AUTHORITIES' RESPONSIBILITIES : DISCUSSION 145 



fro because of the sins of their parents. What she would 

 like to know, speaking of the decrease in infant mortality, 

 was whether the decrease was in regard to children of the 

 unfit or children of the fit. If the decrease was in children 

 of the fit no one would rejoice more than she would, but 

 if it was in children of the unfit, she wished there could 

 be some means found whereby those children could never 

 be born. A gentleman had spoken of the devotion of the 

 poor mothers. She entirely agreed with him if the children 

 were of sound mind, but if not she said again it was better 

 that those children should not be born. She was extremely 

 glad to hear that morning Mr. Burns say that the Mental 

 Deficiency Bill had passed. She wanted to tell them that in 

 Portsmouth, when she was first a guardian, they held a 

 committee on the subject, calling the whole of the women 

 in the house before them, and time after time they found 

 that women had been in and out of the workhouse for five, 

 ten and twenty years, having five, ten, and perhaps more 

 children. When she was in Winchester some time ago she 

 went into the workhouse there and got into conversation 

 with the matron. about mental deficiency, and the matron 

 said to her, " There's a woman there who has just come in 

 going to have her fifth child. She has never done a day's 

 work in her life; she is too silly to attend to herself at all." 

 The matron then said, " I will show you the father," and 

 she showed her a man in the male side of the ward, and 

 she added that neither of them had ever done a day's work 

 in their lives. Some little time ago she (Mrs. Kingswell) 

 was in Southampton, and she saw the same thing there. 

 A lady guardian pointed out a woman to her who was too 

 foolish to attend to her own wants, who, she said, was 

 likely to have perhaps another eight or ten or more children. 

 About a year or a year and a half ago she was in Brighton 

 at a conference on the feeble-minded, and there a gentleman 

 stated that a philanthropic society had followed up 1,000 of 

 these feeble-minded children. At 16 years of age they were 

 sent out to do the best they could. He told them that 

 after the first year so many had gone under, the second 

 year so many more, and more again in the third year, and 

 that in the fourth year there was not one of them who was 

 engaged in good and remunerative employment. Statistics 

 told them that men were perhaps more feeble-minded than 

 women, and that led to a danger of another sort. Those 

 people were filling our prisons .and the maternity wards of 

 our infirmaries, and they were bearing children who in their 

 turn would be more feeble-minded and more vicious than 

 -themselves. She only wished she could know that all the 



