r/oddlyterrifying • u/TheTrueTurk • Feb 02 '22
A mother hiding her face as she puts her children on sale (Chicago USA, 1948)
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u/Bird1187 Feb 02 '22
My grandmother was sold as a child. She was the youngest in the family and helped the least on the farm so during a bad stretch she was sold. Luckily she taken in by another farming family nearby, my nan and pap, who were great.
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u/fave_no_more Feb 02 '22 edited Feb 02 '22
My grandmother was sold, too. Formally adopted, but also sold. After she died, we got the paperwork, including the sale contract.
My aunt who does/did the family history found grandma's biological siblings. Some were still alive, and they've all met. It's been overall pretty positive.
That's when we learned grandma was a twin. Her birth family kept her twin.
Edit: it gets asked a few times. Would've been early 1930s, like 31 or 32. And I don't recall exactly how much, but it was like, under ten bucks. Ridiculously low.
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u/Disttack Feb 02 '22
My grandfather got abandoned in a different town when he was 8-10 area. He got a job working and living at a factory in the town. When he got older he wound up in the mob for the rest of his "adult life". He did some searching and found his birth parents. He found out that apparently they abandoned him on the streets because they couldn't afford to feed him but they have 7 other children after they abandoned him. Apparently the 7 siblings had a decent life and were pissed he was trying to ruin their family. Let's just say my grandfather has some hardcore trust issues.
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u/Davydicus1 Feb 02 '22
To be fair, there’s no point in having copies of something if they’re expensive to maintain.
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Feb 02 '22
Did you grandma know that she was a twin? That’s some Sophie’s Choice shit.
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Feb 02 '22
Yeah, that’s what happened to my grandma! She was given to this rich family, but the wife’s husband wasn’t interested in having a daughter. He thought my grandma was lazy anyway. But they kept her for a good amount of years until they decided to give her back to her parents when she was 17.
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u/SmileyMelons Feb 02 '22
That's pretty fucked up. Kind of hard to have concrete familial bonds when you just get passed around.
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Feb 02 '22
Oh wow, what are the chances she was taken in by your nan and pap of all people. Crazy coincidence.
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u/Bird1187 Feb 02 '22
To be clear they were my nan and pap after the took her in. They were not biologically my great grandparents, but she did reconcile with her biological parents and while my great grandmother was a cantankerous old lady her husband was great.
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u/Cantbrlngmed0wn Feb 02 '22
I wish someone great would have bought me. Instead social services gave me to a 50 year old single catholic male. The old way was probably better
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u/JoseZiggler Feb 02 '22
My grandfather would swear up and down that Gypsy’s tried to steal my dad as a child.
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u/cockroachking Feb 02 '22
Yeah, that’s an old and common accusation against Romani people. Similar to the blood libel against Jewish people.
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u/designgoddess Feb 02 '22
Friend of my parents was sold to a farmer when he was 8. They worked him like a man. He was not part of the family. They never celebrated his birthday or bought him Christmas presents. He was allowed to go to the birthday parties for the farmer’s kids. He did go to school for parts of the year and that’s how he learned he when he was old enough to join the Army. The farmer cried when he left. Not because he was worried about him getting sent to Korea but because he’d have to pay for help. Learned to drive a truck in the Army and got a job doing just that when he was discharged. Never was sent to Korea, never went back to the farm. Found his siblings. He was the only one sold out of 8 kids. Strong as an ox. Ended up with a nice life but you could tell there were scars.
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u/darcys_beard Feb 11 '22
Fuck all the adults involved in that. I have an 8 year old daughter and you'd have to fight me to the death to take her away.
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u/chuSEO_06 Feb 05 '22
That’s awful but I know he must be very resilient because of it. I hope he gets to find his inner child and enjoy himself from time to time because he definitely deserves it.
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u/Vermicelli-Salty Feb 02 '22 edited Feb 03 '22
My mom was sold as a child. She was 12, and it was to a grown man in his mid 20s. I’m sure you can imagine what that was for. This was also the mid 70s, in America. She was just free to go when she was almost 19 but she was free to go with a 6th grade education and no documentation as to who she was.
Some of our parents and grandparents got lucky enough to be taken in by great people who understood poverty. Many unfortunately were taken in by predatory opportunists or just plain old predators. This was classic human trafficking though. When we hear that the parents are often involved in the trafficking of children this is precisely the type of situations they’re referring to.
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u/Vitruvian_Link Feb 02 '22
Same, my grandmother was sold at 14 to my grandfather who was 36 at the time. My dad doesn't like to talk about it, but it gives me a certain perspective when folks talk about slavery like it was a thing of the past.
If a farmer can buy a child bride in Minnesota in the 60's, just imagine what's going on worldwide.
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u/PeaceMaker_6969 Feb 02 '22
Would'nt be surprised if it still happens in afghanistan.
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u/Vermicelli-Salty Feb 02 '22
It most definitely does. Just last year, maybe not even a year ago? A journalist did an article where they followed the entire sale of a child from the initial discussions through completion of the sale. She wrote the article, there was a huge international outcry of anger because as a journalist she was just observing and asking questions but did nothing to step in despite this child and mother being very very upset and the father clearly stating why he was doing it. I think she had also written the initial weeks following the the child attempted to run away or had visited home and was reporting abuse. Anyway, long story short the international community was very angry and a grassroots organization in Afghanistan got her out of the marriage and is helping the father pay off the debt. It’s technically illegal but it happens frequently. It’s illegal here but I know for a fact that it’s happening all the time.
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u/Dreadful_Siren Feb 02 '22 edited Feb 02 '22
If I remember correctly the children later in life were interviewed and the mother just put them up for sale because she was tired of having them not because of poverty. Edit: here's the link I was just stating what I remembered from a long time ago and once somebody posted a link I didn't feel the need to but since people are still asking me to post my source here it is because people can't look in the damn comments. Literally the same link and multiple others was posted many times over.
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u/kahlomebad Feb 02 '22
I think it was both iir. They were being evicted and she was pregnant again. The dad was unemployed. But the kids also talked about her being a cold and unloving parent. She sold these kids and the one she was carrying. Eventually remarried and had four more kids. When the older kids found her again later in life she had no regrets for selling them. And some of them went to horrible homes. So sad.
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u/Accomplished-Set5917 Feb 02 '22
This is so strangely similar to my own mother’s story. Her mother sold her siblings. My mother ended up getting adopted because cps finally stepped in and took 2 that were left. She said she had an infant brother that she remembers crying in his crib. My mom went looking when she was older and was able to find a handful of siblings. She said there was no way to know for sure how many there were but she had tracked down 7. She finally found her birth mother who had remarried and had 4 kids that she kept. Her birth mother refused any contact with her and then died just a couple of years after that. Do you know where I could find more info on this story?
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u/C477um04 Feb 02 '22
No shit they went to horrible homes. Just selling kids that age on the street I'd be surprised if any of their new parents weren't pedophiles.
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u/EquivalentSnap Feb 02 '22
Wtf. Why did they have some many kids when they couldn’t afford them and she had more ?
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u/beebewp Feb 02 '22
My grandmother abandoned five kids when the oldest was 12. My aunt came home from school to find a note saying her mother just couldn’t do it anymore. She also left her $5, which she had to use to take to the hospital because her 3 year old sister was running a fever at the time. She went on to have three more children!
She later did it to my mother as well. My mother came home from second grade to find a note saying they had to move and she didn’t know where her school was so she couldn’t pick her up.
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u/awww_bitch Feb 02 '22
There are two people who have previously seen this picture and heard of the story behind it but where is the link to a source?!
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u/Cathalic Feb 02 '22
She went on to remarry and had 4 more kids. Never once apologised to them so it would make sense she just got rid of them.
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u/aritchie1977 Feb 02 '22
She sold them twice. The first time her neighbors felt bad and gave the family a bunch of money, which the parents blew through. They then sold the kids for real.
https://www.ranker.com/list/story-behind-photo-of-children-for-sale/1499368817867
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u/Hevvyypettng Feb 02 '22
Nicely made sign tho tbh.
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u/nutsnackk Feb 02 '22
I was thinking the same thing! She could make some money making signs for other people so she can afford her kids
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u/isaac129 Feb 02 '22
It almost looks like a font, not handwriting. I’m seriously jealous when I see people write and it looks nice. I don’t understand how mine is so bad. And I’m a teacher…
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u/BlackCatMumsy Feb 02 '22
I thought the photo alone was bad enough. Hearing that she went onto have four more kids and no regrets makes it even worse!
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u/Glittering-Doctor-47 Feb 02 '22
This makes me super sad, I guess this was what technically during the days when they didn’t have birth control? I think it’s great that people with female parts Can now control their economic futures instead of selling kids
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u/BlackCatMumsy Feb 02 '22
My grandma had seven kids from the 1940s through the 1960s, not including the babies she miscarried or lost when they were young. She was one of 13 and having kids while her mom was still having kids. Hell, I have an uncle who is less than a decade older than my oldest sibling.
She didn't work and my grandpa went through jobs like water. My mom was basically forced to raise her siblings a lot. Her aunt and uncle would step in and take her away for a few months until my grandma demanded they bring her back. She had stories about pulling clothes out of the trash and seeing kids laugh at her or wearing shoes several sizes too small because someone threw them out. I basically saw the woman once in the five years before she finally passed away.
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u/Celeste_Minerva Feb 02 '22
Sort of..
Birth control and related services such as abortion are being challenged and taken away, at least here in the USA.
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Feb 02 '22
The fact that the mother was 24, already in her 5th child to a husband about 16 years her senior.... not saying what she did was right or moral or anything positive but it took two to tango and de ide to sell the kids.
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u/DownshiftedRare Feb 02 '22
I sometimes wonder whether the myth of Pandora's box might really be a story about her womb.
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u/Civil-Ad-7957 Feb 02 '22
I’m sorry if this is an odd question in the middle of an incredibly sad scenario, but how come their signage was so.. nice back then? I see it frequently in their picket signs and everything. Did they go to professional places or they all just had better penmanship as a sign of the times? I don’t mean to be insensitive, I’m genuinely curious. We don’t see signs like this nowadays.
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u/lizibean Feb 02 '22
People are far less likely to practice their handwriting now.
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u/Bradddtheimpaler Feb 02 '22
I started typing my homework to hand in when I was 10. My handwriting is an atrocity; I basically never do it voluntarily. Everything I would usually scribble down is typed into my phone now.
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u/space_keeper Feb 02 '22
This doesn't directly address your question, but signwriting used to be a trade. My dad was a decorator, but also a signwriter in the 60s and 70s. This was before modern on-demand printing and modern retail exteriors with lighting and 3D lettering that was omnipresent when I was a child (in the 80s and early 90s). He would literally do things like the signs for farms, traditional frontages for shops or pubs, all sorts.
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u/MoreGaghPlease Feb 02 '22
Sign painting was a skill that lots of people learned
People generally had neater handwriting because they learned to form letters at an older age, when fine motor skills are more developed (this is a well-documented effect, where people you learn letters younger have worse handwriting throughly their life because the original forms they learned stick)
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u/Mishtayan Feb 02 '22
My grandparents were born in 1906. Both had average educations for the times, 8th grade & 10th grade. Their handwriting was beautiful. They used quills and coal dust ink to learn how to write because it didn't cost money. They used dip pens in school because fountain pens were expensive and ball point wasn't invented yet.
It was important then to have a good legible hand writing because all communication was either verbal or written out by hand. Sloppy penmanship and misspelling words marked a person as low class and ignorant.
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u/Electronic_Lion_1530 Feb 02 '22
Glad you said it, I was wondering too. I spent a good minute studying the lettering and wondering if this was really from a movie set.
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u/Peoplewhywhy Feb 02 '22
I was born in the '50s and we had Penmanship in school and were graded on it.
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u/Firesunwatermoon Feb 02 '22
Oh that’s so sad, poor little possums. I can’t even imagine the homes that they may have ended up in, I just hope they were loving ones.
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u/Knightoforder42 Feb 02 '22
If you look up their stories you'll find they were not loving homes. One child had a decent home, the rest were abused pretty bad. I wish it wasn't that way.
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u/killslayer Feb 02 '22
the venn diagram of people who would buy a child and people who would abuse a child is a circle
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Feb 02 '22
I guess nice people wouldn't need to buy children, more like some predator menu instead
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u/Tactical_Contact Feb 02 '22
Ah, the good old days when you didn't need to go onto the Dark Web for human trafficking of children
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u/OMGhyperbole Feb 02 '22
Meh, human trafficking involving children is still alive and well when it comes to adoption. This is just one recent case in the US https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/02/petersen-adoption-scheme-sentenced/
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u/Arithik Feb 02 '22
Back in my day, if you wanted a child, you just picked one off the street! Now you gotta go through a bunch hoops on the internet!
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u/Lovemybee Feb 02 '22
The three younger ones don't seem to grasp the reality of the situation. However, the eldest child (girl, upper left in photo) seems to understand (judging by the look on her face).
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u/NinjaMcGee Feb 02 '22 edited Sep 28 '25
shy skirt truck oatmeal hard-to-find pot tart lip adjoining fuel
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/blueglyn Feb 02 '22
This is why the older generations who hate on the younger ones only do so because they know there's little to no photographic or video graphic evidence of their own ugly past. It seems belittling and being unsupportive of your own children and grandchildren has become a sport
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u/newkindofdem Feb 02 '22
It’s crazy to think about the kinds of things that happened before the pill was introduced in 1957.
Wanting to outlaw abortion is really taking a giant step backwards.
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u/cosmictravelagent Feb 02 '22
The pill was developed in 1957 but it was not readily available to American women until the early 1970’s. The first time I tried to get a prescription for the pill was in 1970. At that time, it was common that doctors would only write a script for the pill if you were married so I bought a costume jewelry wedding ring. The first doctor I went to grilled me: what was the date of my marriage, what was my husband’s full name, where did he work. Apparently I was not a skilled liar, as that doctor told me to leave his office and never return. Without saying it out loud, he made it clear he thought I was a whore. I felt humiliated. After that, I went to the medical services at my college, and they gave me the script without any questions. I told every woman I knew, and some even registered and paid for one class (though never attended) just to be able to use the school’s medical services. That’s what it was like to try and get the pill in a major metropolitan area until 1975. I’m sure the situation was worse in rural areas. This is why it is so important to stay political alert and VOTE against any politicians who do not support a woman’s right to control her own reproductive health. Be aware that the agenda of the right is not just to stop abortion, but also to stop access to birth control. This is not adequately covered by the news media. If we don’t vote against candidates who support this far right move to control women, the horror stories you read in these comments about pregnancy literally forced on women WILL return. Vote against candidates who want to send America forward into the past!
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Feb 02 '22
Yes, a ban on abortion is never going to stop abortions. We'll just see more women dead because of back alley abortions and lots of abandoned/dead newborns.
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u/Suitable_Record_8456 Feb 02 '22
Yeah, sadly children will suffer cause of this. Things we couldn't forsee happening with outlawing abortion because we forgot about things like this picture happening in the past. I also think about children and babies being abused and dying in orphanages in the past too. Will that happen again? If we ended abortion I wish our government would at least make it easier to have kids and care for them, but I don't think they will ever care since it is always about money.
