Human Physiology. 77 



districts of towns, and among great masses of our population, 

 this proportion reaches to one-half or more so cheap is 

 human life in the highest civilisation. But this " Massacre 

 of the Innocents " requires a separate chapter. 



CHAPTER IV. 



INFANT MORTALITY AND INFANTICIDE. 



Conditions of Infancy General Statistics of Infant Mortality Infant 

 Mortality in Certain Places and Classes Workhouse Murder of 

 Infants How far Preventable Gentry, Tradesmen, Operatives 

 Infanticide Child-killing by Opium Testimony of Rev. J. Clay, 

 Mr. Simon, Dr.-Lankester, &c. Murder of Illegitimate Children 

 Child Murder in France and America. 



THE causes which produce the premature mortality of men 

 and women, act with double force on children. Healthy and 

 long-lived parents have vigorous offspring ; but the children of 

 the poor and wretched inhabitants of our large towns inherit 

 weakly constitutions ; they are poisoned before their birth ; 

 their natural food is poisoned; the air they breathe is cor- 

 rupted r they are deprived of maternal love and care ; in many 

 cases they are drugged into insensibility by those who consider 

 them a burthen, and they die by thousands. When it is stated 

 in official reports that the average age of all who died during 

 certain periods of time, in Bethnal Green, was twenty-one 

 years ; in Leeds, twenty-one ; in Manchester, twenty j in 

 Bolton, nineteen ; in Liverpool, seventeen years, it is meant 

 that more than half of all that were born, died before they 

 were five years old. 



Such mortality, let me observe in passing, can be found in 

 no other species of animals. They may be killed, but they do 



