While much has been made in recent weeks about the use of overseas surrogates by Australian couples wishing to have a family how much worse were things a century ago?
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A 1914 copy of the Sydney Morning Herald carried 10 separate advertisements all of which involved, in one form or another, trafficking in children.
What is the story of heartbreak and misery behind the following advertisement, for example? We will never know but can only hope it ended well.
"WANTED: KInd Person to adopt a baby boy, two-weeks old. Apply A.J. Crown St Post Office"
And again:
"WANTED: RC (Roman Catholic) lady to adopt lovely boy, aged three years. Apply First Instance to A, Post Office Queen Victoria Markets."
Or, if you were after something in a different sex:
"WANTED: Kind lady to adopt girl aged three months. Apply to AG, Dulwich Hill Post Office.
Children were also being solicited, in some cases fairly obviously for cheap labour or other forms of exploitation:
"WANTED: By highly respectable person, girl about 12 years, to adopt." The address given was in Homebush.
The heartbreaking thing is that some of the children involved in these Dickensian transactions, and I daresay that money almost certainly changed hands, may still be living.
Australia may have led the world in many areas including the old age pension, the basic wage and female suffrage - but child welfare was not one of them apparently.
I can't help wondering if the typesetter who placed that little column of human woe immediately below an advertisement for "furs within reach of all" was indulging in a little piece of ironic social commentary of their own?
The same edition of the paper promoted a "spring fashion show" in which the comment was made "Who'd think there was a war?" Ainsworth's were crowing "our shipments came through safely" (ie without being torpedoed by a German submarine) and that there would be "no war prices".
