"Angel-maker"

[Joel S. Berson]

 From another list--the noun in Dutch:
>So, I too took my dictionary, and found this (in my translation):
>engeltjesmaakster: 1. woman who,  for money,
>takes up the raising of very young
>children, who were usually born out of wedlock, and who are then deliberately
>and systematically negelected or malnourished leading to a slow death. 2.
>unqualified abortionist
>Interestingly, the male equivalent, engeltjesmaker, has only one meaning:
>unqualified abortionist.

Joel

At 6/10/2006 11:21 AM, you wrote:
>Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>---------------------- Information from the
>>mail header -----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>>Subject:      "Angel-maker"
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>"Angel-maker" is not in OED2.  (However, it appears s.v. "patrist" in
>>the title of a book by G. R. Taylor.  I have heard/read it in English
>>somewhere/sometime.
>>
>>Joel
>>
>I can offer this:
>
>angel-maker:
>
>1. [late 19C­1900s] a baby-farmer, a woman who took in (usu.
>illegitimate) babies on the pretext of bringing them up in return for a
>fee; thus _angel-making_, the starving to death of such unwanted children
>1892 newspaper cutting in Ware (_Passing English of the Victorian Era_,
>1909) ‘ANGEL-MAKING’ Another case of ‘baby-farming’ or ‘angel-making’
>[...] has just been discovered by the Lemberg police, who have arrested
>three women on charges of systematically starving to death infants
>committed to their care.
>1896 Daily Telegraph (London) 7 Dec. Every day a fresh charge is laid at
>their doors, and some people have even gone so far as to describe them
>as [...] what Parisians call ‘angel-makers.’
>
>2. an abortionist.
>1994 N. Lewis _The Book of Babel_ ‘Abortionist’ (or _faiseur d’ anges_,
>‘angel-maker’ in French)
>2002 Leif’s Page of Various Things [Internet] Margot also works as a
>backstreet abortionist, a profession also known as angel maker
>
>It is possible that the 1896 citation - offered by Ware - misinterprets
>the French, and that the 1994 one is the only correct translation.The
>Oxford/Hachette French Dictionary (3 edn 2001) terms it 'a backstreet
>abortionist'.
>
>Jonathon Green
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org