Baby farming

Baby farming is the historical practice of accepting custody of an infant or child in exchange for payment in late-Victorian Britain and, less commonly, in Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

In late-Victorian Britain (and, less commonly, in Australia and the United States), baby farming was the practice of accepting custody of an infant or child in exchange for payment.

[citation needed] An undercover investigation of baby-farming, reported in 1870 in a letter to The Times, concluded that "My conviction is that children are murdered in scores by these women, that adoption is only a fine phrase for slow or sudden death".

[8] Spurred by a series of articles that appeared in the British Medical Journal in 1867, the Parliament of the United Kingdom began to regulate baby farming in 1872 with the passage of the Infant Life Protection Act 1872.

[citation needed] London coroner Athelstan Braxton Hicks gave evidence in 1896 on the dangers of baby-farming to the Select Committee on Infant Life Protection Bill.

In the 1960s and 70s, thousands of West African children were privately fostered by white families in the UK in a phenomenon known as 'farming'.

[15][16] The following is a list of baby farmers with criminal convictions associated with their operations, categorized by country and Number of Victims: