THE KILLING OF PARENTS, SICK PERSONS, CHILDREN--FETICIDE
WE have found that among mankind at large there is a moral rule which
forbids people to kill members of their own society. We shall now see
that the stringency of this rule is subject to variations, depending
on the special relationship in which persons stand to one another or
on their social _status_, and that there are cases to which it does
not apply at all.
Owing to the regard which children are expected to feel for their
parents, parricide is considered the most aggravated form of murder.
Nowhere have parents been more venerated by their children than among
the nations of archaic culture, and nowhere has parricide been
regarded with greater horror. In China it is punished with the most
ignominious of all capital punishments, the so-called "cutting into
small pieces"; and in some instances, when the crime has occurred in a
district, in addition to all punishments inflicted on persons, the
wall of the city where the deed was committed is pulled down in parts,
or modified in shape, a round corner is substituted for a square one,
or a gate removed to a new situation, or even closed up altogether.[1]
In Corea the parricide is burned to death.[2] {384} Among the ancient
Egyptians, we are told, he was sentenced to be lacerated with
sharpened reeds, and after being thrown on thorns he was burned.[3] In
Exodus we read of the "smiting" of parents, but parricide is not
expressly mentioned, perhaps because the Hebrew legislator, like Solon
at Athens,[4] did not think it possible that any one could be guilty
of so unnatural a barbarity.[5] Herodotus states that the same notion
was held by the ancient Persians, who said that no one ever yet killed
his own father or mother, and that all cases of so-called parricide if
carefully examined, would be found to have been committed by
supposititious children or those born in adultery, it being beyond the
bounds of probability that a true father should be murdered by his own
son.[6] Plato says in his 'Laws':--"If a man could be slain more than
once, most justly would he who in a fit of passion has slain father or
mother undergo many deaths. How can he whom, alone of all men, even in
defence of his life, and when about to suffer death at the hands of
his parents, no law will allow to kill his father or his mother who
are the authors of his being, and whom the legislator will command to
endure any extremity rather than do this--how can he, I say, lawfully
receive any other punishment?"[7] At Athens parricides were the only
persons accused of murder who were not allowed the chance of escaping
before sentence was passed, but were instantly arrested.[8] According
to Roman Law, a committer of _parricidium_ was not subjected to any of
the regular modes of capital punishment, but for "the most execrable
of crimes" was provided "the most strange of punishments." The
criminal was sewn up in a leathern sack with a cur, a cock, a viper,
and an ape, and, when cooped up in this fearful prison, was hurled
into the sea, or into {385} some neighbouring river.[9] But by the
term _parricidium_ was not understood the murder of a parent only.
According to the 'Lex Pompeia de parricidiis,' it included the murder
of any of the following persons: an ascendant or descendant in any
degree,[10] a brother or sister, an uncle or aunt, a cousin, a husband
or wife, a bridegroom or bride, a father- or mother-in-law, a son- or
daughter-in-law, a step-parent or step-child, a patron; and Mommsen
suggests that in earlier times it had a still wider significance,
being applied to intentional homicide in general.[11] But whilst the
punishment just referred to was in other cases of _parricidium_
replaced by banishment, it was, during the Empire at least, actually
inflicted upon him who murdered an ascendant.[12]
[Footnote 1: Doolittle, _Social Life of the Chinese_, i. 338 _sq._
Smith, _Chinese Characteristics_, p. 229.]
[Footnote 2: Griffis, _Corea_, p. 236.]
[Footnote 3: Diodorus Siculus, _Bibliotheca historica_, i. 77. 8.]
[Footnote 4: Diogenes Laërtius, _Solon_, 10. Cicero, _Pro S. Roscio
Amerino_, 25. Orosius, _Historiæ_, v. 16.]
[Footnote 5: _Exodus_, xxi. 15. _Cf._ Keil, _Manual of Biblical
Archæology_, ii. 376.]
[Footnote 6: Herodotus, i. 137.]
[Footnote 7: Plato, _Leges_, ix. 869. _Cf._ _ibid._ ix. 873.]
[Footnote 8: Müller, _Dissertations on the Eumenides of Æschylus_, p.
91. _Cf._ Euripides, _Orestes_, 442 _sqq._]
[Footnote 9: _Institutiones_, iv. 18. 6.]
[Footnote 10: Unless the descendant was in the _potestas_ of him who
committed the deed.]
[Footnote 11: Mommsen, _Römisches Strafrecht_, pp. 644, 645, 612 _sq._]
[Footnote 12: _Ibid._ p. 645 _sq._]
Whilst Christianity generally increased the sanctity of human life, it
could add nothing to the horror with which parricide was regarded by
the ancients. The Church punished it more severely than ordinary
murder,[13] and so did, at least in Latin countries, the secular
authorities.[14] In France, even to this day, a person convicted of
parricide is "conduit sur le lieu de l'exécution en chemise, nu-pieds,
et la tête couverte d'un voile noir";[15] and whilst _meurtre_ is
excusable if provoked by grave personal violence or by an attempt to
break into a dwelling-house by day, parricide is never excusable under
any circumstances.[16]
[Footnote 13: Gregory III., _Judicia congrua p[oe]nitentibus_, ch. 3
(Labbe-Mansi, _Conciliorum collectio_, xii. 289). _P[oe]nitentiale
Bigotianum_, iv. 1 (Wasserschleben, _Bussordnungen der abendländischen
Kirche_, p. 453). _P[oe]nitent. Pseudo-Theodori_, xxi. 18 (_ibid._
p. 588).]
[Footnote 14: Chauveau and Hélie, _Théorie du Code Pénal_, iii. 394
(France). Salvioli, _Manuale di storia del diritto italiano_, p. 570.
In Scotland, also, parricide formerly had a place in the list of
aggravated murders (Hume, _Commentaries on the Law of Scotland_, i.
459 _sq._; for a sentence passed in 1688, see Pitcairn, _Criminal
Trials in Scotland_, iii. 198); though nowadays it is penalised in the
same way as other forms of murder (Erskine, _Principles of the Law of
Scotland_, p. 559). There never was any special punishment for
parricide in English law (Blackstone, _Commentaries on the Laws of
England_, iv. 202. Stephen, _History of the Criminal Law of England_,
iii. 95).]
[Footnote 15: _Code Pénal_, art. 13.]
[Footnote 16: _Ibid._ art. 321 _sqq._]
{386} As regards the feelings with which ordinary parricide is looked
upon by uncivilised peoples, direct information is almost entirely
wanting. It is rarely mentioned at all, no doubt because it is very
unusual.[17] Among the Kafirs of Natal, though murder is generally
punished by a fine, death is inflicted on him who kills a parent.[18]
Among the Ossetes a parricide draws upon himself a fearful punishment:
he is shut up in his house with all his possessions, surrounded by the
populace and burned alive.[19] To judge from the respect which, among
the majority of uncivilised peoples, children are considered to owe to
their parents, it seems very probable that the murder of a father or a
mother is generally condemned by them as a particularly detestable
form of homicide. But to this rule there is an important exception.
According to a custom prevalent among various savages or barbarians, a
parent who is worn out with age or disease is abandoned or killed.
[Footnote 17: Among the Omahas there have been a few cases of
parricide caused by drunkenness (Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in _Ann.
Rep. Bur. Ethn._ iii. 369). A Chukchi killed his father for charging
him with cowardice and awkwardness (Sarytschew, 'Voyage of Discovery,'
in _Collection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages_, vi. 51). In Lánda
"it is no uncommon thing for a son to murder his father in order to
step into his shoes" (_Emin Pasha in Central Africa_, p. 230). See
also Wilson and Felkin, _Uganda_, i. 224.]
[Footnote 18: Shooter, _Kafirs of Natal_, p. 103.]
[Footnote 19: von Haxthausen, _Transcaucasia_, p. 415.]
Hearne states that, among the Northern Indians, one half at least of
the aged persons of both sexes, when no longer capable of walking, are
left alone to starve and perish of want.[20] Among the Californian
Gallinomero, when the father can no longer feebly creep to the forest
to gather his back-load of fuel or a basket of acorns, and is only a
burden to his sons, "the poor old wretch is not infrequently thrown
down on his back and securely held while a stick is placed across his
throat, and two of them seat themselves on the ends of it until he
ceases to breathe."[21] The custom of killing or abandoning old
parents has been noticed among several other North {387} American
tribes,[22] the natives of Brazil,[23] various South Sea
Islanders,[24] a few Australian tribes,[25] and some peoples in
Africa[26] and Asia.[27] According to ancient writers, it occurred
formerly among many Asiatic[28] and European nations, including the
Vedic people[29] and peoples of Teutonic extraction.[30] As late as
the fifth or sixth century it was the custom among the Heruli for
relatives to kindle a funeral pile for their old folks, although a
stranger was employed to give the death wound.[31] And there is an old
English tradition of "the Holy Mawle, which they fancy hung behind the
church door, which when the father was seaventie, the sonne might
fetch to knock his father in the head, as effete and of no more
use."[32]
[Footnote 20: Hearne, _Journey to the Northern Ocean_, p. 346.]
[Footnote 21: Powers, _Tribes of California_, p. 178.]
[Footnote 22: Nansen, _First Crossing of Greenland_, ii. 331 (natives
on the east coast of Greenland). Seemann, _Voyage of "Herald,"_ ii. 66
(Eastern Eskimo). Catlin, _North American Indians_, i. 217. Lafitau,
_M[oe]urs des sauvages ameriquains_, i. 488 _sq._ Domenech, _Seven
Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of North America_, ii. 325
(north-western tribes). Lewis and Clarke, _Travels to the Source of
the Missouri River_, p. 442 (Dacotahs, Assiniboins, the hunting tribes
on the Missouri).]
[Footnote 23: von Martius, _Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika's_, i.
126, 127, 393. von Eschwege, _Brasilien_, i. 231 _sq._ (Uerequenás).
Among the Fuegians the practice in question seems to occur only
accidentally (Bridges, in _A Voice for South America_, xiii. 206).]
[Footnote 24: Codrington, _Melanesians_, p. 347. Romilly, _Western
Pacific_, p. 70 (Solomon Islanders). Brainne, _Nouvelle-Calédonie_, p.
255. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 335 _sq._ (Efatese). Seemann, _Viti_, p. 192
_sq._ Williams and Calvert, _Fiji_, pp. 116, 157 _sq._ Angas,
_Polynesia_, p. 342 (natives of Kunaie).]
[Footnote 25: Eyre, _Central Australia_, ii. 382. Dawson, _Australian
Aborigines_, p. 62 (tribes in Western Victoria).]
[Footnote 26: Arnot, _Garenganze_, p. 78 n. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_,
p. 197 _sq._ (Damaras). Kolben, _Present Stale of the Cape of Good
Hope_, i. 322, 334; Hahn, _The Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi_, p. 86
(Hottentots). Lepsius, _Letters from Egypt_, p. 202 _sq._ (Negro
tribes to the south of Kordofan). Post, _Afrikanische Jurisprudenz_,
i. 298 _sq._ Sartori, 'Die Sitte der Alten- und Krankentötung,' in
_Globus_, lxvii. 108.]
[Footnote 27: Hooper, _Ten Months among the Tents of the Tuski_, p.
188 _sq._; Dall, _Alaska_, p. 383 _sqq._ (Chukchi). Rockhill, _Land of
the Lamas_, p. 81 (Kokonor Tibetans).]
[Footnote 28: Herodotus, i. 216 (Massagetae). Strabo, xi. 8. 6
(Massagetae); xi. 11. 3 (Bactrians); xi. 11. 8 (Caspians).]
[Footnote 29: Zimmer, _Altindisches Leben_, p. 328.]
[Footnote 30: Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_, p. 486 _sqq._]
[Footnote 31: Procopius, _De bello gothico_, ii. 14. _Cf._ Grimm,
_Kleinere Schriften_, ii. 241.]
[Footnote 32: Thoms, _Anecdotes and Traditions_, p. 84.]
However cruel this custom may appear to be, something is certainly to
be said in its favour. It is particularly common among nomadic hunting
tribes, owing to the hardships of life and the inability of decrepit
persons to keep up in the march. Mr. Morgan observes that, whilst
{388} "among the roving tribes of the wilderness the old and helpless
were frequently abandoned and, in some cases, hurried out of existence
as an act of greater kindness than desertion," this practice was
unknown among the Iroquois, who "resided in permanent villages, which
afforded a refuge for the aged."[33] With reference to certain tribes
of Western Victoria, Mr. Dawson remarks that the old people are a
burden to the tribe, and, should any sudden attack be made by an
enemy, the most liable to be captured, in which case they would
probably be tortured and put to a lingering death.[34] Moreover, in
times when the food-supply is insufficient to support all the members
of a community, it is more reasonable that the old and useless should
have to perish than the young and vigorous. Hahn was told that, among
the Hottentots, aged parents were sometimes abandoned by very poor
people who had not food enough to support them.[35] And among peoples
who have reached a certain degree of wealth and comfort, the practice
of killing the old folks, though no longer justified by necessity, may
still go on, partly through survival of a custom inherited from harder
times, partly from the humane intent of putting an end to lingering
misery.[36] What appears to most of us as an atrocious practice may
really be an act of kindness, and is commonly approved of, or even
insisted upon, by the old people themselves. Speaking of the ancient
Hottentot custom of famishing super-annuated parents in order to cause
their death, Kolben remarks:--"If you represent to the Hottentots, as
I have done very often, the inhumanity of this custom, they are
astonished at the representation, as proceeding, in their opinion,
from an inhumanity of your own. The custom, in their way of thinking,
is supported by very pious and very filial considerations. 'Is it not
a cruelty.' they ask you, 'to suffer either man or woman to languish
any considerable {389} time under a heavy, motionless old age? Can you
see a parent or a relative shaking and freezing under a cold, dreary,
heavy, useless old age, and not think, in pity to them, of putting an
end to their misery by putting, which is the only means, an end to
their days?'"[37] When Mr. Hooper, hearing of an old Chukchi woman who
was stabbed by her son, made some remarks on the frightful nature of
the act, his native companions answered him:--"Why should not the old
woman die? Aged and feeble, weary of life, and a burden to herself and
others, she no longer desired to cumber the earth, and claimed of him
who owned nearest relationship the friendly stroke which should let
out her scanty remnant of existence."[38] Catlin tells us that, among
the North American tribes who roamed about the prairies, the infirm
old people themselves uniformly insisted upon being left behind,
saying, "that they are old and of no further use--that they left their
fathers in the same manner--that they wish to die, and their children
must not mourn for them."[39] In Melanesia, says Dr. Codrington, when
sick and aged people were buried alive, it is certain that "there was
generally a kindness intended"; they used themselves to beg their
friends to put them out of their misery, and it was even considered a
disgrace to the family of an aged chief if he was not buried
alive.[40] In Fiji, also, it was regarded as a sign of filial
affection to put an aged parent to death. In his description of the
Fijians Dr. Seemann observes, "In a country where food is abundant,
clothing scarcely required, and property as a general rule in the
possession of the whole family rather than that of its head, children
need not wait for 'dead men's shoes' in order to become well off, and
we may, therefore, quite believe them when declaring that it is with
aching heart and at the repeated entreaties of their parents that they
are induced to commit {390} what we justly consider a crime."[41] The
ceremony is not without a touch of tragic grandeur:--"The son will
kiss and weep over his aged father as he prepares him for the grave,
and will exchange loving farewells with him as he heaps the earth
lightly over him."[42] One reason why the old Fijian so eagerly
desired to escape extreme infirmity was perhaps "the contempt which
attaches to physical weakness among a nation of warriors, and the
wrongs and insults which await those who are no longer able to protect
themselves"; but another, and as it seems more potent, motive was the
belief that persons enter upon the delights of the future life with
the same faculties, mental and physical, as they possess at the hour
of death, and that the spiritual life thus commences where the
corporeal existence terminates. "With these views," "says Dr. Hale,
"it is natural that they should desire to pass through this change
before their mental and bodily powers are so enfeebled by age as to
deprive them of their capacity for enjoyment."[43] Finally, we have to
observe that in many cases the old people are not only killed, but
eaten, by the nearest relatives, and that the motive, or at least, the
sole motive, for this procedure is not hunger or desire for human
flesh.[44] It is described as "an act of kindness" or as a "pious
ceremony," as a method of preventing the body from being eaten up by
worms or injured by enemies.[45] Considering that many cannibals have
an aversion to the bodies of men who have died a natural death, it is
not unreasonable to suppose that, in some instances, the old person is
killed for the purpose of being eaten, and that this is done with a
view to benefiting him.[46] But, on the other hand, the "pious
ceremony," like so many other funeral customs which are supposed to
comfort the dead, may be the survival of a practice which was
originally intended to promote the selfish interests of the living.
[Footnote 33: Morgan, _League of the Iroqnois_, p. 171.]
[Footnote 34: Dawson, _op. cit._ p. 62.]
[Footnote 35: Hahn, _op. cit._ p. 86.]
[Footnote 36: Tylor, 'Primitive Society,' in _Contemporary Review_,
xxi. 705. _Idem_, _Anthropology_, p. 410 _sq._]
[Footnote 37: Kolben, _op. cit._ i. 322.]
[Footnote 38: Hooper, _op. cit._ p. 188 _sq._ _Cf._ Sarytschew, _loc.
cit._ vi. 50; Dall, _op. cit._ p. 385; von Wrangell, _Expedition to
the Polar Sea_, p. 122.]
[Footnote 39: Catlin, _North American Indians_, i. 217.]
[Footnote 40: Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 347. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 335
_sq._ (Efatese).]
[Footnote 41: Seemann, _Viti_, p. 193.]
[Footnote 42: Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 175.]
[Footnote 43: Hale, _op. cit._ p. 65. Williams and Calvert, _op. cit._
p. 156. See also Erskine, _Islands of the Western Pacific_, p. 248.]
[Footnote 44: For instances, see Steinmetz, _Endokannibalismus_,
_passim_.]
[Footnote 45: _Ibid._ pp. 3, 5, 17.]
[Footnote 46: _Cf._ Herodotus' statement regarding the Massagetae,
i. 216.]
{391} Closely connected with the custom of doing away with decrepit
parents is the habit, prevalent among certain peoples, of abandoning
or killing persons suffering from some illness.
"The white man," Mr. Ward observes, "can never, as long as he may
live in Africa, conquer his repugnance to the callous indifference to
suffering that he meets with everywhere in Arab and Negro. The dying
are left by the wayside to die. The weak drop on the caravan road, and
the caravan passes on."[47] Among the Kafirs instances are not rare in
which the dying are carried to the bush and left to perish, and among
some of them epileptics are cast over a precipice, or tied to a tree
to be devoured by hyenas.[48] The Hottentots abandon patients
suffering from small-pox.[49] The southern Tanàla in Madagascar take a
person who becomes insensible during an illness, to the spot in the
forest where they throw their dead, and should the unfortunate
creature so cast away revive and return to the village, they stone him
outright to death.[50] In New Caledonia "il est rare qu'un malade rend
naturellement le dernier soupir: quand il n'a plus sa connaissance,
souvent même avant son agonie, on lui ferme la bouche et les narines
pour l'étouffer, ou bien on le tiraille de tous côtés par les jambes
et par les bras."[51] In Kandavu, of the Fiji Group, sick persons were
often thrown into a cave, where the dead also were deposited.[52] In
Efate, if a person in sickness showed signs of delirium, his grave was
dug, and he was buried forthwith, to prevent the disease from
spreading to other members of the family.[53] The Alfura "kill their
sick when they have no hope of their recovery."[54] Dobrizhoffer says
of the Patagonians, "Actuated by an irrational kind of pity, they bury
the dying before they expire."[55] In cases of cholera or small-pox
epidemics, North American Indians have been known to desert their
villages, leaving all their sick behind, of whatever age or sex.[56]
According to Dr. Nansen, it is not inconsistent with the moral code of
the Greenlanders "to hasten the death of those {392} who are sick and
in great suffering, or of those in delirium, of which they have a
great horror."[57] Lieutenant Holm states that, in Eastern Greenland,
when an individual is seriously ill, he consents, if his relatives
request it, to end his sufferings by throwing himself into the sea;
whereas it is rare that a sick person is put to death, except in cases
of disordered intellect.[58] At Igloolik "a sick woman is frequently
built or blocked up in a snow-hut, and not a soul goes near to look in
and ascertain whether she be alive or dead."[59]
[Footnote 47: Ward, _Five Years with the Congo Cannibals_, p. 262.]
[Footnote 48: Shooter, _Kafirs of Natal_, p. 238 _sq._ Kidd, _The
Essential Kafir_, p. 247.]
[Footnote 49: Le Vaillant, _Travels into the Interior Parts of
Africa_, ii. 112.]
[Footnote 50: Sibree, _The Great African Island_, p. 291.]
[Footnote 51: Brainne, _op. cit._ p. 255.]
[Footnote 52: Williams and Calvert, _op. cit._ p. 159.]
[Footnote 53: Turner, _Samoa_, p. 336.]
[Footnote 54: Pfeiffer, _A Lady's Second Journey round the World_, i. 387.]
[Footnote 55: Dobrizhoffer, _Account of the Abipones_, ii. 262.]
[Footnote 56: Domenech, _op. cit._ ii. 326.]
[Footnote 57: Nansen, _Eskimo Life_, p. 163.]
[Footnote 58: 'East Greenland Eskimo,' in _Science_, vii. 172.]
[Footnote 59: Lyon, _Private Journal_, p. 357. For other instances,
see Sartori, in _Globus_, lxvii. nr. 7 _sq._; von Martius, _op. cit._
i. 126, 127, 393 (Brazilian tribes); Steller, _Beschreibung von dem
Lande Kamtschatka_, p. 354; Dawson, _op. cit._ p. 61, quoted _supra_,
p. 271.]
These and similar facts are largely explained by the pitiful condition
of the invalid, the hardships of a wandering life, and the
superstitious notions of ignorant men. In some cases the practice of
killing a dying person seems to be connected with a belief that the
death-blow will save his soul.[60] In 1812, a leper was burnt alive at
Katwa, near Calcutta, by his mother and sister, who believed that by
their doing so he would gain a pure body in the next birth.[61] By
carrying the patient away before he dies, the survivors escape the
supposed danger of touching a corpse.[62] In the poorer provinces of
the kingdom of Kandy, when a sick person was despaired of, the fear of
becoming defiled, or of being obliged to change their habitation,
frequently induced those about him to take him into a wood, in spite
of his cries and groans, and to leave him there, perhaps in the
agonies of death.[63] But the most common motive for abandoning or
destroying sick people seems to be fear of infection or of demoniacal
possession, which is regarded as the cause of various diseases.[64]
Among the North American Indians, we are told, "the custom of
abandoning the infirm or sick arose {393} from a superstitious fear of
the evil spirits which were supposed to have taken possession of
them."[65] In Tahiti, says Ellis, "every disease was supposed to be
the effect of direct supernatural agency, and to be inflicted by the
gods for some crime against the tabu, of which the sufferers had been
guilty, or in consequence of some offering made by an enemy to procure
their destruction. Hence, it is probable, in a great measure, resulted
their neglect and cruel treatment of their sick."[66]
[Footnote 60: Sartori, _loc. cit._ p. 127.]
[Footnote 61: Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern
India_, ii. 169.]
[Footnote 62: Shooter, _op. cit._ 239 (Kafirs of Natal). Kidd, _The
Essential Kafir_, p. 247.]
[Footnote 63: Joinville, 'Religion and Manners of the People of
Ceylon,' in _Asiatick Researches_, vii. 437 _sq._]
[Footnote 64: See Sartori, _loc. cit._ p. 110 _sq._; Lippert,
_Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit_, i. 110; ii. 411.]
[Footnote 65: Dorman, _Origin of Primitive Superstitions_, p. 392.]
[Footnote 66: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 395.]
* * * * *
Whilst the regard which children owe their parents makes parricide an
aggravated form of murder, the paternal power sometimes implies that,
under certain circumstances, the father is allowed to kill even his
grown-up child. Though the Chinese Penal Code provides a slight
punishment for parents who punish disobedient children with death,[67]
the crime is practically ignored by the authorities.[68] Among the
Hebrews, in early times, a father might punish his incontinent
daughter with death.[69] The Roman house-father had _jus vitæ
necisque_--the power of life and death--over his children. However,
this power did not imply that he could kill them without a just
cause;[70] already in pagan times a father who killed his son
"latronis magis quam patris jure," was punished as a murderer.[71] As
Dean Milman observes, long before Christianity entered into Roman
legislation, "the life of a child was as sacred as that of the parent;
and Constantine, when he branded the murder of a son with the {394}
name of parricide, hardly advanced upon the dominant feeling.[72] Nor
is there any reason to suppose that, among savages, the father
possesses an absolute right of life and death over his children. On
the contrary, among many of the lower races the existence of such a
right is expressly denied.[73]
[Footnote 67: _Ta Tsing Leu Lee_, sec. cccxix. p. 347:--"If a father,
mother, paternal grandfather or grandmother, chastises a disobedient
child or grandchild in a severe and uncustomary manner, so that he or
she dies, the party so offending shall be punished with 100
blows.--When any of the aforesaid relations are guilty of killing such
disobedient child or grandchild designedly, the punishment shall be
extended to 60 blows and one year's banishment."]
[Footnote 68: Douglas, _Society in China_, p. 78 _sq._]
[Footnote 69: _Genesis_, xxxviii. 24.]
[Footnote 70: Mittermaier, 'Beyträge zur Lehre vom Verbrechen des
Kindesmordes,' in _Neues Archiv des Criminalrechts_, vii. 4. Walter,
_Geschichte des Römischen Rechts_, § 537, vol. ii. 147. von Jhering,
_Geist des römischen Rechts_, ii. 220. Mommsen, _Römisches
Strafrecht_, p. 619.]
[Footnote 71: _Digesta_, xlviii. 9. 5. Orosius, _Historiæ_, v. 16.
Mommsen, _Römisches Strafrecht_, p. 618.]
[Footnote 72: Milman, _History of Latin Christianity_, ii. 25.]
[Footnote 73: Lang, in Steinmetz, _Rechtsverhältnisse von eingeborenen
Völkern in Afrika und Ozeanien_, p. 224 (Washambala). Desoignies,
_ibid._ p. 271 (Msalala). Marx, _ibid._ p. 349 (Amahlubi). Kohler,
'Recht der Hottentotten,' in _Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss._ xv.
347. Post, _Afrikanische Jurisprudenz_, i. 52 _sq._]
But whilst a father only in rare cases, and then merely as a measure
of justice, is allowed to put to death his grown-up child, he very
frequently has the right of destroying a new-born infant. Nay, in many
instances infanticide is not only permitted, but enjoined by custom.
Among a great number of uncivilised peoples it is usual to kill an
infant if it is a bastard,[74] or if its mother dies,[75] or if it is
deformed or diseased,[76] or if there is anything unusual or uncanny
about it, or if it for some reason or other is regarded as an unlucky
child. In some parts of {395} Africa, for instance, a child who is
born with teeth,[77] or who cuts the upper front teeth before the
under,[78] or whose teeth present some other kind of irregularity,[79]
is put to death. Among the natives of the Bondei country a child who
is born head first is considered an unlucky child, and is strangled in
consequence.[80] The Kamchadales used to destroy children who were
born in very stormy weather;[81] and in Madagascar infants born in
March or April, or in the last week of a month, or on a Wednesday or a
Friday, were exposed or drowned or buried alive.[82] Among various
savages it is the custom that, if a woman gives birth to twins, one or
both of them are destroyed.[83] They are regarded sometimes as an
indication of unfaithfulness on the part of the mother--in accordance
with the notion that one man cannot be the father of two children at
the same time[84]--sometimes as an evil portent or as the result of
the wrath of a fetish.[85] Miss Kingsley observes, "There is always
the sense of there being something uncanny regarding twins in West
Africa, and in those tribes where they are not killed they are
regarded {396} as requiring great care to prevent them from dying on
their own account."[86] The Kafirs believe that unless the father
places a lump of earth in the mouth of one of the babies he will lose
his strength.[87]
[Footnote 74: Turner, _Samoa_, p. 304 (Savage Islanders). Elton, in
_Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xvii. 93 (some Solomon Islanders). Munzinger,
_Ostafrikanische Studien_, p. 145 (Beduan). Dyveyrier, _Exploration du
Sahara_, p. 428 (Touareg). Burton, _Sindh_, p. 244 (Belochis).
Haberland, 'Der Kindermord als Volkssitte,' in _Globus_, xxxvii. 58.
The natives of Australia often kill half-caste children (Roth,
_Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland
Aborigines_, p. 184. Curr, _Recollections of Squatting in Victoria_,
p. 252. Haberland, _loc. cit._ p. 58).]
[Footnote 75: Collins, _English Colony in New South Wales_, i. 607
_sq._ (aborigines of Port Jackson). Dale, 'Natives inhabiting the
Bondei Country,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxv. 182. Comte de Cardi,
'Ju-Ju Laws and Customs in the Niger Delta,' _ibid._ xxix. 58. Nansen,
_First Crossing of Greenland_, ii. 330; Holm, 'Ethnologisk Skizze af
Angmagsalikerne,' in _Meddelelser om Grönland_, x. 91 (Greenlanders).
Haberland, _loc. cit._ p. 28 _sq._ Ploss, _Das Kind_, ii. 252, 254,
258 _sq._ Chamberlain, _Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought_,
p. 110 _sq._]
[Footnote 76: Dawson, _op. cit._ p. 39 (tribes of Western Victoria).
Kicherer, quoted by Moffat, _Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern
Africa_, p. 15 (Bushmans). Shooter, _Kafirs of Natal_, p. 89. Chapman,
_Travels in the Interior of South Africa_, ii. 285 (Banamjua). Reade,
_Savage Africa_, p. 244 (Equatorial Africans). New, _Life, Wanderings,
and Labours in Eastern Africa_, p. 118; Krapf, _Travels_, p. 193 _sq._
(Wanika). Georgi, _Russia_, iii. 134 (Kamchadales). Sarytschew, _loc.
cit._ vi. 50; von Wrangell, _op. cit._ p. 122 (Chukchi). Simpson,
quoted by Murdoch, 'Point Barrow Expedition,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur.
Ethn._ ix. 417 (Eskimo). Powers, _Tribes of California_, p. 382
(Yokuts). Guinnard, _Three Years' Slavery among the Patagonians_, p.
144. Haberland, _loc. cit._ p. 58 _sq._ Ploss, _Das Kind_, ii. 252,
254, 255, 258.]
[Footnote 77: Ploss, _Das Kind_, ii. 257, 259.]
[Footnote 78: Livingstone, _Missionary Travels_, p. 577. Kingsley,
_Travels in West Africa_, p. 472. Allen and Thomson, _Expedition to
the River Niger_, i. 243 _sq._ Mockler-Ferryman, _British Nigeria_,
p. 286 (Ibos).]
[Footnote 79: Baumann, _Usambara_, pp. 131 (Wabondei), 237 (Wapare).]
[Footnote 80: Dale, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxv. 183.]
[Footnote 81: Krasheninnikoff, _History of Kamschatka_, p. 217.]
[Footnote 82: Ploss, _Das Kind_, ii. 257. _Cf._ Little, _Madagascar_,
p. 60.]
[Footnote 83: Dawson, _op. cit._ p. 39 (tribes of Western Victoria).
Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 52.
_Idem_, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 609. Romilly,
_Western Pacific_, p. 70 (Solomon Islanders). Kolben, _op. cit._ i.
144 (Hottentots). Shooter, _op. cit._ p. 88 (Kafirs of Natal).
Livingstone, _Missionary Travels_, p. 577. Decle, _Three Years in
Savage Africa_, p. 160 (Matabele). Chapman, _op. cit._ ii. 285
(Banamjua). Baumann, _Usambara_, p. 131 (Wabondei). New, _op. cit._
pp. 118 (Wanika, formerly), 458 (Wadshagga). Burton, _Two Trips to
Gorilla Land_, i. 84. Kingsley, _Travels in West Africa_, p. 472
_sqq._ Schoen and Crowther, _Journals_, p. 49 (Ibos on the Niger).
Comte de Cardi, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxix. 57 _sq._ (Negroes of the
Niger Delta). Nyendael, quoted by Ling Roth, _Great Benin_, p. 35
(people of Arebo). Ploss, _Das Kind_, ii. 267 _sq._ (African peoples),
274 (some South American Indians). Schneider, _Die Naturvölker_, i.
305 _sq._ (some South American Indians). Krasheninnikoff, _op. cit._
p. 217 (Kamchadales).]
[Footnote 84: Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, iii. 394, 480
(South American Indians). Dapper says (_Africa_, p. 473) that no twins
are ever found in the country of Benin, because the people considered
it a great dishonour to give birth to twins.]
[Footnote 85: Allen and Thomson, _op. cit._ i. 243. Baumann,
_Usambara_, p. 131 (Wabondei).]
[Footnote 86: Kingsley, _Travels in West Africa_, p. 473, According to
Nyendael, twin-births are, on the contrary, esteemed good omens in
most parts of the Benin territory (Ling Roth, _Great Benin_, p.
35).]
[Footnote 87: Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 202.]
In the instances just referred to, the infant is killed either
because, after the death of its mother, there is nobody to nurse it,
or on account of the fault of its parents, especially the mother, or
because it is held desirable that the sickly or defective should die
at once, or out of superstitious fear. However, among many of the
lower races, infanticide is not restricted to similar more or less
exceptional cases, but is practised on a much larger scale. Custom
often decides how many children are to be reared in each family, and
not infrequently the majority of infants are destroyed.
Infanticide is common among various tribes in North and South
America.[88] Dobrizhoffer says that it was a rare exception among the
Abipones to find a woman who had brought up two or three sons, whilst
some mothers killed all the children they bore, "no one either
preventing or avenging these murders."[89] According to Azara, the
Guanas buried alive the majority of their female infants, and the
Mbayas suffered only one boy or one girl in a family to live;[90] but
the correctness of his statements has been questioned.[91] On the
other hand there can be no doubt as to the extreme prevalence of
infanticide in the islands of the South Seas. In some of the principal
groups of Polynesia it was practised publicly and systematically,
without compunction, to an extent almost incredible. During the whole
period of his residence in the Society Islands, Ellis does {397} not
recollect having met with a single pagan woman who had not imbrued her
hands in the blood of her offspring, and he thinks that there, as also
in the Sandwich Islands, two-thirds of the children were destroyed by
their parents.[92] "No sense of irresolution or horror," he says,
"appeared to exist in the bosoms of those parents who deliberately
resolved on the deed before the child was born. They often visited the
dwellings of the foreigners, and spoke with perfect complacency of
their cruel purpose"; and when the missionaries tried to dissuade them
from executing their intention, the only answer generally received was
that it was the custom of the country.[93] The Line Islanders allowed
only four children of a family to get the chance of life; the mother
had a right to rear one child, whereas it rested with the husband to
decide whether any more should live.[94] In Radack every mother was
permitted to bring up three children, but the fourth and every
succeeding one she was obliged to bury alive herself, unless she was
the wife of a chief.[95] In Vaitupu, of the Ellice Archipelago, also,
"infanticide was ordered by law," and only two children were allowed
to a family.[96] In New Zealand and the Marquesas infanticide, though
not so general, was yet of frequent occurrence and not regarded as a
crime.[97] In most of the Melanesian groups it was very common.[98] In
the Solomon Islands there still seem to be several places where it is
the custom to kill nearly all children soon after they are born, and
to buy other children from foreign tribes, good care being taken not
to buy them too young.[99] The practice of infanticide occurred at
least occasionally in Tasmania,[100] and, as it seems, almost
universally in Australia. Mr. Curr supposes that the Australian woman,
as a rule, reared only two boys and one girl, the rest of her children
being destroyed.[101] "In the laws known to her," says Mr. Brough
Smyth, "infanticide is a necessary practice, and one which, if
disregarded, would, under certain circumstances, be disapproved {398}
of; and the disapproval would be marked by punishment."[102] Mr.
Taplin was assured that, among the Narrinyeri, more than one-half of
the children born fell victims to this custom;[103] and in the
Dieyerie tribe hardly an old woman, if questioned, but will admit of
having destroyed from two to four of her offspring.[104]
[Footnote 88: Bessels, quoted by Murdoch, 'Point Barrow Expedition,'
in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ ix. 417 (Eskimo of Smith Sound). Nelson,
'Eskimo about Bering Strait,' _ibid._ xviii. 289. Gibbs, 'Tribes of
Western Washington and Northwestern Oregon,' in _Contributions to
North American Ethnology_, i. 198. Powers, _op. cit._ pp. 177, 184
(Californian tribes). Yarrow, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ i. 99 (Pimas
of Arizona), Hawtrey, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxxi. 295 (Lengua
Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco).]
[Footnote 89: Dobrizhoffer, _op. cit._ ii. 98. For another account of
the infanticides of the Abipones, see _infra_, p. 400.]
[Footnote 90: Azara, _Voyages dans l'Amérique méridionale_, ii. 93, 115.]
[Footnote 91: Wied-Neuwied, _Reise nach Brasilien_, ii. 39.]
[Footnote 92: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 252. _Idem_, _Tour
through Hawaii_, p. 325.]
[Footnote 93: _Idem_, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 250.]
[Footnote 94: Tutuila, 'Line Islanders,' in _Jour. Polynesian
Society_, i. 267.]
[Footnote 95: von Kotzebue, _Voyage of Discovery_, iii. 173.]
[Footnote 96: Turner, _Samoa_, p. 284.]
[Footnote 97: Hale, _U.S. Exploring Expedition. Vol. VI. Ethnography
and Philology_, p. 15.]
[Footnote 98: Codrington, _Melanesians_, p. 229. Turner, _Samoa_, p.
333 (Efatese). Gill, _Life in the Southern Isles_, p. 213 (islands of
Torres Straits). Atkinson, in _Folk-Lore_, xiv. 248 (New
Caledonians).]
[Footnote 99: Romilly, _Western Pacific_, p. 68 _sq._ _Cf._ Guppy,
_Solomon Islands_, p. 42.]
[Footnote 100: Ling Roth, _Aborigines of Tasmania_, p. 167 _sq._
Bonwick, _Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians_, p. 85. Brough
Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, ii. 386.]
[Footnote 101: Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 70.]
[Footnote 102: Brough Smyth, _op. cit._ i. p. xxi. _Cf._ Oberländer,
'Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Victoria,' in _Globus_, iv. 279.]
[Footnote 103: Taplin, 'Narrinyeri,' in Woods, _Native Tribes of South
Australia_, p. 13.]
[Footnote 104: Gason, 'Manners and Customs of the Dieyerie Tribe,'
_ibid._ p. 259.]
Among the Todas of India, up to the period of Mr. Sullivan's visit
to their hills, about the year 1820, only one female child was allowed
to live in each family.[105] With reference to the Kandhs, or Khonds,
Macpherson observes, "The practice of female infanticide is, I
believe, not wholly unknown amongst any portion of the Khond people,
while it exists in some of the tribes of the sect of Boora to such an
extent, that no female infant is spared, except when a woman's first
child is a female, and that villages containing a hundred houses may
be seen without a female child."[106]
[Footnote 105: Metz, _Tribes inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills_, p. 16.]
[Footnote 106: Macpherson, _Memorials of Service in India_, p. 132.]
It is said that among the Guanches of the Canary Islands, in
ancient times, all children, except the first-born, were killed.[107]
The people of Madagascar frequently practised infanticide; but Ellis
says that they were much less addicted to it than the South Sea
Islanders, a numerous offspring being generally a source of much
satisfaction.[108] According to Kolben, infanticide was common among
the Hottentots;[109] whereas Sparrman only states that "the Hottentots
are accustomed to inter, in case of the mother's death, children at
the breast alive,"[110] and Le Vaillant altogether denies the
existence of customary infanticide among them.[111] Among the Swahili,
according to Baumann, infanticides are very common and hardly
disapproved of.[112] But the peoples of the African continent are not
generally addicted to infanticide, except in such special cases as
have already come under our notice.
[Footnote 107: Ploss, _Das Kind_, ii. 259 _sq._]
[Footnote 108: Little, _Madagascar_, p. 60. Ellis, _History of
Madagascar_, i. 155, 160.]
[Footnote 109: Kolben, _op. cit._ i. 333.]
[Footnote 110: Sparrman, _Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope_, i. 358 _sq._]
[Footnote 111: Le Vaillant, _op. cit._ ii. 58 _sqq._]
[Footnote 112: Baumann, _Usambara_, p. 42.]
The custom of infanticide, in its extensive form, has been attributed
to various motives. Among some peoples mothers are said to kill their
new-born infants on account {399} of the trouble of rearing them,[113]
or the consequent loss of beauty.[114] Another cause is the long
suckling time, generally lasting, among savages, for two, three, four
years, or even more, owing to want of soft food and animal milk.[115]
When, as is very commonly the case, the husband must not cohabit with
his wife during the whole of this period,[116] he is naturally
inclined to form other connections, and this seems in some instances
to induce the mother to destroy her child.[117] In another respect,
also, the long suckling-time is an inducement to infanticide; among
certain Australian tribes an infant is killed immediately on birth
"when the mother is, or thinks she is, unable to rear it owing to
there being a young child whom she is still feeding."[118] Among the
Pimas of Arizona, again, infanticide is said to be connected with the
custom of destroying all the property of the husband when he dies.
