FRIGHTFUL STATISTICS.

389

months, died on the 6th of March, and that on the 21st of the same month died Richard Pimlet, aged four years and a half. On the 27th of the same month a third child was taken ill. The medical man's suspicions were aroused. The authorities caused the bodies of the two dead infants to be exhumed. It was found that the mother had purchased arsenic before the children's illness. Dr. Brett showed the presence of arsenic in the bodies in quantities more than sufficient to cause death.' The collector of the Liverpool Victoria Legal Burial Society proved that the three children were all enrolled members; that he had paid £1 58. on the death of one child, and £5 on the death of the other. The steward of another society proved the payment of £1 5s. and £1 158. on the two deaths. Verdict, willful murder, against the mother. "2. At York assizes, in July, 1846, John Rodda was convicted of the willful murder of his own child, aged one year. The evidence proved that the wretch poured a spoonful of sulphuric acid down his helpless infant's throat. It was proved that he said he did not care how soon the child died, for whenever it died, he should have £2 108. as it was in a 'dead list.' He said he had another that would have the same when it died, and two others that would have £5 apiece when they died.

"8. In June, 1849, Mary Ann Milner was charged with the willful murder-by arsenic-of her mother-in-law, her sister-in-law, and her niece; her father-in-law had also well nigh become her victim, and was reduced to imbecility from the effects of the poison. The only imaginable motive for the conduct of the prisoner, as suggested by the counsel for the prosecution, and as supported by the evidence, was the obtaining moneys from a burial society.

"4. In July, 1848, Mary May took her trial for the murder of Spratty Watts, by the favorite means-arsenic. This horrible case will be still in the recollection of your readers. The woman had put her victim into a 'death list,' which lured her to her crime, by promising £9 or £10 on its perpetration. The private confession of Mrs. May afforded'-I quote from The Times of September 21-a due clue to a system which it is feared is capable of most extensive proof, and will result in the conviction of a large number of women, who have adopted the practice of poisoning their husbands and children, for the purpose of obtaining the fees which are granted by what are in this part of the country termed death lists.'

"5. I must add to this imperfect, but too full catalogue, the name of Ann Mather, against whom, in August, 1847, a coroner's jury, at Warrington, returned a verdict of 'willful murder.' Her husband's name being in three separate death lists,' the usual means-arsenic-was resorted to, and the desperate gamestress won £20. I shall merely name the 'Essex poisonings;' their horrible notoriety has not yet subsided. Let it be remembered, that we have here only a portion of the positive murders resulting from the temptations offered by burial clubs. No one can guess how many more victims-infants especially-have been poisoned, or otherwise destroyed, for the sake of the coveted burial money, though neither inquiry nor suspicion may have been excited; nor, how many children, entered by their parents in burial clubs, are, when attacked by sickness, suffered to die without any effort being made to save their lives."

XVIII.

IN

N Mr. Clay's Report on the sanitary condition of Preston, is furnished startling evidence of the wide prevalence of this feeling :

"My report on the sanitary condition of Preston, given in the 'First Report of the Health of Towns Commission,' furnishes startling evidence of the wide prevalence of this feeling. A collector of cottage rents states, that almost all the children of the families where he collects are members of burial societies. . . . . . ... The children of the poor, when sick, are greatly neglected; the poor seldom seek medical assistance for sick children, except when they are at the point of death.' Another collector states, 'the poor people have often told me that they were

390

NUMBER OF INFANTS KILLED.

