§ Order for Second Reading read.
§ MR. CHARLEY, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said, that this was the first occasion on which the House of Commons had an opportunity of discussing the question of preventing, by beneficent legislation, the wanton destruction of infant life, which was a reproach to our modern civilization, and it would be hardly respectful to the House if he did not preface the discussion by a few preliminary observations. It would be in the recollection of the House that he introduced last year a similar Bill, which he withdrew in deference to objections which had been raised to it by the hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Jacob Bright) and by the Government, and subsequently on his Motion a Select Committee was appointed to inquire into the subject. The Committee sat for 13 days, and examined 20 witnesses, chiefly scientific men, who had for years studied the subject, or persons who had a practical knowledge of the system of criminal baby farming, or of putting out children to nurse for hire in its innocent form; and he ventured to say that their evidence, and the papers which they handed in, formed one of the most valuable Blue Books ever presented to Parliament. Hon. Members would find in it an inexhaustible repertory of information upon this interesting subject. The hon. Member for Edinburgh University (Dr. Lyon Playfair) introduced a Bill at the latter end of last Session for the compulsory registration of births and deaths, embodying one of the recommendations of the Committtee, and only withdrew it on the understanding that the Government intended to take the matter into their 1487 own hands; and he had reason to believe that at the present moment Her Majesty's Government were investigating the question, with the view to the introduction of such a measure. It might surprise many hon. Members to learn that at present there was no compulsory registration of births and deaths in this country, and the Registrar General for Scotland, where a compulsory system was in force, not unnaturally complained that the rate of the births of illegitimate children appeared larger in consequence in that country than in England. The Committee further recommended that there should be a registration and inspection of secret lying-in establishments; but after a careful consideration it had been found that so much difficulty existed in framing provisions for that purpose, that it had been determined not to embody that recommendation in the Bill, but to leave the matter in the hands of the Government—more especially as the Public Health Department, which would have to undertake the duty of inspection, was at present undergoing a complete reconstruction. The criticisms of the Press upon the Bill were in general very favourable. The only complaint was that the Bill was not sufficiently stringent—that it omitted inspection; that it passed by day nurseries altogether; and that it did not include within its scope persons who took in only one child at a time to nurse for hire. The Bill of last Session included all of these provisions. The framers of the Bill of this Session had made concessions in order to secure unanimity, and the wisdom of that course was proved by the total absence of opposition to the Bill to-day. The hon. Member for Manchester objected to legislating for day nurseries, as an unwarrantable interference with the liberty of the subject: the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Melly) objected to legislating for persons who only took in one infant at a time to nurse for hire. The framers of the Bill had the less reluctance in parting for the present with the scheme of inspection, as the Public Health Department was in a transition state, and until it was reconstructed the question of inspection could not be satisfactorily dealt with. The Bill now before the House provided that every person who for a money consideration placed himself in 1488 loco parentis toward two or more infants under one year of age for a longer period than a day should be required to prove the fitness of himself and his house for the trade in which he had embarked by producing a certificate under the hand of a registered medical practitioner, of a minister of religion, or of a justice of the peace, and on the production of such certificate a justice of the peace might grant him a licence to endure for a year, but revocable in case it was found that the infants were being neglected. Together with the licence, the applicant was to receive a book for the registration of infants, which was to be kept privately and not to be open to inspection without an order under the hand of a justice of the peace, and the falsification of such register was to be an offence under the Bill. Within 24 hours after the death of an infant so placed out, notice was to be given by the person licensed to the coroner of the district, who would hold an inquest on the body, unless he received a certificate under the hand of a registered medical practitioner that the death arose from natural causes; and no burial of the body of such an infant was to take place without a certificate under the hand of the coroner authorizing it. The penalties for offences under the Bill had, with the view to make them as light as possible, considering the enormity of the crimes that had led to legislation, been limited to six months' imprisonment. Relatives and guardians of infants, and also persons taking care of infants whose parents were resident abroad, would be excepted from the operation of the measure, as well as infant homes like that established in Great Coram Street, public orphanages like the Foundling Hospital, and pauper children boarded out under the regulations of the Local Government Board. Unlike the Bill of last year, the present measure asked for no public money. The plan of inspection having been for the present abandoned, it was unnecessary to ask for public money to maintain a staff of Inspectors. The fee for licensing had also been omitted, on the ground that this might deprive poor women of many little luxuries. The public were familiar with the case of Margaret Waters, the Brixton baby-farmer. The justice of her sentence had been questioned; but if ever the 1489 extreme penalty was necessary for the sake of example it was so in her case, and he was informed by the police that the severity of her sentence had had the effect of breaking up many criminal establishments in the metropolis. At the last Manchester Assizes another severe and well-deserved punishment was inflicted, Mr. Baron Martin sentencing Ellen Rogers to 20 years' penal servitude for attempting to murder a child by starving it. The Bill did not profess to be a complete remedy for infanticide. The Committee of the Infant Life Protection Society were as sensible as the hon. Member for Manchester of the necessity of amending the bastardy laws, and had actually prepared a Bill amending them; but any amendment of those laws, would merely transfer the payment for children put out to nurse for hire from the mother to the father, and would not touch criminal baby farming. Public opinion, tired of party politics, demanded that a large portion of the present Session should be devoted to the consideration of social and sanitary reform. The apathy which political questions had encountered this Session was an accurate reflex of the state of feeling out-of-doors. It was in harmony with public opinion that he asked the House to read a second time this measure of social and sanitary reform; and he ventured to say that there were few measures more deserving of their consideration, as Christians, philanthropists, and legislators, than the question of preventing, by beneficent legislation, the wanton destruction of infant life.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the second time."—(Mr. Charley.)
§ MR. HURSTsaid, he did not rise to oppose the second reading of the Bill, but to point out what he considered some of its main defects. In the first place, the Bill did not extend its operation to the persons who entrusted children to baby farmers. It proposed to make the keeper of these establishments liable to the criminal law; but it made no provision that persons who placed their children in these establishments should also, under certain circumstances, be liable to the criminal law. It ought to be made an offence for a mother or guardian to place a child in an unlicensed establishment, for it was too notorious that in 1490 many cases infants were placed with these people to be got rid of. They must bear in mind that they had to deal with mothers who had lost the best instincts of human nature, and with persons who took in the children for the purpose of getting rid of them; and it was idle, therefore, to suppose that persons of this character would not evade the provisions of the Bill, if possible. Private lying-in establishments should also be licensed and subjected to registration of persons received there, otherwise the stringency of the law might lead to the perpetration of the crime in those establishments, instead of the baby-farming houses. Entries in the register should be required to be made immediately on the admission of a child, and provision was needed for putting inspection in force, as also for making the annual renewal of the licence obligatory. The "other particulars" to be registered together with the name should be defined, and the responsibility of holding an inquest or not in case of death should continue to devolve on the coroner, instead of being thrown on the "registered medical practitioner." The latter should state the cause of death, and not merely assign it to "natural causes," and the coroner should hold an inquest unless actually satisfied that this was unnecessary. Many of these defects might, no doubt, be amended in Committee. There should also be a provision in the Bill, in accordance with the recommendation of the Select Committee, that the houses as well as the persons who kept them should be proper and fit for the purpose for which they were intended, or else the infants taken by registered persons might be consigned to a cellar, and in that way be got rid of. The Bill was so loosely drawn, that every clause could be easily evaded.
§ MR. KINNAIRD, as a Member of the Select Committee, thanked the hon. and learned Member for having introduced the Bill. It might have been made more stringent; but in the hands of a private Member it would then have run the risk of serious opposition, and it was best to proceed tentatively. People did not like rapid changes, and the principle once recognized, it would be easy to make the provisions hereafter more stringent—though he did not believe the Bill would be so inoperative as was feared by the hon. and learned Member for Horsham (Mr. Hurst).
