mw:'':"*^ :■:■*» INFAOT MOETALITYi ITS CAUSES AND EEMEDIES. Oh ! yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of Nature, sius of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood. Tennyson. PUBLISHED FOR THE COMMITTEE FOR AMENDING THE LAW IN POINTS WHEREIN IT IS INJURIOUS TO WOMEN. [Copies for circulation may be had from the Honorary Secretary, Miss Wolstenholme, Moody Hall, Congleton; to whom all communications should be addressed.] PRICE THREEPENCE. MANCHESTER: A. IRELAND & CO., PRINTERS, PALL MALL. 1871. INFANT MORTALITY: ITS CAUSES AND ITS REMEDIES. rvURING the Session of 1871, the member for Salford, Mr. -^ Charley, introduced into Parliament a measure, with the object of which, as set forth in its title — ^A Bill for the Better Protection of Infant Life — all good men and women must, and do, sympathise. Yet so far were these from- adopting it as their own and lending it their hearty support, that many philanthropic indi- viduals and societies received it with disapproval and distrust, and by their opposition to its provisions induced its author himself to propose that, before becoming law, the subject with which it dealt should be investigated by a Parliamentary Committee; which Com- mittee has been engaged in collecting evidence bearing, directly oi indirectly, upon the system popularly known as Baby Farming. Some of those who avow themselves responsible for this post- ponement of legislation on a point so important, and demanding such immediate reform, feel that they owe it to the public at large, and to the House of Commons in particular, to turn the delay which they have helped to occasion to account, by setting forth and, if possible, establishing the principles which have governed their conduct in this matter. The following pages will contain a brief statement of the grounds on which we — the Committee for Amending the Law in points wherein it is injurious to Women — oppose Mr. Charley's Bill ; the causes out of which, as we believe, the dangers to infant life arise, and the means whereby, in our opinion, those causes may be removed, or, at least, deprived of much of their force. We object then to the Infant Life Protection Bill on three grounds : Firstly, because it confounds together the women who take the entire responsibility of a child off the shoulders of its natural guardians, and those who only share that responsibility with one, or both, parents. To the former, a system of voluntary registration and supervision may justly be applied, (except in cases of bona fide adoption, which ought to be considered apart and treated altogether differently), because it is beyond all question that, if the child lives, the sums paid with such deserted and, in most cases, illegitimate infants, are quite inadequate to their maintenance, by how much more then, to the remuneration of the nurse. So far, therefore, as legiti- mate baby farmers^ can be placed under supervision, without thereby putting obstacles in the way of mothers anxious to con- ceal their connection with the children committed to the care of such nurses, — (all such obstacles having a tendency to increase the practice of abortion, or to substitute direct for indirect desertion and infanticide), we accept the principle of State responsibility for infant life, and are ready to lend our aid to any well-considered measure providing for the adequate fulfilment of this branch of national duty. It is State interference with the second, and far away most numerous class of nurses that we oppose, and we believe that we shall be supported in our opposition by all who have any experi- ence of the extent to which the practice of paying a neighbour to look after a child whilst its mother is at work, prevails in manufacturing towns and villages. We have ourselves a personal knowledge of districts where almost every married woman works in the mills, where, consequently, all children are left for many hours each day in the care of those who, from age or infirmity, are incapable of taking part in the industry of the place, and who most frequently resort to nursing to eke out the scanty allowance^ ^ In this pamphlet no criminal idea is connected with ne word baby -farmer ; it implies merely a woman who takes the entire and sole charge of infants, not related to her. Thus limited, the class will, we believe, be found to be a very small one, since it only includes the nurses of deserted children. ^ It is needful that this point should be borne in mind, because, though the weekly payment of 2s or 23. 6d. with an infant is altogether inadequate to defray the expense \ uiuc ' which they receive from relatives or the parish ; and we can judge, therefore, of the confusion and dismay which the Infant Life Protection Bill, were it to become law, would work throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire. It is, indeed, urged that such confusion and dismay would be altogether uncalled for, since the licensing fee is so small, and the facilities for registration so great, that no woman who desires to act as a nurse will, by this Bill, be prevented from doing so, if only she can prove her fitness for the office. Now, in the first place, we are satisfied that the licensing fee, small as it may appear, and the need of a certificate^ easily as it may be obtained, will debar many deserving, but poor women from continuing or undertaking the duties of a nurse. Looking to the smallness of the weekly payment made by parents with their infants, it is difficult to discover the margin out of which five shillings, or even half-a-crown, are to come, and the rooted aversion and distrust with which men and w^omen of the working classes regard all meddling, clerical, medical, or other- wise is well known.* We do not say that such dislike and of feeding the child, and also to leave a profit sufficient for the nurse to live upon, where the absolute necessaries of life are provided from other sources, she can gain out of it a trifle towards tea or butter, which form for her the luxuries of existence ; and because, in all such cases, it is inadmissible to point to the smallness of the sum paid with the nurselings as leading necessarily to their destruction. ^ It is difficult for the rich to judge rightly what constitutes, for the poor, a large or small tax upon their eai'nings. How is it possible for men who spend on a single cigar the sum which would provide a poor woman for a whole week with all the indulgences to which she ever aspires, or, with a single glass of rare wine, swallow down a sum equal to her entire means of livelihood for the same period, to pronounce, authorita- tively, that a fee is moderate and one that she can afford to pay ? Take the Hcensing fee in this case as five shillings, and sixpence as the sum which the nurse would set aside v/eekly to be spent upon luxuries ; that gives us ten weeks, during which, in con- sequence of the proposed philanthropic change in the law, she would have to content herself with the barest necessaries of life. * One of our committee lately visited a woman living in a silk manufacturing village in Cheshire, who has long been in the habit of taking in a baby to add to the little income which she draws from a tiny shop. This woman, one in whose hands any mother might safely trust, her child, when told of Mr. Charley's bill, and brought to see that it would apply to her, remarked quietly, " I am fond of children; but, if that becomes law, I shall never take charge of another, and all my neighbours will say the same. Poor little things, it makes me sad for them." Within twenty yards of the house in which this woman lives, a little girl of five years of age, who, about a year and a half ago, was most severely burned, was, to the knowledge of the same member, locked up daily alone from six in the morning till 6 suspicion are reasonable, only that they exist, and must be taken into account, in forming a judgment on the probable results of the proposed Bill. But granting that no competent woman need be shut out from the care of children by the provisions of this Act, we still condemn it, on the ground that it imposes on the State an office which Nature lays upon the parents. ^ If there are to be officials to decide for the poor to what women they are to confide the rearing of their little ones, why not have others to choose the schools to which they are to send them in later years 1 The two cases are analogous, since the answer to be given in each depends upon whether or not the parents are to be held capable of understanding what is for their children's good, and loving enough to desire to promote it, when known. It is not against the licensing of women as nurses, that we protest, — a bill empowering suitable authorities to grant certificates of fitness to all nurses who desire to possess them, and can show that they merit such a distinction, would command our support, — it is to the compulsion to be put upon parents to employ none but those holding such licenses that we object. The responsibility for the child in infancy, as in later life, lies with them, and we deny emphatically that the State has any right to dictate to them the way in which it shall be fulfilled. We hold that its function ought to be confined to the imposing of penalties for the culpable neg- lect of this, as of any other department of parental duty. If through indifference, ignorance, or wilful malice, parents place their infants in untrustworthy hands, and the child suffers in consequence, the law should punish them, equally with the nurse. noon, and again from one in the afternoon till six, while the mother worked in the mill, food being placed on a table beside the sofa, on which the little creature, all swathed in cotton avooI, was laid. In another village, near which the same member resides, a child of two years old, left in the charge of a sister of five, whilst the parents were at the mill, was burned to death, before the passer by, who heard her cries, could burst open the locked door to reach her. In these cases, it was by the parents' deliberate choice, prompted no doubt by motives of economy, that the children were not left with a nurse, but such instances may be indefinitely multiplied if nurses are either not to be had, or only to be obtained with increased trouble and expense ; unless, indeed, Mr. Charley and his friends contemplate offering to Parliament, simultaneously with their Infant Life Protection Bill, a measure to provide all parents with incomes, out of which they can afford to pay the five or seven shillings, without which, medical authorities inform us, a nurse cannot properly provide for the infants under her charge. I Let self-interest and a wholesome fear of penalties be thrown, by all means, into the same scale with natural affection, but beyond such precautions against their exercising their right to choose a nurse, carelessly or wickedly, the State should forbear to limit in any way their perfect freedom of action, in this as in all other matters connected with the rearing and maintenance of their families. what would the ladies of England say, if some philanthropic member of the House of Commons was to bring forward a mea- sure for licensing nurse-maids, and forbid them to employ any girl who could not produce such an official testimony to her compe- tence ? Yet in cases, and they are not rare, where the mother, absorbed in social duties or pleasures, leaves her children entirely to the care of servants, the need for such State interference may be absolutely the same. It is not alone the offspring of the poor who fall victims to ignorance or neglect, and unless Parliament is prepared to sanction the interference of the State in the selection of all persons to whom parental duties are to be deputed, it ought to content itself with imposing and inflicting punishment where such duties have been carelessly or culpably devolved upon incom- petent substitutes, for it is of the essence of a just law that it shall be of so wide an application that none who violate its provisions shall escape its penalties.^ Secondly, we object to the Infant Life Protection Bill because by increasing officialism, police interference, and espionage, it * It is urged in favour of inspecting all n\irses, that in the baby farms of the North of England, where children are only taken by the day, narcotics are so com- monly resorted to as a means of quietening them, that an extra threepence or sixpence is charged weekly with each infant, where the drug is found by the nurse. The persons who draw from this statement a conclusion favourable to the inspection of all such nursing establishments fail, it seems to us, to perceive that it would equally warrant an inspection of all households in those districts containing children ; for if the parents furnish the narcotics to the nurse, or pay at a higher rate that she may find them herself, the natural inference to be drawn from such conduct is that, had the child remained at home they would not have scrupled to drug it themselves. The real remedies in this case are, firstly, to dispel