20 AI.EXANDER WII^ON : POET-NATURAUST 



and men* and Lady Elliott of Minto declared that, 

 "The misses are the most rotten part of the so- 

 ciety."t Nor was it in the least uncommon for the 

 best-bred ladies to accompany young men to the 

 dirty little oyster cellars below the street, where they 

 ate and drank together.^ 



It was among the poorer classes that conditions 

 were worst. Especially appalling are the figures 

 which illustrate the number of child-murders which 

 occurred all through the seventeenth and eighteenth 

 centuries. So great was the dread of the church 

 penance that the worst crimes were committed to 

 avoid it, and in some parishes it became necessary 

 to cease enforcing these penances in order that the 

 murder of babies might be lessened. § This crime 

 was at its most terrible climax in the latter half of 

 the seventeenth century. On one day, in Edinburgh 

 alone, in the year 1681, seven women were executed 

 for destroying their offspring; four were hanged 

 in Aberdeen in 1705 in a single day and in 17 14 

 there were executions on the i8th and 24th of June 

 and the 3rd of July.|| In 1690 a law was passed, 

 which remained effective in the following century, 

 making a woman responsible for the death of her 

 child even though there were no signs of violence, 

 unless some one was with her at the time of its 

 death.TI Yet the crime continued so frequent that 



* Topham's Letters. 



t Graham's Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, II, 

 p. 108. 



t Ibid., II, p. 108. 



S "Travels of Rev. James Hall," II, p. 351. 



II Graham's "Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century," II. 



p. 223- 



1 Ibid., II, p. 223. 