§ MR. D. DALRYMPLEsaid, it would be a great pity if the House did not accept the Bill; but with the distinct understanding that it would be materially strengthened either in Committee or in a subsequent Session. In early life he observed in a large union connected with the metropolis the wholesale massacre of infant life, and more recently he had witnessed in infant hospitals in London and elsewhere the painful results of cupidity and mismanagement. He thought that restrictions should be placed on the terms of payment made to persons who took charge of infant children, and that the payment of a lump sum should be made illegal, for this almost certainly implied the death of the child, whereas a monthly or weekly payment involved its being kept alive and in decent condition. The registration of lying-in establishments had been omitted, through fear of interference with institutions of high character; but this might be avoided by excepting institutions already registered or incorporated by charter; but it was necessary to take cognizance of those illegal and vicious establishments where the fruits of vice and crime were concealed and rarely came out alive. There was another species of infanticide, which he trusted was not indigenous, but had come from across the Channel or the Atlantic. He should not allude to it more pointedly than by saying he feared there were institutions in which the infant never saw the light alive, and he would urge the Government to take steps to bring this class of offenders to condign punishment. He agreed with the hon. and learned Member for Horsham (Mr. Hurst) that the provision as to inquests required strengthening. Children intrusted to baby-farmers usually died through insufficient nourishment or drugging; but there were "gallipot" names for the results of such treatment—deaths resulting from insufficiency of food or small doses of opiates were often returned as due to "natural causes." The disease ought, therefore, to be certified, and in the case of these diseases the coroner ought to hold an inquest to elicit all the circumstances. He accepted the Bill as an instalment.
§ DR. BREWERwould remind the hon. Member for Horsham that to proceed against a parent for putting out her child to nurse would in many, he hoped in the majority of cases, be unjust and unwarrantable. A number of helpless persons 1492 were, from their poverty and from their being compelled to go out to service, forced to entrust their children to others to nurse. It had come out in evidence at the Committee, that many to whom these poor women had given their children up to be nursed treated such little charges with tenderness and truly maternal affection—more still, with a fair amount of motherly supervision. It was a mistake, he thought, to conclude that the majority did not live above the law, and those for whom the restraints of the Act were provided, it must be admitted, were persons who receiving only one child might be as dangerous as those charged with several infants, for it might be their interest to get rid of one child at a time with facility, and without exciting suspicion. There would be a difficulty, however, in dealing with this class. Many innocent persons were glad to take a single child to nurse from poverty, and there was a strong feeling entertained by a number of benevolent ladies who were associated that care must be taken in the proposed legislation not to interfere with this class of nurses. On the other hand, there were instances in which women who took in one child at a time had lost them with such rapidity as to alarm the medical practitioners of the district and the clergymen. It was impossible, in the first instance, to frame such a Bill as would satisfy all the views of those who had turned attention to the subject. The promotors of the Bill had not overlooked the importance of the registration and inspection of lying-in establishments; but he thought that was rather a matter for the consideration of the Home Secretary than for private Members, and he hoped the Government would turn their attention to the point—taking care not to make it so inquisitorial as to be oppressive. Periodical inspection was of great importance, and he hoped that public opinion would ultimately sanction it. What influenced the Committee in limiting the scope of the Bill was the fear that stringent provisions would lead to an increase of infanticide by the mothers themselves. On this ground they had abstained from making persons sending children to baby-farmers criminally responsible. The remedy must be sought rather in education than in criminal punishment. The hon. and learned Member (Mr. Hurst) was mistaken in stating that the fitness of the premises 1493 was not provided for; the licence would have to show that the baby-farmer could give "proper food and lodging" to children intrusted to her. As to the payment of a lump sum, it was no doubt a serious temptation, and persons accepting an insufficient amount evinced a criminal intention; but the practice, though to be discouraged, could not absolutely be forbidden, or a baby-farmer would have no security for payment in the event of its guardian going abroad or to a distance. It was not necessary to stigmatize with criminal motives those to whom the care of infants was committed; it was sufficient to show that the fear of ill-treatment in a certain number of cases was a reasonable one, and the reports of the police as to the number of dropped children in dust-heaps, areas, and open, unfrequented spaces, the exposures at the Courts of Justice, the evidence of medical men and clergymen adequately proved this; and, if so, considering the human infant as the most helpless and defenceless of the community, it was eminently fitting the Legislature should step in for its protection; but the promoters of the Bill had ample warning that legislation in the matter should proceed tentatively:—they did not want to go beyond the necessity of the case in any legislation that was proposed on the subject.
