Infanticide, or the murdering of infants, was common in ancient times, and still prevails in some barbarous communities. The practice existed in Greece and Rome, and even found defenders in Plato and Aristotle. The latter in his Politics said the law should forbid the nurturing of the maimed, and, where a check to population is required, abortion should be produced before the quickening of the infant. In Sparta, as in other Greek states, the law directed that when a child was born the father should carry it to an appointed place, there to be inspected by the elders of the community. If it was a promising child, they returned it to its parents to be educated; otherwise it was thrown into a cavern at the foot of Mount Taygetus. In ancient Rome the Twelve Tables directed malformed infants to be immediately destroyed, and by the Patria Potestas the father had an absolute power over his children extending to life and death; but the rigour of the paternal law both as regards the killing and the sale of infants was softened by subsequent legislation, and especially by Numa. Among the Norse the child's life hung in the balance till the father handed it to the nurse to be reared. If it was weak or malformed, or if the father disapproved of its living, the child was killed by exposure to the weather and to wild beasts. According to Cæsar the Gauls were invested with the power of life and death over their children, and so late as the 13th century the Poles killed imperfect children. Amongst the Arabs it required an ordinance to prevent the crime of killing children lest the parent should be reduced to want, and this element of anxiety for the father's independence and comfort entered largely into the calculations of many states, barbarous and civilised, with regard to their posterity. The Arabs also buried female infants alive.
In modern times infanticide prevails only amongst barbarous or semi-civilised nations, and even amongst these the increased intercourse with civilised states is gradually stamping out the practice. Until comparatively recent times child-murder prevailed throughout the whole of the South Sea Islands. In the Fijian island of Vanua Levu, or some parts of it, the infanticide reached, till the middle of the 19th century, a half and in others two-thirds of the child population. Amongst the Hindus the practice of destroying children, especially females, prevailed to a fearful extent, until it was checked under the Marquis of Wellesley's rule (1798-1805). The practice was forbidden by the Vedas; but, in consequence of the expense and the disgrace attached to girls remaining unmarried, the practice prevailed amongst the Rajputs—who destroyed all females except the first-born—and the native races. The methods of killing were poisoning by pills of tobacco, drowning in milk, smearing the mother's breasts with opium, and plastering the mouth with cowdung. Notwithstanding the Koran, the Mohammedans were inclined to the practice, but effected their object by means of abortion. Efforts began to be made towards the close of the 18th century, amongst others by Jonathan Duncan and Major Walker, for the suppression of the practice, and in 1853 these efforts were at last crowned with success at a durbar arranged for by Lord Lawrence. It was thought expedient to continue a system of surveillance by the police in some districts, and to institute a system of average numbers in families, which concentrated their vigilance upon those families which reached the lowest average. Amongst the Japanese the father had, but has not now, absolute power of life and death over his children. In China infanticide was, and in the remoter parts of that vast country still is, common. One of the causes here is the right possessed by Chinamen of periodically repudiating their wives. Sometimes the infants were stifled by the midwives at birth, and sometimes they were cast into a neighbouring stream, where in some cases they were humanely kept afloat by a gourd, so that they might be saved from destruction by any compassionate person who might feel disposed. In early missionary times it was a part of the duty of missionaries to pick up and rear, or entrust to others for the purpose of rearing, the waifs who had been abandoned through the avarice, poverty, or callousness of their parents.
In nearly all the cases mentioned infanticide was prompted by religious or economic reasons, or indulged in from caprice or indolence; and it was permitted in deference to the power with which in primitive communities as well as in advanced states like Greece and Rome the father was endowed. Modern civilisation deals very differently with the subject. In all European states, although they differ widely in their treatment of infanticide and cognate crimes, human life is from its first to its last hour held sacred, and whoever puts an end to it is a murderer. Almost the only motive which in such countries now leads to infanticide is that of shame—the parents incurring the risk of committing child-murder to escape social disgrace. The efforts therefore of legislators and criminal lawyers on the one hand have been directed to the repression of abortion, concealment of pregnancy, and murdering the new-born infant, and of philanthropists on the other to remove temptation to commit the graver crimes by providing Foundling Hospitals (q.v.), where the offspring of sin may find a refuge. See also ILLEGITIMACY.
In England and Scotland the inexcusable killing of infants is theoretically murder, and the only excuse for killing the fetus is the safety of the mother; otherwise, Abortion (q.v.) is a criminal offence. The concealment of birth is also a criminal offence; see BIRTH (CONCEALMENT OF). The destruction of children may be effected negatively by not supplying food and clothing, as well as by the positive act of wounding or ill-treating; and if a parent or other person who is bound by law to supply food and clothing to the child refuses or neglects to do so, thereby causing its death, such refusal or neglect amounts either to murder or manslaughter, according to the circumstances. Moreover, the unlawful abandoning or exposure of any child under the age of two years, whereby the life and health of the child are endangered, is a misdemeanour punishable with three years' penal servitude. Where a person is charged with the murder of a very young child it is essential to prove that the child was in life. Under a statute of James I. there were presumptions against the mother, but in 1803 the trials for offences of this class were placed under ordinary rules of evidence. The presumption which now obtains that every new-born child found dead was born dead is believed by certain jurists to have encouraged infanticide. The test of a child being born alive is not that it breathed, or had an independent circulation after it was separated from the mother; it is enough that the child was fully born. Hence, if a man strike a woman with child, so as to cause the death of the child, he is neither guilty of murder nor of manslaughter of the child. In all cases of the murder of infants the question whether the child was fully born, and so the subject of murder, is generally one of medical jurisprudence. In England and Wales the annual number of verdicts of murder of infants one year old and under varied in 1879-88 from 65 to 103. The above offences in reference to infanticide are punished in a similar manner in Scotland, where, though the killing of a completely born infant is murder, a verdict of culpable homicide is frequently returned. Concealment of pregnancy is the usual charge under 49 Geo. III. chap. 17.
It has been stated that every day an inquest is held upon the bodies of children destroyed through the design, the neglect, the ignorance, or the mental infirmity of the mothers. Even when the act may fairly be regarded as a crime, its enormity is generally greatly lessened in the eye of the law by the consideration of the physical condition and moral disturbance of the parent.
An Act of 1872 obliges those who undertake for hire to nurse infants under the age of one year, for a longer period than twenty-four hours, to have their house registered, and to keep records of the children they take charge of. They must also give notice to the coroner or procurator-fiscal of such infants' deaths, and are under obligation to keep sanitary houses. By an important statute passed in 1889 any person over sixteen who wilfully ill-treats, neglects, abandons, or exposes a boy under fourteen or girl under sixteen years of age, or causes or procures this to be done, in a manner likely to cause the child unnecessary suffering or injury to its health, is guilty of a misdemeanour, and is liable to £100 of fine or imprisonment for two years, or to both. Lesser penalties are inflicted on summary conviction. The fine may be increased where the offender is proved to be interested in the death of the child. See CHILDREN (CRUELTY TO), and BURIAL SOCIETIES.