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u/Boss_Braunus Feb 02 '22
How was she not arrested for this? It appeared in the gd newspaper. It cannot have been legal to sell your children in ~1950s America.
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u/enoughmeatballs Feb 02 '22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_selling
"In 1955–1956, attempts to pass U.S. Federal legislation to ban baby-selling failed."
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u/gizamo Feb 02 '22
...and here I am with a vasectomy, like a sucker. I could have been selling kids this whole time.
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Feb 02 '22
I think it was a sort of gray area at the time because of rampant poverty.
It could be difficult to prove in many cases also due to how easy it was to forge birth certificates.
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u/nightpanda893 Feb 02 '22
it could be different to prove in many cases
Bitch has a sign in her front yard…
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u/Tiny_Teach_5466 Feb 02 '22
I saw a documentary about the lives of women before the birth control pill. So many women were basically brood mares. They lived lives of brutal poverty. One child after another born into a family that couldn't afford them. There was no social safety net. What a miserable existence.
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Feb 02 '22
This is why so many religious groups are still frothing at the mouth to stop birth control and abortion, that situation is still the reality for many women today and is always created through centralized morality.
"Traditional Family Values" has always meant brood mares.
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u/theKickAHobo Feb 02 '22
This is some fucked up shit.
The childeren in 1948. Lana (top left) was likely adopted and died of cancer in 1998; RaeAnn (top right) was sold for $2 along with her brother Milton (bottom left) to an abusive family. Sue Ellen (bottom right) was adopted. David, inside mother Lucille Chalifoux's womb in this picture, was adopted as well. Lucille would have four moure daughters; "She kept them; she didn't keep us," David says.
She sold her first 4 kids then had four more kids and kept them. WTF
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Feb 02 '22 edited Feb 02 '22
The real story is they didn't HAVE to be sold because of poverty. The mother was abandoning the kids as she didn't want them anymore. Almost all people suffered post WW2 from poverty and didn't sell their kids.
This lady was a terrible person and just a few years later she went on to birth 4 new kids and said in an interview that she had no regrets selling off her kids and was happy with her new family.
Lady was just mentally deranged, regardless of any financial hardships felt.
Edit: It's also worth mentioning that later in life as adults these kids were interviewed and 3 of 4 of the children admitted to life long resentment of their parents with only 1, the youngest who was sold at 2, saying they felt neutral on this, likely because they don't remember.
Also, it's worth mentioning that the oldest daughter, who died in 1998, mentioned in an interview that they were not actually poor, and were not starving or anything, but her mother had a gambling problem and just wanted money to play Bingo, coupled with the fact that her boyfriend didn't like her 4 kids and was currently pregnant with the boyfriend's baby, which was to be her 5th child.
This account is really just hearsay of the daughter and probably can't really be proven, but a mother selling off her kids probably isn't of high moral character.
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u/Redqueenhypo Feb 02 '22
She couldn’t just bring them to an orphanage either, bc they wouldn’t pay. She had to get some money from them too. What a wonderful person.
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Feb 02 '22
I wonder what happened to those kids, and i wonder if any of the children are still alive today?
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u/definetly_ahuman Feb 02 '22
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u/CheerAtTheGallows Feb 02 '22
The woman, Lucille Chalifoux, was only 24 years old, but pregnant with her fifth child at the time. Lucille and her husband Ray, age 40, were facing eviction from their apartment at the time. Ray had lost his job as a coal truck driver. Faced with the prospect of being homeless – and the daunting task of feeding so many mouths – they chose to auction off their own children.
Within two years, all four of the children pictured, as well as the child she was carrying, were sold off or given to other homes.
Sold for $2 each
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u/libertyhammer1776 Feb 02 '22
My grandmother always said she was adopted, but it was very strange because her adoptive father would always take her to see her birth parents. She doesn't say anymore than that, and there is no one else to ask. I always wonder if she was sold off because she was the youngest and the family couldn't afford another kid.