the ignorance which leads thousands of men and women to regard opium as a legitimate cure for infant-restless- ness and pain ; secondly, whilst engaged in spreading the knowledge which will cut away the root of the practice, to put such difficulties in the way of people's procuring poisonous drugs as shall hinder their indiscriminate use ; and, lastly, to make parents understand that, if the children whom they leave to the care of strangers are drugged and die, they will be included with the nurse in an indictment for murder or man- filaughter, as the case may be. tends to add to the already oppressive burden which the rate- payers have to bear, and to weaken in the community that sense of responsibility to conscience and to God in which virtue, national as well as personal, has its root. On referring to the reply of the Infant Life Protection Society to a memorial of the National Society for Woman's Suffrage objecting to the proposed measure, we find it stated that there is to be only one Registrar at the central office in London, and that all other functions created by the Act are to be entrusted to the present parish medical officers. But whether exercised by old officials or new, fresh duties, we suppose, entail fresh pay. Now, we cannot believe that, even in the case of deserted child- ren, the license fees demanded from the nurses, and which, we are of opinion, they will often be unable to pa}^, can possibly cover all the expenses attendant on the proposed system, with the excep- tion of the salary assigned to the Head Registrar in London ; and if to them were added all legitimate children boarded out by the day, the number of inspectors, and, consequently, the cost of inspection, would be enormously iu creased.^ We would have it clearly understood that we have no desire to win over the ratepayers to our views by pandering to their often selfish and short-sighted dislike to any additional expenditure of public money. Every object that can be shown to be of imperative necessity, and incapable of due attainment by private effort, we are willing to see supported by the public at large, and that chiefly on economical grounds, because we know that for every pound required, but not spent, in preventing evils, the community, sooner or later, will have to give two, for their punishment or their cure. But believing, as we do, that the enforced inspection of children possessing natural guardians, is unnecessary and unwise, we feel ourselves authorised to take objection to the expense which such inspection would entail, and to bring this side of the question promineritl}'' before the minds of those with whom we know it will have weight; though we ourselves lay more stress on the other consideration. We are convinced that the whole community ^ The system, once fully established, we have a strong susijicion based upon the statements of medical men themselves, that the inspectors Vk^ould soon find the five shillings fee an inadequate remuneration for their time and trouble, and strike for higher pay. suffers by every attempt made to lessen the number of personal duties or the amount of personal responsibility. The moral facul- ties of man, like his physical and intellectual powers, grow and strengthen by use, and to diminish the force of the motives which impel him to exercise them, is therefore to run the risk of dwarfing and weakening the highest side of his nature/ JWe cannot forbear from calling attention to the recent total and terrible collapse of that country in w^hich officialism has attained to its greatest height ; a collapse which competent judges attribute largely to the helplessness and ignorance engendered by a political system which trusts nothing to the people and everything to officials. It is not the actual number of officials to be called into being by the Infant Life Protection Bill, nor yet the additional powers to be confided to them, which awakens our distrust, so much as the tendency to multiply the departments of life taken out of the hands of private persons to be given over to the State, manifested in this and many kindred proposals. Believing, as we do, that social improvement, to be permanent, must spring out of an increased sense of duty, a wider knowledge, and a deeper love of right in the individuals composing the State, we have no hesitation in declaring that we shall invariably oppose every measure calculated to weaken individual responsibility and to restrict the objects which do or ought to call it forth. Thirdly, we object to the Infant Life Protection Bill because it merely aims at removing the apparent and proximate causes of the fearful mortality prevailing among nurse-children, whilst it leaves the real and ultimate causes untouched. Referring again to the reply of the Infant Life Protection Society from which we have already quoted, we find that it answers this objection, by falling back upon that great stronghold of men who object to all inquiry into first causes, all efforts to base legislation upon first principles, the argument that the facts are there, and being there, must be dealt with. Now, -^e by no- means depreciate the importance of facts — indeed, we are specially anxious to ascertain and classify them ; but we look upon them ' Those "who have witnessed in private life the extraordinary influence exercised on character by the imposition of new duties and responsibilities, an influence so great, in the case of young persons, as almost to appear to create in them powers which they did not before possess, will be able to realise the force of the same argument as applied to communities. 