Infant mortality : its causes and remedies.

Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Infant mortality : its causes and remedies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    be so, which, when right is once known, prompts to its performance; and numbers of girls are reared under circumstances fatal to the acquisition of any such knowledge, so far as personal purity and chastity are concerned; whilst the direct teaching of virtue which might, to some extent, counteract the evil influences with which from their birth they are surrounded, never reaches them at all.io But it is not alone to moral ignorance that illegitimate births and infanticide are due, but also to ignorance of physical facts. Many girls are led astray without the faintest previous knowledge that the result of their weakness will probably be to make them mothers. The assertion is so terrible a one that our readers may well shrink from accepting it; but it is literally true, as we shall now proceed to show by passing to the consideration of the second cause to which we have attributed infanticide and excessive mortality among illegitimate infants,—viz., the seduction of children and young girls; and we know of no better way of vindicating the Class VI. Unskilled Labour and Agriculture.—Full Work: Average Weekly Wages. Subdivision V. Subdivision VI. Subdivision VII. Subdivision VIII. s- d. s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. Men 20 0 to 15 0 14 0 14 G to 10 6 Boys 6 6 4 6 6 0 Women ... 9 0 5 6 7 0 12 0 Girls 7 6 4 6 7 0 5 0 In analysing the preceding tables we find that they give the following instructive results:— Firstly, that the average earnings of all the women of the manual labour classes in England and Wales amount weekly to Qu. ljil> ^ /^-jz. Secondly, that a woman's weekly earnings are about three-fifths less than those of a man, whereas the weekly earnings of a gh-l are only one-fifth less than those of a boy. Thirdly, that the proportion betwixt the wages of a woman and those of a girl is as 10 to 7, and that betwixt the wages of a man and those of a boy as 3 to ]. The difference betwixt the possible advance of a boy's earnings and those of a girl is due to the fact that the latter is practically excluded from all branches of skiUed labour, an exclusion which proves clearly that her industrial training is as neglected as her intellectual training. ' We desire to record here our conviction that the circumstances which often place chastity beyond the very conception of the poor, are by no means equally fatal to other virtues. Patience, courage, longsuffering, unselfishness, flourish in the midst of physical filth and moral impurity, serving, by their presence, not only to vindicate the inherent nobleness of human nature, but also to impose silence upon those who would fain have us believe that in woman the capacity for goodness begins and ends with chastity.