Wolves in Women’s Clothing: Baby-Farming and the British Medical Journal, 1860-1872

Baby-farming, a form of infanticide performed on unwanted children by hired nurses in nineteenth-century Britain, was defined by the medical experts who first wrote about it in the British Medical Journal. They described the problem in terms that reflected concern for infant welfare as well as suspicions of lower-class women that arose from the medical experts’ class and gender biases and their professional status. Medical men blamed baby-farming on the corruptions of working-class women and suggested that punishment, not extensive social reform, would eliminate it. Their definition influenced the outcome of two sensational trials and the Infant Life Protection Act of 1872.