56 Human Physiology. 



that anything may be done, but nothing must be talked 

 about." This was said before the discussion of the Contagious 

 Diseases Act. But no one who reads the leading English 

 newspapers, can be supposed to be ignorant of what is going 

 on in the world around him. I am very desirous, in all this 

 work, to give no offence tc the purest minded of my readers; 

 and I shall give no fact without a much higher motive than 

 a wish to make a sensation, or satisfy mere curiosity. What 

 we have to do is to rescue millions from very debased and 

 unhappy conditions; and, to do this, we must know something 

 about them. 



In 1863 more than 47,000 children were registered in 

 England as born out of wedlock. In Norfolk the proportion 

 reached 11.3 per cent in beautiful Cumberland 12 per cent 

 In Scotland the proportion is considerably greater than in 

 England; in Ireland very much less. The Pall Mall Gazette 

 says: "Wherever the labouring class is ignorant, badly 

 lodged, poorly fed, and half stupefied for lack of rational 

 amusement, sensual indulgences of the most debasing kind 

 will be eagerly sought. . . . There is not much in the 

 condition of an English peasant to make him anything but 

 immoral. . . . The English farm labourer does not, as a 

 rule, get enough meat to eat ; what schooling he has is wholly 

 useless to him; he is worse lodged than a calf or a pig; his life 

 is one of incessant toil, and in his old age he has nothing to 

 look forward to except the union workhouse." It is no 

 wonder, then, the writer thinks, that he should do very much 

 wo se than "make a beast of himself." 



1 Whatever the cause or causes may be, the fact that the 

 lower classes of the English and Scottish people are not 

 scrupulous in regard to sexual morality, is sufficiently notorious. 

 In 1860 the number of illegitimate children born in the work- 

 houses of England and Wales was 7077; in 1861, 8020; in 

 1862, 8115. For the lowest class, every workhouse is a lying- 



