Children, PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO.

Children, PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO. Experience has proved that defenceless children, even within the range of our boasted civilisation, are not infrequently grossly maltreated by parents, their natural protectors, and that therefore special legislation is necessary to secure their proper treatment. To ameliorate the condition of children has therefore entered largely into the scope of modern legislation. The Factory Acts (q.v.), the Education Acts, the Reformatory and Industrial Schools Acts, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, and the Dangerous Performances Act are all evidence of this fact. The operations of the recently formed Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children show in the strongest light the necessity for their action, though it is but a very few years since this special agency was introduced among us. The first societies of the kind were established in the United States. That in New York was the earliest, as it is the largest and most influential. Liverpool in 1883, and London in 1884, followed this example, and now, by means of other local societies, or of local aid committees affiliated to the London society, the work they have undertaken is rapidly spreading; convictions for cruelty are secured and children are sheltered and fed. The Rev. Benjamin Waugh deserves mention as the main promoter of the society (now incorporated by royal charter) and its work. The Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act of 1894 has given great help to the cause. It imposes penalties on those who inflict needless suffering on children; punishes neglect, exposure, and assault—especially where insurance money is a bait; specially deals with offences by drunken parents, and with parents who make their children under eleven beg or vend in the street between nine at night and six in the morning. It also provides for government inspection of places where acrobats and pantomime children are trained, and abolishes the necessity of the oath in many cases. Sentences of from three months' imprisonment to three years' penal servitude may be inflicted. And the Act further modifies the conditions of guardianship, and brings in the authority of the Home Office in connection with the emigration of ill-treated children. Yet further legislation is required. A wife cannot give evidence against her husband of his drunken midnight cruelty to their child which she alone has witnessed, though a mother's evidence is legally admissible if she is not married to her child's father. State protection should be as freely accorded to the lives and limbs of children as, through the Court of Chancery, it is to their property. This benevolent work for children is indeed essentially a special work, and the police have not the sufficiency of time, resource, and special training which its full discharge requires. Municipal corporations should be empowered to regulate as in America what is called 'street peddling,' as of evening newspapers and the like. The hours, varying with the season of the year, in which it may be carried on at all, and the ages of the boys and girls who may be engaged in it, should be fixed and enforced. Once give the necessary powers, and many present evils will cease.—For the Criminal Law Amendment Act, see ABDUCTION; see also INFANTICIDE.