Prostitution : considered in its moral, social, and sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities and garrison towns : with proposals for the control and prevention of its attendant evils / by William Acton.

  • Acton, William, 1813-1875.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prostitution : considered in its moral, social, and sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities and garrison towns : with proposals for the control and prevention of its attendant evils / by William Acton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    figures in mind, we shall receive vast instruction from a perusal of the coroner’s returns. Turning to the judicial statistics for 18G7, we find that in that year 1153 inquests were held upon illegitimate children aged one year and under, against 29G0 inquests held upon legitimate children of like age, so that though the proportion of legitimate to illegitimate children exceeds 1G to 1, the number of inquests held upon the former are little more than double the number of those held upon the latter, thus pre- senting a ratio of inquests held on illegitimate children eight times as high as it ought to be, taking as our mean the number of the deaths occurring among the legitimate, though this mean is hardly the true one either, because misery and want are present in numberless instances, even when the parents have been duly married to bring about, if not the actual destruction of the offspring, at least the neglect that leads to the premature and sudden, if not violent death; in addition to all this, we may remember with what tenfold force the observations of the learned re- corder to which I have already referred apply to the case of the illegi- timate as compared with the case of the legitimate child, and we shall unavoidably come to the conclusion that even the enormous dispropor- tion shown as the result of the coroner’s inquest is very far below the real state of the case, and that we shall not be far wrong if we take the violent, and sudden, and unaccountable deaths returned by the Regis- trar General as the untimely fate of children unlawfully begotten, while if even a considerable proportion of that black list could be shown to belong to married life, it would not weaken, but on the contrary strengthen our apprehensions as to the untimely and miserable end that in the majority of cases falls to the lot of so-called “ love children.” A little further examination of the figures at our disposal seems to place almost beyond the possibility of doubt the supposition that a large pro- portion of the illegitimate children brought into the world meet with a violent, or at least premature end. We find that the number of in- quests held on illegitimate children of the age of one year, but under seven, amounted to 2960, while the number held upon legitimate chil- dren of a like age reaches only to 201. There is here a preponderance of illegitimate deaths striking enough to call forth suspicions of foul play, but as compared with the discrepancy exhibited by the earlier period, the proportion has fallen off from one half to one fourteenth. Clearly the time of the strongest temptation to tampering with the life of the infant is during the earliest stage of its existence. It is at the outset of the baby’s life that the mother has to answer for herself whe- ther she can bear the shame that must inevitably occur to her from that infant life. During that evil time, also, it becomes apparent whether or no the father will support the life he called forth, and whether, if he fails to take the burden on himself, the mother can make up by her exertions for his default. Let the first gust of shame pass over, the first difficulty of providing for the babe be faced and overcome, and it is reasonable to suppose that the chances against its life being preserved are little greater than those against the attainment to maturity of the offspring ot married life. The results, then, of seduction and desertion are to force the mother