"The women of the tribe, well aware that they will be poor should
their husbands die, and that then they will have to provide for their
children by their own exertions, do not care to have many children,
and infanticide, both before and after birth, prevails to a great
extent. This is not considered a crime."[119] But there can be little
doubt that the wholesale infanticide of many of the lower races is in
the main due to the hardships of savage life. The helpless infant may
be a great burden to the parents both in times of peace and in times
of war. It may prevent the mother from following her husband about on
his wanderings in search of food, or otherwise encumber her in her
work.[120] Mr. Curr states of the Bangerang tribe of Victoria, with
whom he was intimate for ten years, that their habit of killing nearly
half {400} of the children born resulted "principally from the
difficulty, if not the impossibility, of transporting several children
of tender age from place to place on their frequent marches."[121]
Concerning the Abipones, Charlevoix observes:--"They seldom rear but
one child of each sex, murdering the rest as fast as they come into
the world, till the eldest are strong enough to walk alone. They think
to justify this cruelty by saying that, as they are almost constantly
travelling from one place to another, it is impossible for them to
take care of more infants than two at a time; one to be carried by the
father, and the other by the mother."[122] Among the Lenguas of the
Paraguayan Chaco an interval of seven or eight years is always
observable between children of the same family, infants born in this
interval being immediately killed. The reasons for this practice, says
Mr. Hawtrey, are obvious. "The woman has the hard work of carrying
food from garden and field, and all the transport to do; the Lenguas
are a nomadic race, and their frequent moves often entail journeys of
from ten to twenty miles a day. . . . Travelling with natives under
these circumstances, one is forced to the conclusion that it would be
impossible for a mother to have more than one young child to carry and
to care for."[123] Moreover, a little forethought tells the parents
that their child before long will become a consumer of provisions
perhaps already too scanty for the family. Savages often suffer
greatly from want of food, and may have to choose between destroying
their offspring or famishing themselves. Hence they often have
recourse to infanticide as a means of saving their lives; indeed,
among several tribes, in case of famine, children are not only killed,
but eaten.[124] Urgent want is frequently represented by our
authorities as the main cause of infanticide;[125] and {401} their
statements are corroborated by the conspicuous prevalence of this
custom among poor tribes and in islands whose inhabitants are confined
to a narrow territory with limited resources.
[Footnote 113: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 256 (Tahitians).
_Idem_, _Tour through Hawaii_, p. 327. Polack, _Manners and Customs of
the New Zealanders_, ii. 92. Gason, _loc. cit._ p. 258 (Dieyerie
tribe).]
[Footnote 114: Williams, _Missionary Enterprises_, p. 565
(Tahitians).]
[Footnote 115: See Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, p. 484.]
[Footnote 116: _Ibid._ p. 483.]
[Footnote 117: Schneider, _Die Naturvölker_, i. 297, 307.]
[Footnote 118: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central
Australia_, pp. 51, 264. _Idem_, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 608. Oberländer, _loc. cit._ p. 279.]
[Footnote 119: Yarrow, _loc. cit._ p. 99.]
[Footnote 120: Turner, _Nineteen Years in Polynesia_, p. 394 (people
of Vaté, New Hebrides). Polack, _op. cit._ ii. 93 (Maoris).]
[Footnote 121: Curr, _Squatting in Victoria_, p. 252. Oberländer,
_loc. cit._ p. 279. _Cf._ Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p.
259; Fraser, _Aborigines of New South Wales_, p. 5.]
[Footnote 122: Charlevoix, _History of Paraguay_, i. 405.]
[Footnote 123: Hawtrey, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxxi. 295.]
[Footnote 124: See Steinmetz, _Endokannibalismus_, pp. 8, 13, 14, 17.]
[Footnote 125: Nansen, _First Crossing of Greenland_, ii. 330. Nelson,
in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xviii. 289 (Eskimo about Behring Strait).
Brough Smyth, _op. cit._ i. 53; ii. 386 (aboriginal tribes of
Australia and Tasmania), von Kotzebue, _op. cit._ iii. 173 (natives of
Radack). Tutuila, in. _Jour. Polynesian Soc._ i. 263 (Line Islanders).
Campbell, _Wild Tribes of Khondistan_, p. 140 (Kandbs of Sooradah).
Marshall, _A Phrenologist amongst the Todas_, p. 194. Kolben, _op.
cit._ i. 144 (Hottentots). See also Haberland, _loc. cit._ p. 26;
Dimitroff, _Die Geringschätzung des menschlichen Lebens und ihre
Ursachen bei den Naturvölkern_, p. 162 _sqq._; Sutherland, _Origin
and Growth of the Moral Instinct_, i. 115 _sqq._]
In the chapter dealing with human sacrifice we shall notice that
infanticide is in some cases practised as a sacrificial rite. In other
cases infants are killed for medicinal purposes, without being
sacrificed to any divine being.[126] Thus in the Luritcha tribe, in
Central Australia, "it is not an infrequent custom, when a child is in
weak health, to kill a younger and healthy one and then to feed the
weakling on its flesh, the idea being that this will give to the weak
child the strength of the stronger one."[127] A curious motive for
female infanticide is also worth mentioning. That the victims of this
practice are most commonly, among several peoples almost exclusively,
females,[128] is generally due to the greater usefulness of the men
both as food-providers and in war. But the Hakka, a Mongolian tribe in
China, often put their girls to a cruel death with a view to inducing
thereby the soul to appear the next time in the shape of a
boy.[129]
[Footnote 126: See _infra_, p. 458 _sq._]
[Footnote 127: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 475. _Cf._ _ibid._ p. 52.]
[Footnote 128: _Cf._ Haberland, _loc. cit._ p. 56 _sqq._]
[Footnote 129: Hubrig, quoted by Ploss, _Das Kind_, ii. 263.]
Thus various considerations have led men to destroy their own
offspring. Under certain circumstances the advantages, real or
imaginary, assumed to result from the deed have been sufficiently
great to silence the voice of parental love, which, as will be seen,
is to be found even in the bosom of a savage father. The resistance
offered by this instinct would be so much the less as the child is
killed immediately after its birth, at a period of its life {402} when
the father's affection for it is as yet only dawning Even where, at
first, infanticide was an exception, practised by a few members of the
tribe, any interference from the side of the community may have been
prevented by the notion that a person possesses proprietary rights
over his offspring; and, once become habitual, infanticide easily grew
into a regular custom. In cases where it was found useful to the
tribe, it would be enforced as a public duty; and even where there no
longer was any need for it, owing to changed conditions of life, the
force of habit might still keep the old custom alive.
Though infanticide is thus regarded as allowable, or even obligatory,
among many of the lower races, we must not suppose that they
universally look upon it in this light. Mr. McLennan grossly
exaggerated its prevalence when he asserted that female infanticide is
"common among savages everywhere."[130] Among a great number of them
it is said to be unheard of or almost so,[131] and to these belong
peoples of so low a type as the Andaman Islanders,[132] the
Botocudos,[133] and certain Californian tribes.[134] The Veddahs of
Ceylon have never been known to practise it.[135] Among the Yahgans of
Tierra del Fuego, Mr. Bridges informs me, it occurred only
occasionally, and then it was almost always the deed of the mother,
who acted from "jealousy, or hatred of her husband, or because of
desertion and wretchedness."[136] Mr. Fison, who has lived for a long
time among uncivilised races, thinks it will be found that infanticide
is far less common among the lower savages than it is among the more
advanced tribes.[137] Considering {403} further that the custom of
infanticide, being opposed to the instinct of parental love,
presupposes a certain amount of reasoning or forethought, it seems
probable that, where it occurs, it is not a survival of earliest
savagery, but has grown up under specific conditions in later stages
of development.[138] It is, for instance, very generally asserted that
certain Indians in California never committed infanticide before the
arrival of the whites;[139] and Ellis thinks there is every reason to
suppose that this custom was practised less extensively by the
Polynesians during the early periods of their history than it was
afterwards.[140]
[Footnote 130: McLennan, _Studies in Ancient History_, p. 75.]
[Footnote 131: See Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, p. 312
_sq._; and, besides the authorities there referred to, Dorsey, 'Omaha
Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ iii. 369; Kirke, _Twenty-five
Years in British Guiana_, p. 160; Chalmers, _Pioneering in New
Guinea_, p. 163; Hodgson, _Miscellaneous Essays_, p. 123 (Bódo and
Dhimáls); Baumann, _Durch Massailand zur Nilquelle_, p. 161
(Masai).]
[Footnote 132: Man, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xii. 329.]
[Footnote 133: Wied-Neuwied, _op. cit._ ii. 39. Keane, in _Jour.
Anthr. Inst._ xiii. 206.]
[Footnote 134: Powers, _op. cit._ pp. 192, 271, 382.]
[Footnote 135: Sarasin, _Ergebnisse naturwissenschaftlicher
Forschungen auf Ceylon_, iii. 469, 539.]
[Footnote 136: Bridges, in a letter dated Downeast, Tierra del Fuego,
August 28th, 1888.]
[Footnote 137: Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 134 _sqq._
_Cf._ Farrer, _Primitive Manners and Customs_, p. 224; Sutherland,
_op. cit._ i. 114 _sq._]
[Footnote 138: _Cf._ Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 594.]
[Footnote 139: Powers, _op. cit._ p. 207. _Cf._ _ibid._ p. 183.]
[Footnote 140: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 249.]
Where infanticide is not sanctioned by custom, the occasional
commission of it has a tendency to call forth disapproval or excite
horror. The Blackfeet are said to believe that women who have been
guilty of this crime will never reach the happy mountain after death,
but are compelled to hover round the seats of their crimes, with
branches of trees tied to their legs.[141] Speaking of another North
American tribe, the Potawatomis, Keating observes:--"In a few
instances, it is said that children born deformed have been destroyed
by their mothers, but these instances are rare, and whenever
discovered, uniformly bring them into disrepute, and are not
unfrequently punished by some of the near relations. Independently of
these cases, which are but rare, a few instances of infanticide, by
single women, in order to conceal intrigue, have been heard of; but
they are always treated with abhorrence."[142] Among the Omahas
"parents had no right to put their children to death."[143] The Aleuts
believed that a child-murder would bring misfortune on the whole
village.[144] The Brazilian Macusis[145] and Botocudos[146] look upon
the deed with horror. At Ulea, {404} of the Caroline Islands, "the
prince would have the unnatural mother punished with death."[147] So,
too, Herr Valdau tells us of a Bakundu woman who, accused of
infanticide, was condemned to death.[148] In Ashanti a man is punished
for the murder of his child.[149] Among the Gaika tribe, of the
Kafirs, the killing of a child after birth is punishable as murder,
the fine going to the chief.[150] Nay, even peoples among whom
infanticide is habitual seem now and then to have a feeling that the
act is not quite correct. Mr. Brough Smyth asserts that the Australian
Black is himself ashamed of it;[151] and Mr. Curr has no doubt that he
feels, in the commencement of his career at least, that infanticide is
wrong, as also that its committal brings remorse.[152]
[Footnote 141: Richardson, in Franklin, _Journey to the Shores of the
Polar Sea_, p. 77.]
[Footnote 142: Keating, _op. cit._ i. 99.]
[Footnote 143: Dorsey, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ iii. 268.]
[Footnote 144: Dall, _op. cit._ p. 399.]
[Footnote 145: Waitz, _op. cit._ iii. 391.]
[Footnote 146: Wied-Neuwied, _op. cit._ ii. 39.]
[Footnote 147: von Kotzebue, _op. cit._ iii. 211.]
[Footnote 148: Valdau, in _Ymer_, v. 280.]
[Footnote 149: Bowdich, _Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee_,
p. 258.]
