Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · February 11, 1868

Child Murder.

In our paper for January 25, we published a view of the wicket of the Foundling Hospital at Florence, in Italy, and we called attention to the fact of the alarming increase of infanticide, and of other unmentionable crimes. Indeed, the most startling phenomenon of our life is the apparent decline of the maternal sentiment. Essays are constantly published by medical men which explain the mysterious advertisements in otherwise respectable newspapers. In some papers the reader may find nearly a column of such advertisements, which, in plain English, are merely murder made easy and disease made sure. They are both a cause and a symptom; and the essays of which we speak are the record of the experience of faithful and wise physicians. The late Dr. Worthington Hooker, one of the most eminent among them, declared, in a former number of this journal, that the average of children in American families has declined from eight to less than three, and that one of the chief causes is the consent of the mother.

The inevitable consequence of such a condition is that human life declines in value, and that the unwilling mother views infanticide with composure. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Secretary of the Board of State Charities in Massachusetts has ascertained during the last year that eighty out of every hundred infants placed in public alms-houses die within a short time; and an asylum has been founded to care for the unfortunate children; and all the town authorities are authorized to send foundlings and all deserted infants thither. During the last week, also, another instance of this wanton carelessness of life, or in other words, murder, was exposed in this city. A woman applied to the Board of Health for a burial permit for a child two months old. Dr. Harris was suspicious, and upon inquiry it was ascertained that the body of the infant was brought from the house of Catharine D. Putnam, who keeps a lying-in hospital for women who are not wives.

The certificate upon which the permit was sought was given, according to the report in the morning papers, by Dr. James W. Ranney, and a false number of the house was mentioned. To the inquiry, whether it

was a disreputable house, Dr. Ranney replied that if taking children from the breast and feeding them upon “spoon victuals” tends to shorten their lives, and “if persons in a house doing this thing makes it disreputable, then this is a disreputable house.” The cook testified that Mrs. Putnam advertised children for adoption, and kept them until they were adopted, and that there was a death in the house every two months. That is, Mrs. Putnam keeps a lying-in retreat for mothers who wish to abandon their offspring, and Mrs. Putnam disposes of them. If there are no applicants for adoption, the fate of the infants may be presumed.

The experience of Europe has led to the establishment of foundling hospitals as the surest method of diminishing child murder. The argument that such institutions tend to promote vice by alleviating its consequences is not sound; for we have no right to make the sacrifice of those who are wholly innocent a means of restraining the guilty. Nor is the correction of the evil from which this crime springs to be found in vehement denunciation, and exclamations of horror, and then leaving it to cure itself. In the city of New York we believe that the Creche receives foundlings under certain conditions; but the time is fully ripe for such foundling hospitals as those in Europe. Nor have we any doubt that the revelations of every month and week, the testimony of science and of the police, will rapidly persuade the public of this truth.—Harper’s Weekly.