§ MR. SPENCER WALPOLEthought that some of the criticisms made upon the Bill deserved the consideration of his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Charley) when the Bill got into Committee. As to the provisions regarding registration of children put out to nurse, it appeared to him that they might be easily evaded. There was certainly a little more stringency required in order to carry out effectually the objects of his hon. and learned Friend, who deserved the thanks of that House and the country for the valuable services he had rendered in this direction, and for the great zeal he had manifested in his efforts to provide a remedy for the dreadful evils complained of. It had been proved by evidence that the loss of infant life, even under the most favourable circumstances, was very great, being about 15 or 16 per cent. That loss was doubled the moment infants were transferred from the hand of the mother to those of strange nurses. Among children that were illegitimate, the loss of life, even in comparatively good homes, amounted to 40 or 50 percent; 1494 and when transferred to homes of a worse character the loss of life rose to about 80 or even 90 per cent. In the presence then of such facts he submitted that much more was required than the proposed provisions for registration. The root of the evil would not be reached unless the neglect which these unfortunate children encountered from their very birth, and their transfer from lying-in establishments to baby farms, on the payment of lump sums or miserable allowances, were dealt with. This Bill, made somewhat more stringent, might meet the simpler class of cases; but he would urge the Government to bear in mind the necessity of passing some measure making registration compulsory both as to births and deaths, so that those children might be traced from the hands from which they originally came to the latest homes in which they were received, and in the event of their being made away with the crime brought home to the really guilty parties. He admitted that the sanitary and social part of the question was met by this Bill; but unless it was supplemented by much more stringent provisions than any it contained, he did not think that the great object which his hon. and learned Friend had in view—the criminal part of the case—would be reached.
MR. BRUCEsaid, that having an important engagement, he intended to leave his hon. Friend (Mr. Winter-botham), as a Member of the Committee, to speak on this Bill; but before leaving the House he wished to state that the Local Government Board was considering the subject of registration, and hoped to introduce a Bill in the course of the Session. As to strengthening the effect of the Bill by introducing more stringent provisions, the suggestions of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Walpole) would receive the consideration of the Government before the next stage of the Bill.
MR. HENLEYsaid, he was willing to give full credit to the Gentlemen who promoted this Bill for the most amiable and best intentions; but he concurred with his right hon. Friend near him (Mr. Walpole) in thinking that this measure did not go to the root of the evil. He (Mr. Henley) much misgave that this Bill, however good the intentions of the authors, instead of protecting infant life, would rather tend to make it more insecure. His reason for thinking so was this. All Bills of this 1495 sort must necessarily increase the charge on the wretched women who had the misfortune to have one or two illegitimate children. The position of such a woman was difficult enough already. Her character lost, she could only obtain employment at a very low pay by persons who consented to receive her under her unfortunate circumstances; and, therefore, everything tended to increase her difficulty in getting her child properly provided for. He thought it probable, therefore, that this kind of legislation might have the effect of causing many more of these children to be put away, and that, instead of saving human life, it would have the opposite result. The position of those unhappy women who had illegitimate children was rendered more sad from the operation of the law, which compelled their husbands, if they should subsequently get married, to maintain those children. He was afraid that that was a frequent stimulant to parties to make away with them. Everything which had been done in the way of legislation on the subject during the last 40 years tended to make the position of such women worse than it had been before; and so long as they increased the burden of that class of persons, unless human nature became much improved, they offered a premium for the commission of those crimes which they all so much deplored. He believed that, unless they went to the root of the evil, they would never succeed in lessening the amount of that destruction of human life which now, unfortunately, existed.
