Definition of "by hand"

That left me an orphan and folks were at their wits’ end, so Mrs. Thomas said, what to do with me. [...] Finally Mrs. Thomas said she’d take me, though she was poor and had a drunken husband. She brought me up by hand. Do you know if there is anything in being brought up by hand that ought to make people who are brought up that way better than other people? Because whenever I was naughty Mrs. Thomas would ask me how I could be such a bad girl when she had brought me up by hand--reproachful-like.

1908, L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables