From ‘baby-farmer’, to ‘licensee’, to ‘foster-parent’: the origin and administration of New Zealand’s Infant Life Protection legislation, 1893–1926

New Zealand’s efforts to regulate ‘baby-farming’ – the practice of taking in an infant or young child in exchange for payment – led to several pieces of legislation, beginning with the Infant Life Protection Act 1893. The Act required the homes of people taking in infants under two years of age for payment to be registered and licensed on an annual basis. The legislation also required police to inspect registered homes. Following the conviction of ‘baby-farmer’ Williamina ‘Minnie’ Dean, who was accused of murdering an infant in her care in 1895, there was a widespread call to strengthen the legislation. A more stringent and workable version of Infant Life Protection legislation passed in 1896. Under the updated legislation, the age of infants protected was raised to four years and police were given wider inspection powers over licensed homes. The updated regulations also allowed for New Zealand’s first full-time police matrons to serve as inspectors under the scheme. Shortcomings in the Infant Life Protection scheme and how it was administered remained, however. High-profile coroner inquests on infants who died in licensed and unlicensed homes led to frequent calls for further reform. The 1893 and 1896 pieces of legislation were punitive in nature and directed toward the individuals (usually women) taking in infants in exchange for payment. By the early twentieth century, however, there was a growing emphasis on the value of infant life in New Zealand. With a sharpened focus on reducing an already dropping Pākehā infant mortality rate, a range of individuals and organisations fought for the administration of the Infant Life Protection scheme to be taken out of the hands of the Police Department. This happened in 1907 when administration was transferred to the Education Department. The transition happened just as state involvement in family life was extending as evidenced by activities such as the opening of the first St Helens hospitals and the passage of the Midwives Act 1904. The voluntary sector, particularly with the establishment of the Society for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children (the Plunket Society), also brought a new focus to infant welfare as an important part of New Zealand’s national identity. In-step with many countries recovering from the impact of the First World War, by 1919 reforms were proposed to broaden aspects of the Infant Life Protection scheme to encompass all infants born outside of marriage, along with infants who were orphaned or where parents were unable or seen as unfit to care for them. The proposed reforms eventually became enshrined in the Child Welfare Act 1925. Between 1893 and 1926, infants who fell under the Infant Life Protection scheme were often a proxy for ‘illegitimate’ infants. This view impacted on how the scheme was designed by politicians and how it was administered by first the Police Department and then the Education Department. Reviewing the overall downward trend of the infant mortality rate under the scheme suggests that the Education Department’s approach was successful. But as numerous historians have convincingly discussed, the dropping infant mortality rate was due to a range of factors that would have affected the infants, children and homes that fell under the Infant Life Protection scheme. This does not negate the work of those who administered the scheme under the auspices of the Education Department. Instead, the Education Department’s efforts often complemented and sometimes amplified other efforts to reduce New Zealand’s infant mortality rate.