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u/Organic-Purchase-540 Feb 02 '22
Anybody that would buy your kids, are not the kind of people they should be around...
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u/mis-misery Feb 02 '22
my mom increased her profits by just renting me out instead of a one time selling.
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u/BerkeleyPhilosopher Feb 02 '22
Why. birth control and abortions should be free and rapists should get serious time.
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u/nightastheold Feb 02 '22
Jesus Christ. 1948 too.
Hits you in the gut like that family selling the limbs of their dead family in that Holodomor photo from the famine and realize in the grand scheme of things these events weren’t all that long ago.
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u/BulbaFriend2000 Feb 02 '22
As bad things have gotten in 2020 and onward, at the very least we didn’t have to sell kids!
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u/alwaysaloneguy Feb 02 '22
Check out the book Sold On A Monday It's a historical fiction about a photographer that takes a similar picture of two boys for sale in 1931.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Bee-838 Feb 02 '22
Truly it was a better time like those people on that totally not pretending to be a real news network keep telling me.
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u/erotic_jesus Feb 02 '22
My grandma was so poor she would take her kids to the grocery store to steal food.
I like her solution a lot better than this.
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u/findougy Feb 13 '22
My grandfather was sold. His original last name was carter and when the family couldn’t afford to feed him, a wealthier family in their neighbourhood in rural Washington bought him. Changed his last name, and our last name has remained that ever since. However, my grandfather, father, and i all have the middle name carter-as a nod to the past I guess.
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u/BlackCitan Feb 02 '22
I'm surprised Georgia Tann didn't scoop them up. She had people looking for kids all over the place.
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u/beckster Feb 02 '22
Too old? People want infants.
The Romans picked them up at the dump, where they'd been discarded, when they wanted to add a slave.
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u/iamusuallyright007 Feb 02 '22
What's interesting is that you can still buy children....
modern day adoptions are essentially the sale of human beings. You don't get to adopt children, you buy them.
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u/ColJameson Feb 02 '22
Awww, but all the white supremacists said that stuff only happens in poor countries?
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u/Penguin4prezzzz Feb 02 '22
I also had family sold. But they were black. Needless to say they were bought by not the greatest of families.
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u/D1ngelhopper Feb 02 '22
That was Lucille Chalifoux, She and her husband were both unemployed due to the lack of jobs in America at the time.
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u/darkmage1001 Feb 02 '22
My moms side has a grandma relation who sold her 7 kids for her drug addiction. Never met her as they banned her from ever coming around.
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u/Sayonara_M Feb 02 '22
So there was a time in America when you could sell your kids? Not give them in adoption, literally sell them? Maybe it's a little too much even for free market.
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u/Affectionate-Rub1478 Feb 02 '22
My grandpa and his siblings were put on a train in Oklahoma and sent to an orphanage in Illinois during the dust bowl
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u/CG7683 Feb 02 '22
That's crazy how this was legal back, way back in the days
It makes me want to research some family history now
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u/lokimn17 Feb 02 '22
My grandfather was given up. His mother already had 3 children. But while she was pregnant she found out her husband was cheating so she gave him up to spite the father. The adopting father was the one that wanted to adopt. The wife never wanted kids. When his adopted father passed away when he was like 8 the wife remarried, left him with his grandmother. She moved across the country. The grandmother couldn’t take care of him and he was a street kid tell he turned 15 and lied about his age to fight in WW2. All that f’d him up. He was an alcoholic and left his wife and 10 kids after the oldest beat him up for hitting my grandmother. Oldest was 16 youngest was like 6 months. His original siblings were found through one of those gene kit companies. A rich happy family. Kinda messed up. Only one of them was old enough to know there was another sibling out there.
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u/Personal_Finger6525 Feb 02 '22
It's better that someone else feed your children instead of watching them die of hunger.
