Child auction ( sv, Barnauktion, fi, Huutolaisuus) was a historical practice in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

and Finland during the 19th and early 20th centuries, in which orphan and poor children were boarded out in auctions. 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 auctions, 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, who later became the

Minister for Finance A finance minister is an executive or cabinet position in charge of one or more of government finances, economic policy and financial regulation. A finance minister's portfolio has a large variety of names around the world, such as "treasury", ...

of Sweden, the Finnish politicians

Eino Kujanpää Eino Nikolai Kujanpää (16 January 1904 - 11 June 1980; original surname ''Syrjänen'') was a Finnish construction worker and politician. He was born in Tammela. He became a communist as a young man and in the late 1920s he went to the Soviet Uni ...

, Jukka Lankila and

Vasili Suosaari Basilius Suosaari (born Vasili Tichanoff, 4 April 1861 - 4 July 1939) was a Finnish-Australian politician and farmer. He was a Member of the Parliament of Finland for the Social Democratic Party in 1907-1908 and 1909-1910. Suosaari was born to a ...

, and the Finnish author

Joel Lehtonen Joel Lehtonen (27 November 1881 – 20 November 1934) was a Finnish author, translator, critic and journalist. He was born in Sääminki (now part of Savonlinna). His childhood was fatherless and poverty-stricken, his mother suffered from mental f ...

. Similar practices were also carried out in other European countries, like the ''

Verdingkinder Verdingkinder, "contract children",Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

References

Social history of Sweden Social history of Finland Unfree labour Child labour Governmental auctions Human commodity auctions {{Finland-hist-stub

See also

References