The Warwickshire Herald. — 1888-05-10 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

HORRIBLE CRUELTY TO CHILDREN. The report of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children for 1887-88 contains a shocking record of cruelty—of brutal assaults, starvation, and grave and culpable neglect. Besides the usual weapons of ordinary punishments, which in 100 cases of assault have been used most unreasonably—such as canes, straps, whips, and the less usual bouts, belts, thongs of rope, there have been used hammers, pokers, cold and tict—deliberately heated in the fire; wire toast‘g-forks, the prongs hammered out, the stem untwisted a little up, making a sort of a birch of frayed wire: files, with which the skin on projecting bones has been rasped raw: hot stoves, on wbich bare limbs have been put; hot fire-grates, against which little bands have been held. I /read. ful descriptions are given eel the condition in which the poor little vi-Aims' bodies have been found. The provocations pleaded,many of them repeated in court, reveal a marvellous idea of what is an accepted justification of barbarity. "He took a piece of my bread," said a big man who had made a little body and head raw and broken shoulder and arm. The child was four years and a-half old. "lie stole some sugar," was the reason why a child had been whipped with a scourge of wire on his bare limbs. He was four years and 10 months. "They pester and cry so," said a fat butcher, as his excuse for strapping with his loin-belt two little motherless girls, who were kept in a room °lt of the way without food, save such as they got from neighbours stealthily when he was out. " The-y conies in so late," was given as a proper reason for turning little hawkers' bodies into a mass of bruises and wounds, first with a strap and then with a piece of wood split off the side of a packing-case. "I have my dogs to feed," was a greyhound•breeder's plea for consideration in the matter of starving to within sight of the grave his two children. " Why does not the little devil pay what I tell him, and as I tell him," exclaimed a linguist of 35. He had mutilated a little face with his fist till it was like no human thing. There are many cases cf systematic cruelty far worse than the reckless. even if murderous, cruelty of the drunkard. One particular child is its object. All it does is wrong. One such child before it could walk had learned to crawl under the bed at the sound of its father's approach, with thee' little startled cry of " Dad!" One frail child was kept in a damp, dark kitchen while the rest sat round the fire. Three were made to sleep on the floor, in damp cellars or attics. Two were made to go out when suffering from ailments to which exposure would be fatal. One infant was found laid close to the fire to get rid of it through thirst. Here is an example of the treatment of a child " for being born be-fore marriage." Before it was many days old the father soused it on its mother's knee with the contents of a pail of cold water. On another occasion he seized it while suckling at her breast, and flung it violently against the wall at the other end of the room. When its mother was out be took it into the yard, and put it overhead into a tank of cold water, holding it under till it was with difficulty recovered. " What do you feed the little d— for?" lie would ask his wife. He was for ever assaulting her for her care of it. Having deliberately excluded her from the room, he pitched it upon the floor and struck it about with the legs of a chair. It was always in dread of the sound of his footsteps on the stairs, and would hide under the bed and lie breathless till he had gone. It was three years old. The man's family was two. His other chili) be did not assault -• •