10 as results of causes, as illustrations of the just application or the abuse of principles ; and we hold that the only successful way of modifying them is to investigate those causes and principles, and legislate upon the knowledge thus obtained. "Well, then," say Mr. Charley's supporters, "bring in a Bill based upon a knowledge of causes and principles, if you like ; but why hinder us from passing a measure which will check infanticide, whilst you are seeking how to cure it ? It is the Bastardy Law that is in fault ; attack that." We are quite aware of the defects of the Bastardy clauses in ■ the Poor Law, about which we shall, by-and-by, have much to say; but we cannot agree to the proposal to allow one injurious measure to become law, whilst we are endeavouring to amend another. So far from checking infanticide and diminishing infant mortality, Mr. Charley's Bill will, in our opinion, increase both. We also know by experience that legislating against effects tends to distract the attention of Parliament and the people from the causes out of which they arise. Having done something to lessen an evil, it is only natural that men should rest on their oars, or turn to the study of some other grievance, thankful that, for a season, there is one disagreeable subject at least which they cannot be called upon to consider. Yet this is a satisfaction that can only legitimately be enjoyed when the root of the whole matter has been reached, when the springs of evil have been dried up. This brings us to the second point, on which we desire to lay before the public a clear statement of our opinions, viz., the causes to which, in our eyes, infanticide and infant mortality are directly traceable, leaving those to which they are indirectly traceable to be brought to light in the course of our investigation. These causes, after long and anxious consideration of the whole subject, we feel justified in asserting to be : 1.; — The ignorance and poverty of women ; 2. — The seduction of children and young girls ; 3. — The difficulty experienced by the mothers of illegitimate children in finding employment by which they can earn enough to maintain their infants and themselves. 1. — That most women are painfully ignorant, and wretchedly poor, is beyond dispute. There is abundant evidence to show that multitudes of men receive in childhood a most defective 11 education, sometimes no education at all, and can, in after years, with difficulty procure for themselves the barest necessaries of life; and it is also well known, that both in the matter of education and in that of employment, the condition of women is worse than that of men.^ Take what class we may, the same sad truths stare us always in the face, that less money, less time, less thought, is bestowed upon the training of girls than upon that of boys; that fewer ways of gaining a livelihood are open to women than to men ; and that for work done by the former, even if it be equal in quality to that done by the latter, the remuneration is usually less.^ Now ignorance and poverty are usually either the causes or the conditions of the sin of which infanticide and baby farming proper are the results. To the avoidance of evil, a knowledge of good is essential, and that knowledge is undoubtedly not instinctive, though the impulse may ® From no employment are women excluded by law ; but custom, the unwritten rules of Trades' Unions and professional guilds of every degree, and the regulations of governmental departments do, virtually, exclude them from many occupations for which they are naturally well qualified ; and, in those from which they are not altogether excluded, they are admitted only to the lowest and least skilled departments, for which, by reason of the great fatigue and exertion undergone therein, they are physically least suited. In the same manner there exists no law enacting that girls shall be worse educated than boys ; but their exclusion from a share in the educational endowments of the nation does really shut them out from all higher intellectual training, and we have ample proof that girls of all classes are expected to receive a worse education than boys, in the facts that in the Government Training Colleges less money is paid for the instruction of female teachers than of male ; that in all schools a lower salary is paid to a mistress than to a master, and that some of our recently instituted school boards have, by their bye-laws, established a lower scale of fees for girls than for boys, ® Extract from Mr. Dudley Baxter's tables, showing the earnings by classes of the men and women, boys and girls, in England and Wales. Class IV. Higlur Skilled Labour and Manufactures.— Full Work : Average Weekly Wage*. Subdivision I. Subdivision II. s. d. s. d. s. d. Men 35 28 to 30 Boys 10 9 Women 8 6 9 6 Gkls 6 6 6 6 Class V. Lower Skilled Labour and Manufactures.- Full Work : Average Weekly Wages. Subdivision III. Subdivision IV. s. d. s. d. s. d. Men 25 23 to 21 Boys 8 7 6 Women 9 6 10 Girls 6 6 6 12 be so, which, when right is once known, prompts to its performance; and numbers of girls are reared under circumstances fatal to the acquisition of any such knowledge, so far as personal purity and chastity are concerned ; whilst the direct teaching of virtue which might, to some extent, counteract the evil influences with which from their birth they are surrounded, never reaches them at all.i'^ But it is not alone to moral ignorance that illegitimate births and infanticide are due, but also to ignorance of physical facts. Many girls are led astray without the faintest previous knowledge that the result of their weakness will probably be to make them mothers. The assertion is so terrible a one that our readers may well shrink from accepting it; but it is literally true, as we shall now proceed to show by passing to the consideration of the second cause to which we have attributed infanticide and excessive mortality among illegitimate infants, — viz., the seduction of children and young girls ; and we know of no better way of vindicating the Class VI. Unskilled Labour and Agriculture.— Full Worlc : Average Weekly Wages. Subdivision V. Subdivision VI. Subdivision Vir, Subdivision VIII. s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. Men 20 to 15 14 14 6 to 10 6 Boys 6 6 4 6 6 Women ... 9 5 6 7 12 Girls 7 6 4 6 7 5 In analysing the preceding tables we find that they give the following instructive results : — Firstly, that the average earnings of all the women of the manual labour classes in England and Wales amount weekly to 9s. 4|d. Secondly, that a woman's weekly earnings are about three-fifths less than those of a man, whereas the weekly earnings of a girl are only one-fifth less than those of a boy. Thirdly, that the proportion betwixt the wages of a woman and those of a girl is as 10 to 7, and that betwixt the wages of a man and those of a boy as 3 to ] . The difference betwixt the possible advance of a boy's earnings and those of a girl is due to the fact that the latter is practically excluded from all branches of skilled labour, an exclusion which proves clearly that her industrial training is as neglected as her intellectual training. ^" We desire to record here our conviction that the circumstances which often place chastity beyond the very conception of the poor, are by no means equally fatal to other virtues. Patience, courage, longsuffering, unselfishness, flourish in the midst of physical filth and moral impurity, serving, by their presence, not only to vindicate the inherent nobleness of human nature, but also to impose silence upon those who would fain have us believe that in woman the capacity for goodness begins and ends with chastity. 13 soundness of our judgment in this matter, than simply to print and analyse a table furnished to us by the Rescue Society. 2.- TABLE OF THE AGES AT WHICH THE WOMEN AND GIRLS RECEIVED INTO THE HOMES OF THE RESCUE SOCIETY WERE FIRST LED ASTRAY. Years. 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Above 19 Total, 1861 1 4 1 11 11 36 64 78 81 60 41 85 473 1862 1 2 2 1 15 18 31 65 54 65 49 33 53 389 1863 1 2 10 3 29 26 47 63 63 48 37 24 63 416 1864 2 4 9 10 37 28 53 52 80 47 56 36 58 472 1865 1 3 5 16 11 61 46 61 59 94 63 58 25 44 547 1866 1 1 5 7 12 7 73 29 60 50 90 53 56 32 62 538 1867 1 4 3 8 14 11 68 35 53 57 58 70 42 34 56 ! 513 1 1868 1 3 2 6 19 15 47 30 43 69 66 56 34 36 48 474 1869 3 1 9 17 12 31 29 41 60 78 64 37 30 59 471 1870 1 5 1 11 16 8 49 29 42 52 91 94 55 37 61 551 4 1 ¥ 17 54 119 79 421 ^281 1 1 467 591 752 1 1 641 484 328 589 4,844 It will be seen from the above table, that of the whole number of women admitted by the society into their various homes during the last ten years, the proportion of those seduced before attaininf^ their nineteenth year, is to those who fell after that age, as four to one ; that the maximum risk of seduction is run by girls in their seventeenth year, the figures falling in the following year from 752 to 641, and in the year succeeding that again to 484, whilst at 1 9 the risk has been reduced by considerably more than one-half. It is also worthy of note that, although, on the whole, the table bears testimony, column by column, to a steady increase in the numbers seduced, until that maximum is reached, yet there are two excep- tions to the steadiness of this advance — a larger number of children being led astray at ten than at eleven ; whilst at twelve years of age, the figures rise from 79 in the preceding year to 421, to fall, in the succeeding column, to 281, about the number which, had the rule of progressive increase been observed throughout, we should have expected it to show. The conclusions to be drawn from this table, and from the kindred experience of the Homes of Hope and other societies, are that many girls are led astray in total ignorance of the ordinary results of sexual intercourse ; and that if they can be shielded from temptation until sense and principle have had time to grow, and until experience has taught its lessons, the danger of their yielding to it afterwards is but small. That they are not so shielded is due in part to the helplessness and indifference of their 14 parents or other natural guardians, but in still larger measure to a cause which will shortly engage our attention, namely, the defective state of the law relating to offences against women and children. The difficulty experienced by the mothers of illegitimate chil- dren in finding employment by which they can earn enough to maintain their infants and themselves requires no proof from facts and figures. Of two girls, the one of unstained, the other of tarnished character, both willing and anxious to work, it is certain that ninety-nine persons out of every hundred will, most naturally, give the preference to the former ; and the demand for the labour of women, so limited are the branches of industry in which it is employed, being insufficient to absorb the supply, those who have erred are almost necessarily driven by the pres- sure of want to rid themselves of children they cannot feed, by desertion or murder. Thus, that poverty" which, at the beginning of this investiga- tion, we recognised as one of the conditions of seduction, and therefore as a remote cause of infanticide, and excessive mortality among illegitimate children, reappears at this later stage, as the 11 In support of our belief that poverty is the almost invariable cause of the desertion of infants hy their mothers, we will cite the last report of the Cumberland- street Home for Deserted Mothers and Infants. Speaking of the mothers who have gone forth to service from the institution, leaving their children in its charge, Miss Broughton, the author of the report, says :— " They all pay readily for them, and we have never— as it has sometimes been supposed we should— had an instance of a mother deserting her child." The italics are Miss Broughton's, not ours. A paper published by the Committee of the Homes of Hope, speaking of the young mothers received by that society, says : — " In almost every case they have turned out well." We are also authorised to quote from the letters of three ladies all possessing extensive knowledge on this painful subject, and each dwelling in a different part of England. Miss Nicholson, of Devonport, writes that she has known cases of mothers who were brought by desertion, contemptuous treatment, and starvation, to the verge of madness, if not to a condition of positive insanity, but who, having been rescued and helped, now manifest such love for their children as to undergo very painful sacrifices for their sakes. It would be impossible, without breach of confidence, to describe the extent to which, in regard to infanticide, some of these poor mothers were tempted. Mrs. Evans, of Stroud, states that there is scarcely any infanticide in that neigh- bourhood, yet the women seldom affiliate their children, partly because such a proceed- ing, by embittering the man, destroys their chance of marriage, and partly because, the labour of women being in demand and weU paid, they can support them themselves. Lastly, Mrs. Whitehead, writing from Rawtenstall, and referring to the upper valley of the Irwell, says, "No infanticide; work for women plentiful, their wages high." The connection between the two statements is obvious. 15 immediate, often the sole, motive prompting to the crimes of child murder and desertion. We have said that children and young girls are chiefly led astray for lack of those external safeguards against temptation of which the young, of both sexes and all classes, stand equally in need, and we have assigned, as the ground for their defenceless condition, the helplessness and indifference of their parents or other natural guardians. Here again, the terms helplessness and indifference stand in reality for poverty and ignorance. He who is too poor to keep his girls under his own roof, but must, of necessity, send them forth, from their earliest years, to tread alone the lowest streets of our cities, the loneliest of our country lanes, or to pursue amongst companions of both sexes, and every shade of character, the occupation by which they contribute their mite to the household fund, is literally, for many hours of each day, helpless to protect • them ; and he who has never learned the beauty and worth of personal purity, never been taught the responsibility which lies on him to preserve his children from every moral taint, will, as a rule, think little of the temptations to which his daughter may be exposed, and hardly more of her sin, should she succumb to them. And yet her salvation, physical and moral, depends upon her receiving that protection which he cannot afford her. How is this awful diflS-culty to be surmounted ? We can discover but two ways in which it can be done — either we must place all parents in a position to give their daughters the instruction and protection which their weakness and inexperience demand, or else the State must devise measures to lessen the dangers to which girls are exposed. The former alternative is, in the present state of society, im- practicable, since no legislation can at once remove, or materially diminish, the existing mass of ignorance and poverty which ©rushes down many thousands of our adult fellow-countrymen to the level of the brutes ; though much may, perhaps, be done, by the infliction of penalties for culpable neglect of parental duty, to develop that sense of responsibility for their children's virtue which is so weak among the men and women of the poorer classes. We find ourselves, therefore, thrown back upon the latter alterna- tive, and if, on examining the existmg laws for the protection of children and young girls, we find that all has already been done 16 in til at direction which it is wise or safe for the State to under- take, we shall be compelled to rank early seduction, with all its miserable consequences, as among the evils which, in our day, admit of no cure. Anxious, therefore, on the one hand, to be able to show that there was room for great improvement in English legislation relating to seduction, yet, on the other, unwilling to be convinced that English statesmen could make and, up to the present hour, maintain unjust and unwise laws on a subject of such vital im- portance to the physical and moral welfare of the community, we began our investigation, and were soon at once relieved and shocked to discover that the special protection which the State, in this country, affords to its female subjects, ends with their twelfth year, and, after their tenth, is so slight as to be of little practical value. Briefly, it is a felony, by the law of England, to seduce a child under ten, a misdemeanour, to seduce one under twelve, yet the statistics of the Rescue Society already quoted, prove that the period of life at which girls are most exposed to dangers and least strong to resist them^^ is just that which lies betwixt their thirteenth and their nineteenth year. All mothers know that they risk corrupting their daughters' minds by opening their eyes too early to the dangers against which, as the law declines to protect them, they must needs learn to defend themselves. The age at which this knowledge may safely be imparted varies, of course, according to certain physical and moral differences ; but, we think, most experienced mothers would refuse to sanction its being placed below sixteen. It will, perhaps, be objected that, though it may be wise and right to fix sixteen as the age below which knowledge of the kind alluded to ought not to be imparted to young girls of the upper classes, it is absurd to place it anything like so high in the case of 1 '^ The latter cause has, probably, far iDore to do with the number of early seductions than the former. We see no reason, in the nature of the physical constitution either of men or women, why the temptations to which the chastity of the latter are exposed, should be less strong or numerous after eighteen than before, except in so far as the wider knowledge of life and the greater moral strength which comes to them with years, tend to discourage the former from attempts which they know will either fail, or, if successful, be still attended with more trouble ; and, as it may be assumed that the chief motive impelling the seducer is personal gratification, not love for the seduced— for how is love compatible with subsequent desertion ?— he is likely, as a rule, to prefer the victims whom it costs him least time and labour to sacrifice. 17 the daughters of the poor, the circumstances of whose lives must necessarily enlighten them, even if their parents do not ; and that, as a matter of fact, the age at which the State has seen fit to withdraw its special protection from young girls, lies far beyoad the limit at which most of them can plead ignorance in excuse for sin. Granted, — but if the knowledge thus sadly acquired tends, by corrupting the child's mind, to render her more, instead of less, susceptible to temptation, more, instead of less, liable to err, does not this very precocity entitle her to a larger measure, a longer continuance, of State care and protection ?^^ It is a felony^* punishable with fourteen years imprisonment to allure a girl, being an heiress, from home, with intent to seduce, or even to marry her, without her parents' consent, below the age of twenty-one ; it is no offence to seduce a child having no wealth or prospect of wealth, for whom character is the only passport to the employments by which she can hope to escape starvation, as soon as she has completed her twelfth year. So incongruous, so monstrous does such legislation appear to us, that we are reluctantly driven to conclude either that, in the i3 "If your children had to hear daily the words which ours hear, and to see daily the sights which ours see, they would not be pure long ; and you'll never have women honest till Parliament cares for girls till they get sense to care for themselves." Words spoken by a working woman to a member of our committee. '* 24 and 25 Vict., c. 100, clause 5^5 : — " Where any woman of any age shall have any interest, whether legal or equitable, present or future, absolute, conditional, or contingent, in any real or personal estate, or shall be a presumptive heiress or coheiress, or presumptive next of kin, or one of the presumptive next uf kin to any one having such interest, whosoever shall, from motives of lucre, take away or detain such woman against her will, with intent to marry or carnally know her, or