§ DR. LYON PLAYFAIRsaid, he agreed with the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) that this Bill would not wholly meet, nor was it intended to meet, the causes which produced infant mortality. The primary causes of the enormous mortality among illegitimate children had roots deeper than this Bill would penetrate. The law relating to seduction and bastardy were among these ultimate causes, and were not dealt with by this Bill. But when effects were notoriously evil and dangerous, it was often right to remove them, even before they tried to extirpate the causes which produced them. The mortality among all infants was great, but that among illegitimate infants enormous. If it were true that there were some 50,000 illegitimates annually born in this country, the evidence before the 1496 Committee showed that 30,000 of them perished in the first year of their existence. This enormous mortality, amounting to about 60 per cent. was mainly due to two causes—criminal negligence and ignorant negligence. He was happy to believe that the latter was a far more frequent cause of mortality than the former. Illegitimate infants had, to a large extent, to be brought up by hand, and the artificial feeding of infants required an amount of knowledge rarely possessed by parents or nurses even of the upper classes. The natural aliment of an infant was milk, every part of which being soluble was easily digested and assimilated by the infant. But when they came to hand-feeding, kinds of food suitable enough for adults were wholly useless and positively pernicious to the child, because its digestive organs could not render them soluble. Thus, if they gave, as nurses for hire very often did give, oatmeal gruel to a child, they might as well keep it without food at all, for the child was starved, though under circumstances which a coroner's jury would be loath to describe as starvation. And then when the poor starved irritable child fretted, opiates were largely given to soothe it and dull its pain. It was now more than a quarter of a century since, in his capacity as a Royal Commissioner, he laid before that House a Report on the terrible effects produced upon children by the indiscriminate use of opiates, and then adduced the evidence of three druggists who, in a poor locality, sold nine gallons of opiates weekly in doses which did not exceed a teaspoonful for each child, and he drew attention to the fact that infantile mortality diminished largely as pauperism increased, because the parents, from want of employment, stayed at home and nursed their own children, and had not money to buy opiates to keep them quiet—a quietness which so often ended in death. In that Report he also drew attention to the excessive mortality among infants insured in burial clubs. Since that time he had anxiously waited to see the Legislature take steps to mitigate these crimes against society, and if he said only a few words to-day in support of the Bill of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Salford, it was because the time for action had come, and the time for speaking was passed. The Bill did not root out the causes of infant 1497 mortality, nor would it extinguish their effects, but it would contribute much to mitigate them. Only such nurses as made nursing a trade and vocation would be continued on the register when they showed that they were acting honestly, and with a fair amount of success. If a succession of coroners' inquests were held on a particular nursing establishment, public attention would soon be drawn to it, and an unskilled and ignorant woman would lose her vocation. The Bill would therefore lead indirectly to only capable women following the practice of nursing as a trade. It would also induce a large number of respectable women to follow an occupation which they rejected now because of its association with criminal baby-farming. After the explanations of his hon. and learned Friend, he need not enlarge upon this as a disgraceful practice, far more prevalent than even he, who had watched the subject for 27 years, had any conception of. When they advertised for a nurse to adopt an infant for life at a premium of from £5 to £10, and got some 300 answers to their advertisement, as witnesses had stated to be the case before the Committee, no one could attribute the motives for those prompt and overwhelming replies to benevolence, but must ascribe them to love of gain. And how was a child to be nurtured, clothed, and educated for the whole of life for £10? Clearly, because the speculators in adoption knew that the value of the life in their hands was so uncommonly small, calculated not by the Carlisle tables of mortality, but by the experienced risks of baby-farming, which made gain to the nurses a surety. Unquestionably actual criminality occurred, or they would not have 276 dead bodies of infants picked up in the streets of the metropolis in a single year; but it was less to substantive acts of crime, than to negative neglects of a nurse's duty, that