§ LORD BUCKHURSTrose to call attention to the state of the law with reference to the employment of Women and Children in public entertainments as acrobats. In these exhibitions women and children of tender years were often put in positions of the greatest danger—their lives might be said literally to hang upon a thread. There was no legislative provision which was sufficient to meet such cases. He had received an account from an eye-witness of what occurred at the Alhambra, where a little girl, not more than 12 years of age, risked her life in a fearful gymnastic feat, in which if she had not succeeded she must have suffered instant death. He had also received an account from an eye-witness of a performance at the Oxford Music Hall where two little boys (the youngest of whom could not be older than five or six years) were placed in imminent peril. He asked whether performances of this kind ought to be allowed in order to satisfy a morbid love of excitement? He admitted that it might be difficult to legislate on such a subject, but he thought there were instances in which legislative interference had taken place in circumstances somewhat corresponding. For instance, there was an Act of Parliament which forbad that boys of tender years should be employed as chimneysweepers, and there were also the Factory Acts. He would suggest to the Government whether it would not be possible to introduce some clause into the Metropolitan and County Police Acts which would 1734 give the police the power of discretionary interference where the lives of women and children were placed in jeopardy.
THE EARL OF MORLEYsaid, that the noble Lord had himself acknowledged the difficulty of legislating upon this subject, but any suggestion made by the noble Lord would be received with the deference which it deserved. He thought the legislation proposed by the noble Lord would be too restrictive, and approached to over-legislation. At present if the Home Secretary, upon receiving information that any dangerous exhibition was about to take place, he at once intimated to the manager of the place of amusement in question that he must abide by the consequences if an accident happened. He believed that in every case the warning of the Home Secretary had proved sufficient. Blondin, for instance, had been prevented by such a warning from carrying his child along the high rope.