to cause her to be married or carnally known by any other person, and whosoever shall fraudulently allure, take away, or detain such woman, being under the age of twenty-one years, out of the possession and against the will of her father or mother, or of any other person having the lawful care or charge of her, with intent to marry or carnally know her, or to cause her to be married or carnally known by any other person, shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof, shall be liable, at the discretion of the Court, to be kept in penal servitude for any term not exceeding foiirteen years, and not less than three years, or to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour ; and whosoever shall be convicted of any offence against this section shall be incapable of taking any estate or interest, legal or equitable, in any real or per- sonal property of such woman, or in which she shall have any such interest, or which shall come to her as such heiress, coheiress, or next of kin as aforesaid, and if any such marriage as aforesaid shall have taken place, such property shall, upon such conviction, be settled in such manner as the Court of Chancery in England or Ireland shall, upon any information at the suit of the Attorney General appoint." 18 case of the daughters of the poor, the law relating to seduction does not desire to prevent the wrong, but simply to defer it until children have undero^one certain constitutional changes, or else that its authors were ignorant of the most common facts concern- ing the physical and moral nature of women, and consequently unfit for the difficult and delicate task of legislating for them. That men of brutal instincts put the former interpretation upon that law, regarding it ratlier in the light of a license than of a prohibition, is sufficiently proved by the significant figures to which we drew attention when analysing the table furnished to us by the Rescue Society. At 9 years old, 54 children were led astray, (we are really at a loss to know what word to employ, all those that imply blame to the victim appearing to us entirely out of place) ; at 10, when the offence ceases to be felony, 119 ; at 11, 79 were sacrificed, at 12, when their last defence is withdrawn, 421 ; from which terrible figures we draw two inferences, more terrible still : the first, that there are men, who, knowing the law, deliberately wait to indulge their passions till the hour when they can do so with diminished risk or total impunity ; the second, that the violators of these little ones must be persons standing towards them in positions of trust, near relatives, guardians, masters ; — they being the only men likely to know their ages with sufficient accuracy to be able to use that knowledge for their own protection, and in the case of children over 11, their victims' more complete ruin — pleading consent in legal justification of their crime. Laws which produce such results may satisfy some statesmen so fully, as to leave them freedom and quiet of mind to meditate their philanthrophic schemes for protecting infant life by the registration and inspection of nurses. Not only do they not content us, but we shall accept as final no changes that may be made in them, until the State shall afford to all its female subjects, ir- respective of wealth or poverty, up to the age of 17,^^ full, and up to the age of 19, partial protection against the dangers with 1* We do not mean that no girls are capable of defending their own honour before seventeen years of age, but only that we are not justified in expecting those most exposed to temptations, and least prepared by previous training and example to resist them, to do so. It is the absence of good influences, quite as much as the presence of temptations, which calls for the interference of the State. 19 which there is no security that they will be able to cope earlier. And, as we before avowed our intentions of opposing all legislation tending to shift on to official shoulders the responsibilities of men, so now we declare our determination to oppose all legislation which does not rest upon this, to us, indisputable truth, — that it is better to remove the causes and conditions of evils, than to control or soften their results, and to persist in that opposition, unless con- vinced, in each separate instance, that all possible means of prevention have been employed and failed, and that all laws calculated to encourage or facilitate the evils complained of, have been repealed. Now, in the particular case before us, will Parliament have done all that this principle demands of it, when it has made the needful alterations in the law relating to seductions ? Certainly not, since, on examiniug the subject more closely, we find that state respon- sibility for infanticide and the excessive mortality prevailing among illegitimate infants, is not confined to the law limiting to so extremely early an age the period during which girls shall be defended against the selfishness and brutality of men, but that the charge of contributing to those evils can, with equal justice, be brought . against other parts of our legalised social system. Let us for a moment return to figures. According to Mr. Curgenven, 50,000 women become, in England, yearly, the mothers of illegitimate 'infants, and of these 50,000, taking the proportion of four to one obtained from the Rescue Society's statistics, 37,500 are seduced before the age of nineteen. Unfortunately, we have no like data from which to calculate the ages of the seducers, but Ave believe the majority of them to be men, not boys ; and we ask on which of the two sinners, through whose sin an innocent and helpless human creature is brought into the world, the mature man or the immature girl, (child would be often the more appropriate term, since motherhood at fifteen is no unusual occurrence) does the chief moral responsibility for its life and welfare rest ? Again, what is the social position held by these 50,000 mothers, what the educational advantages they have enjoyed ? The reports of such associations as the Rescue Society and the Homes of Hope, leave no doubt that they belong chiefly to the lower social strata. 