Selling Children in the 1800s March 10, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
An amazing report from Oldham, 1888:
On Monday evening a woman about 40 years of age was seen in Curzon Street with two children, one in arms, and the other, about three years old, walking by her side. From what transpired it appeared that the woman wanted to sell her children, and thereupon a large crowd collected. She was successful in selling one child to a woman who, it appears, had not been blessed with offspring, and the party, having purchased the child for 6d [six pence], made off with her prize in a cab. The mother wanted to dispose of the other child, and first asked two-pence, but ultimately brought down her demand to a penny, without finding a purchaser. Having secured some money, the woman wanted to enter the Market Hotel [to drink or sleep?], but the people there refused to allow her to enter, and she made off, followed by a large crowd. The child that had been sold was a pretty creature, and did not appear to have been much neglected.
Not sure what is going on here. A penny is really very little in 1888. Perhaps the woman simply did not want to abandon her children on the street and was not seriously thinking of making money. Perhaps she was simply mentally imbalanced? Perhaps they were not her children… A man who sold his son for beer in 1894 (7 July, Daily Gazette) was presumably just drunk. More worrying is a case from 1874 of a woman in London trying to buy dark-complexioned children for two pounds a piece to send to appear on the stage in Paris (Lloyds Weekly, 31 May). Adolescent girls in Eastern Europe are tempted with similar cock-and-bull stories to come to the rich west today and end up chained to radiators in brothels. In 1872 in Bradford a boy was passed from hand to hand three times between men (Sheffield Daily, 30 April 1872): pity knows why. The boy’s age is not mentioned, though he seems to have been younger than ten.
An interesting article from 1906 [!], Edinburgh Evening News, 3 August 1906, claims that babies are often sold ‘within the begging fraternity’. It also refers to how babies that are attached to organ grinders trolleys [!!!] are hired out.
Beach was put onto this fascinating and disturbing topic by Ricardo who sent the orphan lottery that heads this post: babies were given away in a lottery in Paris. Memories too of selling wives. Other cases: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
14 Mar 2015: Bruce writes in ‘At one time, and a short distance away, I could have taken you to the lovely tavern where in the late 1930’s, Charles XXXX mother tried to to sell young Charles and his brother, not once, but twice for a pitcher of beer in the course of an evening. A fellow overheard her pitch to a nearby couple, then bought her the pitcher. He then took the two boys a quarter of a mile down the the street to a local children’s home. It’s where Charlie later said he first became an, “Institutional Man”. The tavern was razed for a parking lot in the late 90’s. It was in the city of Charleston, WV. Charles’ mother was living with relatives in town at the time. XXXX has relatives in the area to this day. I worked near the tavern for a couple of years. I was never in the place, the regular shootings and stabbings there took the edge off of my curiosity. Not to mention the looks of the young ladies who practiced their trade just outside the door. Spandex isn’t for everyone.
