MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.

Grey River Argus, Volume III, Issue 150, 27 December 1866, Page 3

MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.

The following details are given by the Paris correspondent of the Morning Star in a letter written in the middle of September last : — P A subject of jleep interest is now being discussed at tlui Academy of Medicine to which I have already alluded, namely, the frightful mortality am jng French children according to the fashion of this country, pnt^uut to nurse. < -Every year, 20,000 bams£ure sent out If Paris under the care of peasant nurses, \y.u\ of that number 5000 on an average are returned to their mothers, the other io.OOO having died of cold, starvation and Uul treatment. Si.ice 1840, it has been calculated that, in the neighbourhood of Paris alone, 30,000 of these nurslings have cied in the hands of their foster-mothers. ', Why should such barbarous murder be \;dlowed to depopulate the country ! It U entirely owing to the bad management |>f the hureauc de /joiim'ccs over which Government lias not, till now, exercised a proper amount of surveillance. These ofices receive indiscriminately every woman who applies at them for employment. { A frightful trade is carried on by speculators of the lowest class, denominated menmrts, who enrol ■countrywomen in their {ay, convey them to Paris in carts called " purgatories," obtain for them babies! whose mothers have applied at the officit for a nurse for their child, and convey", them . and the children back to the conntrjf . The horrors that take place during the journey to Paris and back in thi vehicle of the meneur- are of so startling a 1 nature that one could hardly believi them to be true were it not for the undoubted proofs which have been laid before tHt' Academy of Medicine. Thus the countrywomen make no scruple in exchanging the babies entrusted to them, and seyjval among them undertake to nurse tw^ir' three clrildren at a time. " I have seei," exclaimed M Chevalier, addressing tt|' Academy, "one woman professing to^nfrse seven infants, and yet she herself li&cyteither milk nor a cow. Fed with ba|j|p>rpth, exposed to i every species of xur ; t and neglect the miserable infant stilus and dies. The nurse, however, wipfs to its mother that her baby is prospefug/ that it had grown out of its clothes Mil id required a fresh supply. The motive- naturally spends her month's washes in Jiupplying her child's wants, and goes on paying its board for month's after it h& been lying in the village cemetery. .^considerable number of nurses come annvally to Paris and carry back a supply of jihildren, and not one has ever been known to bring a child back to the capital. lijtheir charge the children simply appear yhd disappear. Dr Brochard cited in lis speech to the Academy two communea'of the Eure et Loire Department, wheie the nurslings invariably die. It appear there are women among the nurses whse reputation is well known and Jwrresco jrcferen, these nurses are specially sougit for by certain ill-famed houses. Enfrustirig a new-born infant to • one of them is tantamount to infanticide. Dr Brocharo read several copies of the lying letter? written by nurses to the children's jarents, describing in pathetic language tie rosy cheeks and increasing charms of aheir infants dead weeks before the epistlff was indited. The doctor also gave sevepl curious details of the annual pilgrimagf to St Criard, in the department off La Perche. St Criard, be it remar ked| is the real name of the place, and not a cajembourg. On a given day, late in autun, it is the custom of the country to brittj every infant in the vicinity before tKj painted image of the saint, there to' - : yjo. . him' homage. The ; said statute haTOens to be in a chappel at the top of a stjfep hill,, exposed to all the winds of ■Ufiiven. Thje country itself is bleak and jtclimate peculiarly cold at any time of Naturally this long pilgrimage, season of the year, to the top

of a great height, proves fatal to all delicate infants who are carried in the procession, and the amount of deaths from bronchitis, which ensue in the course of the week following, is something incredible. These horible facts are highly discreditable to the Mayors of fie various villages where these infants are nursed. Naturally, if M le Maire, ihstead of cultivating his apricots and peaches, and gaining prizes,at agricultural shows for his fat pigs, was to look sharply after the extraordinary number of little graves in his village cemetery, and insist on medical reports as to the cause thereof being laid before him, infant mortality would rapidly diminish. - Messieurs les Maires will probably read this opinion from the pens of their respective prefects, expressed in a somewhat startling form, as, once the French Government 1 takes up a subject, it does not trifle with it, and undoubtedly possesses the rare gift of making itself p ' >ey ed.