Margaret Waters was executed at the Surrey County Gaol in Horsemonger Lane, Newington, on October 11, 1870. She was 35. She had been convicted of murdering one child, and two years later the House of Commons heard her described as a baby-farmer of Brixton, in London, the term then used for people who took in infants for payment. The law professor Kristin Kalsem, writing in a peer-reviewed essay for The Victorian Web in 2024, states that she was suspected of being responsible for the deaths of some forty others. None of those deaths was tried against her.
Her case reached Parliament. In March 1872, as the House of Commons debated a bill to license people who took in infants for money, the member who had brought it in, Mr. Charley, opened by reminding the House that the public "were familiar with the case of Margaret Waters, the Brixton baby-farmer." The bill passed that year as the Infant Life Protection Act 1872.
Official records say little about her life. The register of prisoners who died in the Surrey County Gaol, held at Surrey History Centre and indexed by the county's heritage service, lists her as Margaret Waters, aged 35, with a date of death of October 11, 1870. The occupation column carries the same label Parliament later used for her. The gaol on Horsemonger Lane was Surrey's main prison until it closed in 1878, and its death register records executions along with the causes of other prisoners' deaths, according to Surrey History Centre.
The Capital Punishment UK execution list for England and Wales from 1868 to 1899 gives the same date, the same age and the same place: October 11, 1870, Horsemonger Lane, Surrey, Margaret Waters, 35.
Her birthplace, her family and the year she began taking in children have never been reported. The debates in Parliament did not set out her trial, the judge, the date of the verdict or the full charges, and the child she was convicted of killing was not named there.
Kalsem writes that the famous baby-farming cases of the 1860s and 1870s, the Waters case among them, turned public anger not only on the women who ran such homes but also on the unmarried working-class mothers who used them.
In the 1872 debate, Dr. Lyon Playfair, one of the bill's sponsors, described what such payments could look like. An advertisement seeking a nurse to adopt an infant "for life," at a premium of £5 to £10, had drawn some 300 answers, he told the House. In his view, the replies showed "love of gain" rather than kindness.
The man credited with bringing the case was named in the House of Commons. Speaking in June 1872 about the inquiry into infant deaths held the year before, Charley described "Mr. Serjeant Relf, who had had great experience in cases of infanticide, and who brought Margaret Waters to justice." His first name was not given in the debate, and the steps of his investigation were not described.
Waters was put to death for the murder of one child. Two years later, Charley defended the sentence in the Commons. "The justice of her sentence had been questioned," he said, "but if ever the extreme penalty was necessary for the sake of example it was so in her case." He claimed it had worked: in his words, the severity of her sentence "had had the effect of breaking up many criminal establishments in the metropolis." That claim was his own assessment, offered in support of his bill, and he gave no figures for it.
Who had questioned the justice of the sentence, and on what grounds, he did not say.
On February 21, 1871, the Commons gave Charley leave to bring in a "Bill for the better protection of Infant Life," with Dr. Brewer and Dr. Lyon Playfair as co-sponsors. It was read a first time the same day, as Bill 49.
He later withdrew that bill, and a Select Committee was appointed on his motion to look into the subject instead. By Charley's account in March 1872, the committee sat for 13 days and examined 20 witnesses, "chiefly scientific men." He called the evidence and papers it produced "one of the most valuable Blue Books ever presented to Parliament." Among its recommendations, as he summarized them, were compulsory registration of births and deaths and the registration and inspection of secret lying-in houses where women gave birth. The committee also recommended, he said in June 1872, "that the bastardy laws should be amended for the better protection of infant life."
Outside Parliament, the inquiry drew criticism. Kalsem writes that a women's group formed in 1871 by Elizabeth Wolstenholme, Josephine Butler and Lydia Becker, the Committee to Amend the Law in Points Wherein It Is Injurious to Women, argued in a pamphlet, Infant Mortality: Its Causes and Remedies, that infanticide was not the main cause of infant deaths and that lawmakers were looking in the wrong places. The group opposed compulsory registration and inspection of infant carers, warning of "increasing officialism, police interference, and espionage."
On February 7, 1872, Charley, Dr. Brewer and Dr. Playfair brought in a new Infant Life Protection Bill, which was read a first time that day. Its second reading came on March 6, 1872, in a debate opened by Charley with the Waters case.
As he described it, the bill applied to anyone who, for payment, took in "two or more infants under one year of age for a longer period than a day." Day nurseries were left out, and so, after objections, were people who cared for a single infant. A carer would need a license from a justice of the peace, granted for a year on a certificate of fitness from a registered doctor, a minister of religion or a justice, and revocable if infants were neglected. The carer would keep a register of the infants, open to inspection only on a justice's order, and falsifying it would be an offense. A death had to be reported to the coroner within 24 hours, and no child could be buried without the coroner's certificate. Penalties were capped at six months' imprisonment. Relatives and guardians, public orphanages such as the Foundling Hospital, and pauper children boarded out under Local Government Board rules were exempt. No public money and no license fee were involved.
Not everyone in the Commons agreed. Mr. Hurst, the member for Horsham, objected that the bill "did not extend its operation to the persons who entrusted children to baby farmers." Charley replied that the Infant Life Protection Society shared the view that the bastardy laws needed reform, but that such a change alone would not touch criminal baby farming.
In June 1872 the House of Lords read the bill a second time and sent it to a Select Committee whose members included the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Bishop of London. The bill became law that year as the Infant Life Protection Act 1872, which Kalsem describes as imposing rules and registration requirements on a broad range of childcare providers.
The Infant Life Protection Act 1897 repealed it from the date the new law came into force. The 1897 Act required notice to the local authority from anyone keeping more than one infant under the age of five apart from its parents for more than 48 hours, let the local authority fix how many infants could be kept in one home, and also covered a single infant under two taken in for a lump sum of up to £20. Kalsem adds that no other law aimed specifically at infanticide was passed in England until the Infanticide Act of 1922.
The number of children who died in Waters's care was not established in court. She was convicted of one murder. Kalsem's figure of "some forty others" is a statement of suspicion; none of those deaths was tried against her.
Charley's claim that her sentence broke up "many criminal establishments" in London was a political argument, made in support of his bill, not a finding.
How the child died, how the investigation unfolded and whether anyone else was tried with her were not described in the parliamentary debates of 1871 and 1872.
1870: Margaret Waters is convicted of the murder of one child in her care.
October 11, 1870: She is executed at the Surrey County Gaol, Horsemonger Lane, Newington, aged 35.
February 21, 1871: Mr. Charley, Dr. Brewer and Dr. Lyon Playfair bring in a bill for the better protection of infant life (Bill 49); it is later withdrawn and a Select Committee is appointed on Charley's motion.
1871: Elizabeth Wolstenholme, Josephine Butler and Lydia Becker form a committee that opposes registration of infant carers.
February 7, 1872: A new Infant Life Protection Bill is brought in.
March 6, 1872: Second reading in the Commons; Charley opens with the Waters case and reports that the Select Committee sat for 13 days and heard 20 witnesses.
June 19, 1872: In a debate on the bastardy laws, Charley credits Relf with bringing Waters to justice.
June 20, 1872: The House of Lords reads the bill a second time and refers it to a Select Committee.
1872: The Infant Life Protection Act 1872 becomes law.
1878: The Surrey County Gaol in Horsemonger Lane closes.
1897: The Infant Life Protection Act 1897 repeals the 1872 Act.
1922: The Infanticide Act is passed.