The Baby Farmers

by Annie Cossins

  By the time Sarah was arrested in October 1892, she had had the disease for at least ten years and may have been in the initial stages of tertiary syphilis. As she sat through weeks of coronial inquiries and then her trial, her behaviour became more and more erratic. Although she was known for her ‘fiendish’ temper before she married John, the disease may have exacerbated an already fragile mentality, suggesting that Sarah was not of sound mind when she was tried for baby farming in March 1893.

  The legacy of congenital syphilis

  Because Leslie Makin’s death certificate states that he died of syphilitic convulsions, Sarah would have known that she had syphilis by 1884, if not earlier, since baby farmers and midwives were well acquainted with the symptoms and cause of congenital syphilis. While a foetus can contract the disease as early as the ninth week in utero, this will depend on how long the mother has had syphilis.22 If a woman has untreated early syphilis of four years or less, she is more likely to give birth to a stillborn child or a child who dies soon after birth. Transmission of the disease to the baby is highest when women are in the primary and secondary stages (70 to 100 per cent), although this risk drops off to 40 per cent in the early latent stage and 10 per cent in the late latent stage.

  Between November 1883 and August 1888, Sarah had three children who died from the symptoms of congenital syphilis: syphilitic convulsions and infantile atrophy. This suggests she was in the early stages of syphilis and contracted the disease between October 1881 and February 1883 before she became pregnant with Leslie. She could also have become infected during her pregnancy with this baby. By the time Sarah had her last child, Cecil, in 1890, she was in the latent stage of syphilis and was less likely to give birth to a child with congenital syphilis. Cecil was the fortunate baby who survived to adulthood.

  As common as the disease was in the nineteenth century, it was a terribly sad legacy since babies with congenital syphilis suffered from a range of serious medical problems. Often these symptoms did not develop for some weeks and months after birth or even as late as two years of age. Occasionally, symptoms did not manifest until puberty. But Sarah’s three babies, Leslie, Linda and Harold, all had symptoms in their first year of life.

  They may have been born premature and underweight, possibly with respiratory distress. They would have had a rash of raised, round, copper-coloured eruptions filled with fluid on their palms and soles, although this unpleasant rash can sometimes occur over the whole body. These skin lesions seep fluid and form a crust which causes scarring. Because they had symptoms within their first year of life, Leslie, Linda and Harold probably would have had the characteristic fissured or cracked lesions around their nose, mouth and genitals which also cause scarring as they heal.

  Because of complications like gastroenteritis, babies with congenital syphilis fail to thrive and have a wizened, ‘old man’ look due to starvation which causes the skin to turn yellow-brown. Harold’s death certificate says he died of ‘infantile atrophy’, which is another way of saying he suffered from marasmus, the medical term for starvation or wasting away. Sarah’s babies may also have developed meningitis and an abnormally enlarged head, which would have caused the seizures or convulsions that led to the deaths of Leslie and Linda. They may have had inflamed bones and cartilage, especially in the arms and legs and ribs, which would have caused paralysis of their limbs. Other tell-tale symptoms include jaundice, an enlarged liver or spleen giving the baby a swollen abdomen, an unpleasant mucus, pus and bloodstained discharge from the nose (called snuffles), patchy hair loss on the scalp, anaemia, blindness, no eyelashes or eyebrows and abnormal fingernails. Before they died, Sarah’s three babies were not only very ill but a shocking sight—bald, wizened and wasted before their time.

  Leslie died in 1884, Linda in 1886 and Harold in 1888. During these years, Sarah’s life would have been filled with sickly babies, all with similar, distressing symptoms, and their untimely deaths. How she and John reacted to their deaths can only be guessed at, although guilt, grief and shame is a potent mixture. Did Sarah and John harden their hearts, becoming indifferent to young children?

  When Sarah contracted syphilis, John would have become infected as well, turning the family into the economic victims of the disease. John did not work from Christmas 1891, although the Makins gave no explanations to neighbours or the police about the reasons for his ‘idleness’. Was he too sick to work as the disease took hold? Or did he merely exploit Sarah’s skills to compensate for his disinterest in work? Either way, the family became completely reliant on Sarah as a ‘ladies’ nurse’ and the revolving door of mothers and babies that characterised their lives from at least 1888 onwards.

  PART II

  DIGGING UP THE BABY FARMERS’ SECRETS

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The baby trade

  Sarah was imprisoned and John died ‘for the sake of getting three pounds from a “poor girl”’.1 This paltry sum—which bought a bale of fresh hay in 18922—was the money they received from a young, unmarried barmaid who believed her baby had been taken to live in the country air of Hurstville, some distance from the nefarious activities of city-dwellers and her own tainted life.

  The questions that intrigued everyone at the time were, when did the Makins become baby farmers and why did they switch from being poor to taking advantage of the poor around them? Possibly, they began baby farming after the death of their third baby in November 1888 when a third lot of doctors’ bills, undertaker’s costs and cemetery fees had brought them to a new low. Along with the bills spread out on the table in their sparsely furnished kitchen, perhaps John scanned the columns of advertisements for work in the daily newspapers. An interesting advertisement by a scientific reader of cards and teacups may have momentarily caught his eye. John’s finger stopped at a small ad which asked for a ‘kind person’ to adopt a young baby. A small premium is offered. John and Sarah have six children to feed and a landlord demanding rent.

