Wikipedia (“Butterbox Babies”): The Ideal Maternity Home, a discreet residence for unwed pregnant mothers, was operated by William Peach Young, an unordained Seventh-day Adventist minister and chiropractor, and his wife Lila Gladys Young, a midwife. They opened "The Life and Health Sanitarium," later called the Ideal Maternity Home in East Chester, Nova Scotia in February 1928.
From 1928 to 1945 the unlicensed Ideal Maternity Home
promised both maternity care for local married couples and provided private
birthing and placement of children of unwed mothers. However, it faced serious
allegations of profiteering from the fees charged to female residents and
adoptive parents, and for the home's high rates of infant mortality which were
later proven to be caused by starvation. Any baby deemed "unadoptable"
due to physical or mental handicaps was allegedly starved to death on a diet of
only molasses and water. Within two weeks the child would succumb and was
either buried behind the IMH property, in a field adjacent to a nearby
cemetery, dumped into the ocean or burned in the home's furnace.
The nefarious methods allegedly used by the Youngs also
included separating or "creating" twins to meet the desires of their
customers. And, they were said to have sold newborns belonging to local married
women who were told that their child had inexplicably died. Since many births
and deaths went unrecorded, we will never know the full extent of the
atrocities committed at the Ideal Maternity Home.
Hundreds of others were left to die, either because the
medical care at the home was lacking, or because the children appeared
"unmarketable," according to witnesses.
“We still don’t know and can never
know how many victims can be attributed to them, but the best estimates put the
figure between four hundred and six hundred.”, “Lila and WilliamYoung,” hellbeasts.org, Oct. 6, 2011]
“During the eighteen years of its
operation, the Ideal Maternity Home generated several million dollars [tens of
millions in today’s money] in revenue
for the Youngs. Investigations into the baby farming operation were especially
intense in the 1940s These probes resulted in testimony by one of Lila Young’s
workers that he had buried the remains of well over one hundred infants who had
died at the Ideal Maternity Home.” [Michael D. Kelleher & C. L. Kelleher, Murder Most Rare:
The Female Serial Killer, 1998, p. 105]
During WWII, business at the IMH was booming because nearby
Halifax was a major port that was the departure point for convoys crossing the
North Atlantic Ocean to England. The sailors & merchant seamen left behind
many unmarried or widowed expectant mothers. The IMH provided the only place
that could provide for these women and their offspring. The birth mothers would
be charged $500. and they would work at the Home for many months in order to
pay their maternity bills. Although the Nova Scotian government officially
closed down the IMH in November 1945, the Youngs continued to operate and sell
babies under the illusion of a hotel for a while longer. However, the heyday of
the war years had ended.
The Ideal Maternity Home was the source for an illegal trade
in infants between Canada and the United States. During this period, the laws
in the U.S. forbid adoption across religious backgrounds. There was an acute
shortage of babies available for Jewish couples to adopt. The home provided
these desperate people "black market" adoptions charging up to
$10,000 for a baby (in 1945 prices). A few babies were never legally adopted
and yet they were brought across the border to the U.S. Hundreds of babies
ended up in Jewish homes in the United States, mainly in New York and New
Jersey.
This dark chapter in Canadian history has been documented in
several books, plays and a movie. The title of Bette Cahill's book, Butterbox
Babies, and the subsequent movie is a reference to the "butter
boxes," wooden grocery crates from a local dairy used as coffins for the
babies murdered at the Ideal Maternity Home.
A group of the Survivors of the Ideal Maternity Home, now
scattered throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe continue to meet, provide
support, and assist one another with birth family searches. Their website:
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EXCERPT:
“Handyman Glen Shatford would later admit burying between 100 and 125 babies in
a field owned by Lila’s parents near Fox Point, adjoining the Adventist
cemetery. ‘We buried them in rows,’ he said, ‘so it was easy to see how many
there were.’”
[Michael Newman, Bad Girls Do It!: An Encyclopedia of
Female Murderers, Loompanics Ltd., 1993, p. 190]
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CHRONOLOGY
1928 –Youngs open their business in their home in East
Chester.
1933 – Youngs thrown out of fox point seventh-day Adventist church
congregation.
Mar. 3, 1936 – Young arrested. death of Eva Neiforth and her
newborn.
May 28, 1936 – Youngs acquitted on all charges.
May 31, 1946 – Montreal Standard expose.
May 16, 1947 – libel suit filed by Youngs against Montreal
Examiner dismissed by jury.
1947 (1948?) – Ideal MH closes.
1969 – Lila Young dies.
Nov. 24, 1988 – Nova Scotia Attorney General states no
charges will be filed in connection to investigation of Ideal Maternity Home.
Dec. 1988 – RCMP completes preliminary probe.
1992 – book, Bette Cahill, Butterbox Babies: Baby Sales.
Baby Deaths. The Scandalous Story of the Ideal Maternity Home, published.
Dec. 19, 1997 – Exhumations by anthropologist.
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For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.
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[5354-4/11/20]
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For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.
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[5354-4/11/20]
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