the mortality even of baby farms was due. They could not be surprised, then, that respectable women would not enter a vocation eminently suitable to women of tender sympathies, when the whole system was stained by criminality and by motives of negligence closely hovering on the brink of crime. One of the chief merits of this Bill, then, in his eyes, was, that while it would entirely stop criminal baby-farming, it would render nursing an honourable 1498 occupation, which might be followed without discredit by respectable women. No doubt, the Bill did not go so far as its promoters would have wished. The Association for the Protection of Infant Life, of which they who backed the Bill were mere representatives, and reaped the fruits of their disinterested labours, had desired to go much further, and had advocated inspection of all nursing establishments. They were justified in that demand, for if it were right to inspect helpless lunatics, who rarely recovered so as to become useful and productive citizens, it would be surely right to inspect the upbringing of helpless children brought up for hire by strangers, and who by neglect might become so weak and stunted in frame that they would fill our hospitals and workhouses in future life, and yet who by care might be so nurtured as to become healthy and useful members of society; but they felt, however desirable inspection might be, that they could not have carried through this Bill when weighted with inspection clauses, and therefore they had unwillingly omitted them. If no other legislation were to follow this Bill, it would certainly not meet all the evils. It would perhaps be useless to pass it unless they were assured that a law would be brought before them for the compulsory registration of births, and for the better verification of deaths. The House allowed him to introduce a Bill last year for that purpose, and it was backed by leading Members on both sides of the House; they withdrew it because the Government gave them a promise that they would not allow this Session to pass without carrying through such a measure; and they looked with anxiety for the fulfilment of that promise; but that Bill was not yet even introduced. The Bill of his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, relating to the protection of young women, would be another step in the removal of causes which laid at the root of the evils that they were trying to remedy. But no one of those measures would obviate the necessity for a careful revision of the bastardy laws, which now pressed with such severity on women as compared with men. These subsequent measures, however, did not in any degree render unnecessary the Bill before them, for it was simple and direct in its application, and would largely mitigate the effects of 1499 evils, though it did not profess to eradicate them. He trusted, then, that the House would give to it a second reading, in order that they might soon extend the protection of the law to infants deserted or neglected by their natural protectors. Experience had taught them that strangers who nursed infants for hire allowed a large portion of them to perish in their infancy, or managed them so unskilfully and ignorantly that they remained weak and sickly grafts on society, which had too long ignored that it was its interest as well as its duty to aid in their protection.
§ MR. WINTERBOTHAMsaid, although the Government would offer no opposition to the second reading of the Bill, yet he should be going too far if he said he had very much faith in its sufficiency to remove or materially diminish this evil. This Bill differed greatly from the Bill of last Session. He felt strongly the remark of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), as to the danger of producing greater evils, or intensifying existing evils, by this effort to remedy them. He was not very sanguine that the Bill would materially affect the criminal branch of this evil. The Bill would drive the criminal class of nurses to greater secrecy, and, perhaps, give them stronger motives for crime. The penalties proposed were rough. Six months' imprisonment, under the summary jurisdiction of a justice of the peace, was, in his opinion, a severe penalty for what might be a mere accidental infringement of the law. He very much feared that one of the great causes of non-criminal neglect of children was the poverty of those who had to provide for them. How could that state of things be met unless suitable nourishment and adequate remuneration were provided? He saw no means in the Bill of removing that difficulty. However, that, and the penalties for infringing this measure, would be matters for the consideration of hon. Gentlemen in Committee.
§ MR. CHARLEYrejoiced that such unanimity had prevailed in the discussion on the measure—the only objection to it being similar to that raised out of doors—namely, that its provisions were not sufficiently stringent.
§ Motion agreed to.
1500§ Bill read a second time, and committed for Tuesday, 9th April.