freten by sowe

[George Thompson]

        [inquest on] the body of a child found in an open lot [on] Fourteenth street.  The body had been . . . torn to pieces by the hogs.  ***
        New York Daily Express, September 5, 1842, p. 2, col. 5

        [the body of a month old baby dug up by pigs from a vacant lot, 13th St. and 1st Ave]
        Commercial Advertiser, June 11, 1842, p. 2, col. 5; NY Herald, June 11, 1842, p. 2, col. 4

        A male child about a week old was found by policeman Dean, early this morning, on the stoop of a house in Elizabeth-st.  This abominable practice of abandoning infants in the street, exposed to cold and in danger of being devoured by hogs, should be treated as infanticide in all cases of detection of the parties.
        N-Y D Tribune, February 3, 1847, p. 1, col. 3

Often it's not clear whether the baby was stillborn or died soon after birth, and the body disposed of by parents who couldn't afford the fees and other costs connected with reporting the death, or whether it was abandoned alive, with the hope (perhaps) that it would be taken up and fostered.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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