[Footnote 150: Maclean, _Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs_, p. 111.]
[Footnote 151: Brough Smyth, _op. cit._ i. 54.]
[Footnote 152: Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 100.]
The custom of infanticide in most cases requires that the child should
be killed immediately or soon after its birth. Among certain North
American Indians "the right of destroying a child lasted only till it
was a month old," after which time the feeling of the tribe was
against its death.[153] Ellis says of the Society Islanders:--"The
horrid act, if not committed at the time the infant entered the world,
was not perpetrated at any subsequent period . . . . If the little
stranger was, from irresolution, the mingled emotions that struggled
for mastery in its mother's bosom, or any other cause, suffered to
live ten minutes or half an hour, it was safe; instead of a monster's
grasp, it received a mother's caress and a mother's smile, and was
afterwards nursed with solicitude and tenderness."[154] Almost the
same is said of other South Sea Islanders[155] and of tribes
inhabiting the Australian continent.[156] That the custom of
infanticide is generally {405} restricted to the destruction of
new-born babies also appears from various statements as to the
parental love of those peoples who are addicted to this practice.[157]
In Fiji "such children as are allowed to live are treated with a
foolish fondness."[158] Among the Narrinyeri, "only let it be
determined that an infant's life shall be saved, and there are no
bounds to the fondness and indulgence with which it is treated";[159]
and with reference to other Australian tribes we are told that it is
brought up with greater care than generally falls to the lot of
children belonging to the poorer classes in Europe.[160] Among the
Indians of the Pampas and other Indians of that neighbourhood, who
abandon deformed or sickly-looking children to the wild dogs and birds
of prey, an infant becomes, from the moment it is considered worthy to
live, "the object of the whole love of its parents, who, if necessary,
will submit themselves to the greatest privations to satisfy its least
wants or exactions."[161] In Madagascar, according to Ellis, "nothing
can exceed the affection with which the infant is treated by its
parents and other members of the family; the indulgence is more
frequently carried to excess than otherwise."[162] From these and
similar facts, as also from the general absence of statements to the
contrary, I conclude that murders of children who have been allowed to
survive their earliest infancy are very rare, though not quite
unknown,[163] among the lower races.
[Footnote 153: Schoolcraft, quoted by Sutherland, _op. cit._ i. 119.]
[Footnote 154: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 255.]
[Footnote 155: Waitz-Gerland, _op. cit._ vi. 138, 139, 638. Angas,
_Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand_, i. 313.]
[Footnote 156: Ploss, _Das Kind_, ii. 255. Spencer and Gillen, _Native
Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 51. _Iidem_, _Northern Tribes of
Central Australia_, p. 608.]
[Footnote 157: See _infra_, p. 529 _sqq._; also Haberland, _loc. cit._
p. 29, and Sutherland, _op. cit._ i. 115 _sqq._]
[Footnote 158: Williams and Calvert, _op. cit._ p. 142.]
[Footnote 159: Taplin, in Woods, _Native Tribes of South Australia_,
p. 15.]
[Footnote 160: Brough Smyth, _op. cit._ i. 51. Meyer, 'Manners and
Customs of the Aborigines of the Encounter Bay Tribe,' in Woods,
_Native Tribes of South Australia_, p. 186.]
[Footnote 161: Guinnard, _op. cit._ p. 144.]
[Footnote 162: Ellis, _History of Madagascar_, i. 161.]
[Footnote 163: Among the Sandwich Islanders "the infant, after living
a week, a month, or even a year, was still insecure, as some were
destroyed when able to walk" (Ellis, _Tour through Hawaii_, p. 325).
Among the Eskimo about Behring Strait, "girls were often killed when
from 4 to 6 years of age" (Nelson, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._
xviii. 289).]
The custom of infanticide prevails, or has prevailed, not only in the
savage world, but among semi-civilised and {406} civilised races. In
the poorest districts of China female infants are often destroyed by
their parents immediately after their birth, chiefly on account of
poverty.[164] Though disapproved of by educated Chinese, the practice
is treated with forbearance or indifference by the mass of the people,
and is acquiesced in by the mandarins.[165] "When seriously appealed
to on the subject," says the Rev. J. Doolittle, "though all deprecate
it as contrary to the dictates of reason and the instincts of nature,
many are ready boldly to apologise for it, and declare it to be
necessary, especially in the families of the excessively poor."[166]
However, infanticide is neither directly sanctioned by the government,
nor agreeable to the general spirit of the laws and institutions of
the Empire;[167] and it is prohibited both by Buddhism and
Taouism.[168] According to Dr. de Groot, the belief that the spirits
of the dead may, with authorisation of Heaven, take vengeance on the
living, has a very salutary effect on female infanticide in China.
"The fear that the souls of the murdered little ones may bring
misfortune, induces many a father or mother to lay the girls they are
unwilling to bring up in the street for adoption into some family, or
into a foundling-hospital."[169]
[Footnote 164: Gutzlaff, _Sketch of Chinese History_, i. 59. Wells
Williams, _Middle Kingdom_, ii. 240 _sqq._ Douglas, _Society in
China_, p. 354 _sqq._ Doolittle, _Social Life of the Chinese_, ii. 206.]
[Footnote 165: Doolittle, _op. cit._ ii. 203, 208 _sq._ Wells
Williams, _op. cit._ i. 836; ii. 242. Douglas, _Society in China_, p.
354. Ploss, _Das Kind_, ii. 262.]
[Footnote 166: Doolittle, _op. cit._ ii. 208.]
[Footnote 167: Staunton, in his translation of _Ta Tsing Leu Lee_,
p. 347 n. *]
[Footnote 168: _Thâi Shang_, 4. Giles, _Strange Stories from a Chinese
Studio_, ii. 377. Douglas, _Confucianism and Taouism_, p. 267.
_Indo-Chinese Gleaner_, iii. 164.]
[Footnote 169: de Groot, _Religions System of China_, (vol. iv. book)
ii. 457 _sqq._]
In ancient times the Semites, or at least some of them, not only
practised infanticide, but, under certain circumstances, approved of
it or regarded it as a duty. According to an ancient Arabic proverb,
it was a generous deed to bury a female child;[170] and we read of
[(]O[s.]aim the Fazarite who did not dare to save alive his daughter
Lacî[t.]a, without concealing her from the people, although she was
his only child.[171] Considering that among the {407} nomads of
Arabia, who suffer constantly from hunger during a great part of the
year, a daughter is a burden to the poor, we may suppose, with
Professor Robertson Smith, that "infanticide was as natural to them as
to other savage peoples in the hard struggle for life."[172] It was
condemned, however, by the Prophet:--"Slay not your children for fear
of poverty: we will provide for them; beware! for to slay them is ever
a great sin."[173] In the Mosaic Law, on the other hand, infanticide
is never touched upon, and, in all probability, it hardly occurred
among the Hebrews in historic times. But we have reason to believe
that, at an earlier period, among them as also among other branches of
the Semitic race, child-murder was frequently practised as a
sacrificial rite.[174]
[Footnote 170: Freytag, _Arabum Proverbia_, i. 229.]
[Footnote 171: Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early
Arabia_, p. 293.]
[Footnote 172: _Ibid._ p. 294.]
[Footnote 173: _Koran_, xvii. 33; also, _ibid._ vi. 141, 152, and
lxxxi. 8 _sq._]
[Footnote 174: See _infra_, on Human Sacrifice.]
The murder of female infants, whether by the direct employment of
homicidal means, or by exposure to privation and neglect, has for ages
been a common practice, or even a genuine custom, among various Hindu
castes.[175] Yet they are well aware that it is prohibited by their
sacred books; according to the Laws of Manu, the King shall put to
death "those who slay women, infants, or Brâhmanas."[176] Even the
Rajputs, who--out of family pride and owing to the expenses connected
with the marriage ceremony--were particularly addicted to infanticide,
considered that a family in which such a deed had been perpetrated
was, in consequence, an object of divine displeasure. On the twelfth
day, therefore, the family priest was sent for, and, by suitable
gratuities, absolution was obtained. In the room where the infant was
born and destroyed, he also prepared and ate some food with which the
family provided him; this was considered a _hom_, or burnt offering,
and, by eating it in that place, the priest was supposed to take the
whole _hutteea_, or sin, upon himself, and to cleanse the family from
it.[177]
[Footnote 175: Wilkins, _Modern Hinduism_, 431. Chevers, _Manual of
Medical Jurisprudence for India_, p. 750 _sqq._]
[Footnote 176: _Laws of Manu_, ix. 232.]
[Footnote 177: 'Oude as it was before the Annexation,' in _Church
Missionary Intelligencer_, xi. 81 _sq._]
{408} Exposure of new-born children was practised by the people of the
Vedic age,[178] as also by other so-called Aryan peoples in ancient
times.[179] The Teutonic father had to decide whether the child,
whilst still lying on the ground, should be accepted as a member of
the family, or whether it should be exposed. If he lifted it up, and
some water was poured over it, or a drop of milk or honey passed its
lips, it was generally safe. But apart from these restrictions, custom
seems to have been in favour of exposure only under certain
circumstances, exactly similar to those in which infanticide is
practised among many modern savages: if the child was born out of
wedlock, or if it was deformed or sickly, or if it was born on an
unlucky day, or in case of twins--one of whom was always supposed to
be illegitimate--or if the parents were very poor. The exposed infant,
however, was not necessarily destined to die, but was, in many cases,
adopted by somebody who could afford to rear it.[180]
[Footnote 178: Kaegi, _Rigveda_, p. 16.]
[Footnote 179: Strieker, 'Ethnographische Notizen über den Kindermord
und die künstliche Fruchtabtreibung,' in _Archiv für Anthropologie_,
v. 451 (Celts and Slavs).]
[Footnote 180: Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_, p. 455 _sq._
Wilda, _Strafrecht der Germanen_, pp. 704, 725. Maurer, _Bekehrung des
Norwegischen Stammes_ ii. 181. Weinhold, _Altnordisches Leben_, p.
261. Nordström, _Bidrag till den svenska samhälls-författningens
historia_, ii. 44. Stemann, _Den danske Retshistorie indtil Christian
V.'s Lov_, p. 359.]
The exposure of deformed or sickly infants was undoubtedly an ancient
custom in Greece; in Sparta, at least, it was enjoined by law. It was
also approved of by the most enlightened among the Greek philosophers.
