The hospitals / [W.I. Bicknell].

  • Bicknell, W. I
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hospitals / [W.I. Bicknell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mind; and suitable provision should be made in every part of jur country for affording relief to these suffering innocents^ It may be alleged that the provision made by the poor laws furnishes means for the relief of such cases; but when the general state of our parish workhouses and unions are con- sidered, the immense mortality which takes place amongst the infant children of the poor, the peculiar attention which the state of infancy requires, and the dreadful cases of infanticide which are constantly occurring, should satisfy every thinking mind of the great want which exists in our country of asylums for the reception of foundlings; and the duty of every paternal government to mitigate suffering by legislative enactments. Asylums for infant children are much more frequent on the continent of Europe than in Great Britain ; perhaps the real necessity for such establishments may even be greater there than amongst us. The professed design of such establish ments, wherever found, being the prevention of the destruction of children by actual violence, or by being exposed in the streets or highways. Little notice appears to have been taken by the nations of antiquity to guard against the exposure of children by poor or unfeeling parents; and, amongst the un- civilized nations in our own times, the practice of infanticide, particidarly of female children, seems almost universally to prevail, requiring the utmost vigilance 6n the part of the missionaries to discourage and suppress. Christianity denounces the practice of infanticide; and from the severe penalties pro- nounced against it, and the few means within the power of the unhappy mother of providing for her illicit offspring, has, it is to be feared, rendered the murder of infant children almost as common in countries professedly Christian as in those of the heathen. Fornication, likewise, being in itself a crime, X 2