One of my teenage granddaughters recently told me she was fooling around on the Internet one day and found an article about “Victorian Baby Farms,” where babies, primarily of unmarried mothers, were boarded out to wet-nurses or “taken in” by women who promised to take care of them and/or place them for adoption. This practice seems to have started in England, which had no legal adoptions at that time, but also took place in Canada, the United States and other countries, and still happens in such countries as India and Guatemala.

The case my granddaughter had read about concerned a woman who took in babies, at first taking care of them for money and sometimes, for a larger fee, placing them with foster or adoptive families. These babies did not often fare well, due to poor nutrition (not enough wet nurses to go around, and later not enough food or not enough nutritious food), and not enough care or attention, and many died. Death rates for babies, even in well-off families, were high in those days, due to disease, lack of knowledge of sanitation, and lack of appropriate health care for mothers.

When one of these unfortunate babies died, the “caregiver” realized she could make more money by quietly disposing of babies from time to time, since the mothers had already given her the child and some money. Having a baby “out of wedlock” was viewed very harshly then, although among the poor people, it was common and more accepted. Baby farms, where a woman took in many children at a time, were essentially for-profit orphanages, and pre-dated large orphanages run by churches or other charities. For the most part, of course, these children were not actually orphans, in that they had living parents, but the parents either could not afford to feed them or were so afraid of being “found out” that this seemed like a solution. In those days, birth control was unreliable, and abortion was dangerous, usually performed by untrained individuals in unsanitary conditions. Had it been safe, Queen Victoria would not have had nine children! She did, as many wealthy women did then, hire wet nurses to feed her babies, and nursemaids to care for them. This also happened in the United States among the wealthy and in slave-owning families. When many people learn their detailed family history, they may find there was a wet nurse, either white or black, who saved an ancestor’s life.

As for the baby farms, however, they often dealt with desperate women who needed to continue working to keep from starving. The only other alternative was that England passed the Poor Law Amendment in 1834, which allowed poor, unwed mothers to be given food, money, or clothing from the parish, but only if they went to live in the workhouse, in which the conditions of filth and abuse were so extreme that many of these women chose to place their children elsewhere (in other words, gave up custody) rather than subject themselves and their children to life in the workhouse. Many of these young women had jobs as maids or cooks, lived in the employer’s house in a tiny room, with no room for children. Some of their babies, no doubt, were fathered by the male employer, although no one spoke of it. So the baby farms were meant to serve as around-the-clock care facilities for working mothers, and, supposedly, the mother could visit often and retrieve the child when she was able financially. In reality, very few children surrendered to baby farms were ever reclaimed, and most did not survive infancy.

As these caretakers started to exploit this “business model” by taking in more babies in order to increase income, the children were cared for less, not given adequate care, nutrition, or attention, and they often did not survive. Although some had a weekly fee arrangement, others required up-front payments, and did not bother to communicate further with the mother. In those circumstances, letting children die or deliberately killing them, or letting them slowly starve, sometimes happened.

An article we found on the Internet—one of the ones my granddaughter found—mentioned a woman named America Dyer, who took 400 lives in her baby farming business, although she started out caring for her charges legitimately. She strangled some of these babies and disposed of them. One of the bodies was discovered in the River Thames. She was convicted of the baby’s murder, and hanged.

Another woman, Margaret Walters, found it easier to drug the babies with opiates (readily available then, no prescription needed) and let them slowly starve, before dumping them on the street, wrapped in brown paper, not uncommon in those times for people who could not afford the cost of burial. Five babies died in her care, although she is suspected of killing up to 19. She was eventually arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged for the murder of John Walter Cowen, the son of 16-year-old Janet Tassie Cowen. Margaret Walters’ crimes led to the Infant Life Protection Act in 1872.

This website mentioned other such cases, including a “home” in Canada, which was detailed in a book and movie, Butterbox Babies, where the babies who died were buried in white pine butter boxes. The book was by Bette L. Cahill. The film was shown at the AAC Conference in Albuquerque in 2000.

My granddaughter’s discovery of this website and of former happenings regarding babies and desperate mothers led to a discussion of what that was like and how horrible would be to return to such institutions or orphanages, which is sometimes suggested by persons who have never experienced anything like that, nor ever relinquished or adopted a child. Google Victorian baby farms and see what comes up.