20 and are, as a rule, very imperfectly educated, often not educated at all. Here, too, there being no associations for the rescue and reformation of fallen men, we cannot speak positively as to the social position and education of the seducers ; but we know that whatever may be the truth as regards the whole number of seductions, where seduction is followed by desertion ^^ and those are the instances in which there is reason to apprehend infanticide — the betrayers are often better born, better bred,^' better taught, than the betrayed ; and once more we ask : on which of the two transgressors, to whose transgression an innocent and helpless human creature owes the misfortune of its birth, on him who possesses and knows more, or on her who possesses and knows less, does the chief moral responsibility for its life and welfare lie ? Again, we answer boldly, on the man.-^^ But legal responsibilities must correspond to moral ones. Let us not be misunderstood ; we do not say that it is possible, or even advisable, to make legal co-extensive with moral responsibility ; the principle which we maintain, and of which, in as far as we can influence it, we mean to make the future legislation of England ^^ Mrs. Evans, of Stroud, in a letter already cited, writes : — "Public opinion in the operative class usually compels marriage where a man has seduced a girl. " It is well known that in the labouring classes, though seduction is too often the result of keeping company, marriage generally precedes the birth of a child, and no stigma, in such cases, attaches even to the woman. 1 ' We use the current terms, but only to protest against them. All men are nobly bom in virtue of the humanity which God bestows and Christ ennobles ; and he, alone, is better bred than his brethren, in whom the moral nature, which all alike possess, is cultivated to bring forth in larger measure the fruits of the Spirit. *^ We are well aware that the mothers of childr^ placed in baby farms are not all of a class about which statistics can be obtained from the Kescue Society or any other association of like character. Some are ladies ; others, of whom this cannot exactly be said, are, at least, not the daughters of poor men ; but if the argument of the superior social condition of the seducer does not touch them, that which is based upon his superior age and knowledge undoubtedly does so ; indeed, we are inclined to believe that it is just in their case that the disparity in the relative ages of the seducer and the seduced would, on examination, be found to be the greatest ; firstly, because the opportunities for familiar intimacy with their daughters, which parents in the higher ranks of society deny to young men, they often freely afiford to those whom they look upon as their own friends and contemporaries ; secondly, because girls are least .ikely to be on their guard with men in whom they see their parents place trust ; thirdly, because poverty, the element which, at any age, may enter into the sum of the causes to which female unchastity can be traced, being, in their case, absent, more weight must be given to ignorance, inexperience, or immaturity of judgment, — all causes which exercise their chief influence in early youth. 21 tlie expression, is that there must be no contradiction betwixt Acts of Parliament and the teachings of virtue and morality. Let us turn now to the clauses of the Poor Law^, treating of the claims of illegitimate children upon their parents ^^ — merely- noting, in passing, that it is in the Poor Law that those claims must be studied, all such infants entering life as paupers — and there we shall find : — Firstly, that, under no circumstances can the father be made to contribute more than half-a-crown weekly towards the maintenance of his illegitimate child except during the first six weeks of its. existence, in respect of which period a weekly payment of five shillings may be ordered. Secondly, that unless an application for a summons against the father is made within twelve months of the birth of the child, or, if made later, the application can be substantiated by proof that within the first tw^elve months he has, by paying money towards its support, virtually acknowledged it to be his, he is absolved for ever from all legal responsibility for its life, well- being, and education. Thirdly, that if by enlisting, emigrating, or otherwise absenting himself, the father can succeed in avoiding service of the summons before the time appointed for the hearing of the application, and twelve months have elapsed from the birth of the child, his re- sponsibility for its support thereby lapses, and he cannot be com- pelled to recognise or assist it, unless, as before stated, he has contributed towards its support within the period of tw^elve months. Fourthly, that, if through neglect, ignorance, or any other cause, the mother of an illegitimate child permits the allowance made by the putative father to fall in arrear, she cannot later recover more than the amount due for thirteen weeks, whatever the length of time during which the father has neglected to make the payment ordered by the justices. Fifthly, that a father's liability to contribute two shillings and sixpence, or less, towards the maintenance of his illegitimate child 1® There is a belief very generally prevailing in the world which, as regards England, requires correction, viz. : that all children have two parents. Every child that enjoys the privilege of being bom an Englishman or an Englishwoman has, for all purposes before the law, only one— if legitimate, a father; if illegitimate, a mother. It is just possible that Nature knew best, and that some of the evils of our social state may arise out of this violation of her laws. 22 ends with its thirteenth year, or at any earlier date, should the mother marry. Sixthly, that for the further protection of the fathers of illegiti- mate children, the cost in the first instance, and also the trouble of obtaining the order, and afterwards of seeing that it is enforced, is thrown upon the mother ; parish officers of every kind being forbidden, under a penalty of 40s., to interfere in any way, unless the child has become chargeable to the parish.^^ The law relating to the responsibility of the mothers of such children is summed up in a single clause, which for the sake of its admirable clearness and simplicity we print in full : — " And be it declared and enacted, that every woman neglecting to maintain her bastard child, being able wholly or in part so to do, whereby such child becomes chargeable to any parish or union, shall be punishable as an idle and disorderly person, under the provisions of an Act made and passed in the fifth year of the reign of his late Majesty King George the Fourth, entitled : ' An Act for the punishment of Idle and Disorderly Persons, and E-ogues, 20 7 -\^-==^"-<>i' - , m>