Who Slays These Babes ?

NZ Truth, Issue 976, 9 August 1924, Page 5

Who Slays These Babes ?

Is it Frenzied Ma, or Absconding Pa, or the Unco' Guid?

I saw where m the shroud did lurk A curious frame of Nature's work; A flowret crushed m the bud, A nameless piece of Babyhood.

These were lines ascribed by Charles Lamb ,to an infant dying as soon as born, and they describe as succinctly as" they do poignantly what has been an experience of the police authorities at .Auckland on more than one occasion within the past few weeks. Within all too recent date there have been three or four bodies of newlyborn infants found m various parts of the city with not a trace of the perpetrators of the grim tragedies or the identity of parenthood. The authorities are left 'with no clue to allow of their sheeting home to the responsible parties this . tragic indication of incipient immorality. The old saw that murder- : will, out is proved m modern times to be not infallible, and on many" occasions the only punishment which can be meted out to. heartless individuals who kill ere life has yet begun, must be the prod, prod, prodding of conscience. - ■ No crime can be more heinous than! theactthat stifles life upon its nativity.

,and the frequency with which this has v happened of. late m Auckland and elsewhere, is indicative of a moral slump. Behind every such occurrence one conjures up tempestuous mental anguish ending m abjeqt desperation, and" womanly brutality equalled only by the cowardice of man. While nothing more heinous or heartless could .be imagined than the destruction of helpless, innocent infancy, there is enough cant and hyprocrlsy m the community to drive the unmarried mother to the depths of desperation rather than face an unforgiving, unforgetting world. After all: To err is human, to forgive divine; and much more than is done could be done to obviate such calamitous happenings even after\ the "original sin.',' A judicious conception of the frailties of the human composition, would maket the thorny path of many an unmarried mother more easy and avert the awful climax m the murder of helpless infants.