The tragic death of baby William Manifold at Port Adelaide in
1873 disclosed no crimes, but shed light on the brutal practice of
baby-farming.
William was born in the Adelaide Destitute Asylum on May 24,
1873. He and his mother, single woman Harriet Manifold, remained at the asylum
for nine weeks after his birth.
After nine weeks, Harriet and William were forced to leave the
sanctuary of the asylum. William’s father, John Flaherty, had not been
heard from since before the birth of the infant, and had contributed nothing
toward his support. It later emerged that he was serving a jail sentence for an
assault on his wife.
Harriet had no family besides a stepmother and two brothers.
It seemed they were either unwilling or unable to help the young mother and her
child.
In desperation, Harriet obtained a position as a general
servant for eight shillings a week and fostered William out to a Mrs Godfrey of
Port Adelaide.
Mrs Godfrey had several other children, but agreed to care for
William for the sum of seven shillings a week, and allowed Harriet to visit him
once a month.
William died at Mrs Godfrey’s place just four months
later.
At a subsequent inquest into William’s death, several of
Mrs Godfrey’s neighbours gave evidence. Many said the child always
appeared clean and well cared for. However, his bed was nothing more than an
upturned box with a bag of chaff as a mattress and a shawl for a blanket.
Mrs Godfrey fed the baby from a bottle, which she said
contained a boiled mixture of milk, water and flour. The neighbours said the
baby was often seen in the street in the care of a girl of about nine or 10,
and that sometimes that girl placed the baby into the lap of a another child
– aged about three – while she went off to play.
One neighbour said she sent the older girl home on a
particularly cold day to get a shawl for William.
In any case, all witnesses maintained that the baby seemed to
have been well cared for. Yet, under questioning, two admitted they had offered
to take over the care of the baby and to give it a nice, soft bed and a change
of diet.
Another witness said that, on at least two occasions, she
alerted Mrs Godfrey to the fact that the milk she was feeding William was sour.
She said Mrs Godfrey then immediately threw it away and sent for some fresh
milk.
When William took ill, Mrs Godfrey called in a doctor, at
whose suggestion she changed his diet to one of fresh milk. However, William
continued to weaken, became emaciated and died.
The doctor said he had diagnosed William as suffering from
atrophy, and that while many people believed flour, milk, and water to be good
for infants, he considered it to be injurious. He said that when he visited
William the day before he died, he found plenty of milk in the house, but that
William was unable to digest anything.
On the evidence presented, the Coroner’s jury found that
William had died from natural causes, and attached no blame to Mrs Godfrey.
As tragic and avoidable as William’s death might have
been, baby-farming was yet in its infancy. It had not then reached its vilest
aspect, and far more horrific cases would surface.
In a somewhat similar case in Western Australia in 1907, East
Perth woman, Alice Mitchell, was charged with the murder of five-month-old
Ethel Booth. Ethel, who had been in Mitchell’s care, was proven to have
been starved to death. Evidence showed that of the 32 infants Mitchell had in
her care over a five-year period, 29 had died. The same physician attended most
of the babies, and most of the deaths were attributed to marasmus (wasting
illness).
Mitchell was subsequently found guilty of the manslaughter of
Ethel Booth and accordingly sentenced to five years’ imprisonment with
hard labour.
In a Sydney case in 1892, 50-year-old John Makin was
executed, while his wife, 47-year-old Sarah, had her death sentence commuted to
life imprisonment.
They had each been found guilty of murder in its most vile and
repulsive form. The court heard that under the guise of taking infants into
their home to be cared for and given “a mother’s love and
attention,” children were murdered and buried in the yard “as you
would the carcass of a dog”.
The promised “mother’s love and attention” was,
of course, not freely given. The mother of the usually illegitimate child paid
for the service, and continued to pay long after the child had died. When a
mother called to make payment and to visit her child, various excuses were
offered to explain the child’s absence. After a while, the Makins moved
house and left no forwarding address.
Though the full extent of the operation has probably never
been revealed, the bodies of at least eight babies were discovered buried in
the yards of various houses in which the Makin family had lived.
A Melbourne baby-farming case in 1893 had an SA connection. A
year before her arrest in connection with the case, the chief offender,
26-year-old Frances Knorr, born Minnie Thwaites, had spent time around the Port
Adelaide area.
During her time there, the SA Police sought to interview her
in connection with at least two minor crimes. They described her as:
“...age about 25 years, height 5ft, 2in (157.4 cm), fair complexion, very
stout build, light brown hair, very large peculiar-shaped mouth, very
talkative, and speaks with a lisp.”
Like the Makins, Knorr ran a clandestine baby-minding service
for destitute and single mothers, with fees paid in advance. It was thought she
sold some of the babies to childless couples. And, those she could not sell she
strangled and buried in the gardens of the various houses she rented. This
proved to have been the fate of at least three of her infant charges.
After her conviction, and faced with the inevitability of her
execution, came a suddenly renewed sense of religion. Knorr confessed her guilt
in a written statement. It read: “Placed as I am now within a few hours of
my death, I express a strong desire that this statement be made public, with
the hope that my fall will not only be a warning to others, but also act as a
deterrent to those who are perhaps carrying on the same
practice.”
