BABY FARMING IN CANADA.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1653, 29 October 1887, Page 3

BABY FARMING IN CANADA.

: Keceni exposures in ttie city, says A special from Montreal to the St. ' Louie Post Diipatch, regarding the treatment of foundling a, show that .86 met cent, of the children die. The children are left at a certain establishment, and from there are “ farmed but” to poor people in the city and suburbs, who are paid 10 cents a day per head to care for them. These poor people take almost no care of the infants, and simply starve them to death. The correspondent of the Dispatch, got a list of some of the "people who have charge of the babies, and lately made a tour of inspection. They had heard that a visit would be paid to them, and most of them had made some preparations for it. The ; house of Mrs Dagenal, a professional “ baby farmer” at Saule-au-Recollet was.at .first visited. At the door of the house lay three little children, each with bare legs, breast and arms, withafrowzy bodice around its middle, ' and a piece of dark cloth around its loins; each covered from head to foot with large black flies, which preyed voraciously upon the soft flesh—each exposed to the pitiless heat of the sun, which poured down upon them in untempered severity. The house was small, and contained three apartments. In the kitchen was a stove, a table, and a “ settle bed,” and three rude square boxes upon rockers for theuio of the children. The three children who had been upon the verandah were placed in two of these cribs. In the third was a fourth child, but it was so small and so completely covered . with flies that it was not easily recognisable as human. It was a shocking sight of neglect and misery. The little thing was breathing heavily. It moaned feebly now and then, and wearily opened two intensely blue eyes, In which there was unutterable appeal. /Aw india-rubber nipple, attached to a / , bottle containing wnat looked like sour, i ' curdled milk, had been thrust into, its v mouth, and at this it sucked now and then, but was too feeble to draw the fluid from the bottle. Its arms were hardly larger than a pipe-stem, its leg* not thicker than a grown man’s finger Its skin hung in loose folds upon its manikin frame, and its face Had the ■ look of Age stamped upon it. The flies every feature. An } infe #toble effluvia, heavy and sickening, eihsjed from the dirty clothes in the .1 Cradle. Of the four children one will ’prbbably survive,'but they are all fi<l , wasted, and they all -suffered from neglect.. They were all dirty, and all .clutched at the india-rubber nipple, ■ • which, when the children are numerous , Mnpt evpn attached Ito a milk bottle. ! another place a child lay dying—starved to death. The third house had six children, all of them marked for death. They were covered with flies. t One woman said she had 24 children in her house in three years, and that all of them died. In nearly . every place visited similar scenes met : the eye, and the woman who had ' charge of the unfortunates seemed utterly heartless and cruel.