  With his quill and ink and a clean sheet of lined paper, John scratched the first letter to the first, unsuspecting mother who would gratefully hand over her baby to the man with a gift for stories and his unassuming wife. Maybe Sarah looked over John’s shoulder as she thought about how a little baby would take her mind off her own dead babies. As John signed the letter, he used a false surname. Perhaps it was ‘John Hill’, one of his many aliases which would protect the family time and again from demanding landlords and curious mothers. But the risk was worth it. Unlike John’s previous jobs, baby farming ensured a guaranteed stream of babies and pounds with little intrusion from the authorities.

  Some evidence for when the Makins transformed into baby farmers comes from the birth and death certificates of their three dead babies, Leslie, Linda and Harold. These show that the Makins were moving frequently between late 1881 and 1888, preferring the inner city of Sydney where rents were cheap. As the Makin family increased in size each year, they also increased the pace of their nomadic lifestyle. Altogether, they lived at at least 16 different addresses between 1880 and 1891.3 Sometimes the Makins moved to avoid paying unpaid rent, although by 1888 the frequency of their house moving had increased.

  Relocations at regular intervals of a few weeks or months were characteristic of baby farmers in the nineteenth century. For the Makins, packing up was an operation of little difficulty because they had hardly any furniture, despite having six children. But each move meant they needed money to pay rent in advance for their new premises. A new batch of babies would be needed. The old batch would soon disappear.

  To most people the term ‘baby farming’ is unknown, while to others it is a quaint term from a simpler time. During the 1800s it evoked great concern among the medical profession, politicians and social reformers.4 But what was baby farming? One of the best kept secrets of the nineteenth century was the trade in the life and death of children. Bought and sold like cats and dogs, an illegitimate child was a commonly available ‘commodity’ with no oversight by government authorities in Au
stralia until the 1890s when the Infant Life Protection Act was enacted in Victoria in 1890, followed by the Children’s Protection Act in New South Wales in 1892.

  For thousands of unmarried mothers, the baby trade was a necessary evil, since illegitimacy was a moral transgression condemned by the church and the law. An unmarried pregnant woman was trapped by the twin gatekeepers of financial ruin on one side and moral ruination on the other. The thin space in between was occupied by the baby farmer, holding out a helping hand. Perhaps it is no surprise that illegitimate children had a much higher mortality rate than those born within marriage.5

  Baby farmers like John and Sarah played a crucial role in contributing to this mortality rate. Baby farming in Sydney was a lucrative trade because particular demographic factors made unwanted pregnancy a major problem for New South Wales women in the 1880s and 1890s. Marriage was an uncommon event, with Sydney and its suburbs having ‘the highest rate of spinsterhood in Australia’, due to the shortage of men in the city and the older age at which they married compared to women. While Sydney was a ‘poor marriage market’ it was not necessarily a poor sex market.6 Unmarried men could easily obtain sex without marriage and married men could easily obtain sex on the side from young, cheap prostitutes who gave birth to some of the city’s illegitimate babies.

  But most illegitimate babies were born to servants. Domestic service was the most common form of employment for single women in cities and usually involved living-in, with all the implications that evokes.7 Female servants were frequently the subject of their employers’ attentions or those of the male servants in the household since female servants worked long hours and had little free time for outside amorous adventures. Unmarried domestic servants under the age of 25 gave birth to most of the annual number of registered illegitimate births which, in New South Wales, was 2000–3000. Although these births amounted to about 12 per cent of babies born between 1880 and 1899 in New South Wales, this was an underestimation because illegitimate babies were not always registered.8 An unmarried, pregnant female servant faced dismissal and homelessness, which ensured an ongoing market for the farming of babies. Low rates of marriage, no state regulated adoption scheme and lack of effective and affordable abortion all meant that unmarried pregnant women had two options—infanticide or baby farming.

  If an unmarried mother was lucky she might be able to conceal her growing belly beneath the skirts of her domestic service. If luck was still her friend, she would give birth in secret in an outside privy or stables as she struggled to swallow her cries and push out the new, insistent life. Perhaps an older servant who knew the tricks for suppressing an infant’s first cry assisted by turning the healthy newborn into a blue stillborn whose death would not attract police attention. Sometimes the child would be smothered or the umbilical cord would not be tied so that it bled to death.

  A lonely walk late at night with a small wrapped bundle deposited in the nearest drain or watercourse meant the child became another statistic for the Coroner and the mother remained unknown. Between 1881 and 1939, 864 dead babies were discovered in public places in Sydney, while 614 police cases of infant corpses were reported between 1885 and 1914 in Victoria.9 Perhaps the most desperate women chose to abandon their babies in this way. Other mothers with a little money to spare hoped the baby farmer offered a better solution.

