More than 30 infants died.
***
FULL TEXT: Sergeant Phillips, of the Yorkville police Court squad,
yesterday arrested Mrs. Ellen Roberts, a middle-aged, intelligent woman, living
in the tenement No. 212 East Thirty-eighth street, on charges of infanticide.
Mrs. Roberts’ accusers are her neighbors. They are J. Selby West, 21 East
Thirty-sixth street; Catherine Blackwood, 210 East Thirty-eighth street; Ellen
Jarvis, 206 East Thirty-eighth street, and Fanny Phyfe, 210 East Thirty-eighth
street. The complainants allege that Mrs. Roberts is a professional
baby-farmer. The little foundlings and orphans, for whose care she is paid by
the Commissioners of Charities and Correction, are starved and neglected. They
are exposed to the extremes of weather in the back yard in an almost nude
state, and the mortality among them is frightful.
One of the complainants swears that she resided on the same floor
with Mrs. Roberts from the 1st of January last to June 21st,
and that during that time more than thirty of the infants died. Another witness
swears that Mr. Roberts is drunk nearly all the time, and that on one occasion
two babes nearly suffocated by her while in this condition. It is also alleged
that several infants who died on her hands were kept for days in the stable of
an undertaker named Boylston, on the opposite of the street, and removed in a
mysterious manner. Mrs. Roberts has no babes in her charge at present. The last
one she nursed was taken from her by Captain Allaire and Dr. Wooster Beach, for
the reason that the neighbors complained that it was starving to death. The
accused appears to be but little affected by the terrible charges brought
against her, and claims her ability to disprove them all when accorded an
examination. She is the mother of five children.
[“Starved Babies – Terrible Charges Against A Baby-Farmer.” [from
New York World], Nashville Union and American (Tn.), Oct. 2, 1873, p. 1]
***
FULL TEXT: Reference was made yesterday to the operation of Mrs.
Roberts, a baby farmer, and in the description of her methods of increasing the
mortality reports, allusion was made to an undertaker, whose name, by the way,
is Boylston, and exceedingly suggestive of the old hymn, beginning “Our days
are as the “grass.” It is due to Mr. Boylston to say that he claims not to have
had a monopoly of Mrs. Roberts’s patronage. He says he had only buried nine
infants from this house, and for these he had certificates and burial permits. The
question seems to be quite in order why the Health Bureau does not make some
special inquiry into such peculiar facts as nine young children being buried
from one house in New York, and that house not a hospital? And why should Mrs.
Roberts divide her medical custom with Drs. Smith, Chambers and Cybert? In this
business so common in New York that the Health Board winks at it and physicians
maintain silence?
[Untitled, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (N. Y.), Sep. 25, 1873, p. 2]
***
FULL TEXT: Mrs. Roberts, the alleged baby farmer, will be further
examined to-day. Yesterday Dr. Harris, of the Board of Health, presented
certificates of eleven deaths issued from the office for infants who died where
Mrs. Roberts lived. Mrs. Thylfe testified to Mrs. Robert’s [sic] frequent and
helpless drunkenness, that she had twelve children in her care the latter part
of May, and the witness knew of fifteen having died there. She testified that
eight had been taken away by Mr. Boylston, the undertaker.
[Untitled, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (N. Y.), Sep. 26, 1873, p. 2]
***
For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.
***
For more cases of this category, see: Female Serial Killers of 19th Century America
***
[138-12/27/20]
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