Hitman Physiology. 25 



that "over 300 dead children are found in the streets of London 

 every year, and that it is a notorious fact that in some other 

 large towns child desertion and child murder are just as rife as 

 in London, and that the rural districts are scarcely, if at all, in 

 -a more favourable condition." In presiding at a lecture by the 

 Rev. W. W. Malet on child murder, he said " Child murder 

 had attained to such horrible proportions in London that he 

 had no hesitation in saying that one out of every 30 women 

 you saw in the streets was a murderess in other words, there 

 were 12,000 women in the metropolis to whom this crime 

 could be attributed. The extent of the crime was positively 

 appalling." 



" Coroners have declared," says the Daily Telegraph, " that 

 child murder is a flourishing business in England/' and it goes 

 on about " people in silks and satins the damnable Locastas 

 of a civilisation crueller than Rome's who drive carriages and 

 fare sumptuously upon the fees of infanticide." 



And the Morning Star asks, " Is it not certain that all over 

 the country, in great cities and small villages, there is going on 

 a daily and nightly massacre of the innocents, not limited even 

 by the Herodian condition? The horrible truth must be 

 spoken a truth which it would be perfectly idle to gainsay 

 that child murder is now an institution in certain classes of 

 English society. Dr. Lankester has over and over again pro- 

 claimed the fact as one which cannot be denied. Nor is it 

 the unmarried mothers alone who destroy, or allow to be 

 destroyed, the infants that have lain in their bosoms. It is 

 but too well known that married women are, in certain classes, 

 growing into this appalling practice. It is but too well known 

 that in a large number of instances the cases of what are 

 called ' children overlain ' are simply cases of children 

 purposely smothered. Let no one affect ignorance of the 

 growth, the wild, rank spread, of infanticide in England." 



A writer in the London Review says : " The crime of 



