BABY FARMING.

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 724, 8 September 1870, Page 4

BABY FARMING.

[PUOM PALL MALL BCDGET.J

What baby farming means is once more made known to the world by the newspapers. Though the story is inexpressibly painful, it is by no means a new one. The ordinary methods adopted in following this well-established business are cast now into a conventional mould. The traditions of the traffic are known, not only to the initiated few, but to all persons who desire to earn a living by diminishing the pressure on population, and who have the limited amount of intelligence necessary to starve little children in a slow and gentle way, or deaden their miseries and their pulses by means of opiate drugs. No one can pretend ignorance of its outlines or general methods of proceeding, for the souvenirs of baby Jaggers are still too fresh to allow the least responsible persons to affect ignorance of the cruel details and direful results of the system which has long been tolerated in this country, notwithstanding its thorough exposure. There is, however, in the prosaic detail of the police evidence as to this last discovered farm, a record of sights and incidents •which ninsfc excite pihy and indignation so much as to give hope that their influence will not be altogether transient or sterile. The lure was an advertisement in the good old style : — "Adoption. — A good home, with a mother's love and care is offered to any respectable person wishing her child to be entirely adopted. Premium L 5, which sum includes everything. Apply, by letter only, to Mr Oliver, post office, Grove place, Brixton." Following up a clue which he obtained by the simple process of keeping his eyes open, a police sergeant named Relf was led to answer this advertisement, and to track its author to her farm in the Camber well road. The translation into facts of the tender, but business-like form of the advertisement is best told i» the words of the witness. On asking for a particular child which he had traced thither, he was told it was not there. Asking the woman it " she took in children to adopt," she replied that "she did not." Notwithstanding this sudden abnegation of the promised " mother's love and care," the sergeant persisted in looking over the house. " Mary" was called, and brought up the child. "It was filthy, and wrapped up in some dirty black clothes ; the child was nothing but skin and bones, and appeared to be dying." Ithadbeen "large and healthy." On a sofa in the front kitchen, were found five infants about three or four weeks old, all huddled together, covered over with gowna and shawls. "They were quiet and asleep ; they were very dirfcy, and appeared to be quiet neglected ; two of them appeared to be dying." There were five other clildren between fourteen months and two-and-a-half years old in the back yard. They are spoken of as being in a much better condition. Mr Edward Pope, a surgeon, describes ten infants on the farm from three weeks old up to four months. The feeding-bottles contained food which was "unfit for a child." There was "very little chance, of the children living with such food as he found supplied to them.' On a table was an opiate, " paregoric elixir." One child was lying unconscious from its influence, with its mouth open arid apparently lifeless, The children v could not cry naturally, and were always asleep ; they all appeared to have been deprived of food, and were in a sadly neglected condition."- The woman concluded her defence by stating that " children are more frequently killed before they are born." Thus the proprietors of newspapers who allow themselves to be bribed to the insertion of such advertisements, can read once more, in very plain language and on sworn evidence of eye-witnesses, an account of that kiud of offence against morals and against humanity of which they make themselves accomplices.