Their story reveals a larger societal problem infanticide was so rampant at the time that the newspapers actually ran tallies of the numbers of dead babies found in a week. The horrific attitude toward infants in late-19th-century Australia is brought to light through the story of John and Sarah Makin, baby farmers in Sydney (in the Victorian era, children born out of wedlock were often given to professionals, who raised them at a price). 'Cossins is both relentless in her search, and engrossing in her writing' - Lucy SussexĪs in the very best true crime, criminologist Cossins uses the murders she recounts as a way of exposing an aspect of society that has been hidden. The writer has a passionate grasp of her subject and her time.' - Kerry Greenwood 'A very readable and accessible history of a terrible time.

conditions which broke that most sacred and powerful bond - between mother and baby - and broke the hearts of impoverished young women.' - Gabrielle Lord brings to life the awful poverty and the immoral 'morality' of the times.

It's a glimpse into a society that preferred to turn a blind eye to the fate of its most vulnerable members, only a century ago. This resulted in the most infamous trial in Australian legal history, and exposed a shocking underworld of desperate mothers, drugged and starving babies, and a black market in the sale and murder of children.Īnnie Cossins pieces together a dramatic and tragic tale with larger than life characters: theatrical Sarah Makin her smooth-talking husband, John her disloyal daughter, Clarice diligent Constable James Joyce, with curious domestic arrangements of his own and a network of baby farmers stretching across the city. In the weeks that followed, 12 more babies were found buried in the backyards of other houses in which the Makins had lived. In October 1892, a one-month-old baby boy was found buried in the backyard of Sarah and John Makin, two wretchedly poor baby farmers in inner Sydney.

The Baby Farmers by Annie Cossins