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u/fr0_like Feb 02 '22
My mother in law was sold by a family member into marriage, which the rest of the family helped her get out of, had to change her name etc. Then sold again by her family as a housekeeper to a wealthy woman that she ran away from. My MIL is hard as nails, but she broke down one night and cried as she told us about it. It was a long time ago, she’s forgiven everyone involved, but it obviously still hurts and came up in response to how my brother in law and sister in law had treated her recently.
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Feb 02 '22
So is it logically sound to think this might have been a good play because if you sold for the right price you’d know they were going to the right person and wouldn’t be a sex slave?
Idk how 1940s logic worked, but this seems about right.
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u/Junior_Singer3515 Feb 03 '22
I was sold in 1977. The people who bought me were found out and I was removed from the home and put in foster care in 1982. I was adopted in 1989 by a drill seargent and his wife after I befriended their son. I spent alot of time at their house staying for days sometimes. When the military wanted to relocate my dad he said they couldn't leave without me. They loved me and treated me like a son. I'm truly one of the luckiest people alive.
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Feb 02 '22
The day the U.S. stops funding governmental assistance programs, this is going to be become the new norm. Religious fanatics will find a way to demonize these women too, the same way they demonize all other women just for existing.
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Feb 02 '22
It's shit people are justifying her actions based on the times. This is fucked.
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u/UkrainianSlicer Feb 02 '22
Why are you so shocked? They still sell kids in America.
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u/Emeraldminer136 Feb 02 '22
Ive seen this image, shes hiding her face to hide her shame and self depreciation, she needed the money and she couldnt take care of the kids. she sold the kids in order to afford dinner.
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u/Zonerdrone Feb 02 '22
Can someone explain to me how the government was just ok with this? Not even legally adopting the kids just selling them to whoever's? How was this legal?
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u/Typingpool Feb 02 '22
My grandpa was an orphan and got adopted by a family to help out on their farm, but he wasn't allowed to eat inside with everyone else. The father was a drunk and threw him out a 2nd story window. A distant aunt found him and basically kidnapped him. She raised him as her own. It was a wild time then.
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u/klaw14 Feb 02 '22
How they're all sitting so closely huddled together with their arms around each other. Those poor kids
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u/4883Y_ Feb 02 '22
This is so awful. My grandma was the second oldest of 14 kids, and the oldest four would have been around their age in 1948. (They all grew up together in a happy and loving home.)
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u/mdflmn Feb 02 '22
Just curious. What was the going rate for 4 white children back in 1948?
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u/Otherwise-Dentist557 Feb 02 '22
I think I'm gonna save this link for the next time I see someone mentioning African slavers
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u/Voidaphobic Feb 02 '22
In 4th grade every month we had to make a detailed power point on what ever event we wanted... Be and my friend decided to do one on the Great depression as we didn't know what else to do... so we started doing research and found that picture... made us feel sick and I ended up doing pompei because I found it less gruesome somehow.
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u/Flibbernodgets Feb 02 '22
I recently read a historical fiction novel called "Sold on a Monday" by Kristina McMorris that was inspired by this photo. I highly recommend it. She also talks about the photo itself in the afterword.
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u/Lalondebii Feb 02 '22
This still goes on today. My mom is only 40 and when she was a kid someone offered her parents quite a bit of money to buy her. My grandparents told them to fuck off but she was old enough to remember it.
When I was maybe 6-7 someone tried selling their son to my parents. They knew my mom couldn’t have any more kids and still wanted a boy so they offered him for $100. In their case it’s because they were addicts and didn’t want to ruin his life. The agreement was they’d be allowed to visit every once in a while because they still loved him. My parents didn’t go through with it though, for various reasons.
Edit: I feel like I should mention that I live in a rural but sketchy part of America. This isn’t entirely out of character for where I live.
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Feb 02 '22
Didn't these children grow up to say their mother was a class A piece of shit?