unable to pay at that time; but when a certain member of the family-generally a child-died they would be able to pay.'. A lady states, that a young woman whose services she required as wet nurse, having a child ill, she offered to send her own medical friend to attend to it; the reply of the nurse was, 'Oh! never mind, ma'am, it's in two burial clubs.' It also appears, on the unimpeachable authority of a burial club official, that hired nurses speculate on the lives of infants committed to their care, by entering them in burial clubs;' that 'two young women proposed to enter a child into his club, and to pay the weekly premium alternately. Upon inquiring as to the relation exsisting between the two young women and the child, he learned that the infant was placed at nurse with the mother of one of these young women.' The wife of a clergyman told me that, visiting a poor district just when a child's death had occurred, instead of hearing from the neighbors the language of sympathy for the bereaved parent, she was shocked by such observations as- Ah! it's a fine thing for the mother, the child's in two clubs!'. . . . . As regards one town, I possess some evidence of the amount of burial-club membership, and of infant mortality, which I beg to lay before you. . . . . . The reports of this town refer to 1846, when the population of the town amounted to 61,000. I do not name the town, because, as no actual burial-club murders are known to have been committed in it, and as such clubs are not more patronized there than in other places, it is, perhaps, not fair to hold it up to particular animadversion; indeed, as to its general character, this very town need not fear comparison with any other. Now, this place, with its 61.000 people of all classes and ages, maintains at least eleven burial clubs, the members of which amount in the aggregate to nearly 52,000; nor are these all. Such clubs, remember, act as burial clubs. Of these there are twelve or fourteen in the town, mustering altogether, probably, 2,000 members. Here, then, we have good data for comparing population with 'death lists;' but it will be necessary, in making the comparison, to deduct from the population all that part of it which has nothing to do with these clubs, viz., all infants under two months old, and all persons of unsound health (both of these classes being excluded by the club rules); all those of the working classes, whose sound intelligence and feeling lead them to abhor burial-club temptations; and all the better classes, to whom £5 or £20 offer no consolation for the death of a child, On the hypothesis that these deductions will amount to one-sixth of the entire population, it results, that the death lists are more numerous by far than the entire mass-old, young and infants-which support them; and according to the statement of a leading death-list officer, threefourths of the names on these catalogues of the doomed are the names of children. Now, if this be the truth-and I believe it is-hundreds, if not thousands, of children must be entered each into four, five, or even twelve clubs, their chances of life diminishing, of course, in proportion to the frequency with which they are entered. Lest you should imagine that such excessive addiction to burial clubs is only to be found in one place, I furnish you with a report for 1846, of a single club, which then boasted 34,000 members-the entire population of the town to which it belongs, having been in 1841 little more than 36,000 !"

In Dr. Lyon Playfair's Report,

.....

"It is stated, that among the poor of Manchester, out of 100 deaths, 60 to 65 are of infants under five years old. One man put his children into nineteen clubs! Dr. Lyon Playfair, again shows (p. 54,) that children die in Manchester when wages are high, at a rate more than that at which they die among the poverty-stricken laborers of Dorsetshire. . . . . .

"I have now before me communications from five medical gentlemen, resident in the town of 61,000 inhabitants above alluded to (four of them surgeons to the union, and the fifth the medical officer of an institution furnishing gratuitous medical aid to the poor), showing their attendance on poor children under five years old, contrasted with their attendance on the poor above that age. The older patients, for whom medical aid was sought, constitute 87 per cent., the younger ones, 18 per cent. Poor little creatures! 56 per cent. die, but only 18 per cent. of them have the doctor's help, though it may be had for asking."

CRUELTY TO INFANTS.

391

ΧΙΧ.

R. CLAY then makes the following extracts from the authorities alluded to:

MR.

"1. "The above numbers (247 patients above five years of age, and 26 under five years of age) very strikingly illustrate what I have frequently remarked otherwise-the great difference displayed by parents and others in the lower ranks of life with regard to infant life.'

"2. With respect to the attendance which the poorer classes give to their children in sickness, I am sorry to say it is generally anything but what it ought to be. . . . . . If they seek medical aid at all, it is too often when there is not the slightest chance of recovery.'

"3. My impression is, that very few of the children of the operative class, in sickness, fall under the notice of the medical men of the town. But latterly there has been a disposition to call us in, in the last stage of disease, for the purpose of obtaining a certificate of death for the registrar.'

"4. My general impression, derived from three years' experience at this institution, compels me to admit, what is very painful to acknowledge, that there is among the poorer classes a manifest and cold indifference to the health of infants, and especially so when suffering from disease.'

"The above extracts are from letters written in 1846. Since then, the medical certificate necessary to the registration of death has been more stringently required, and it was hoped would produce better attention to sick children. How far that hope has been realized, is shown in the following extract from a letter, written by the present medical officer of the charitable institution adverted to, a gentleman of distinguished zeal and ability: 'The return rather understates the mortality of infantile life; for in several instances, where very gross neglect has been apparent, and where our aid has only been requested in extremes, I have declined to give certificates, and such cases do not appear in the list. The whole number of patients admitted during the year 1847, was 3,052; of these 341 were under five years of age, 2,711 were above five years of age. It would thus appear that although one-half of all the deaths in the town consists of children under five years of age, the proportion of those who become patients of the only charitable medical institution in the place is only one-eighth of that above five years! Of the cases under five years, one in six proved fatal; of those above five years, one in nineteen and a quarter. . . . . . The difference between a mortality of one in six and one in nineteen and a quarter is too great to be accounted for on any other supposition, than that of the existence of great neglect on the part of the parents."

