Draft Exemption One A in the Czarist conscription law, whereby a child adopted by a barren couple is exempt from conscription. A lot of people did that. The Czar in the 10th Century conscripted 8-year-old boys, and didn’t demobilize them until they were in their twenties, which Jewish families found especially grievous, since they would by then be completely estranged to their own faith. So families with a lot of kids farmed them out to childless couples, in the vain hope that the Czar’s agents would respect their own rules.
10th = 19th