The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-22 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 1870.

During several years past the terrible conviction
has been growing upon us that the crime of infan-
ticide here in England, but more particularly here

in London, has been increasing and multiplying.
Nearly ten years have elapsed since the late mem-
ber for Finsbury, Mr. DUNCOMBE, as about the last
act of his political career, moved for certain sta-
tistics, which were therefore, in due course of
time, produced and laid upon the table of the House
of Commons, showing the prevalence between 1850
and 1860 of this same heinous atrocity of infanti-
cide. In one sense, it is surely the cruelest and the
most dastardly of all Murders— that is when
one takes into account the utter helplessness and the
touching dependency of the tender victims sacrificed.
So far from this infernal crime in any way diminish-
in frequency, it would actually appear, from man
ghastly witnesses to the contrary that have been
but very recently brought to light, to have become
systematized into a trade, known for some time
under its significant title of Baby Farming. As if it
were so many head of cattle that were being dealt
with, infants have been trafficked in quite delibe-
rately and systematically. They have been
cleared out of the way at the rate of £5
a head. Little EMILY, and FREDDY, and JOE,
and WILLY have been left, for a five-
pound note a piece, to the tender care of Mrs.
WATERS, or Mrs. OLIVER, or Mrs. HURLEY, or Mrs.
WILLIS, or Mrs. BLACKBURN—for the miserable crea-

tare has been known by those, and it may be other
names indiscriminately. The disclosure brought to
our knowledge through the agency of a sergeant of
detectives within these last few days, beyond a
doubt surpasses all that had been feared through
our recent investigations. The public had heard
with a shudder of abhorrence that here and there
all about the waste places in the neighbourhood of
Brixton, the dead bodies of infants had been picked
up, iu old rags, in brown paper parcels, iu this
place and in that place, and all of them
in a more or less advanced stage of decomposition.
At length, step by step, the den in which these
atrocities had been perpetrated has been traced
through the sagacious investigations of the detective
bent on its discovery. A detestable advertisement
inserted in one of the weekly newspapers, one of
the foulest of the foul abominations, dubbed by a
Saturday Reviewer the garbage of journalism, affords
the clue by means of which we seem to have got at
last to the heart of this horrible labyrinth. Then,
when WATE as, otherwise OLIVER, otherwise Huar.Ev,
otherwise Wthus, otherwise BLACKB URN, was at length
discovered, it turned out that her house-room
was littered with the dirty, neglected, emaciated
forms of sickly and some of them seemingly dying
infants. A narcotic drug labelled " Paregoric
Elixir"
was found in a bottle upon a table
close by a sofa on which five of these poor
little helpless mortals were huddled up together.
Laudanum was frequently sent for by the baby-
farmer under the pretence of toothache, but presum-
ably for insidious administration. Lime had been
procured, a lump of it had been placed for an hour
in a jug of water, a dessert spoonful of which had
been then put into each infant's feeding-bottle. One
of the dead infants picked up the other
day was wrapped in a piece of brown
paper o❑ which was found written the
name of Mrs. WATERS. And it is Mrs. WATERS,
who is now in custody charged with cruelty

in carrying out her trade of Baby Farming, and
more than that under dire suspicion of the crime of
infanticide. The question as to this woman's guilt

or innocence, it is earnestly to be hoped, will be, as
rapidly as possible and as clearly as possible, de-
monstrated. There is all the more reasonable
hope that it will be so, seeing that the investigation
of the case has been now entrusted to the watchful
care of the solicitor to the Treasury.

TEE round of time has brought us the periodical
sacrifice in the shape of a great railway accident. 411
our precautions fail—it is scarcely to be hoped that
they ever will succeed—in securing absolute immunity.
Human care is fallible ; mechanical contrivances are
liable to flaws. Get as perfect an organisation of
men as you will, and some one will break down in some
detail at a critical moment. Employ machinery of
the most skilful construction, and some flaw will
throw the whole out of gear, at an instant when
tremendous interests are at stake upon the integrity of
metal. There can be no question that anxious atten-
tion and scientific skill have contributed to diminish
the liability of railway travellers to disaster. As a
matter of fact, great accidents have diminished in
frequency. One disaster of very serious extent, and,
sometimes two, were wont to form part of every
year's tale of misfortune; it is now two years since a
collision similar in effects to that of yesterday took
place. When an event of this kind occurs there is
some consolation in noticing signs of improvement;
but it is evident enough that more preventive mea-
sures are still open to adoption. In the accident
near Newark, yesterday, figured the old performers
—a goods train and an excursion train. The axle
of a waggon in the former train broke, and the cars ran
off the rails so violently, as to be precipitated on to
the other line, blocking up the way. Immediately
afterwards an excursion train came up, ran
into the mass of disarranged goods waggons,
and then all that remained was to collect the dead
and the wounded. It is difficult to attach responsi-
bility to a disaster of such a remarkable origin. The
waggon with the faulty axle tree belonged, not to
the Great Northern, but to another company;
it is impossible, however, for either one company