It is evident at a glance that the advertisers seek for customers and expect none other than from among the sorely pinched and poverty-stricken class that specially patronise the newspaper in question. The complexion, tone, and terms of their villanously cheap suggestions for child adoption are most cunningly shaped to meet the possible requirements of some unfortunate work-girl, who, earning while at liberty never more than seven or eight shillings a week, finds herself hampered with an infant for whom no father is forthcoming. There can scarcely be imagined a more terrible encumbrance than a young baby is to a working girl or woman so circumstanced. Very often she has a home before her disaster announced itself—her first home, that is, with her parents—and in her shame and disgrace she abandons it, determined on hiding away where she is unknown, “keeping herself to herself.” She has no other means of earning a livelihood excepting that she has been used to. She is a “cap-hand,” or an “artificial flower-hand,” and such work is always entirely performed at the warehouse immediately under the employer’s eye. What is she to do? She cannot possibly carry her baby with her to the shop and keep it with her the livelong day. Were she inclined so to do, and could somehow contrive to accomplish the double duty of nurse and flower-weaver, it would not be allowed. If she stays at home in the wretched little room she rents with her infant she and it must go hungry. It is a terrible dilemma for a young woman “all but” good, and honestly willing to accept the grievous penalty she must pay if it may be accomplished by the labour of her hands. Small and puny, however, the poor unwelcome little stranger may be, it is a perfect ogre of rapacity on its unhappy mother’s exertions. Now and then an instance of the self-sacrificing devotion exhibited by those unhappy mothers for their fatherless children creeps into print. There was held in the parish of St. Luke’s, last summer, an inquest on the body of a neglected infant, aged seven months. The woman to whose care she was confided had got drunk, and left the poor little thing exposed to the cold, so that it died. The mother paid the drunken nurse four-and-sixpence a week for the child’s keep, and it was proved in evidence that she (the mother) had been earning at her trade of paper-bag making never more than six-and-threepence per week during the previous five months. That was four-and-sixpence for baby and one-and-ninepence for herself.
I don’t think, however, that the regular baby-farmer is a person habitually given to drink. The successful and lucrative prosecution of her business forbids the indulgence. Decidedly not one of the eleven advertisements before mentioned read like the concoctions of persons whose heads were muddled with beer or gin. Here is the first one:—
NURSE CHILD WANTED, OR TO ADOPT.—The Advertiser, a Widow with a little family of her own, and a moderate allowance from her late husband’s friends, would be glad to accept the charge of a young child. Age no object. If sickly would receive a parent’s care. Terms, Fifteen Shillings a month; or would adopt entirely if under two months for the small sum of Twelve pounds.
Women are shrewder than men at understanding these matters, and the advertisement is addressed to women; but I doubt if a man would be far wrong in setting down the “widow lady with a little family of her own,” as one of those monsters in woman’s clothing who go about seeking for babies to devour. Her “moderate allowance,” so artlessly introduced, is intended to convey to the unhappy mother but half resolved to part with her encumbrance, that possibly the widow’s late husband’s friends settle her butcher’s and baker’s bills, and that under such circumstances the widow would actually be that fifteen shillings a month in pocket, for the small trouble of entering the little stranger with her own interesting little flock. And what a well-bred, cheerful, and kindly-behaved little flock it must be, to have no objection to add to its number a young child aged one month or twelve, sick or well! Fancy such an estimable person as the widow lady appraising her parental care at so low a figure as three-and-ninepence a week—sevenpence farthing a day, including Sundays! But, after all, that is not so cheap as the taking the whole and sole charge of a child, sick or well, mind you, to nourish and clothe, and educate it from the age of two months till twelve years, say! To be sure, the widow lady stipulates that the child she is ready to “adopt” must be under two months, and we all know how precarious is infantine existence, and at what a wonderfully low rate the cheap undertakers bury babies in these days.
Another of the precious batch of eleven speaks plainer, and comes to the point without any preliminary walking round it:—
ADOPTION.—A person wishing a lasting and comfortable home for a young child of either sex will find this a good opportunity. Advertisers having no children of their own are about to proceed to America. Premium, Fifteen pounds. Respectable references given and required. Address F. X—.
All that is incomplete in the above is the initials; but one need not ask for the “O” that should come between the “F” and “X.” After perusing the pithy advertisement, I interpreted its meaning simply this:—Any person possessed of a child he is anxious to be rid of, here is a good chance for him. Perhaps “F. X.” is going to America; perhaps he’s not. That is his business. The party having a child to dispose of, need not trouble itself on that score. For “respectable references” read “mutual confidence.” I’ll take the child, and ask no questions of the party, and the party shall fork over the fifteen pounds, and ask no questions of me. That will make matters comfortable for both parties, ’specially if the meeting is at a coffee-house, or at some public building, for if I don’t know the party’s address, of course he can have no fear that I shall turn round on him, and return the child on his hands. The whole affair might be managed while an omnibus is waiting to take up a passenger. A simple matter of handing over a bulky parcel and a little one—the child and the money—and all over, without so much as “good night,” if so be the party is a careful party, and wouldn’t like even his voice heard.
