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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    ticide and excessive mortality among illegitimate infants, we have several suggestions to offer. 1. —Let it be enacted that the parents are the persons legally responsible for the life, health, -and education of an illegitimate child. 2. To put an end to the difficulty hitherto experienced m making fathers responsible for the maintenance of such infants, let every man whom a woman may name, in the application for an affiliation order, as the father of her child, be bound in surety to appear to answer the charge and be liable to pursuit and imprison- ment should he abscond. . 3. —Let the cost of applying for an affiliation order in the case of a first child be borne in the first instance by the parish when the parish authorities shall be satisfied that there is reasonable ground for the application, to be recoverable from the father on the order being made, or from the woman, if it should appear that the accusation has been false and malicious. 4).—Let the guardians (or public prosecutor) be bound to pursue and prosecute absconders. 5. —Let it be lawful for a woman to apply for an affiliation order before the birth of her child, or at any time during the period in which the father of such child is legally responsible for its support. 6. —Let that period of liability be extended from the child's thirteenth to its sixteenth year, whether the mother marries or not. 7. —Repeal the clauses in the present Poor Law, in virtue of which that liability is now allowed to lapse ; also that by which the father cannot be made to pay up arrears for more than thirteen weeks, although he may have neglected payment for a longer time. 8. —Remove the legal proceedings in the case of an application for an affiliation order from the summary jurisdiction of the magistrates, and let all such applications be heard and decided by a jury. 9. —Do away with the provision fixing half-a-crown per week as the maximum amount to be paid by the father of an illegitimate child towards its support, and leave it to the jury to make the order for any sum they may think just, taking into account the means of the father and the standard of living in the class to which the mother belongs.