcurno. They appear very largely iu those places of resort which have earned the name ** gay,” anil extend to tiho resorts of tho English on tho Continent. Another large ami luaru tiro baby-hunt-ing ground is police-court affiliation cases where “ quality” is concernod, and which fret into the papers. In otic month wo came across three children attempted to bo captured iu this field. Besides tho advertising procurer, there are procurers among tho sort of women usually Giigugod at the birth of these illegitimates—loivclurts monthly nurses and midwivos, nurses at workhouses, nud keepers of lying-in houses—most of thorn probably helping tho mother out of her “ troubles,” not for gain, yet sending to houses which exist for gain. NO OICEOK TO FOUL PLAY. There is, says Mr. Waugli, little check to foul piny. The child cannot complain ; the police are not informed ; and tin* neighbours, when they know a little, do not interfere. One, on being asked why she did not tell somebody what she knew was happening, said, “ You get w> thanks for interfering for them sort of children.’’ Tho system of death certificates is but small security ; as a rule, it is none nt all. Disease generally supervenes, is named ou tho certificate, and is enough- Even that is often tilled in from tho lips of the woman who, in the oases supposed, knows t hat her liberty depends on lies easily nud safely told. In most districts there is a doctor who ns, as one of the fanners expressed it, “ not troublesome about certificates.”