Abandoning Babies, Roman Style
I’m a complete sucker for information about the ancient Greeks and Romans. It started as an obsession with Greek Myths and the Odyssey in grade school and peaked with an obsession with Aeschylus in college. I’m not quite so fanatical these days, but the easiest way to hook my attention is to hit me with a quirky ancient or midaeval. This article’s lead paragraph was made just to capture my attention:
In the Middle Ages, new mothers in Rome could abandon their unwanted babies in a “foundling wheel” — a revolving wooden barrel lodged in a wall, often in a convent, that allowed women to deposit their offspring without being seen.
The simplicity of such a device! It’s just a barrel in a hole in the wall for anonymous baby placement. And it must be effective too. Wikipedia says they were in use from about 1200 until the late 1800’s.
And today, a modern version is in use in Japan, Germany and Italy, and other countries all over the world. The newer baby hatches are not as simple as a barrel in the wall. They can run €52,000 and include medical devices and alarms so the baby isn’t left alone for long.
I wonder why America has no foundling wheels.
March 1st, 2007 at 12:14 pm
We do. Here is a trend report…
March 1st, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I was gonna say me and the Mrs. went to a charity breakfast for a similar concept. The group would take babies no questions asked. A worthy cause, I must say.
March 1st, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Yeah, I know there are places you can safely and legally dump a baby in America, but I’m not aware of any that do it in this completely anonymous manner. Women can go to a hole in the wall and put a baby in a box. No need to talk to anybody, see anybody or even go inside. It’s the ultimate in easy, shameless baby dumping, and I don’t know of any places in America where women can do it.
March 1st, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Hatches are better than leaving the child in a box, or a dumpster, or any of the other places desperate folks leave babies on the hope that they will be found.
Anonymous abandonment is distastful in many ways, but it is better than the alternatives.
March 1st, 2007 at 5:12 pm
I forget the name of the program, but Shelby County will allow mothers of newborns to drop them off at hospitals no questions asked. When a young woman dropped her infant off at a fire station, she wasn’t prosecuted but the number of places was increased.
There was an episode of MASH where a baby was dropped off at the camp and they dithered about what to do until Fr. Mulcahy told them about a convent up the road that did this. The finale was putting the baby into just such a barrel and ringing a bell to alert the nuns.
At least the Romans were an improvement over the Greeks, who just left babies up in the mountain to die of predators or exposure!
March 1st, 2007 at 6:14 pm
I wonder why America has no foundling wheels.
We prefer to kill them and call it choice.
March 2nd, 2007 at 1:29 am
It’s a holdover of our Puritanism. We don’t think it is enough to look out for the welfare of the child — we also have to look out for the spritual welfare of the mother, which requires at the very least shaming her, and in the eyes of a lot of people, criminally prosecuting her.
March 2nd, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Down here you can drop them off at fire stations, no questions asked.
March 2nd, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Yes, but they still can see the bimbo. Apparently, that’s too much shame for some women to bear. Or else, she just doesn’t believe that once people have checked the kid out, they won’t try to track her down and charge her with neglect.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
[…] Original post by Brutal Hugger […]
March 9th, 2007 at 11:48 am
[…] I posted about foundling wheels, a friend brought this cartoon to my […]
May 4th, 2007 at 10:52 am
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