Baby farming was the 19th-century practice of taking in other people’s infants for payment, nominally to nurse or adopt them, under conditions that routinely led to neglect, starvation, and death. It flourished across Victorian Britain, the United States, and Australia because unmarried mothers had almost nowhere else to turn, and it ended only after a series of criminal prosecutions pushed governments to pass the first laws regulating who could care for someone else’s child. Those laws are the ancestors of modern childcare licensing, adoption oversight, and safe haven statutes.
How the Arrangement Worked
Baby farmers advertised in newspapers using coded language aimed at desperate mothers. A notice might offer to “accept the charge of a young child” for a weekly fee, or to “adopt entirely if under two months for the small sum of twelve pounds.” On any given day, a mother could find a dozen such ads in a major paper.
The exchange itself was deliberately anonymous. Mother and baby farmer met in a public place or on public transportation, handed over money and child, and parted without exchanging real names. That anonymity protected the mother’s reputation and gave the baby farmer total freedom over whatever came next.
Payment came in two shapes. Some mothers paid a lump sum, around twelve pounds in Victorian England, for the child to be adopted permanently. Others paid weekly or monthly nursing fees. The lump-sum model built in the cruelest incentive the system had: once the money was collected, the child was pure expense, and the sooner the child died, the sooner the baby farmer could take in another.
Why Mothers Turned to Baby Farmers
In England, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 included “bastardy clauses” that put the entire financial burden of an illegitimate child on the mother. Before 1834, a woman could seek a court order compelling the father to contribute. After the amendment, she could not. The law punished the mother while the father walked away.
The social consequences compounded the financial ones. Domestic service was the largest employer of young women, and pregnancy meant immediate dismissal. An unmarried mother also stood to lose family ties and any prospect of future marriage. Workhouses would take her and the child, but conditions were intentionally harsh, designed to discourage reliance on public relief rather than offer real support. Against that backdrop, handing a baby to a stranger who promised care felt like the least terrible option available.
Poverty pushed married women toward baby farmers too. Working-class households where both parents needed wages had no access to affordable childcare, and baby farmers filled the gap. The practice was widespread in Victorian England, common in American cities like Philadelphia and New York, and well-documented in Australia.
What Happened to the Children
Slow starvation was the most common cause of death. Baby farmers fed infants as little as possible, often substituting watered-down milk or bread soaked in opiate-laced syrups like Godfrey’s Cordial, a mixture of opium and treacle marketed as a children’s medicine, which kept children quiet while they wasted away. Overcrowding and filth produced rampant disease.
Some baby farmers killed children directly. “Overlaying” meant suffocating an infant in bed and making it look accidental. Others gave lethal doses of laudanum. The most prolific operators strangled or drowned their victims and disposed of the bodies in rivers or buried them in backyards.
Beyond killing, baby farmers also trafficked children, selling them to other parties, passing them between households without any legal process, or simply abandoning them. The absence of birth registration requirements or any system for tracking infants meant a child could vanish without anyone in authority noticing.
The Cases That Forced the Law to Change
Margaret Waters, England, 1870
Margaret Waters and her sister Sarah Ellis were arrested after police investigated the deaths of 18 infants in the Brixton area of London. Officers searching their lodgings found nine babies, five of them dying from malnutrition and opium poisoning. Waters was convicted of murdering a child named Cohen and hanged at Horsemonger Lane Gaol on October 11, 1870. Her sister received 18 months of hard labor. The public horror the case generated finally forced Parliament to take up infant protection legislation.
Amelia Dyer, England, 1896
Amelia Dyer is suspected of murdering as many as 400 infants over roughly two decades, which places her among the most prolific serial killers in British history. She initially used drugs before settling on strangulation, disposing of bodies in the River Thames. She was caught when a package containing a baby’s remains was pulled from the river and traced back to her through an address label she had failed to fully remove. Convicted of a single murder, with the jury returning its guilty verdict in under five minutes, she was hanged at Newgate Prison on June 10, 1896. The case showed that the first round of infant protection laws had failed to stop determined baby farmers from operating for years.