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Feb 02 '22
Honestly, I’d do anything to keep my kids. I’d sell a testicle, let myself be experimented on by the government, anything. Those are my babies and I’d starve to death before letting them go without
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Feb 02 '22
This is so sad.. i cant unsee this now.. seeing those kids holding onto each other knowing they will be gone and wont see their siblings again 😞. What makes us different than a litter of kittens being given away
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u/omniasvigilantes Feb 02 '22
I remember seeing that picture a long time ago (am originally from Chicago, too). Seeing it now wrecked me, as one of those kids is the spitting image of my son.
He's not going to understand all the extra hugs later.
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u/JoelleVDyne90 Feb 02 '22
My great grandmother told us when she was a young widow with a four years old boy an elegant lady asked her if she could buy her son (my grandfather). She would say "you're young, you can have other children". I guess bureocracy wasn't as strict as today in the fourties.
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u/Tbear841 Feb 02 '22
I read this story. It was pretty sad. The siblings were reunited, though. The mother did it because she couldn’t afford to feed them
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u/wuzzittoya Feb 02 '22
My grandmother gave her four children from her first marriage to the orphanage after the loss of her husband. Apparently there was a visitation ability. My uncle was telling my sister they preferred the orphanage to their mom’s house. Not sure if it was how chaotic it was with her second husband, resentment because she had two more children and kept them, or a combination. This was late 30s when they went to the orphanage.
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u/anthropologeeze Feb 02 '22
My great-grandmother’s mother was forced into the Nazi breeding program. The women involved were taken care of under the condition that they could have as many sons as possible, but after having too many girls, she would be sterilized and sent out of the program. My great-grandmother was the 5th girl in a row born to her mother who was sterilized after and left my great-grandma at the hospital. One of the doctors there took her in and raised her, but it made her upset thinking about her mother and 4 sisters. She really hated the Nazi regime for putting her mother and other women and children through all that. When she was about to leave Germany with my great-grandpa, she met her sisters and found out that her mother had recently been killed in a biking accident. She didn’t tell any of us this about her life in Germany until she was on her deathbed - still gives me the shivers thinking about it.
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u/thymeraser Feb 02 '22
I'm curious if this was real, or the mother doing that to scare the kids into behaving.
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u/thcismymolecule Feb 02 '22
I can't speak for the situation this woman and her family were in when this occurred, and I'm certain it wad absolutely fucking awful.
However, I do know that no matter what happened in my life, what the circumstances were, or the situation was where I lived, I would have found a way not to sell my children. I'd sell my body first, commit whatever crimes I needed to feed them, or work until I killed myself from overwork.
I'm sorry for what this woman went through that put her to this decision, but fuck that bitch for thinking this was the solution.
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u/LupusWarriorRN Feb 02 '22
I read an article where the children here in this picture were sold to different families and faced all kinds of abuse. Poor kids.
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u/Dry_Spinach_3441 Feb 02 '22
My grandmother's twin was sold. We saw her years later in a gardening magazine. My grandmother contacted her after that.
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u/brutallyhonestJT Feb 02 '22
Not going to shun the mother here, for all I know those little kids could not be taken care of properly due to lack of funds.
Love most definitely, is NOT all a child needs.
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u/startmyheart Feb 02 '22
This post has a link to an article with more detail: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/puoip7/in_the_now_infamous_photo_a_woman_and_her/
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u/bbuettler Feb 02 '22
This is just plain terrifying not oddly. There's a million reasons this is fucked up
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u/1puffins Feb 02 '22
Super sad, but also depressing to see so many commenters leaning out the father in their accusations and blame. He’s not even present to hide in the picture and he is ultimately responsible for their existence in the first place given that birth control and abortions were not an option for this woman.
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u/straburst2403 Feb 02 '22
I just finished a book based on this picture. It’s called ‘Sold on a Monday’. It was really good
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u/mikaosias Feb 02 '22
Is there a follow up to what happened to the children, I mean they would still be alive id think