Submitted by: Devonna Edwards

The Ideal Maternity Home, also known as the East Chester Foundling Home was located in East Chester, Nova Scotia. It was ran by an unsavory couple by the name of William and Lila (Coolen) Young. William was the Superintendent and Lila was the managing director of the facility.

Lila Gladys Coolen was the daughter of parents who were Seventh-Day Adventist and grew up in Fox Point, Nova Scotia. She began her career as a teacher, but after marrying William Peach Young, they moved to Chicago. There he changed his profession from a un-ordained Seventh Day Adventist minister to a licensed Chiropractor and Lila graduated from the National School of Obstetrics and Midwifery. In 1928 they returned to Nova Scotia and started a business called “The Life and Health Sanitarium” advertised as “Where The Sick Get Well”, which failed to produce any profit, so they decided that ‘Baby Farming’ would be more profitable. The Youngs changed the name of their establishment to “The Ideal Maternity Home” offering maternity care for both married and unwed mothers with private placement of unwanted infants. Newspaper advertisements offered unwed mothers sanctuary in a safe shelter and good adopted homes for their newborns. Their business flourished with unwed women desperate for help and soon the Home expanded from a small four bedroom house to a large structure with 54 bedrooms and fourteen bathrooms. A sizeable nursery was also built with 70 bassinets.

The new Home was picturesque on the outside, surrounded by well-kept lawns, greenery and flowers. Waterfalls and ponds were also added to the beautiful grounds.

At that time abortion was illegal and birth control was limited, so the Home met a demand for pregnant unmarried women when there was little or no support from family or community and no social programs to guide them. An illegitimate child meant the mother would be looked upon as promiscuous and the child would be labeled ‘a bastard’. Unwed mothers faced only shame and given very little sympathy for their situation. The Home offered the unwed mothers safe, discreet birthing and adoption for their infants, protecting them from prying eyes and gossip. The Youngs often changed the names of the unwed mothers and babies, making it extremely difficult to trace occupants of the Home. They charged the unwed women $500.00 in advance for room, board and other services, if they did not have the funds to pay that amount, they had to work in the home until their debt was paid off.  If the newborn expired they charged $20.00 for the funeral.  

The Lucky Ones  

The Youngs charged up to $10,000 for black market adoption of a baby and many travelled from the United States, mainly from New York or New Jersey to collect their little bundles of joy. In the U.S. adoption had the restriction of only allowing couples to adopt babies of the same religion as themselves. In the Young’s institution, that law didn’t matter to them, they did anything for a sale and would lie telling the couple that their new adopted enfant had a mother of the same religion as them. Some enfants were chosen long before the birth, but others were picked by couples looking through a glass window in the nursery. The Youngs were also said to have sold enfants belonging to local married women, who had their delivery at the Home and were told that their baby had died. The Youngs greed knew no bounds and the money flowed in.

Murder In The First Degree! 

Any new born enfant that displayed illness or deformity of any kind were considered unadoptable and were of no financial gain to the Youngs so they were executed. These little tykes were fed a diet of water and molasses until they slowly starved to death, which took about two weeks. When death occurred they were placed in wooden pine butter boxes obtained from the LaHave Creamery Co. Ltd. in Bridgewater, NS. These enfants became known as “The Butter Box Babies”. These boxes became the newborns coffins and no identification was ever put on them. They were secretly buried in back of the Ideal Maternity Home and in the bushes behind The Seventh-Day Adventist Cemetery in Fox Point, property once owned by Lila’s family. Some were thrown into the sea and others were thrown into the Home’s furnace; casted away as if they were just household trash. It was whispered in the community that as many as between 400 to 600 babies died in the Home. There are no records left to confirm how many babies were born and died there, because fire in 1962 destroyed everything. There were no accurate records kept of births and deaths at the Home anyway. Some pregnant women in the Home were suspicious of the Young’s wrongdoing, but were afraid to voice them because Lila’s retaliation would be harmful to them, while others kept silent about the newborn’s neglect because of their shame. 

In 1988 due to a CBC television news report regarding the former Ideal Maternity Home, there was finally proof of the crimes committed in the Home. Former employees came forth and told about the starvation tactics used in the home, also a   previous worker Glen Shatford said he buried many babies who died at the Home. He quietly buried them in butter boxes without markers or ceremony.   
Years later some enfants remains were eventually unearthed, but it was impossible to prove their cause of death.  

Justice Took A Long Time

In 1933 The Nova Scotia Child Welfare Director and Health Minister forced them to hire a Registered Nurse for the Home.
By 1935 rumours were rampant in the community of East Chester and the Public Health began their investigation, but proof was hard to get as the slippery Youngs hid their criminal activity very well. It took years before the authorities gathered evidence against them and finally in 1945 an inspection in the Home showed significant signs of neglect and abuse. Conditions there were found to be unclean, including dirty bedding and an abundance of flies and overcrowding. Some infants were so malnourished that they weighted in at only half the weight they should have been for their age. Finally other mothers and pediatricians voiced their complaints against the Youngs and they lost their license with orders that the Home was to close in November 1945. The ‘evil’ Youngs defied the law and continued operation illegally, but that spring they were again charged on eight counts. This time they were fined $150 dollars, but continued their wicked work. Again in June 1946 they went to court on charges of illegally selling babies to four U.S. couples, but were only given a fine of $428.90.   

At last, in 1947 The Montreal Standard Publishing Company News exposed the Ideal Maternity Home and the Young’s criminal activity there. How disgraceful that it took a Montreal Newspaper to do what our hometown papers ignored. The Youngs were furious at the Company and filed a libel suit, but the case was dismissed. Due to the news article, considerable damage was done to their creditably and their business plummeted, so they closed their facility. They immediately opened another business on the same site called ‘Young’s Hotel-Rest Home-The Battle Creek of Nova Scotia’, also known as ‘Rest Haven Park’. It was advertised as delightful surroundings for retired business people and the aged. Their new business adventure failed and now heavily in debt the couple fled to Thurso, Quebec.

The Youngs were never charged for their horrendous crimes, thus escaping “The Hands of Justice” and any well deserved prison time.

William died in Quebec a few years after moving there, then Lila Young came back to Nova Scotia and started teaching again in a school near Fox Point. She died in 1969 and is buried in The Seventh-Day Adventist Cemetery at Fox Point. Her tombstone is close to where many of the murdered babies lie buried in their little butter boxes. The huge structure known as The Ideal Maternity Home burnt down on Sept.23,1962. Today The East Chester Recreation Centre occupies the site. In front of the Centre stands a monument dedicated to the babies of the Home, placed there by survivors of the Home. The Young’s former 3 storey small house survived the fire and remains standing on the property.