THE TRADE IN CHILDREN TO BURY. _
A CONTEMPORARY calls attention' to the poisonings which have become a practice among certain classes of the population, for the sake of gain, by frauds on insurance-offices and burial-clubs ; and shows reasons for supposing that the known cases are but a few instances of a crime which is to a wide extent undetected, especially in the factory districts. At Preston, where 23,000 members are enrolled in three burial-societies, statistics suggest a very dark suspicion. Only healthy children are accepted for enrolment, and sixteen weekly payments are exacted before the benefit can accrue to the person who enrols a child : accordingly, between the ages of two months and six months, the mortality among children enrolled is less than that among. the unentered children of the general population ; but after six months, it is greater,—that is, the healthier children, who are insured, die off faster than the uninsured and sickly. "The average amount granted at death," says the Daily News, "is between eight and nine pounds; and it is not unfrequent to find that an infant is enrolled in three or four different burial-clubs, so that the premium for its death becomes as 'inch as twenty pounds. In the manufacturing districts, where the mother of a family is working in a factory, the infants are intrusted to hired nurses, who often take charge of the children of several families at the same time. Now it is by no means rare to find these hired nurses speculating on the decease of their charges, by enrolling them in burial-clubs, in the expectation that a speedy death may insure a larger return for the investment. It is unnecessary to allude to the easy methods by which this gambling speculation may be realized; for negligent treatment, with the aid of Godfrey 's cordial, will soon terminate the life of a child under circumstances in which criminal intention could not be construed. These pecuniary inducements to negligent treatment act upon parents themselves. The chaplain of Preston Gaol mentions the case of the sickness of the child of a nurse, who, being offered by her sympathizing mistress the services of her own medical man, declined them on the ground of the enrolment of the child in two burial-clubs, and the consequent gain by its death."
The check upon this crime suggested by our contemporary is " the verification of the alleged cause of death in every case which occurs, whether or not there be just grounds for sus- picion " : a very proper rule, which ought to be enforced by the existing law of registration, but that the law is imperfect, and its enforcement still more so.
In considering the moral pestilence and its appropriate checks, we ought to look deeper than the mere proximate cause—the hope of lucre. The crime is not altogether new. The case of Stand- ring and his wife, at Stockport, which first called any decided at- tention to the subject, happened at least ten years ago ; and there was then reason to suppose that the practice was by no means new. Standring and his wife traded in the death of their own children. The habits of providence which are inculcated on the industrious classes thus become instruments of depravity, so atro- cious that there must be something wrong in the system to which that provident institution belongs. The factory system gives us cheap cottons, makes us " the workshop of the world," augments the national wealth, enables the factory districts to dictate free trade and decree cheap bread ; but along with it goes this hideous depravity, that perverts the strongest and most sacred of in- stincts. We are dismayed when we see the parental instinct perverted in the lower animals ; but such aberrations are rare : it is in our own race, and in the crowning work of the newest civilization, that we detect the wholesale depravity.
Now, what are the circumstances of the classes in which it is most common ? We find them among the communities where we find also the most general traces of intelligence and education ; but nevertheless, if we look a little closer, we shall see that the particular sections of the community among which the practice prevails, endure the more privative influences of civilization, without enjoying its fortifying influences. The division of em- ployments and the competition of labour have given to the millowner the pick of the labour-market ; and he selects the very best hands—such as will turn out the greatest amount of work, in the best state, in the shortest time : his choice falls mostly on "young persons," who combine the skill of mature age with the delicate finger and sensitive touch of youth. In the bulk, the best wages and the most certain employment fall to these young persons and women : the natural head of the family is deposed ; the youna•b persons are prematurely independent. Boys and girls marry in haste, and take no leisure for repentance ; separation after a few weeks is common ; bigamy is frequent. The whole day, except each "roaring, ranting, tearing" holyday, is spent in the factory : there is no home. Children are an infliction : they are put out to nurse, at a set charge nicely reduced
to a minimum by "the higgling of the market have a child means, to pay half-a-crown a week to a woman who trado in nursing, until the child be old enough to enter a factory; unless a burial-society should offer a more ready source of profit. In short, throughout large sections of our population, the family is broken up, and the family instincts are destroyed. Such are among the incidents of our boasted factory system. But what statutes, however stringent, can serve in protecting the child as a substitute for the natural parental instinct? This view opens a dreary prospect of continued and increasing depravity, with no adequate remedy in sight ; but we ought not to close our eyes to the dangers that accompany our "greatness."
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