Child auction ( sv, Barnauktion, fi, Huutolaisuus) was a historical practice in
Sweden and
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
during the 19th and early 20th centuries, in which orphan and poor children were boarded out in
auction
An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...
s. The name "auction" however does not refer to actual slave auctions, as the children in these auctions were never actually bought in a legal sense, but the name has become the common name for the practice.
The children were handed over to the person asking least money from the authorities to provide for the child. The compensation was determined in descending
English auction
An English auction is an open-outcry ascending dynamic auction. It proceeds as follows.
* The auctioneer opens the auction by announcing a suggested opening bid, a starting price or reserve for the item on sale.
* Then the auctioneer accepts incre ...
s, where the children were present. The lowest bidder became the child's foster-parent and was compensated with an annual amount equal to his bid. The foster-parents provided the child the housing, upbringing and education, but the children were often used as a child labour.
Specially in the Finnish countryside the children sold in the auctions usually lived in a very bad conditions. They were also mistreated.
Child auctions were
prohibited in Sweden in 1918[ and in Finland in 1923. Although, auctions were still organized in Finland until the late 1930s. The last known child auction was held in 1935.][ Some of the children were still living with their foster-parents in the 1940s.
Among the notable people who were sold in the child auctions are the Swedish politician ]Fredrik Vilhelm Thorsson
Fredrik Vilhelm Thorsson (30 May 18655 May 1925) was a Swedish politician and shoemaker. He was Minister for Finance during three separate periods (1918–1920, 1921–1923, and 1924–1925), and Minister of Commerce and Industry in 1920.
Biog ...
, who later became the Minister for Finance of Sweden, the Finnish politicians Eino Kujanpää, Jukka Lankila and Vasili Suosaari, and the Finnish author Joel Lehtonen.
Similar practices were also carried out in other European countries, like the '' Verdingkinder'' institution in Switzerland.
See also
*Fattigauktion
Fattigauktion (Poor Auction), was a historical practice within Swedish poor relief during the 19th-century, in which paupers were auctioned off to a bidder among the parishioners willing to house them in exchange for the lowest amount of money for ...
*Rotegång Rotegång ('Walk the parish') or ''kringgång'' ('Walk around') was a historical form of poor care in the history of Sweden to support the very poorest in the peasant community.
Rotegång was practiced in the Swedish countryside already in the Midd ...
References
Social history of Sweden
Social history of Finland
Unfree labour
Child labour
Governmental auctions
Human commodity auctions
{{Finland-hist-stub