ITALIAN BABY FARMING.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1809, 8 December 1879, Page 4

ITALIAN BABY FARMING.

A Roman correspondent, writing on the 27th August, says —The sensitiveness of the majority of Italians in the matter of foreign criticism, and their general dislike to publicity, has been curiously illustrated during the present month in two or three instances worthy of note. To name one —An Englishman ventured to call the attention of the police, then of the press, to the barbarous manner in ■which the foundlings sent out to nurse from the Hospital of Santo Spirito are treated. Ho saw what anyone may have soon twice a week for years —four new-born babes, swathed like mummies in a basket, left to bask in the sun on the board behind the coach which plies between Rome, Tivoli, and Subiaoo. The “ Opiniono,” which is not accustomed to shirk national'shortcomings, and which, to its credit, published Professor Yallari’s revelations on the social state of Naples, also published Mr Lockhart’s statements. Down came i" Li Liberia,” and its motley confraternity, on the insolent Englishman and the unpatriotic "Opiniono.” The former was requested to mind his own business and look at the crime and misery of his own country ; while the organ of the Moderates was belabored as though it had betrayed a State secret to the world. But facts are stubborn things, and the poor foundlings of the future may have to thank our countryman for his interference. Chancing to visit Tivoli, I sifted the matter, and found that things are systematically bad with the Santo Spirito Hospital. It is difficult in all countries" to provide wot nurses for foundlings; extremely so in Italy, where comparatively few mothers nurse their own children, giving instead high prices, excellent food, fine clothes, and presents to their substitutes ; and where, according to physicians, it is next to impossible to bring children up by hand. At the foundling Hospital at Naples there was a time when the now born children died at the rate of 95 per cent, and the mortality was only arrested by giving out the children to women in the towns, villages, and country surrounding the citv, notifying the name and number of the chiict and of the person to whom it may bo consigned to tbo syndic and parish doctor, who are bound to report on the child’s health and treatment at stated intervals. In Boms no such system is adopted. The syndic of Tivoli, for example, can give you no statement of the number of nurselings in the town unless one of them dies, aud is admitted to be dead by its foster-mother, in •which case ho buries it at the expense of the Roman foundling hospital. A broker woman (sensale) goes to Rome, takes as many children as the hospital will give her, bundles them into the cradle-basket, and they are lucky if they come by coach and not by mule carts, as is generally the case. The senaale distributes the children, with their name and number, if so be these have not been lost or exchanged on the journey ; and as far as one can see, there is nothing to prevent her giving three or four to the same woman, who nurses her own child besides. No sort of control is kept, or can be, by the municipal authorities, only as the wot nurse gets 16f. per month for the children, she goes up to the parish doctor with a child and gets his certificate that it is alive and well. I say a child, as there is no possible proof that the child for which she gets the certificate is the one for which the hospital pays. It may be her own, it may be a neighbour’s, aud the real foundling may bo dead or dying. This late publicity has awakened people to the horrors of the question, and only two children are now to be consigned to the same woman, and the conductors of the coaches or tramway cars are to bo paid in person for the transport. But until the syndic of each commune is endowed. with the necessary authority and hold responsible no real reform ■can bo effected.