A BABY FARM.
A Methodist minister of much experience among the Toronto poor corroborated to a great extent the views of his brethren. Among his more novel experiences the following was communicated in reply to questions about baby farming:
“Some of my most painful experiences have been in visiting ‘baby-farms,’ poor and generally narrow premises, for the most part situated in one or other of the slums. I think the popular idea about these places is erroneous—they are not intentionally shambles for infant lives, and poor as their accommodation for the little waifs and strays may be, are the only refuge of a vicious or unfortunate mother—a degree, at least, above desertion or infanticide! I was sent for last March to visit a sick child at one of these places, a cottage on St. David street, in the eastern part of the city. The cottage was a small frame building of but three rooms, in the largest of which, the ‘living room,’ were stowed seven infants, three playing about the floor, the rest in bed. Most of the children were pale and unhealthy-looking; they seemed to have none of the exuberant vitality of healthy childhood; even in their play they were languid. The little one I was called to visit was a child of six, whose pecky, shrunken face, large dark eyes, and unnatural development of forehead betokened the form of cerebral disease peculiar to childhood, ‘water on the brain.’ She was a gentle and intelligent little girl, and joined in the simple prayer I offered with a winning, gentle and tired, but earnest voice. It was her greatest wish to pass away from the world which had been to her one busy scene of suffering, unrelieved by any home or love beyond the casual kindness of strangers. A few days after my visit she sank quietly into sleep—her last. She was the illegitimate child of a young person in respectable position in society in a town of Ontario. Her mother paid regularly for her keep, but never visited her. Poor little Nellie! had her cradle known a mother’s knee, the first symptoms of her sickness been met by a mother’s care, she might have grown into a bright girl; affectionate and true I feel sure she would have proved. But perhaps it is best so, and the heathen saying, ‘Those whom the gods love die young,’ might be adopted as a motto by most baby farms.”
CHAPTER XX.
A PEST HOUSE WIPED OUT.
It is the custom for people to say that evil has existed from the beginning, and will continue till the end of all things. And as far as anybody knows this is entirely true, but the application which a great many put on it is entirely wrong. They make the truism an excuse for ceasing all efforts for lessening evil and confining it to as few of our fellow-creatures as possible. When, some 18 months ago or more, a few gentlemen in the city got up a movement for the suppression of one of the forms of vice which, of all others, is the most degrading, destructive, and terrible in its results, they were met in the outset with the old saw, “This evil has always existed and will continue to exist.” They did not propose to be put down by such an aphorism, and they pressed their ideas on the police authorities, the commissioners, and the magistrates until steps were taken to scorch at least, if not altogether kill, the viper. No one can deny one result which followed. Our principal streets, which were formerly thronged with wantons attired in purple and fine linen, became freed of them to such an extent that the presence of an occasional one caused remark. In the auditoriums of our places of amusement, where they were wont, like the Scribes and Pharisees, to occupy the prominent places,