The Herald of Wales. — 1887-10-15 (Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales)

LONDON CHILD LIFE.  The Bishop of Bedford, speaking at the Church Congress, on Thursday, made the following extraordinary statement as to the atrocities in London child life : —There was a stratum in our social deposits in which childlife was a thing to arouse—he knew not whether to say infinite pity or fierce indignation. The Soeiel for the Prevention ot Cruelty to Children ought to be, if it was not yet, wellknown. It was a ddigrace to our English name that such a society should be needed. If there was not abundant evidence it would be hard to believe in the brutality and selfish cruelty—chiefly, of course, the fruit of drink— shown by parents to their little ones. There woo one case of a man who admitted, without any conscious shame, that he wreaked his vengeance on a baby fifteen months old, beating it chii fly about the face, to vex a mister-in-law who was very fond of the child. There was another case ef a tiny, starved child, found put down in its night gown on the oilcloth, alone, hungry, and cold, ehivering and ill, in a passhge, with the doors at each cod open, in the depth of winter, whilst on the other side of a clotted door opening into the patience was the child's mother, in a room with a fire, eating a breakfast of hot coffee and frizzled bacon and bread. The child could not get up or even stand. It was Ave Tears old, and insured for C. ['here IMP a vast amount of slow but quite deliberate, child ['murder of this sort going on. There was a case of a mother breaking her little girl's arm with a broomstlek, and then setting her to scrub the floor with the broken arm tied up, and whipping her f ar being to slow about it. There was also a case of a poor little dying boy put by his tender parents into a tub of cold water for an hour "to get his dying done," as they said. A vast amount of cruelty to children belonged to the begging my stem. The little ones sent out to beg were, as a rule, brutally beaten if they did not take home enough whezewith their expectant parents might drink themselves drunk, or at leak provide themselves with an atundant supper. The Church of England Society for Providing Homes for Waifs and Strays, following in the steps of Dr. Barnard°, was doieg a splendid work of rescue and restoration, only on distinct Church lines. He might venture, as another instance of the way in which children were sometimee treated, to tell the congress ot a poor little crippled boy obliged constantly to wear irons, without which he was in much pain and quite helpless. When this boy, who was now bright and happy in one of the homes for waifs and atraye, was first found, his mother used continually to pledge hia irons in order to buy gin for hereelf. The sufferings of children however, were not all canned by cruelty; for, alas ! there was much want amongst the poor, at any rate on London. He heard the other day of a poor little girl dying in Bbcreditch who I said. "How there will be enough for the rest to I eat." All this was very sad. Bat why had God given men the gift of pity? Why had He shown them all these poor little souls, dowered with His own loge but do wn•trcdden by the cruelty of man? Vas it that they might sigh with compassion and pate on; or was it that they might rise up and do?