Plato condemns all those children who are imperfect in limbs, as also
those who are born from depraved citizens, to be buried in some
obscure and unknown place; he maintains, moreover, that when both
sexes have passed the age assigned for presenting children to the
State, no child is to be brought to light, and that any infant which
is by accident born alive, shall be done away with.[181] Aristotle not
only lays down the law with respect to the exposing or bringing up of
children, that "nothing imperfect or maimed shall be brought up," but
proposes that {409} the number of children allowed to each marriage
shall be regulated by the State, and that, if any woman be pregnant
after she has produced the prescribed number, an abortion shall be
procured before the fetus has life.[182] These views were in perfect
harmony with the general tendency of the Greeks to subordinate the
feelings of the individual to the interest of the State. Confined as
they were to a very limited territory, they were naturally afraid of
being burdened with the maintenance of persons whose lives could be of
no use. It is necessary, says Aristotle, to take care that the
increase of the people should not exceed a certain number, in order to
avoid poverty and its concomitants, sedition and other evils.[183] Yet
the exposure of healthy infants, which was frequently practised in
Greece, was hardly approved of by public opinion, although
tolerated,[184] except at Thebes, where it was a crime punishable with
death.[185]
[Footnote 181: Plato, _Respublica_, v. 460 _sq._]
[Footnote 182: Aristotle, _Politica_, vii. 16, p. 1335.]
[Footnote 183: _Ibid._ ii. 6, p. 1265.]
[Footnote 184: Schmidt, _Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 138, 463.
Hermann-Blumner, _Lehrbuch der griechischen Privatalterthümer_, p. 77.]
[Footnote 185: Aelian, _Varia Historiæ_, ii. 7.]
In Rome custom or law enjoined the destruction of deformed infants.
According to a law of the Twelve Tables, referred to by Cicero,
monstrous abortions were not suffered to live.[186] With reference to
a much later period Seneca writes, "We destroy monstrous births, and
we also drown our children if they are born weakly or unnaturally
formed"; he adds that it is an act of reason thus to separate what is
useless from what is sound.[187] But there was no tendency in Rome to
encourage infanticide beyond these limits. It has been observed that,
whilst the Greek policy was rather to restrain, the Roman policy was
always to encourage, population.[188] Being engaged in incessant wars
of conquest, Rome was never afraid of being over-populated, but, on
the contrary, tried to increase the number of its citizens by
according special privileges to the fathers of many children, and
exempting poor parents from most {410} of the burden of taxation.[189]
The power of life and death which the Roman father possessed over his
children undoubtedly involved the legal right of destroying or
exposing new-born infants; but it is equally certain that the act was
frequently disapproved of.[190] An ancient "law," ascribed to
Romulus--which, as Mommsen suggests, could have been merely a priestly
direction[191]--enjoined the father to bring up all his sons and at
least his eldest daughter, and forbade him to destroy any well-formed
child till it had completed its third year, when the affections of the
parent might be supposed to be developed.[192] In later times we find
the exposure of children condemned by poets, historians, philosophers,
jurists. Among nefarious acts committed in sign of grief on the day
when Germanicus died, Suetonius mentions the exposure of new-born
babes.[193] Epictetus indignantly opposes the saying of Epicurus that
men should not rear their children:--"Even a sheep will not desert its
young, nor a wolf; and shall a man? 'What! will you have us to be
silly creatures, like the sheep?' Yet they desert not their young. 'Or
savage, like wolves?' Yet even they desert them not. Come, then, who
would obey you if he saw his little child fall on the ground and
cry?"[194] Julius Paulus, the jurist, pronounced him who refused
nourishment to his child, or exposed it in a public place, to be
guilty of murder[195]--a statement which is to be understood, not as a
legal prohibition of exposure, but only as the expression of a moral
opinion.[196] On the other hand, though the exposure of healthy
infants was disapproved of in Pagan Rome, it was not generally
regarded as an offence of very great magnitude, especially if the
parents were destitute.[197] {411} During the Empire it was practised
on an extensive scale, and in the literature of the time it is spoken
of with frigid indifference. Since the life of the victim was
frequently saved by some benevolent person or with a view to
profit,[198] it was not regarded in the same light as downright
infanticide, which, in the case of a healthy infant, seems to have
been strictly prohibited by custom.[199]
[Footnote 186: Cicero, _De legibus_, iii. 8.]
[Footnote 187: Seneca, _De ira_, i. 15.]
[Footnote 188: Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ii. 27.]
[Footnote 189: Montesquieu, _De l'esprit des lois_, 20 _sqq._
(_[OE]uvres_, p. 398 _sqq._). Lecky, _History of European Morals_,
ii. 27.]
[Footnote 190: Denis, _Histoire des théories et des idées morales dans
l'antiquité_, ii. 110.]
[Footnote 191: Mommsen, _Römisches Strafrecht_, p. 619.]
[Footnote 192: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, _Antiquitates Romanæ_,
ii. 15.]
[Footnote 193: Suetonius, _Caligula_, 5.]
[Footnote 194: Epictetus, _Dissertationes_, i. 23.]
[Footnote 195: _Digesta_, xxv. 3. 4.]
[Footnote 196: Noodt, 'Julius Paulus, sive de partus expositione et
nece apud veteres,' in _Opera omnia_, i. 465 _sqq._ Walter,
_Geschichte des Römischen Rechts_, § 538, vol. ii. 148 _sq._
Spangenberg, 'Verbrechen des Kindermords und der Aussetzung der
Kinder,' in _Neues Archiv des Criminalrechts_, iii. 10 _sqq._ Mommsen,
_Römisches Strafrecht_, p. 620, n. 1.]
[Footnote 197: Quintilian, _Declamationes_, 506. Plutarch, _De amore
prolis_, 5.]
[Footnote 198: Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ii. 28. Lallemand,
_Histoire des enfants abandonnés et délaissés_, p. 59.]
[Footnote 199: Mommsen, _Römisches Strafrecht_, p. 619.]
As is generally the case in the savage world, so among semi-civilised
and civilised nations whose customs allow or tolerate infanticide, the
child, if not suffered to live, has to be killed in its earliest
infancy. Among the Chinese[200] and Rajputs[201] it is destroyed
immediately after its birth. In the Scandinavian North the killing or
exposure of an infant who had already been sprinkled with water was
regarded as murder.[202] At Athens parents were punished for exposing
children whom they had once begun to rear.[203]
[Footnote 200: Gutzlaff, _op. cit._ i. 59.]
[Footnote 201: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, xi. 81. Chevers,
_op. cit._ p. 752.]
[Footnote 202: Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_, i. 457.]
[Footnote 203: Schoemann, _Griechische Alterthümer_, i. 503.]
The practice of exposing new-born infants, so common in the Pagan
Empire, was vehemently denounced by the early Fathers of the
Church.[204] They tried to convince men that, if the abandoned infant
died, the unnatural parent was guilty of nothing less than murder,
whilst the sinful purposes for which foundlings were often used formed
another argument against exposure.[205] The enormity of the crime of
causing an infant's death was enhanced by the notion that children who
had died unbaptised were doomed to eternal perdition.[206] According
to a decree of the Council of Mentz in 852, the penance imposed on the
mother was heavier if she killed an unbaptised than if she killed a
{412} baptised child.[207] In the year 1556, Henry II. of France made
a law which punished as a child-murderer any woman who had concealed
her pregnancy and delivery, and whose child was found dead, "privé,
tant du saint sacrement de baptesme, que sépulture publique et
accoustumée."[208] This statute--to which there is a counterpart in
England in the statute 21 Jac. I. c. 27,[209] and in the Scotch law of
1690, c. 21[210]--thus went so far as to constitute a presumptive
murder, avowedly under the influence of that Christian dogma to which
Mr. Lecky attributes, in the first instance, "the healthy sense of the
value and sanctity of infant life which so broadly distinguishes
Christian from Pagan societies."[211]
[Footnote 204: See Terme and Monfalcon, _Histoire des enfans trouvés_,
p. 67 _sqq._]
[Footnote 205: Justin Martyr, _Apologia I. pro Christianis_, 29, 27
(Migne, _Patrologiæ cursus_, Ser. Graeca, vi. 373 _sq._, 369 _sqq._).]
[Footnote 206: _Cf._ Spangenberg, in _Neues Archiv des Criminalrechts_,
iii. 20; Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ii. 23.]
[Footnote 207: _Canon Hludowici regis_, 9 (Pertz, _Monum. Germaniæ
historica_, iii. 413).]
[Footnote 208: Isambert, Decrusy, and Armet, _Recueil général des
anciennes lois françaises_, xiii. 472 _sq._]
[Footnote 209: Blackstone, _Commentaries on the Laws of England_,
iv. 198.]
[Footnote 210: Erskine, _Principles of the Law of Scotland_, p. 560.]
[Footnote 211: Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ii. 23.]
If the Pagans had been comparatively indifferent to the sufferings of
the exposed infant, the Christians became all the more cruel to the
unfortunate mother, who, perhaps in a fit of despair, had put to death
her new-born child. The Christian emperor Valentinian I. made
infanticide a capital offence.[212] According to the Coutume de
Loudunois, a mother who killed her child was burned.[213] In Germany
and Switzerland she was buried alive with a pale thrust through her
body;[214] this punishment was prescribed by the criminal code of
Charles V., side by side with drowning.[215] Until the end of the
eighteenth, or the beginning of the nineteenth, century, infanticide
was a capital crime everywhere in Europe, except in Russia.[216] Then,
under the influence of that rationalistic movement which compelled men
to rectify so many preconceived opinions,[217] it became manifest that
an unmarried woman {413} who destroyed her illegitimate child was not
in the same category as an ordinary murderess.[218] It was pointed out
that shame and fear, the excitement of mind, and the difficulty in
rearing the poor bastard, could induce the unfortunate mother to
commit a crime which she herself abhorred. That no notice had been
taken of all this, is explicable from the extreme severity with which
female unchastity was looked upon by the Church. At present most
European lawbooks do not punish infanticide committed by an unmarried
woman even nominally with death.[219] In France the law which regards
infanticide as an aggravated form of _meurtre_[220] has become a dead
letter;[221] and in England no woman seems for a long time to have
been executed for killing her new-born child under the distress of
mind and fear of shame caused by child-birth.[222]
[Footnote 212: _Codex Theodosianus_, ix. 14. 1. _Institutiones_,
ix. 16, 7.]
[Footnote 213: Tissot, _Le droit pénal_, ii. 40.]
[Footnote 214: Osenbrüggen, _Das alamannische Strafrecht im deutschen
Mittelalter_, p. 229 _sq._ _Idem_, _Studien zur deutschen und
schweizerischen Rechtsgeschichte_, p. 358.]
[Footnote 215: Charles V.'s _Peinliche Gerichts Ordnung_, art. 131.]
[Footnote 216: de Feyfer, _Verhandeling over den Kindermoord_, p. 225.
von Fabrice, _Die Lehre von der Kindsabtreibung und vom Kindsmord_,
p. 251.]
[Footnote 217: Berner, _Lehrbuch des Deutschen Strafrechtes_, p. 497.]
