DEFECTIVE CHILDREN.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17692, 19 February 1923, Page 6

DEFECTIVE CHILDREN.

PROFESSOR ON AN 'ILLUSION." (jffiOH OCS OWJf COBEESIOHDESrr.iLONB'G'N, January 9. Lecturing uetore tiie Eugenics Education Association on '"'Mental Defect and Its Inlieritabiiity,' 1 Professor E. W. Mcßride, Professor of Biology, Imperial College of Science, said that any hope of curing' defective children by ameliorative and environmental measures was aa illusion. Many said the causes were bad housing, indiSerent food, and, to a large extent, venereal disease. AU these things were tested by Dr. Goddaru, and the conclusion ne arrived at was that nope of these causes would account for mental defect. Take alcoholism. Undoubtedly many of tho parents of these detective c-hiidrcn were given to indulgence in strong dnnK, but if the} took "a list of four or five hundred cases, it would be found that theie were' just as many detective children of parents who were not addicted to alcoholism. Venereal disease likewise had to be ruled out, and accidents must be ruled out. denunciations of out* social system as the cause of mental defect were unscientific. Let them look not at the causes, but the results of mental defect. In the case of persons so defective that they never got further than the "mental age" of one, two, three, or four years, they were totally una-fcile to support themselves, and so they were maintained in institutions, and were a burden on the community, but there their damage ended. They did not mingle with the ordinary normal population, and they did not propagate. The same was true of mental cases of five, fix and seven years. What the Americans called the highgrade defectives, whose mental ages were of eight, nine, and ten years, were not confined to institutions, but mingled with the normal population, and were just able to support themselves in the poorest of occupations. Then they inevitably gravitated into the slum 3. Eugenics Education Society. "They breed recklessly,'' Professor Mcßride continued, "and are parents of a large amount of our slum tion. Ir the slums were cleared and these people were put in ideally-con-structed dwellings, tnev would reproduce the slums again in thirty or forty years. Ihe attempt to cure this trouble by providing easy and comfortable surroundings is l»ke a labour of Sisyphus. The Americans have made a more terrible discovery .still. What we in Great Britain call the liberty of tho subject, which is so jealously guarded here, is less" guarded in America. • After a 'roundup' by the police at night they discovered that something like 30 to 60 per cent" of the drunkards, 30 tp 50 per cent, of the criminal thieves —which includes would-be murderers—and 60 to 70 per cent, of the immoral women,' are mentally defectives. They _ point out that mental defect not only implies inability to understand things, but also a defect in self-control, and self-control is the basis of morality. It is not that criminality as such is inherited. What we have to deal with are people with insufficient self-control, and who are not able to appreciate the possible consequence qf tneir acta on themselves and others. Dr. Goddard goes so far as to say that this lack of self-control applies to all classes of criminals, even to clever criminals, who are usually caught through the commission of some inconceivable act of folly. • In these days our authorities are too timid to institute such investigations as have been carried out in America. We' have, I am proud to say, in the Eugenics Education Society a member, 31 r Lidbetter ; who has made a beginning in investigating parish records in the neighbourhood of London. HeJias been able to show that tho same families, generation after generation, have provided their quota of criminals and wastrels of tne population. In my opinion, there is only one remedy for tnis state of affairs —I do not expect to live to see it armlied in this_country—and that is the ruthless sterilisation of the mental defectives, so that they may not he able to hand on these defects to posterity."