My readers will say, "these things are too horrible for belief; now and then such a case might occur, as they occasionally do in other countries:" but what must be the state of society where, in a Christian country, infanticide is reduced to a system? Just what I am proving. "Alas!" says Mr. Kay, "it is only too true. There can be no doubt, that a great part of the poorer classes of this country are sunk into such a frightful depth of hopelessness, misery and utter moral degradation, that even mothers forget their affection for their helpless little offspring, and kill them, as a butcher does his lambs, in order to

392

CELLAR LIFE OF THE POOR.

make money by the murder, and therewith to lessen their pauperism and misery!"

"And yet," the English writer exclaims, "we are sending hundreds of thousands of our savings every year to convert and comfort the heathen, who are seldom so morally degraded, while we are wrangling about the way in which we shall educate the poor; and are still telling government that voluntary efforts will enable us to accomplish this great work. I might greatly multiply the proofs of the universal existence of this evil; but the above quotations are, I think, sufficient to give an idea of this terrible sign of the social state of many of our poor."

CELL

XX.

ELLAR-LIFE of the poor of the large towns-this we must look at for a little while, revolting as it may be. If the upper classes of society will not look at the homes of the suffering and degraded, they must read the description of eye-witnesses, for the cry of the poor shall be heard.

From the Reports of the Towns' Commission (vol. I., p. 127), I find Dr. Duncan's description of the cellar-houses of the manufacturing districts: "The cellars are 10 or 12 feet square; generally flagged, but frequently having the bare earth for a floor, and sometimes less than 6 feet in height. There is frequently no window, so that light and air can gain access to the cellar only by the door, the top of which is often not higher than the level of the street. In such cellars ventilation is out of the question. They are, of course, dark; and, from the defective drainage, they are also very generally damp. There is sometimes a back cellar, used as a sleeping apartment, having no direct communication with the external atmosphere, and affording its scanty supply of light and air solely from the without apartment."

In remarking on this subject, Mr. Kay says :

"But the character of the cellars themselves is by no means the worst feature of this miserable class of dwellings. I have already mentioned that they have never more than two, and

WHOLE NUMBER OF CELLAR-HOMES.

393

generally only one room each, and that these rooms are very small; but small as they are, they are generally crowded to excess. It is no uncommon thing for two and three, and sometimes for four, families to live and sleep together in one of these rooms, without any division or separation whatever for the different families or sexes. There are very few cellars where two families, at least, do not herd together in this manner. Their beds are sometimes of a mattress, and sometimes of straw in the corners of the cellar, and upon the damp, cold, flag floor and on these miserable sleeping-places, the father, mother, sons and daughters crowd together in a state of filthy indecency, and much worse off than the horses in an ordinary stable. In these cellar-houses no distinction of sex and age is made. Sometimes a man is found sleeping with one woman, sometimes with two women, and sometimes with young girls; sometimes brothers and sisters, of the age of 18, 19 and 20, are found in bed together; while at other times a husband and his wife share their bed together with their children.

"The poor creatures who inhabit these miserable receptacles are of the most degraded species-they have never learned to read; have never heard of the existence of a Deity; have never been inside a church, being scared from the doors by their own filth and wretchedness; and have scarcely any sense of a distinction between right and wrong.

"I have heard gentlemen, who have visited these kinds of dens in London, say, that they have found men and women sleeping together, three and four in a single bed; that they have not disturbed or ashamed them in the least, by discovering them in these situations; but that, on the contrary, their remonstrances have been answered only by a sneer or a laugh.

"In these places criminals are raised, and from these dens a moral pestilence creeps forth, and contaminates the moral life of even the more virtuous town-laborers. While such places exist, and continue to harbor so much immorality, it is as hopeless to expect to materially raise the character of our town poor, as it is to improve the sanitary condition of London while the Thames continues to receive the contents of all the London sewers, and to emit the gases of its poisoned waters in the very centre of the great metropolis."

G

XXI.

REAT pains has been taken to get at the exact number of cellar-houses in Great Britain; and the statistics of several of the large towns may be deemed reliable. But the whole extent of the evil, in its physical and moral aspects, not only defies complete examination, but baffles all human comprehension. Dr. Duncan states, that in the 12 wards which form the parish of Liverpool, there are 6,294 inhabited cellars, holding 20,168 inhabitants, exclusive of inhabited cellars in courts, which number 621, containing about 2,000 inhabitants. "Of the entire number of cellars, 1,617 have a back apartment; while of 5,297, whose measurements are given, 1,771, or one-third, are from 5 to 6 feet deep; 2,324 are from 4 to 5 feet, and 1,202 from 3 to 4 feet below the level of the street ; 5,273, or more than five-sixths, have no windows to the front; and 2,429, or about 44 per cent., are reported as being either damp or wet.