THE PERTH HORROR.

NZ Truth, Issue 98, 4 May 1907, Page 8

THE PERTH HORROR.

Mother Mitohell, of Perth, has got five years for baby-slaughter m connection with her foaby-farmirfg Ibua* mess ; and she deserves it, every, day.. But what is the use of it so far as the always-coming crop of unwanted baiMes are concerned? And 1 does anybody believe that the business is at an end?- If so, let him or her get hold, first, of the facts published m the vital statistics and track them down to the dens wherein the babies still rot away rather than die. Poor., pitiful, horridly, shockingly pitiful objects, puling thsir lives away m pain and anguish unspeakable, uncheered by any ra~ of light of human happiness which we are accustomed to consider as the birth-right of humanity. Far better they were nipped out of life sharp and sudden with their first breath. We have sought to end this business with gaol and gallows, which has proved just about as epioacious as prayer and fasting. We are as far advanced m legislation as was Scotland at the time when Effie Deans was sna-tched from the gallows foot. We have our periods of horror as our periods of vengeance. Butt all the time the business of the baiby-farm goes on, and m its carefully concealed realities it is more utterly abominable than anything ever conceived of m this. fairly bad world- Humanitarians some time" j ago created a sensation with graphio description® of the' knifing- of the Fatman's veal. That the flesh may have the desired delicacy the calves are slowly bled to . death. Tiieir veins are tapped and kept open, and thus*through days, they die.. A pen of them m the blood-soaked straw is a fairly slLckening sight, and yet iolerable by comparison with an interior of a baiby-farm, where a half-do^--en or a score of infants are dying m slow torment m sw'muad-iftgs 'pi ißd&seri^a^le .Sltfe