[Footnote 218: Bentham maintained (_Theory of Legislation_, p. 264
_sq._) that infanticide ought not to be punished as a principal
offence. "The offence," he says, "is what is improperly called the
death of an infant, who has ceased to be, before knowing what
existence is,--a result of a nature not to give the slightest
inquietude to the most timid imagination; and which can cause no
regrets but to the very person who, through a sentiment of shame and
pity, has refused to prolong a life begun under the auspices of
misery."]
[Footnote 219: de Feyfer, _op. cit._ p. 228. For modern legislation on
infanticide, see also Spangenberg, in _Neues Archiv des
Criminalrechts_, iii. 360 _sqq._; von Fabrice, _op. cit._ p. 254 _sqq._]
[Footnote 220: _Code Pénal_, art. 300, 302.]
[Footnote 221: Garraud, _Traité théoretique et pratique du droit pénal
français_, iv. 251.]
[Footnote 222: Stephen, _History of the Criminal Law of England_,
iii. 86.]
* * * * *
Hand in hand with the custom of infanticide goes feticide, which
prevails extensively in the savage world.[223] The same considerations
as induce savages to kill their new-born infants also induce them to
destroy the fetus before it has proceeded into the world from the
mother's body. Besides, women procure abortion with a view to avoiding
the disagreeable incidents accompanying the state of pregnancy; or,
very frequently, in order to conceal illicit intercourse.[224]
Considering that the same degree of sympathy cannot be felt with
regard to a child not yet born as with regard to an infant, it is not
surprising to find that feticide is practised without objection even
by {414} some peoples who never commit infanticide. Thus in Samoa,
where the latter practice was perfectly unknown, the destruction of
unborn children prevailed to a melancholy extent, and the same was the
case in the Mitchell Group.[225] Among the Dacotahs, who only
occasionally killed infants, abortion procured by artificial means was
not held objectionable.[226] On the other hand there are savages who
consider it a crime. Some Indian tribes in North America abhor the
practice.[227] The natives of Tenimber and Timor-laut punish it with
heavy fines.[228] Regarding the Kafirs, Mr. Warner states that "the
procuring of abortion, although universally practised by all classes
of females in Kafir society, is nevertheless a crime of considerable
magnitude in the eye of the Law; and when brought to the notice of the
Chief, a fine of four or five head of cattle is inflicted. The
accomplices are equally guilty with the female herself."[229]
[Footnote 223: Ploss, _Das Weib_, i. 842 _sqq._]
[Footnote 224: _Ibid._ i. 851 _sq._]
[Footnote 225: Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 79, 280.]
[Footnote 226: Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes of the United States_, iii.
243. Keating, _op. cit._ i. 394.]
[Footnote 227: Ploss, _Das Weib_, i. 848.]
[Footnote 228: Riedel, _De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen
Selebes en Papua_, p. 302.]
[Footnote 229: Warner, in Maclean, _Compendium of Kafir Laws and
Customs_, p. 62. _Cf._ Brownlee, _ibid._ p. 111; Holden, _Past and
Future of the Kaffir Races_, p. 334.]
Passing to more civilised nations, we notice that, among Hindus and
Muhammedans, artificial abortion is extremely common and is hardly
reprobated by public opinion, whatever religion or law may have to say
on the subject.[230] It is especially resorted to by unmarried women
as a means of escaping punishment and shame. "In a country like
India," says Dr. Chevers, "where true morality is almost unknown, but
where the laws of society exercise the most rigorous and vigilant
control imaginable over the conduct of females, and where six-sevenths
of the widows, whatever their age or position in life may be, are
absolutely debarred from re-marriage, and are compelled to rely upon
the uncertain support of their relatives, it is scarcely surprising
that great crimes should be frequently practised to conceal the
results of immorality, and that the procuring of criminal abortion
should, especially, be an act of {415} almost daily commission, and
should have become a trade among certain of the lower midwives."[231]
In Persia every illegitimate pregnancy ends with abortion; the act is
done almost publicly, and no obstacle is put in its way.[232] In
Turkey, both among the rich and poor, even married women very commonly
procure abortion after they have given birth to two children, one of
which is a boy; and the authorities regard the practice with
indifference.[233] In ancient Greece, as we have seen, feticide was
under certain circumstances recommended by Plato and Aristotle, in
preference to infanticide. In Rome it was prohibited by Septimius
Severus and Antoninus, but the prohibition seems to have referred only
to those married women who, by procuring abortion, defrauded their
husbands of children.[234] During the Pagan Empire, abortion was
extensively practised, either from poverty, or licentiousness, or
vanity; and, although severely disapproved of by some,[235] "it was
probably regarded by the average Romans of the later days of Paganism
much as Englishmen in the last century regarded convivial excesses, as
certainly wrong, but so venial as scarcely to deserve censure."[236]
Seneca thinks Helvia worthy of special praise because she had never
destroyed her expected child within her womb, "after the fashion of
many other women, whose attractions are to be found in their beauty
alone."[237] The Romans drew a broad line between feticide and
infanticide. An unborn child was not regarded by them as a human
being; it was a _spes animantis_, not an _infans_.[238] It was said to
be merely a part of the mother, as the fruit is a part of the tree
till it becomes ripe and falls down.[239]
[Footnote 230: _Laws of Manu_, v. 90; _Vish['n]u Purá['n]a_,
p. 207 _sq._]
[Footnote 231: Chevers, _op. cit._ p. 712.]
[Footnote 232: Polak, _Persien_, i. 217.]
[Footnote 233: Ploss, _Das Weib_, i. 846 _sq._]
[Footnote 234: _Digesta_, xlvii. 11. 4. _Cf._ Rein, _Criminalrecht der
Römer_, p. 447.]
[Footnote 235: Paulus, quoted in _Digesta_, xxv. 3, 4.]
[Footnote 236: Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ii. 21 _sq._]
[Footnote 237: Seneca, _Ad Helviam_, 16.]
[Footnote 238: Spangenberg, 'Verbrechen der Abtreibung der
Leibesfrucht,' in _Neues Archiv des Criminalrechts_, ii.
23.]
[Footnote 239: _Ibid._ ii. 22.]
Very different opinions were held by the Christians. A sanctity,
previously unheard of, was attached to human life from the very
beginning. Feticide was regarded as a {416} form of murder.
"Prevention of birth," says Tertullian, "is a precipitation of murder;
nor does it matter whether one take away a life when formed, or drive
it away while forming. He also is a man who is about to be one. Even
every fruit already exists in its seed."[240] St. Augustine, again,
makes a distinction between an embryo which has already been formed,
and an embryo as yet unformed. From the creation of Adam, he says, it
appears that the body is made before the soul. Before the embryo has
been endowed with a soul it is an _embryo informatus_, and its
artificial abortion is to be punished with a fine only; but the
_embryo formatus_ is an animate being, and to destroy it is nothing
less than murder, a crime punishable with death.[241] This distinction
between an animate and inanimate fetus was embodied both in Canon[242]
and Justinian law,[243] and passed subsequently into various
lawbooks.[244] And a woman who destroyed her animate embryo was
punished with death.[245]
[Footnote 240: Tertullian, _Apologeticus_, 9 (Migne _op. cit._
i. 319 _sq._).]
[Footnote 241: St. Augustine, _Questiones in Exodum_, 80; _Idem_,
_Questiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti_, 23 (Migne, _op. cit._
xxxiv.-xxxv. 626, 2229).]
[Footnote 242: Gratian, _Decretum_, ii. 32. 2. 8 _sq._]
[Footnote 243: As regards the time from which the fetus was considered
to be animate a curious distinction was drawn between the male and the
female fetus. The former was regarded as _animatus_ forty days after
its conception, the latter eighty days. This theory, however--which
was derived, as it seems, either from an absurd misinterpretation of
_Leviticus_, xii. 2-5, or from the views of Aristotle (_De animalibus
historiæ_, vii. 3; _cf._ Pliny, _Historia naturalis_, vii. 6)--was not
accepted by the glossarist of the Justinian Code, who fixed the
animation of the female, as well as of the male, fetus at forty days
after its conception; and this view was adopted by later jurists
(Spangenberg, in _Neues Archiv des Criminalrechts_, ii. 37 _sqq._).]
[Footnote 244: von Fabrice, _op. cit._ p. 202 _sq._ Berner, _op. cit._
p. 501. Wilda, _op. cit._ p. 720 _sqq._]
[Footnote 245: Fleta, i. 23. 12 (England). Charles V's _Peinliche
Gerichts Ordnung_, art. 133. Spangenberg in _Neues Archiv des
Criminalrechts_, ii. 16.]
The criminality of artificial abortion was increased by the belief
that an _embryo formatus_, being a person endowed with an immortal
soul, was in need of baptism for its salvation. In his highly esteemed
treatise De fide, written in the sixth century, St. Fulgentius says,
"It is to be believed beyond doubt, that not only men who are come to
the use of reason, but infants, whether they die in their mother's
womb, or after they are born, without baptism, {417} in the name of
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are punished with everlasting
punishment in eternal fire, because though they have no actual sin of
their own, yet they carry along with them the condemnation of original
sin from their first conception and birth."[246] And in the Lex
Bajuwariorum this doctrine is expressly referred to in a paragraph
which prescribes a daily compensation for children killed in the womb
on account of the daily suffering of those children in hell.[247]
Subsequently, however, St. Fulgentius' dictum was called in question,
and no less a person than Thomas Aquinas suggested the possibility of
salvation for an infant who died before its birth.[248] Apart from
this, the doctrine that the life of an embryo is equally sacred with
the life of an infant was so much opposed to popular feelings, that
the law concerning feticide had to be altered. Modern legislation,
though treating the fetus as a distinct being from the moment of its
conception,[249] punishes criminal abortion less severely than
infanticide.[250] And the very frequent occurrence of this crime[251]
is an evidence of the comparative indifference with which it is
practically looked upon by large numbers of people in Christian
countries.
[Footnote 246: St. Fulgentius, _De fide_, 27 (Migne, _op. cit._
lxv. 701).]
[Footnote 247: _Lex Bajuwariorum_, viii. 21 (vii. 20).]
[Footnote 248: Lecky, _History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit
of Rationalism in Europe_, i. 360, n. 2.]
[Footnote 249: Henke, _Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen Medicin_, 99, p. 75.
Berner, _op. cit._ p. 502.]
[Footnote 250: von Fabrice, _op. cit._ p. 199. For modern laws
referring to criminal abortion, see _ibid._ p. 206 _sqq._, and
Spangenberg, in _Neues Archiv des Criminalrechts_, ii. 178 _sqq._]
[Footnote 251: See Ploss, _Das Weib_, i. 848 _sqq._; Schmidt's
_Jahrbücher der in- und ausländischen Gesammten Medicin_, xciii. 97.]