This abominable system of lodgings purposely kept and adver- tised
for women who want to be confined without the knowledge -of their acquaintances, and for the unhappy children thus born, seems to be increasing in London, and to be producing its usual results,—the early death of the children. Mr. Humphreys, the Middlesex Coroner, has this week held an inquest at Tottenham -on a baby one year and eight months old, the child of "a young lady of wealth and position," farmed out on one Mrs. Jagger, of Tottenham, for six shillings a week! The child had been in Mrs. Jagger's care a year and four months, and seems, as was natural on 6s. a week, to have been underfed by Mrs. Jagger, and not doctored when she began to suffer from the disease of which she died,—a disease of the mesenteric glands. The "young lady of wealth and position" had intimated that "if liar name should be divulged, sooner than live to be ruined for ever she should not return home,"—or, according to a more sensational version of her feelings, that "she should commit suicide I" The jury felt a sympathy for "this young lady of wealth and pcsition " who mild only spare 6s, a week for her illegitimate child, and did not demand the name. Mrs. Jagger seems to have had some 40 to 60 -children to nurse in this way within three years, and this was the third inquest on children dying in her house. Mrs. Jagger shrieked, and "became convulsed," upon the suggestion
of the coroner that there were children- upstairsin her house svlio were "never seen." The coroner veryproperly showed no tender- ness to Mrs. Jagger. We do not see why he showed so much to the young lady "of wealth and position," who spared just .68. a week for the keep of her illegitimate child.
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