I'm writing a short story at the moment, set in mid-Victorian London. A poor(ish) woman engaged to a rich businessman needs to get rid of her baby from a previous affair before her fiancé finds out. She gives her to a baby farmer but has no money, promising to pay the woman later, and for now, to take the widowed baby farmer's own 7-year-old daughter and give her to her sister, so that she can be raised as a servant to the sister's baby daughter - thus having employment, food, and a roof over her head guaranteed. Seventeen years later, the baby farmer has kept the baby (for insurance on the payment, which predictably never came), and now they're out of money, out of babies, and are facing eviction from their home. The baby farmer remembers the payment due and decides to collect, by passing the baby off as a rich society girl. She has been told that a baby wasn't paid for, but doesn't know that it was her. She meets her five half-sisters, who introduce her to their beloved mother and her new baby. What I don't know is how to get her to pay up. All the things I've thought of are illegal, and I don't want my MCs to be convicted. On the other hand, though, it's supposed to be a study of how different circumstances can make people change their morals, and asking the question of whether or not there is such a thing as good people and bad people. So does anyone have any ideas?
I don't follow on what this has to do with Anti-Heros but ok... You could have the mother work in a lowly job she would rather not have just to come up with the money. Or tell a lie and borrow the money from her rich husband. Or tell him the truth and the former. She could go into prostitution to get the money, something that may be frowned upon, but not illegal in the time period. Though it sounds like a horrible thing to do to a child, and should be considered lucky to be alive based on this: http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/baby-farmers-and-angelmakers-childcare-in-19th-century-england.html Though if you look at the Great Depression families would sell their children for food money, and they were raised much better by the people that bought them. Your Child Farming thing is far worse, than trying to do the right thing in a desperate situation. So you have to ask yourself who is the real badguy, the mother for giving up/hiding a child from her fiance, or the fiance for not wanting (or knowing about the child to offer up a position one way or the other)?
