THE CHILDREN’S CHAMPION.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 19, 6 May 1908, Page 43

THE CHILDREN’S CHAMPION.

The death of the Rev. Benjamin Waugh removes the noble founder of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a man who did more for tile cause of ill-treated children than perhaps any other individual of his time. It was Mr Waugh who awakened the national conscience in regard to the cruelty inflicted upon children by brutal and vicious parents. He had found that, the failure of children to attend school, and their miserable slate whep they did come, were commonly due to the ne« gleet, or worse, to which they were

sr-bjctlcd at home; and what chiefly rrousel his indignation was the difficulty, as the law then stood, of bringing home to parents their responsibility. it is hard to realise now that in the seven ties it was the accepted idea, not only among the general public, but among judges and magistrates, that, a-s sc Eng lishman’s house was his castle, the parents could practically do as -they liked with their children, as with their inanimate goods and chattels. The stupid and paralysing old gag about "th'e lib erty of the subject" was thrown in the teeth of any reformer who suggested that the interests of the community-weie of more importance than the parent’s freedom to ill-treat his children. Ml". Waugh set himself to wear down public opinion, and he succeeded. His first and greatest difficulty was ti convince the country that criioliy- to. children actually existed. Hia appeal was nearly always met by the answer, “There is ho crue'ty in this town.” By his persistence, eloquence, and charm- of charecter, Mr Waugh gradually succeeded in changing public opinion. He spent five years tfavelling in Great Britain, collecting facts on which a Statute could be founded. Many of his disclosures were incredibly terrible. There seemed to be absolutely no limit to the variety of ill-treatment to which children were subJected. Referring to this labour he said: —“We find that there is more cruelty in the country than in towns. In the towns there is more brutality; in the counlrmore wilful starvation, and starvation in worse than brutality. A child is strong; led to death in six seconds; it takes si* weeks of agony to starve it gradually to death.” He told of an unnatural mother deliberately killing her child by thirst, and of a farmer devising the death of his son by patent medicine, in order to get the insurance money. Recital* like these, verified, alas! by prosecutions, convinced Parliament of the necessity o’ special legislation, and ip 1885 the Criminal Law Aemndment Act was passed. M.t Waugh also secured a law by which oth ers beside Poor Law guardians might prosecute in cases of starvation. In 1889 his legislative achievements culminated in the passing of the Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to and the better Protection-of Children.

Under this “Children’s Charter,” supplemented in 1895 by a-cha-rter of incorporation conferred on the .Society fov the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the society has done a work of incalculable beneficence. Jt has dealt with .over 306-,009 eases-of -ill-treatment, ami, but for it, in the vast majority of these cases the helpless little victims would have hud to go on suffering. It encountered much opposition at first, even in police and coroners’ courts, hut it triumphed in thn end. Happily it has of late become less and less necessary to prosecute, but the need of keen and persistent vigilance is still there. Every year the society deals with about 40.000 cases. Think of it—in a Christian country! The very fact of such a society being necessary is « dis grace to civilisation; but how necessary it is its record has shown only too dearly. And the chief credit for the whole work which it has done belongs to its founder, Mr Benjamin Waugh, “the Champion of the Child."