While the entirety of the text is very packed-full of surprising and gruesome events for poor Oliver’s life, the baby farm that he is sent to right after he is found from his abandonment, stood out to me right away, and wasn’t something I could seem to forget. In the multiple times I have studied this time in literary history, I have never heard of Baby Farms, and I wanted to learn more.
In the novel, it talks about the reason that children are sent to these farms being: “where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female” (Dickens 30). This situation is kind of what you could deem a modern day “day care” but it’s more of a permanent residency for these children, and there is no fairness on how they are treated or their food levels. The old lady that Dickens mentions who runs this specific farm in the story is a very corrupt one. She takes most of the money that is supposed to be for the children and uses it for personal allowance, while only feeding the children what they need to survive. This is yet another reason why reader’s could imagine this being a horrible place.
These farms were a frequented place for misfit children around the 19th century, especially in higher populated regions. The concept even reached across the ocean, as American society picked up the same idea. My biggest question is how we somehow went from these lethal traps for children to orphanages. That is not to say that all orphanages were necessarily good, but at least there were opportunities for the children to become adopted. It seems that for these baby farms, the only way you get out is if the Parishioners come to take you to work somewhere else, outside of the farm.
Nonetheless, I’m glad that this country now has proper child welfare laws to prevent businesses like these from ever existing again.
Rachel, this was something that really stuck out to me also. There are many social injustices and downright instances of abuse or neglect in this book, but Mrs. Mann’s baby farm is particularly horrific. Certainly it was a testament to the time period—on our trip we learned more about the debtor’s prisons and the workhouses that ate up the poor and unfortunate people of Victorian London. However, I think that the trope of the selfish “foster” mom is actually stille very common today, which is probably suggesting that we as a society still have some work to do in this department. Characters like Zinnia Wormwood from “Matilda” and Petunia Dursley from the “Harry Potter” series are the some of the first “bad moms” that come to mind. Many stories tackle the holes in the foster care system that allow greedy people to foster children into their homes, only to use the children to their benefit and keep the government-issued checks for themselves. Dickens’ Mrs. Mann seems to provide ample inspiration for this trope: she’s wicked, greedy, cruel, and neglectful. She takes far too many children into her home for herself to feasibly keep track of—this is because she doesn’t actually keep track of them at all. She uses the children to do work for her, and gives them only enough nutrition to stay alive, not to grow, resulting in semi-frequent deaths from starvation. It’s really interesting and very sad that Mrs. Mann is the first home that Oliver has, because she could have been the first and only one to ever have to care for him…instead, she becomes the first of a long list of people to use and abuse poor Oliver.
Rachel, Mrs. Mann’s character and the horrific baby farm that she runs out of her home were things that stood out to me as well. I was surprised to read in your post that America adopted this practice. After learning more about debtors’ prisons, workhouses, poor laws, and the general ways of life for poor people in the Victorian era (particularly within the context Dickens’ own life), the concept of baby farms seems to fit right in with these other practices. From the quote you pulled, Dickens calls the children living in baby farms “juvenile offenders against the poor laws,” which I’m assuming is his own satirical way of saying that these children have broken the poor laws simply by 1) being poor by birth and 2) existing at all.
Although conditions for poor and orphaned children are much better in our own context of regulated government systems, there are so many children still neglected by whatever caretakers they may have, so many stuck in the welfare system, and so many still slipping through the cracks. In fact, Mrs. Mann is a character that should be very easily recognizable to us. The greedy welfare mom trope is a character that I have seen countless times. She probably lives in poverty herself, but takes in far too many children to foster for the sole purpose of taking in the checks and using them as personal income. In some cases, this character may also use hr foster children for work (just like Mrs. Mann). So even though conditions have exponentially improved, there is so much work left to do—as we can see though the sheer number of “bad welfare moms” being satirized in modern media.
Rachel,
I agree with you that this image of the Baby Farm is something that stuck out in my head whenever I read the novel. The idea of children just being left in a place simply because they were born into a certain class is something that has struck me. It seems like these poor children don’t have a choice about anything since the moment of their birth. I like your question of going from Baby Farms to Orphanages. I personally don’t know either but I believe that it may have been done whenever the government took more interest in children’s healthcare. The Baby Farms would not pass a social worker’s inspection (if they were a good one anyway). It’s sad to think about all the children stuck in these Baby Farms and I know our foster care system isn’t the best but there are some regulations at least.
Hi Rachel!
This was so informative! I think the way Charles Dickens sheds a light (a literal light since the workhouses/baby farms were so dark and forgotten) on the idea of this cruelty. If I remember correctly, there is even a part in “Oliver Twist” where Oliver is given less food because Mrs. Sowerberry believes that Oliver was getting too comfortable with where he was living. It’s crazy to think that these people were thinking about food how we think about money. In these days, the workhouses and baby farms turned food into a currency. For your question about the baby farms and orphanages, I found an article that explains this a bit. The idea that someone unfit to take care of children could take in children for a fee interested a lot of women. Basically free money for housing poor children, and you don’t even have to treat them right! It’s sick for sure, but I’m glad, just as you said, that we have moved away from this mentality.
Article I read:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-equation/201305/life-the-baby-farm