MEMOIR ON PARENTAL ALCOHOLISM 13 



to distribute between accidents, carelessness, neglect, and 

 toxic effect due to the alcoholism of our 200 alcoholic 

 mothers. Sir Victor Horsley claims the bulk of them for 

 toxic effect. I wonder how many workers among the poor 

 would agree with him! But Sir Victor Horsley and 

 Dr. Sturge appear to have made a gross blunder in citing 

 police returns as to the deaths of infants — ^possibly because 

 they are not acquainted with the Scottish system. They 

 deliberately asserted that the number of accidental deaths 

 of children below fourteen years occurring in Edinburgh 

 during the last seventeen years was 17 per year, and of 

 these only 5 to 6 deaths per year occurred from suffocation, 

 burns, and scalds, causes which might probably be the direct 

 result of domestic carelessness. They give no annual data 

 with exact causes in each case, but appealed to figures — 

 not public property — said to be prepared by Deputy Chief 

 Constable J. Chisholm and Detective-Sergeant McCondach 

 (B.M.J.^ Jan. 14, 191 1, p. 76). It was perfectly open 

 to them to have used the published figures of the 

 Registrar-General for Scotland. Now from 1 890-9 inclusive 

 the total deaths in Edinburgh among children under 

 ten years of age from ' accident and negligence ' were 574 

 in number or 57-4 per year ; those from suffocation alone 

 are 316 or 31-6 per year. For the remaining nine years, 

 1900-8, the total deaths from like causes were ^'>^i or 59-1 

 per year, with 255 from suffocation, or 28-3 per year. 

 The total nineteen years, which cover the period of the 

 Edinburgh Report much more accurately than Sir Victor's 

 spurious data do, show deaths of children from accident 

 and negligence under ten (not under fourteen years as Sir 

 Victor takes them) amounting to 58 per year, of which 30 per 

 year fall to suffocation alone. These are to be put against 

 the 17 per year, with 5 to 6 from suffocation, burns, and 



