"Angel-maker"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Not used in U.S., so far as I know.

  JL

Jonathon Green <slang at ABECEDARY.NET> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Jonathon Green
Subject: Re: "Angel-maker"
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Joel S. Berson wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
> Subject: "Angel-maker"
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>
> "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 19C–1900s] 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

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