Child Welfare
Denise Bates explains how attitudes towards children changed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Denise Bates explores how attitudes towards children changed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
David Dunhill died in July 1885 after being bathed at Scarborough Workhouse. On being placed in the bath the sixyear-old screamed that the water was too hot and jumped out, only to be thrust back into the cauldron by attendant Richard Atkinson. Despite the coroner ruling that Atkinson was not criminally culpable, the inquest jury returned a verdict of manslaughter by negligence. Four months later Atkinson was convicted of the charge, and sentenced to four months’ hard labour.
The insistence of laymen that David’s death could not be dismissed as an accident indicates how opinion was changing. Parental rights remained sacrosanct in 1885 and no one had the power to intervene, even if a child was being treated violently or not given food and clothes, but public revulsion about the abuse of youngsters was growing. The first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had been set up in Liverpool in 1883. The following year Benjamin Waugh, a clergyman who understood that any organisation campaigning on behalf of children must be able to speak for all of the country, founded the London society that became the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) five years later.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (which
developed into the RSPCA) had been established in 1824, so for much of the 19th century children had less legal protection than animals. Despite this, some piecemeal improvements to child welfare were occurring. Their hours of work were regulated by law, as was the age at which they could enter the workforce. In 1870 they became entitled to elementary education, and in 1880 this became compulsory.
Legal Protection
Campaigns by the NSPCC and its supporters bore their first fruit when the Prevention of Cruelty to, and Protection of, Children Act became law in 1889. Anyone who wilfully ill-treated a child in a way that caused unnecessary suffering or injury to health could be fined £100, or jailed for up to two years with hard labour. A child who was being harmed could be removed to a place of safety, which was likely to be the local workhouse.
The new law was immediately seized on by the authorities as a way of protecting the middle class from the feckless poor who had no scruples about sending their children out to cadge alms in the street, or dance. Within a few weeks, newspapers were reporting that the parents of child beggars were being jailed for a couple of months with hard labour.
The police and local boards of guardians appear to have been less concerned about how a child lived at home, because they initiated few prosecutions at this time for any neglect other than begging. However, charities seized the opportunity to investigate if they thought a child was being hurt in its home, usually a working-class one. The NSPCC used funds provided by its growing number of supporters to employ officers to pay them a visit. In the first instance parents might be given advice about how to feed their child, or keep their house clean. If they ignored the advice, or the neglect was too extreme, the society took the parents to court, setting out often harrowing tales of the manner in which a child was being harmed.
The scale of the NSPCC’s activities is shown by the fact that in July 1896 it prosecuted 223 people for child cruelty and obtained 213 convictions, who received between them prison sentences totalling 33 years.
Problem Parents
Not all of the cases that came to court were straightforward, and some loving parents suffered. The problem was that the root causes of neglect were not always understood. Middleclass reformers believed that the parents of ill-nourished children were selfishly squandering money on alcohol, and disbelieved the protestations of many parents that their meagre wages meant they were unable to afford adequate food and clothes.
Investigators were understandably motivated by their zeal to help children, but several cases that they took to court reveal their inability to distinguish between cruel parents and those who were doing their best in appalling circumstances, or who were trying to cope with a child with what would now be identified as special needs. In March 1896 the Cheltenham
Chronicle lambasted the NSPCC for prosecuting Frederick and Fanny Postell, whose only crime was poverty. The couple were devoted to their four young children, but when their furniture and possessions were seized to meet arrears of rent, Fanny could not keep her children or home clean. They received a standard punishment: Frederick was jailed for one month and Fanny for two, and the family was broken up.
Magistrates were occasionally more realistic in their assessment of a family’s circumstances, and dismissed the case against parents. It was not until industrialist and social reformer Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree researched poverty in York in 1899 and published a shocking report proving that some people could not earn enough to live on, that parents who made this point began to be believed. Nevertheless, a suspicion of welfare workers persisted for several decades in some communities.
Meanwhile other changes were occurring. Parents who had been found unfit could be prevented
that ‘Middle-class reformers believed children the parents of ill-nourished alcohol’ were squandering money on
from regaining custody of their children. Initial steps were taken to regulate foster care, which was, at that time, a private enterprise. The role of charities, including Barnardo’s and the Salvation Army as well as the NSPCC, grew, sometimes with the tacit support of local councils who chose to rely on charity workers and their expertise rather than exercise their own powers to address problems. Local societies to help ‘waifs and strays’ sometimes opened a home for children in distress, providing a more suitable environment than the workhouse.
The years before the First World War brought several other helpful changes. From 1906 education authorities were permitted (but not compelled) to provide free meals to impoverished children. Reforms that made financial assistance available to adults who were unemployed or sick also improved living conditions for children whose parents did not wilfully neglect them.
However, the most significant development was the 1908 Children Act, just one of many social reforms made by the Liberal government.
Change For The Better
The Act brought some preventable accidents within the scope of cruelty, making it easier to prove a case. Children under seven had to be protected from the risk of burns from an open fire. Accidentally suffocating a child while nursing it in bed
became neglectful behaviour if the person was drunk. A failure to seek medical attention for a sick child also proved neglect.
Foster care was further regulated, and anyone who looked after a child for more than two days for payment had to register immediately with the local authority. The authority had to appoint infant-protection visitors to check on the welfare of cared-for children, and offer advice or give instructions where necessary. The death of a child in foster care had to be reported to the local coroner.
In addition, children were no longer allowed in the bar of a public house or to purchase tobacco. It also became an offence to allow a young person to associate with people of bad character, or to permit a girl under 16 to engage in prostitution.
A ground-breaking aspect of the new law had been advocated by Benjamin Waugh. Children would no longer be treated as adults if they became involved in crime. Instead, the cases would be heard in juvenile courts and a custodial sentence was to be served in approved schools. This kept young offenders away from the bad influence of hardened criminals, and gave them the opportunity to reform and receive some education.
The 1908 Act became known as the Children’s Charter. Although
‘Children were no longer allowed in the bar of a public house’
most of it merely extended existing law, the provisions show how attitudes had evolved. The notion that the state was interfering with a parent’s rights had gone. Now, parents had a duty to bring up their children responsibly, and protect them.
However, in some minds the belief persisted that neglectful parenting was a vice practised only by the poorer classes, even though a few cases had shown that ‘respectable’ citizens could mistreat a child in their care.
Also, physical punishment was still a parental prerogative and emotional neglect was not recognised. Nevertheless, seeds of change had taken root that offered children the prospect of a kinder childhood than their parents might have survived.