SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS.

NZ Truth, Issue 123, 26 October 1907, Page 8

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS.

INFANTICIDE AND INFANT MORTALITY, the Drugging of Babies. Nefkriotts and inhuman Practices.

In ""Commissioner's Beale's report to the Commonwealth authorities, extracts, from which ''Truth" 'will publish for the information of the public* while' other papers are treating it with a conspiracy of silence, the subject of infanticide is fully dealt with. Amongst the causes of preventable infantile mortality, the N.S.W." Commission on the Decline of the Birth-rate referred to :— The prevalence of the use of noxious drugs and sterilised foods ; the injurious quality of proprietary and other artificial foods, often recklessly advertised ; and the injurious effects of chemical preservatives m milk and m preparations of milk used as infants' food. Mr- Beale states :— "As the sphere of operations -of the Commonwealth Legislature m relation to the health and the lives of the citizens is limited by the Constitution, its duty to the community may perhaps bfi regarded as confined to restriction, and where possible prohibition of advertisements, interstate transfer, and postal carriage of fraudulent, injurious and homicidal drugs and of improper foods. Hence the report upon the inquiry will relate itself chiefly to those articles of commerce, as well as to THE NEFARIOUS PRACTICES to which some of them arc designed to contribute, ' which may be dealt with m the public interest." The Commissioner proceeds to refer specifically to certain preparations. It is not' our intention to afford the proprietors of nostrums the advantages to be derived from the advertising of their so-called "remedies." With reference -to one preparation, Mr Beale quotes from Dr. William Murrell, physician to Westminster Hospital, London, who says : " .— is a 'soothing syrup' extensively .used m some parts of the country. It is eminently adapted for increasing the infant mortality of the neighborhood. Eight or ten drops usually answer the purpose, the child dying speedily with all the symptoms of opium poisoning. The jury generally^ return a verdict of accidental deatli, and mildly censure the chemist or patent medicine vendor from whom it was bought." Mr Beale terms this a "murderous but money-making fraud," and declares ifc only a little less audacious i than another baby opiate, which has been imported and sold m Australia by the thousand gross, and has certainly left LONG ROWS OF TINY GRAVES m our cemeteries. Incidentally to this question of infanticide, he refers to baby insurance, concerning which he states : "The nett position is this : 'When baby dies we get £2 m cash, and a pound or less will pay j for the funeral.' The difference beJ tween foeticide and infanticide can be '< m the mind only, for it is but a q'uesi tion when to take the life. . . The majority of the soothing cough mixtures and sedatives contain opium or 'morphia m large amounts. People vary to a great extent m their susceptibility to opiates, depending upon idiosyncrasy and upon the fact that confirmed habits of opium and morphine taking are very common. Death occurred m adults after taking 2£ grains of the extract, or 2 drachms of the tincture of opium, and l-16th of a grain has caused the death of an infant. One drop of laudanum has caused the death .of a child seven days old." Dr. Taylor states : "A child four months old was nearly killed by the administration of one grain of — — 's powders, containing only l-10th of a grain of opium (which is the usual dose of some of the baby narcotics.) Four grains of the same powder were given to a child four and a half years. old. ' It soon beqame comatose and died m seven hours. A child nine months old was killed m nine hours by four drops of laudanum (or l-4th grain of opium). , Various cases of infants killed by l-7th grain of opium. One died m 1.8 hours from the effects of 1.15 th part of a grain of opium. The smallest fatal case recorded is of an infant of four weeks dying within seven hours from the effects of a dose of paregoric elixir, eqiialto l-19th of a grain. Referring to SYSTEMATIC DRUGGING'. OE CHILDREN, Mx Beale states :— "lt seems a waste of life from every humanitarian point of view. Not, of course, from that of the wealthy drug-packers. The largest sale is enjoyed by an American firm, which derives a vast income from this homicidal traffic. I was authoritively informed m New York that there are four partners, all very wealthy, two of them bankers, not one of them a chemist or physician. The active ingredients are morphine and chloroform.*-'. •Chemists m Australia have assured me that little children, who can hardly speak, are sent to their shops for this opiate, where it is largely sold. And> they got it 'for baby,' " As a typical illustration of the drugging of infants, the Commissioner relates : "On a cold day, with a harsh wintry wind, I saw several nurses m a park with children m perambulators. One of them chatted with her young man.; The arms and face of the baby m her charge were blue with cold, so 'that; the 'infant began' to cry piteously. : The girl 'soothed' it, not by caress-; es, but by taking a phial from her, pocket, poured something into the baby's mouth, who soon lay m a stu-i---por* exposed to cold as before." Another case, said to have occurred m New Zealand, "probably a very common one," is that "where the mother herself said that she gave her baby a dose of when she wanted to go to a dance, leaving the child quite alone m the house for the night m a stupor." Dr. Winter Blyth, an authority on poisons, is quoted as saying :— "Of European countries •England has the greatesl, proportional number of opium poisonings. The more considerable mortality, arises m

