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A baby hatch is a place where mothers can bring their babies, usually newborn, and leave them anonymously in a safe place to be found and cared for. more...

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This kind of arrangement was common in mediaeval times and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the device was known as a foundling wheel. Foundling wheels were taken out of use in the late 1800s but a modern form, the baby hatch, began to be introduced again from 1996 and since 2000 has come into use in many countries, notably in Germany where there are around 80 hatches today.

In German-speaking countries the hatch is known as a Babyklappe (baby hatch or flap) or Babyfenster (baby window); in Italian as Culle per la vita (cradle for life).

The hatches are usually in hospitals or social centres and consist of a door or flap in an outside wall which opens to reveal a soft bed, heated or at least insulated. Sensors in the bed alert carers when a baby has been put in it so that they can come take care of the child. In Germany, babies are first cared for for eight weeks during which the mother can return and claim her child without any legal repercussions. If this does not happen, after eight weeks the child is put up for adoption.

History

Baby hatches have existed in one form or another for centuries. The system was quite common in mediaeval times. From 1198 the first foundling wheels (ruota dei trovatelli) were used in Italy; Pope Innocent III decreed that these should be installed in homes for foundlings so that women could leave their child in secret instead of killing them. A foundling wheel was a cylinder set upright in the outside wall of the building, rather like a revolving door. Mothers placed the child in the cylinder, turned it around so that the baby was inside the church, and then rang a bell to let people know what they had done. One example which can still be seen today is in the Santo Spirito hospital at the Vatican City; this wheel was installed in mediaeval times and used until the 19th century.

In Hamburg, Germany, a Dutch merchant set up a wheel (Drehladen) in an orphanage in 1709. It closed after only five years in 1714 as the number of babies left there was too high for the orphanage to cope with financially. Other wheels are known to have existed in Kassel (1764) and Mainz (1811).

In France, foundling wheels (tours d'abandon, abandonment towers) were introduced by Saint Vincent de Paul who built the first foundling home in 1638 in Paris. Foundling wheels were legalised in an imperial decree of 1811-01-19, and at their height there were 251 in France, according to Anne Martin-Fugier, a writer on women's issues. They were in hospitals such as the Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés (Hospital for Foundling Children) in Paris. However, the number of children left there rose into the tens of thousands per year, as a result of the desperate economic situation at the time, and in 1863 they were closed down and replaced by "admissions offices" where mothers could give up their child anonymously but also received advice. The tours d'abandon were officially abolished in a law of 1904-06-27. Today in France, women are allowed to give birth anonymously in hospitals (accouchement sous X) and leave their baby there.

Read more at Wikipedia.org