Part I

) deals with baby-farming, and requires that notice shall be given to the Local Authority (in Scotland the Parish Council) by the person undertaking for reward the nursing and maintenance of any infant or infants under seven years of age apart from their parents, within forty-eight hours after reception, unless the period for which it is received be only forty-eight hours or less. The notice requires the name, sex, date and place of birth of the child to be stated, where it is to be kept, and from whom it is received. The Act also provides that such a person shall notify any change in his residence or the removal or death of the infant to the Local Authority within forty-eight hours. In regard to all these matters the Act is retrospective, and necessitates persons who had undertaken nursing and maintenance of such infants before its coming into operation to comply with its provisions within a month after the commencement thereof. But it exempts any person who may have given the similar notice required by the Infant Life Protection Act of 1897, although it does not exempt any person whose duty it was to have given notice thereunder from any liability which such a person may have incurred thereunder.

A duty is imposed upon Local Authorities to inquire regarding persons willing to undertake the nursing and maintenance of infants, to appoint infant-protection visitors of either sex in so far as it provides for infant life protection and gives powers to such Local Authorities and visitors for fulfilling the requirements of the Act. It is an offence for the person undertaking the nursing to refuse to allow such visitors access to the infant or the premises in which it is kept; and, if need be, application may be made to the court for a warrant to enter the house in which an infant is farmed out, and where there is reason to believe that the Act is being contravened. It is an offence for any infant to be kept (1) by any person from whose care an infant has been removed under the Act or the Infant Life Protection Act, or (2) by any person convicted of any offence under