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The Paris Baby Raffle
These days, it can be pretty hard to adopt a kid; ask anyone who’s tried. Even if you aren’t a family of which the Catholic church disapproves.
In the past, though, it was often a lot easier. In ancient Rome you could go to a part of the trash dump and pick up an abandoned baby it’s mother couldn’t feed…although many of them became slaves.
And in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they had the opposite problem. Today, we have more people wanting to adopt than there are available babies. Back then? “Can I have some more?” was a thing.
Kids in orphanages often had to work for a living, many children fended for themselves, and foster care wasn’t yet a thing.
And some children’s homes would do all kinds of things to offload kids on hopefully loving families.
Which led to…
Loterie de Bébés
It was 1911 in Paris. A foundling hospital (children’s home) was apparently short on funds and long on children needing help.
They needed to do something, and the something was a baby raffle. To us, this seems absolutely horrific. I mean, many of us would…