baby farmer

Proper placement, Butler noted tersely, "does not mean boarding-out, indenturing, baby-farming, the securing of employment or the mere transferring of the custody of a child from one person to another or to an institution without regard to the object of each transfer." (43)

Social subjects include the evils of baby-farming, health, the appalling treatment of animals in Smithfield Market, and the difficulty of registering patents in the face of obstructive bureaucracy.

He shows that, while informal adoption was extremely widespread at all class levels, the term "adoption" had gotten a bad name due to the baby-farming scandals of the late nineteenth century and to some of the unscrupulous practices of childcare entrepreneurs like Dr.