There are many other things yet to be changed, both in the laws and in the
customs of this country, before child life in it will be what it ought to
be.
1. The shops of England abound with poisons specially prepared for
children. "Syrups" and "foods" as unsuitable for a baby's stomach, and as
fatal, as a bullet would be to its brain or a knife to its throat, are
sold to all comers. In some cities, coroners and medical men have a
hundred times denounced things in common use as poison to babies; and the
Press a hundred times has carried their denunciations into every street,
with absolutely no effect on the extent of their use. Boiled bread,
corn-flour, sago, "tops and bottoms," these soon make a strong, week-old
baby a sight to see.
2. Still further. Where inhuman parents by such death-dealing agents have
done their work, coroner's juries join hands against the child with the
infants' food and syrup shops, and make fatal suffering quite safe to
inflict. Almost the only persons who commit infant slaughter whom these
tribunals send to trial are those who in their tender mercies commit it
hastily and sharply. For long drawn weeks of agony in dying, inflicted by
sham foods, their custom is to request the coroner to pronounce a censure.
The coroner then congratulates the parents on the "mercifulness" of the
jury. So the grand prerogative of mercy, even, is made to serve against
wronged children.
3. But it plays its hypocritical part not at inquests alone. After a
disclosure as to conduct to a child which would have made true men
indignant, too many magistrates mildly say, "We have taken a merciful
view, and shall let you off this time." "Mercy," is this! Mercy! to whom?
To the man's suffering child? To the suffering child of other like-minded
men in the locality? The magistrate who cures a brute of his brutality,
that is the merciful magistrate--merciful to the culprit, to the country,
and to the child! Parliament has passed, and the Queen has sanctioned, a
new law, which has well been called the Children's Charter. Yet a canting
woman before the bench, with the corner of her white apron and a tear, can
wipe it all out. Even a little cant on an idle man's lips--"no work to
do"--will make some J.P.'s disloyal to both Parliament and Crown.
If I happen to be speaking to a magistrate, let me say that no man can
show "mercy" to an offender save where he is himself the person offended.
That a magistrate should forgive a parent for making a baby's back bleed
is impossible. He may lack justice towards him; he may do that, and then
slander the "twice blessed" name, by calling it Mercy. But mercy is
impossible to a magistrate to whom an appeal is made on behalf of a
suffering child, save as he is the indignant champion of the child.
4. Medical men, too, but with far more cause than all the rest, have made
child slaughter safe. Dispensaries give death certificates, knowing
nothing of the case save from the possible criminal's own mouth. And
before coroners, they certify the final not the real cause of the child's
not being alive.
5. Even charity (so called) has lent its patronage against little
children. In no country as in England do children so directly appeal to
human sensibilities; and in no other country are pitiful charities so
readily shown to them. And so it comes about, that for persons using puny
and ill children for the purposes of gain in the streets, England is
perhaps the most scandalous country in the world. A child's bad cough, two
sore eyes, or emaciation through wasting disease, is a living to its
owner. To move charity, children are made to tramp and stand about on cold
stone pavements, weary and hungry, all day long. Parents, who ought to be
flogged for such ways with children, are, because of them, kept in comfort
and idleness. For them to cure their child of its ailments, even to nurse
it, or to give it reasonable food and rest, would be to lose bread and
cheese, and pipe and beer; a sacrifice they do not think of making. And
why should they think of making it, while "lovely charity" gives its
patronage!
Take one illustrative case:--A baby nine months old, dying of starvation,
was the other day taken from the arms of a woman who was exposing its
ghastly face and thin limbs to the passers-by in Whitechapel, pleading
that she was a widow, and her child was starving. Under the new law, the
child was taken from her. It was found not to be her child. She had the
loan of it, and night after night, till eleven o'clock, she moved the
compassion of the passers-by, and out of baby's shivers, dying, she made
her living. She knew how blind and lazy "charity" patronises a wrong-doer
to a child. The wickedest, it patronises the most.
Charity has still further been against the suffering child. By its
institutions for the ill-used and destitute, in not a few cases it has
been an inducement to their ill-usage and destitution. Whilst the kind and
honest poor may do as best they can for their children, the vicious have
had theirs maintained, taught trades, and the drum and fife; and fairly
started in life. The soundest charity is not that which provides food and
homes for the destitute, but treadmills for those who make them destitute.
Not that the one ought not to be done, but that the other ought not to be
left undone.
6. Even the Gospel has been pleaded as a reason for letting the savage
have his way with his child. "Get men converted; you cannot change hearts
by laws," it is said. This is wholly true. But what is needed is not to
change hearts, but to change conduct; to make men keep blows and boots off
babies' limbs, and to put bread into sadly empty little stomachs. And a
free use of the treadmill, though it cannot do more, can do that; and does
it gloriously. And where it fails, I would use the cat. God has put a
cuticle under the skin as the final resort of argument. Where every other
part of the man is "past feeling," it is a divine duty to get at that. The
first object of a Christian nation is to protect a baby's skin, not a
man's. People speak of flogging as degrading. Degrade! can you, a man who
will batter into a shapeless thing a baby face with his fist?
It will be impossible to even mention the hosts of those especial
defilements and injuries done to girl children. They are vast in number
and incredible in kind, and include large numbers of own fathers as the
fearful criminals. Degrade _these_ men! _Degrade_ them!