  The underground trade in babies often began with a midwife who delivered an illegitimate baby in her home. She would place an advertisement in a local newspaper, seeking a ‘kindly lady’ to look after the infant, using a discreet address such as the newspaper office for replies. Other times a young mother would pay for her child to be nursed by her midwife for a few weeks or months before being forced to place an advertisement herself. For the women who gave up their babies to the Makins, some went to great lengths to hide the pregnancy, the baby and their identities.

  The Makins danced with fate by answering advertisements from all the daily Sydney newspapers which were unwitting vehicles for the baby trade, although this trade included much older children as well:

  WANTED Lady to adopt pretty little GIRL two and a half months old, fair, large blue eyes, no premium given. Address: Mrs Greves, G.P.O., Sydney.

  ADOPTION—Will kind LADY ADOPT fine healthy BABY (boy). Address Mrs Bland, P.O., William-st.

  WANTED, Protestant Lady to adopt healthy Girl aged 7. 519 Elizabeth-st, South, Sydney.10

  These ads appeared in the classified advertising section where all manner of items—dogs, cats, horses, second-hand clothing and old coppers—were advertised for sale. In 1892, the year they were arrested, the Makins might have answered any one of them.

  The language of the ads was always in code, reflecting the expectations of the mother and the baby farmer. If a one-off payment, called a ‘premium’, was offered or the word ‘adopt’ was used this meant the child was to be sold, although some unmarried mothers hoped the occasional visit would be part of the adoption plan.

  Even after legislation was passed in the colonies to regulate the activities of baby farmers, adoptions were rarely reported to the authorities, although occasionally a written agreement was signed by the mother and the baby farmer. Midwives involved in the baby trade, if not the mother herself, would have known that the premium was actually a fee for disposing of the child. The premium was usually in the range of £2 to £5, more if the unmarried mother was well-to-do. Anonymity and discretion were usually understood.

  If a weekly payment was offered or the words ‘no premium’ were used, this indicated the mother’s hope that the arrangement was temporary and she would have ongoing contact, perhaps being able to reclaim her child if her situation changed. A weekly payment also meant her child would live longer and be better looked after since weekly visits meant the baby farmer had to keep up appearances.

  Most baby farmers took in more children than they could possibly afford to care for, either in time or money. Many kept a mixture of children—those they adopted outright for a fee and those they kept for a weekly payment. When the premium ran out or weekly payments dropped off, some baby farmers sold adopted children on to other baby farmers for a lower sum, pocketing the difference. This made way for another batch of babies and a new injection of money and left someone else to deal with the problem of disposal.

  Others subjected their premium children to weeks of neglect and starvation. Hidden in the slums of Sydney, baby farmers effectively operated as kennels for babies to be ‘put down’.

  Crimes and punishment

  All of those involved in the baby trade took risks, since the law punished reproductive crimes severely in terms of the sentences imposed. Infanticide was punishable by death while anyone encouraging the murder of an infant was liable to life imprisonment. Concealment of the birth of an infant found dead attracted a penalty of four years’ gaol while a mother or midwife who harmed a baby during its birth could be jailed for fourteen years. Abandonment of an infant was an offence punishable by five years’ gaol.11

  Although these crimes were rarely detected and prosecuted,12 the severe response of the criminal law to reproduction outside marriage meant that baby farming was the far safer solution. Baby farmers filled the gap between abandonment and infanticide by carrying out the killings that some unmarried mothers could not bring themselves to do.

  Even though reproductive crimes were rarely prosecuted, historian Judith Allen concludes they were the most commonly recorded crimes committed by women in New South Wales. Between 1880 and 1899, 80 per cent of murder charges laid against women were for infanticide, while another 6 per cent were for abortions leading to fatalities. Women who killed babies constituted the largest group of people, men or women, in the late nineteenth century who committed murder in New South Wales,13 a fact that will surprise many since most murder is committed by men today.14

  While the crime of murder was more commonly committed by women than by men in the late 1800s, it had a specific focus:

  [although] new-born infants we
re less than 3 per cent of the population, their murder occurred at fifty-five times the rate of the murder of adults.15

  The activities of baby farmers were hidden by ‘the smokescreen’ of high infant mortality among illegitimate children. They were also aided by a lack of regulation of those involved in birthing, including both qualified and unqualified midwives like Sarah Makin. Doctors were rather too willing to attribute baby deaths to ‘separation from the natural mother rather than inadequate substitute care’ and lax standards existed in relation to reporting unnatural deaths by both midwives and undertakers.16

  In the late 1800s infanticide was not a priority for the police, who frequently failed to investigate an abandoned baby’s death. Cases were only pursued when there was clear evidence of foul play. Not only was there a lack of police interest in women disposing of their children in high numbers, but infanticide was also tacitly condoned by judges and juries with convictions hard to come by.

  Because a high infant mortality rate was normal in the nineteenth century, a ‘certain fatalism accompanied the death of babies rather than the moralism, shock and suspicion often apparent by the late twentieth century’. The lack of specific state regulation of baby farming until the 1890s meant that it was accepted that infant deaths were ‘women’s business, to be managed by them as best they could’.17 This attitude made it so much easier for baby farmers to step in and become the sole regulators of this particular type of women’s business, with few questions asked. It also helps explain why the Makins were able to practise under the police radar for so many years. Until they became a little too careless.