THE NUMEROUS BABY FARMS,
which drive a more or less thriving trade in this part of the city. Some of them are situate on St. David street, several of them in a healthier position north of the General hospital. I have frequently visited these places; each dwelling will accommodate from three or four to as many as eight or ten infants, who are in almost all cases the children of shame, for whom their mothers, often persons in respectable positions, pay a small sum monthly. I do not think that they are neglected by the women who undertake the charge of them; in fact it is, of course, their interest that the babies should thrive, as on their living depends the monthly pay; but the circumstances of the birth and rearing of these poor infants, and, above all, the deprivation of the mother’s milk, the often sour milk in the feeding-bottle, and the unavoidable crowding together, make these places nothing less than nurseries of death—the babies all die!”
CHAPTER XIX.
IN THE WARD.
My next interview was with the rector of a church west of Yonge street, the congregation of which, although attended by many of the elite in Toronto uppertendom, mainly consists of the lower middle class, and of the respectable inhabitants of the St. John’s ward streets. In this church, as in a few others in the city, it may be said in the words of the oldest poetry, “The rich and the poor meet together, for the Lord is the maker of them all.”
This clergyman does not wish his name published, but states his readiness to do so in a letter to The News should any doubt be expressed as to the accuracy of the facts reported.
The portion of Toronto from whence his congregation is drawn covers the poorest and least reputable part of St. John’s ward—Teraulay, Elizabeth, and University streets, with the stretch of lanes and alleys between them, east and west; but north and south from these lanes extend smaller lanes, or rather rearages between the houses in the front streets, and occupying the place of the closets and woodsheds. In this network of slums comes and goes a fluctuating population of pauperism, the enfants perdus of the city, all those broken down by vice or poverty or misfortune.
One morning at the early hour of three this clergyman was awakened by a hard knock at his door. He put his head out of the first window and asked what was the matter. A man on the door-step said that his wife was dying, would Mr. ⸺ visit her? The clergyman hurriedly dressed, and accompanied his guide, who was far-gone in liquor, to a yard in the rear of one of the bye lanes alluded to above. As they entered the yard a number of small curs about the various premises began to bark, on which Mr. ⸺ beheld to his astonishment, several old wooden boxes gradually raised up, from each of which, like the head of a turtle from its shell, protruded the head of a boy who had chosen this strange sleeping-place, the bare ground for his mattress,