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Because the Catholics didn’t believe in contraception, babies kept coming. Women would injure themselves on purpose to try and kill the foetus.
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Women were described as cattle. The government tried to solve the problem but failed. Children were also brought up to be teached how to steal but could not steal until after 6.
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They couldn’t sell children until they were 12. It cost 12 pounds each child until they were 12 just on the basics.
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We think Swift is a good man in paragraphs 1-8 but he hits us with the thought of baby eating. He takes the Mick and we think he is serious in paragraphs 1-8. At 1yrs old people would eat the babies.
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Babies were thought of as cattle. Half of the baby population was killed for food and the other half were feed and looked after to breed more babies when they were older. Boys were only thought to be used to impregenent the women as only a few were needed; one male could impregnate 4 women.
Swift didn’t care about the women. Before the mother could sell, she must have made the baby plump for rich families dinner.
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28 pounds could be made from a baby.
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He is being sarcastic; saying England ruined Ireland the English depressed the Irish.
Swift makes this comment on landlords- Landlords should have the first pick of the crop (babies)
Catholics were big on Easter. They ate a lot of fish at lent and Easter. People gave up sex so children were born 9 months later. More and more catholic children were eaten. Swift doesn’t like the Catholics so his plan was to make Catholics have babies; kill them then eat them so there was less.
It was 2 shillings to raise a child and 8 to sell so mothers made a good profit. They used babies skin for gloves and boots. They sold them as food and clothing.
Soon Swift’s friends joined in with the fun and started to help him.
Soon enough another plan arised, why not eat 12-14yr olds aswell as babies?
Boys skin was hard to chew, as it was tough from all the falling down they did.
People started to disagree with Swift and tough the killing of humans for food was disgraceful.
His tale sounds so real because he has gone into so much detail.
Executed men and women were thought to be alright to eat as they were killed for doing wrong not just for food so they were eaten aswell so their corpse were sold.
Also thought inconvenient were the handicapped. Swift’s plan was working a treat, as all he really wanted was to achieve his scheme, which was to get rid of the Catholics.
After the baby idea was set of Ireland became rich again.and didn’t have to pay for their children anymore. All they had to do was make good food so the punters would come and buy it.
Soon baby plumping became a competition to see whose baby was the fattest.
Advantages of baby eating- no more domestic violence for men who feared they could kill the baby, which they needed for money.
Exporting more meat and children were tastier than animals so less livestock was killed.
Baby flesh was being bought for special occasions such as weddings.
At the end we discovered that John was actually being good to his country because he wasn’t able to benefit from this, as he’s wife was too old to conceive and child was 9yrs old, too late to eat.