great measure from il».« pernicious practice, both of the hard-yrorking English mother and of the baby farmer, of giving infants VARIOUS FORMS OF OPIUM, sold under the name of 'soothing syrups,' 'infants' friends,' 'infcipts' preservatives,' 'nurses' drops,' and the like, to allay restlessness, and to keep them asleep during the greater part of their existence." "Mercurous chloride," we read, "is the active ingredient m the teething powders sold by the .thousand gross annually throughout Australia. . , Our analyses revealed this remiarkable fact, which should, however, give no surprise—that some packets contain double doses and others none at all ! The stuS is made, up of starch and calomel. .The mixing is careless, being under no legal supervision where it is done, neither is there any implied guarantee nor any provision at all. as there is m the case of lambs, calves, pigs, and chickens. When mercurial poisoning follows, as, to guide ourselves by the authorities, it sometimes must, the mother will never know. Other 'soothing' powders contain morphine, also m extremely irregular doses, which tends to arrest digestion, to injure the vital organs, to lower the infant's vitality,' temperature, and powers of assimilation. It is mischievous only, and contains no remedial property. Certainly our graveyards are paved with the bodies of poisoned children." • In connection with this subject, Mr Beale. under the caption ot "CHILD MURDER ON SYSTEM," refers to the practice of "unnatural mothers placing their babies with 'kind ladies,' " and to the insane distinctions made by judges and magistrates between offences against children and those against animals or property. In Sydney a year ago a woman named Scholes was shown to have "adopted" eight "superfluous Angic -Saxons." Five of the babies died. The woman was prosecuted and sci. imced to 12 months' imprisonment ! In another case a woman charged with receiving three lambs, not babies, the property of some person unknown, was sentenced to three years ! At the same assizer, a man was sentenced for embezzlement to seven years' penal servitude ! "It is clear," says Mr Beale, "that the law regards as the greater crime an offence against property, ancl as the less crime those outrages upon HELPLESS AND HAPLESS BABES. Property does not make a Commonwealth." In March, 1904, a young man and young woman were convicted at Perth," W.A., of torturing a child. The woman said the child had been given her. One evening a neighbor heard the child crying piteously m the house, where the foster parents had left him alone. "My God," said the neighbor to another woman, "Look at that child !" He was fastened by cords to the legs of a table, the little hands and feet tied tightly behind the wood. "That is the attitude of crucifixion, always held to be the most tormenting death, because of the excruciating agony that attacks the spine. The heavy head had fallen on the breast, and there hung— pathetic twentieth century of his great Prototype— the patient baby sufferer weeping his life away." The child was released by a policeman. Late m the night the man and woman returned, tied the" child ' up again, and then the police arrested them, finding them totally naked m an adjoining room, both smoking cigarettes. For this unspeakable outrage they were sentenced to eight weeks'" imprisonment. At the same time an old Woman, for stealing ducks, was sentenced to five years !