John and Sarah Makin, Australia, 1892–1893
The Makin case made baby farming a national issue in Australia. Police began investigating after a plumber discovered infant remains in the drains of a Sydney house. Excavations of eleven backyards where the Makins had lived since 1890 uncovered thirteen bodies. Both were found guilty of murder in March 1893. John Makin was hanged in August 1893; Sarah’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
Georgia Tann, United States, 1924–1950
Georgia Tann ran the Tennessee Children’s Home Society as a front for a black-market adoption ring. Over 26 years she stole an estimated 5,000 children and sold them to wealthy families. At least 19 children died from abuse under her operation. A state investigation finally shut down the organization in 1950, but Tann died of cancer before she could be prosecuted. Her scheme centered on adoption fraud rather than neglect through starvation, and it exposed how the lack of federal adoption oversight allowed large-scale child trafficking to operate under institutional cover for decades.
How the Law Responded
Victorian legislators were reluctant to intervene in family matters, and even the Waters case barely produced enough momentum for a compromise bill. The Infant Life Protection Act of 1872 was the first law specifically targeting baby farming. It required anyone caring for two or more infants under one year of age, for payment and for longer than a day, to obtain a license from a justice of the peace. Applicants had to produce a certificate of fitness from a doctor, clergyman, or magistrate; they had to keep a register of the infants in their care; and licenses could be revoked where children were found neglected. Penalties were capped at six months’ imprisonment.1Hansard. Infant Life Protection Bill
The gaps were obvious. The Act covered only children under one year old, applied only to people caring for two or more infants at a time (so a baby farmer who took one child was exempt), and included no provision for inspections.1Hansard. Infant Life Protection Bill Baby farming continued largely unabated. The Infant Life Protection Act of 1897 and the Children Act of 1908 gradually closed those gaps, expanding the age range of covered children and giving local authorities real powers to inspect premises and investigate suspected baby farmers. Each reform came only after additional high-profile deaths; Dyer’s arrest in 1896 helped push the 1897 Act through.
In Australia, the Makin case and Sydney’s broader infant mortality problem prompted the New South Wales government to launch a Royal Commission in 1903, led by Dr. Charles Mackellar, investigating the colony’s declining birth rate and the dangers of unlicensed fostering. The commission’s findings produced the Infant Protection Act of 1904, which established inspection, supervision, and control of places used for the reception and care of infants.2Find and Connect. Infant Protection Act 1904, New South Wales
American responses developed more unevenly. Baby farming was documented in major cities during the late 19th century, but legislative responses were scattered and primarily local. Federal involvement in child welfare arrived much later. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, signed on January 31, 1974, established the Office on Child Abuse and Neglect within the Department of Health and Human Services and created a framework for federal coordination of child protection efforts across states.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 5101 – Office on Child Abuse and Neglect
What Prevents Baby Farming Today
No single statute replaced the old infant protection acts. The conditions baby farmers exploited (anonymous child transfers, no government oversight, no tracking of infants) are now addressed by several overlapping systems.
Every state requires childcare providers to obtain a license once they care for more than a small number of unrelated children. The threshold varies by state but commonly falls between one and five children. Licensed providers face background checks, facility inspections, mandated staff-to-child ratios, and health and safety standards. Operating without a license is a criminal offense in most jurisdictions.
Modern adoption requires court oversight, home studies, and involvement of licensed agencies or attorneys. The Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children governs any transfer of a child across state lines for adoption or foster care and requires formal approval from officials in both the sending and receiving states. Private adoption remains legal, but every state limits what payments birth parents can receive, generally to medical and living expenses, and selling a child is a felony everywhere.
Safe haven laws address the desperation that drove the original practice. All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico allow parents to surrender unharmed infants at designated locations such as hospitals, fire stations, and police stations without facing criminal prosecution. Parents can remain anonymous, and the child becomes a ward of the state. A mother who cannot care for her child now has a legal, safe option that does not require handing money and a baby to a stranger in a train station.
The distance between Victorian baby farming and the current legal landscape is enormous, but it was covered in small, reluctant steps. Every major reform came only after preventable deaths made it impossible for lawmakers to look away.