The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE. THURSDAY, NOV. 24 1892.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 3186, 24 November 1892, Page 2

The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE.

THURSDAY, NOV. 24 1892.

Equal and exact justice to all men. Of whatsoever state or persuasion, religious or political.

The annual report of the National Society for the prevention of cruelty to children, which has its headquarters in London, is before us. The tale which if tells is a horrible one, and were it not substantiated by evidence given in the Courts of Justice would be difficult of belief. Our population is stuall and exists

under more favourable circumstances than that of a large section of that of the Old Country, and enly very few cases of flagrant cruelty are brought to light. There have, however, been several instances of cruelty in this country; these suggest the question whether it would not be well to have such a Society. That for the protection of animals has been instrumental in bringing many brutes to justice who would otherwise have escaped the clutches of the law. The report which this document tells of cruel neglect and brutal suffering inflicted upon helpless children reminds one of the horrors of the Dark Ag(-,s, and it is calculated to make one's blood boil to think that such things arc possible in what is professedly a Christian country. It is quite enough disgrace to our common humanity that there should be any necessity at all for a body such as this, but that its work should have assumed such gigantic proportions, and be ever increasing, is an indelible blot upon England's fair name and escutcheon. We all remembt.T the shocking disclosures in a recent cause celebrc, as a result of which a woman holding the position and status of a lady was imprisoned for having ranged the drftth of her rhilrl liy ' ,j

hrutril anil unreasoning severity. This would iilonc h;iv<> justified the existence of tht* institution liy means of which she was brought to justice. In order, however, that this may \>a overwhelmingly established, we quote from the annual report a few of the more lingering and revolting

tortures to which inhuman parents with fiendish propensities have subjected their children during the year embraced in the report:—Keeping a child always in coal cellars until its flesh became green ; tying cords tightly round a child's thumbs, then tying them with extended arms to the foot of a bedstead, and beating it with a thorn bush ; putting pins and lighted matches into a child's nostrils, biting its wrist until a wound was made, and then burning the wound witli matches ; leaving a baby in its cradle for weeks together until toadstools grew around it and the mattmss was alive with maggots; tying a ropo round

a boy of six, dipping him into a canal, leaving him immersed until exhausted, then recovering him and repeating the torture ; throwing a girl of two years, suffering from bronchitis, out of a bedroom window, breaking its bones and thus ending its existence; breaking a two-year-old baby's bones in three places, both arms and a thigh, leaving them untended, and when it moaned with pain, irritably taking it up from its cradle by the broken arms, shaking it by them and throwing it down again. The above list does not by any means exhaust tho foul catalogue of parental atrocities which, through the instrumentality of this Society, have been brought to light in courts

of law, hut we refrain from further horrifying our readers. That the instances we have quoted might be multiplied almost in infinitum will be gathered from the fact that during the year the total number of cases investigated was 8,324, of which no less than 7,291 were proved, involving the suffering of 19,802 children. During the same period the officers of the Society have warned 8,454 offenders, and prosecutions have been instituted in 1,115 cases; in 1,045 of which convictions were obtained. The punishment which followed amounted to a total of 177 years imprisonment and of over .£3OO in tines. The Society has been in existence eight years, during which time it has stood between 44,385 children and brutal parents or guardians. The income of this Society last year was ,£27,0§0, being £300 in excess of expediture. Large, as is the sum one cannot help feeling that it has been as well applied as any subscribed for philanthropic purposes, neither can we avoid the speculation that amongst such an enormous population the work of the society represents onlv a very small proportion of the misery inflicted upon children by those whose bosoms are utterly bare of the natural affections which the lowest sentient animal feels for its offspring. Alas! the Society's transactions prove conclusively that there is a considerable per centage of beings who are human only in the name they bear because of their outward semblance to God's greatest creation. Wβ have not chronicled the above horrors from want of consideration for the feelings of others. We believe that there are many cases of brutality to children in this country which escape publicity from want of an organised body of men and women to bring them to light. We do not mean to say that cases so gross as those we have quoted go unpunished but that there are many of a less degree of atrocity which do not come to the knowledge of the administrators of our laws.