Baby farming

TRIAL FOR BABY-FARMING.—Margaret Waters, aged thirty-five, a widow, was capitally convicted, after a three days’ trial, on a charge arising out of baby-farming at Brixton. The prisoner was proved to have inserted in Lloyd’s Newspaper twenty-seven advertisements, at nine shillings each, offering to adopt children in return for a five-pound note; and it was stated that similar notices had for years past been constantly inserted for different persons. A musician named Cowen, whose daughter was about to have an illegitimate child, answered one of the prisoner’s proposals, and in the negotiations which followed she represented herself to be a married woman named Willis. The child was taken away by her when it was three days old. Soon afterwards, Police-Sergeant Relf answered one of the advertisements, and in that way obtained admission to Mrs. Waters’ establishment, where he found nine children in the most miserable condition conceivable, and drugged with opium.

It appeared that the largest amount of milk ever brought to the house was three pints per day, out of which as many as eleven children had at times to be fed. One of the witnesses deposed that the poor little sufferers soon appeared to lose the power of crying.

The prisoner admitted that she had been four years in the “business,” and that she had had “say forty” children confided to her.

No fewer than ninety-two pawnbrokers’ duplicates, mostly for articles of baby clothes, were found in her possession; and five of the children she had when she was arrested afterwards died. Mr. Ribton, who appeared for the prisoner, attempted to show that the worst crime that could be brought home to his client was receiving money under false pretences; but the jury, after nearly an hour’s consideration, found her guilty of wilfully murdering the child John Walter Cowen.

The Lord Chief Baron, in sentencing her to be hanged, said, “You have been convicted, after a trial lasting nearly three days during which the jury have patiently, calmly, and deliberately investigated the case of the greatest crime that can be committed by any human being. You undertook the charge of this poor innocent child, and while it was in your care and keeping, by the conduct which you adopted towards it, by your shameful and scandalous neglect in not providing it with sufficient food and nourishment, and administering to it drugs calculated to put an end to its life, in depriving it of the chance of any medical attendance, you have caused the early premature death of this innocent child. I fear that in addition to this poor child others have become the victims of your cruel inhumanity,those other poor children, four in number, at least three of them have been done to death through you, and those by whom you were assisted. It is necessary that the strong arm of the law should vindicate the justice of the country, and take up the cause of these poor helpless and innocent children.”

Sarah Ellis, aged twenty-eight, her sister and associate, who had also been arraigned for wilful murder, but against whom the charge had been abandoned, pleaded guilty to conspiring with her to procure money by a false pretence that they would supply children with sufficient food and clothing. She was sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labour; and the Court ordered Relf a gratuity of twenty pounds.