Infanticide

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1865) Most of these institutions prove to be more cruel than direct . Due to insufficient hospital staff and the inefficiency of adoption procedures, human babies died in misery from sheer neglect. (Piers, 14,82)
There are no available statistics that demonstrate an increase in the incidence of during the mid-Victorian years. Yet there is no doubt that there was a dramatic increase in public and professional concern about the issue during this time. Newspapers, quarterlies, professional journals and parliamentary papers alike described as an "growing epidemic" and a "national disgrace". Dramatic cases often preoccupied the media for weeks or even months at a time. Although there was apparent consensus that was serious and on the rise, Victorians disagreed sharply about both the causes and the potential solutions to the problem. The typical case involved a poor, ignorant, unmarried girl, often domestic servant, who concealed her pregnancy and then killed her infant at ...

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by convicting the defendant on the charge of "concealment of death" or acquittal. In many cases the safer course was to murder a child. If you were to beat or starve a child you may get a long imprisonment. was a better investment than ill-treatment as many cases show that if you kill an infant outright you are sure to be acquitted and for ill- treatment you would possibly be sentenced to a year or two of hard labor. (The Saturday Review, Aug 9, 1865)
In the late 1800's there are reports that newborn corpses have been found in sewer systems. This way of disposing of killed babies leads us to guess that they were born to young, ignorant mothers. The babies could have been placed on ...

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