I recall a movie set in WW2 (I think it was Stalag 17) in which one soldier is reading a letter from his girl back home, who writes something like “John, you will never believe what happened! Someone left a baby on my doorstep. You’ll never believe this, but…” The guy reading the letter out loud to his pals says, “Why does she think I won’t believe her? I believe it!” His pals look at him like he might be the dumbest guy in the room.
So, I wonder if the “baby in a basket” story was espeically prominent in people’s minds during the war years, as a joke or legend about women at home getting pregnant while their menfolk were away and then saying they found a baby. I don’t necessarily mean that the practice (of abandonment or infidelity for that matter) was more common in the 40’s. But I wonder if there might have been a common legend at the time about using the baby-in-a-basket ploy to cover infidelity while millions of men were away from home. And, if so, is it possible that Looney Tunes in the 40’s and 50’s picked up on this, rather than on any actual increase in the incidence of baby abandonment?
Instead of fighting for abortion rights many women should just insist on the right to choose the father no matter who they have married. But that would require courage.
Corner house near a big street. Baby left on doorstep with classic note (Please take care of my baby), doorbell pressed. No one but baby on doorstep when door opened.
Police went door to door asking if any ideas who might have done it. My boys were junior high age, they were clueless about the situation (and girls in general at that point).
The people in the house wanted to keep the baby, but I think it went to foster care.
I don’t know if there was a basket involved or not, but James Michener (one of the best selling authors of the 20th century) was left as a baby on the porch of a Quaker widow and her spinster sister. He was raised to adulthood by them.
*(don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t —gah!)
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We already have that right. Our husbands may not be pleased with it, and if we exercise that right, we may no longer have husbands, but we do have the right to have children by any consenting man we like.
