My posts about eating babies lead me to a dark period in the history of adoption in the United States ... the era of Baby Farms.

No, as bad as they were, baby farms were not about growing plump little thighs for the stew pot ... plump little thighs being rather rare in those establishments. (And, no, I don't mean rare as opposed to medium-rare.)

The term “baby farming” was common in late nineteenth and early twentieth century cities but by 1920 or so most states had taken action against the commercial practices it suggested and the term was on the decline. It referred to placing-out infants for money as well as to their sale for profit. Many clients were unwed mothers, prostitutes, and destitute or deserted wives who needed help with their children while they worked for wages. Although most baby farming amounted to what we now call family day care, it developed a terrible reputation when exposes uncovered horrific abuses and horrible death traps.

The University of Oregon's Adoption History Project offers a look back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when babies were bought and sold ... or more accurately, sold and sold again.

This from a report done in 1917:

Some of the worst moral conditions were found in the homes where the physical conditions were best and in good residential districts of the city. In one of the best neighborhoods of the south side, a home was found which was an unlicenced maternity hospital, a disorderly house, and a baby farm combined. It is not at all difficult to see the connection between these enterprises.

The woman who operated this home made a specialty of taking in unfortunate girls for maternity cases, she then made inmates of them and charged them for the board of their children; or she would dispose of a child for the sum of $25.00 or more. A warrant was taken out for this woman, she was tried and convicted.


As a result of this baby farm investigation, it was found that there was a regular commercialized business of child placing being carried on in the City of Chicago; that there were many maternity hospitals which made regular charges of from $15.00 and more for disposing of unwelcome children; and that there were also doctors and other individuals who took advantage of the unmarried mother willing to pay any amount of money to dispose of her child.

 . . . One woman in charge of a baby farm sold a baby for $100.000 during the time of the investigation. It was found that she had required $25.00 to be paid at once and the remainder on the installment plan. Her trade slogan was, “It’s cheaper and easier to buy a baby for $100.00 than to have one of your own.”

. . . Many children placed in this manner were taken by people who could not have secured children through certified child-placing agencies because they were immoral, or wished to procure a child for a fraudulent purpose.

Often doctors, nurses and midwives moonlighted as adoption brokers, placing newspaper ads that read, "For adoption at birth, full surrender, no questions asked," and babies that didn't get the 'at birth' adoptions were often considered shabby goods not much worth the effort of feeding for long. Many, many starved to death.

Continued ...