It may be objected that the seduced factory girl is scarcely likely to become the victim of “F. X.,” inasmuch as she never had fifteen pounds to call her own in the whole course of her life, and is less likely than ever to grow so rich now. And that is quite true, but as well as a seduced, there must be a seducer. Not a man of position and means, probably; more likely the fast young son of parents in the butchering, or cheesemongering, or grocery interest—a dashing young blade, whose ideas of “seeing life” is seeking that unwholesome phase of it presented at those unmitigated dens of vice, the “music halls,” at one of which places, probably, the acquaintance terminating so miserably, was commenced. Or, may be, instead of the “young master,” it is the shopman who is the male delinquent; and, in either case, anything is preferable to a “row,” and an exposure. Possibly the embarrassed young mother, by stress of necessity, and imperfect faith in the voluntary goodness of her lover, is driven to make the best of the defensive weapons that chance has thus placed in her hands, and her urging for “some little assistance” becomes troublesome. This being the case, and the devil stepping in with “F. X.’s” advertisement in his hand, the difficulty is immediately reduced to one of raising fifteen pounds. No more hourly anxiety lest “something should turn up” to explode the secret under the very nose of parents or master, no more restrictions from amusements loved so well because of a dread lest that pale-faced baby-carrying young woman should intrude her reproachful presence, and her tears, into their midst. Only one endeavour—a big one, it is true, but still, only one—and the ugly ghost is laid at once and for ever! Perhaps the young fellow has friends of whom he can borrow the money. May be he has a watch, and articles of clothing and jewellery, that will pawn for the amount. If he has neither, still he is not entirely without resources. Music-halls and dancing-rooms cannot be patronised on bare journeyman’s wages, and probably already the till has bled slightly—let it bleed more copiously! And the theft is perpetrated, and “F. X.” releases the guilty pair of the little creature that looks in its helplessness and innocence so little like a bugbear. And it isn’t at all unlikely that, after all, papa regards himself as a fellow deserving of condemnation, perhaps, but entitled to some pity, and, still more, of approval for his self-sacrificing. Another fellow, finding himself in such a fix, would have snapped his fingers in Polly’s face, and told her to do her worst, and be hanged to her; but, confound it all, he was not such a brute as that. Having got the poor girl into trouble, he had done all he could to get her out of it—clean out of it, mind you. Not only had he done all that he could towards this generous end, but considerably more than he ought; he had risked exposure as a thief, and the penalty of the treadmill, and all for her sake! And so thick-skinned is the young fellow’s morality, that possibly he is really not aware of the double-dyed villain he has become; that to strip his case of the specious wrappings in which he would envelop it, he is nothing better than a mean scoundrel who has stooped to till-robbery in order to qualify himself as an accessory to child murder, or worse—the casting of his own offspring, like a mangy dog, on the streets, to die in a gutter, or to live and grow up to be a terror to his kind—a ruffian, and a breeder of ruffians. Nor need it be supposed that this last is a mere fancy sketch. There can be no doubt that if the history of every one of the ten thousand of the young human pariahs that haunt London streets could be inquired into, it would be found that no insignificant percentage of the whole were children abandoned and left to their fate by mock “adopters,” such as “F. X.”
It is these “adopters” of children who should be specially looked after, since, assuming that heartless roguery is the basis of their business dealing, it becomes at once manifest that their main source of profit must lie in their ability to get rid of their hard bargains as soon as possible. From fifteen to five-and-twenty pounds would appear to be the sums usually asked, and having once got possession of the child, every day that the mockery of a bonâ fide bargain is maintained, the value of the blood-money that came with it diminishes. The term “blood-money,” however, should be accepted in a qualified sense. It is quite common for these people to mention as one of the conditions of treaty that a sickly child would not be objected to, and provided it were very sickly, it might in ordinary cases have a fair chance of dying a natural death; but the course commonly pursued by the professional childmonger is not to murder it either by sudden and violent means, or by the less merciful though no less sure process of cold, neglect, and starvation. Not only does death made public (and in these wide-awake times it is not easy to hide a body, though a little one, where it may not speedily be found) attract an amount of attention that were best avoided, but it also entails the expenses of burial. A much easier way of getting rid of a child,—especially if it be of that convenient age when it is able to walk but not to talk, is to convey it to a strange quarter of the town and there abandon it.
And there is something else in connection with this painful phase of the question of neglected children that should not be lost sight of. It must not be supposed that every child abandoned in the streets is discovered by the police and finds its way first to the station-house, and finally to the workhouse. Very many of them, especially if they are pretty-looking and engaging children, are voluntarily adopted by strangers. It might not be unreasonably imagined that this can only be the case when the cruel abandonment takes place in a neighbourhood chiefly inhabited by well-to-do people. And well would it be for the community at large if this supposition were the correct one; then there would be a chance that the poor neglected little waif would be well cared for and preserved against the barbarous injustice of being compelled to fight for his food even before he had shed his milk-teeth. But wonderful as it may seem, it is not in well-to-do quarters that the utterly abandoned child finds protection, but in quarters that are decidedly the worst to do, and that, unfortunately, in every possible respect than any within the city’s limits. The tender consideration of poverty for its kind is a phase of humanity that might be studied both with instruction and profit by those who, through their gold-rimmed spectacles regard deprivation from meat and clothes and the other good things of this world as involving a corresponding deficiency of virtue and generosity. They have grown so accustomed to associate cherubs with chubbiness, and chubbiness with high respectability and rich gravies, that they would, if such a thing were possible, scarcely be seen conversing with an angel of bony and vulgar type. Nevertheless, it is an undoubted fact, that for one child taken from the streets in the highly respectable West-end, and privately housed and taken care of, there might be shown fifty who have found open door and lasting entertainment in the most poverty-stricken haunts of London.