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inevitable creation of puerperal fever wheresoever two or more
women in childbed are placed in the same room. It is not therefore in
the interest of women that lying-in hospitals are advocated. Then as
to the children and the prevention of infanticide. It must be freely
admitted that child-murder is a frequent crime in this country. Any
rational scheme designed to lessen the commission of a crime so unnatural
deserves to be well weighed. But before concluding that lying-in
hospitals and foundlings, will effect this object, it is prudent to inquire
whether infant life be really more secure where these institutions abound.
In the first place, I have it on the highest statistical authority, that of
Dr. Farr, that there exists no proof whatever that direct infanticide is
more common in England than on the continent. In the next place, I
will invite attention to another fact: there seems to be a close and complementary
connexion between the lying-in hospital and the foundling:
that is, in a community whose moral and social customs demand the
lying-in hospital, the foundling must follow. In such a community, the
bonds of home and maternity are much weaker than they are here.
Pregnant women leave their homes, resort to hospitals to be delivered,
and coming out, leave their children at the foundling, returning themselves
to their former mode of life disencumbered, and abandoning
to others the care of their offspring. What becomes of this offspring?
every possible care, perhaps short of that which a mother can bestow,
is lavished upon these outcasts. But the result is a very large sacrifice of infant
life. The mortality in foundlings is far above the rate of infant mortality
here. If a balance be struck between the saving of infants under the
hospital and foundling system, and that prevalent in England, it will be
found to be largely in favour of this country. The population in France,
for example, instead of exhibiting that increase which surely attends sound
sanitary administration, and which is required to sustain the prosperity of
nations, is actually falling off. So marked is this downward course, that it
has attracted anxious consideration. No doubt there are several causes
operating to produce it; but certainly, lying-in hospitals and foundlings,
and the associated customs and moral characteristics of the people are
largely concerned. It is not perhaps just to compare the criminality
of the mother, who simply abandons her child at the foundling, with a