A horrible case of baby-farming was brought before the Lambeth
Magistrate on Monday. "Mrs. Oliver, of Grove Place, Brixton," had advertised for children to adopt, charge £5, and a suspicious policeman followed up one case of "adoption," and with the grandfather of the child demanded to see it. He found it dreadfully emaciated, and apparently dying. Continuing his inquiries, he found ten children in the house kept by "Mrs. Oliver," alias Waters, five of them in the front kitchen utterly neglected, dirty, and half-starved, and two of them dying. The woman admitted that she bad in four years " adopted" forty children, all illegitimate, but could not explain where they were. The police records, however, show an extraordinary number of dead children found about in the district, in fact, the suspicion would seem to be that children are adopted by the " farmers " in heaps, starved to death, and flung away,—a state of affairs which almost makes one long for Foundling Hospitals, bad as their moral effect always is.
Previous page
