precautions are provided for the detention of children in safety during trial and for placing them with respectable relations or friends or with societies or industrial schools or reformatories after- wards. In cases of homicide or grave crime the Home Office has to provide special places of detention; one of these is the Borstal Institution at Rochester. The parent is compellable to attend the juvenile court and can be fined in lieu of the child. No sentence of felony or death can be recorded against any person under 16 years of age. Any court may be cleared for a child to give evidence. No child may be present at any trial in which he is not concerned.
No pawnbroker or dealer in old metal may deal with a child under 16.
Vagrants who keep children from school can be fined and the children may be removed to a certified school.
Liquor. By Sect. 119 of the Children Act any person giving a child under the age of five any intoxicating liquor except by doc- tor's order can be fined 3. No child under 14 can be allowed in a bar, and the licencee or any person bringing the child in may be summoned by the police and fined. Railway and other bona- fide refreshment rooms are excepted.
Entertainments for Children. Where the majority of the audience are children and the number exceeds loo the occupier is respon- sible and can be fined up to 100. He must provide a sufficient number of adult attendants to take precautions for the safety of the children. His licence may be revoked (Sect. 121).
Verminous Children. The local authority may direct their medi- cal officer to examine the children in any provided school and remove and cleanse any verminous child after notice to the parent who can be fined on a second offence.
Presumption of Age. The decision of the court on the hearing can be given on such evidence as is available and is final even if direct proof of age is subsequently forthcoming. The onus of proof that the person is over age lies on defendant, and if strictly proved at the time is a good defence.
Reformatory and Industrial Schools. Part IV. of the Act is a code regulating these schools. .Briefly, reformatory schools are those provided for youthful offenders between 12 and 16 years of age who have been convicted of some offence punishable in an adult by imprisonment. Industrial schools are those for children under 14 (a) whose parents cannot control them and consent, or (6) who are found begging under any excuse, wandering, destitute, having drunken or criminal parents, or associating with thieves or prosti- tutes or in immoral surroundings, or (c) children under 12 who, if over 12, might have been sent to a reformatory, or (d) any refrac- tory workhouse child under 14, or child who cannot be made to attend any elementary school. In the alternative any child who could be committed to an industrial school can be committed to a relative or other person nominated by the court. All these schools are inspected and controlled by the Home Office, but they are provided at the expense of the local authority which can borrow in order to provide them. They are certified by the Home Office and the certificate may be withdrawn. Managers are appointed to look after these schools and their expenses are paid. The funds are partly supplied by the Home Office, partly by the parents of the children, partly by the local authority.
Scotland. The Secretary for Scotland is substituted for the Home Office and there are other provisions so as to extend the Act to Scotland. What is called the police court in England is the sheriff's court in Scotland, the workhouse becomes the poorhouse, and the coroner the procurator fiscal.
Ireland. The Act also applies to Ireland.
Juvenile Courts. The most conspicuous advance is the development of juvenile courts, which have been a great success and have been adopted in most towns. The appointment of women magistrates is also a step in advance and an additional good influence. By 10 and n Geo. V., C 68 (Dec. 23 1920) a woman justice must sit with the magistrate in a juvenile court. They are chosen from a panel nominated by the Home Office. The idea of the juvenile court is to get the child away from the criminal atmosphere and the kind of public which frequents police courts, and from the procedure in which the terrified child was placed in a high dock surrounded by members of the police force in uniform, too frightened to tell the truth or know what was being said in the case. The proceedings are conducted in a quiet room by a magistrate who tries to get the confidence of the child and act as a father would in a like case.
Defective Children. Much has been done for defective children since 1893. The Board of Education has issued consolidated regulations (Cmd. 617) dealing with: (a) medical inspection and treatment of children in elementary schools; (b) provision of meals; (c) schools for blind, deaf, defective and epileptic chil- dren; (d) physical training; (e) evening play centres.
These various activities for the benefit of children are taken into consideration in " substantive grants " by the Board of Education
to local authorities. The evening play centres, initiated by Mrs. Humphry Ward, and largely supported by voluntary contribu- tions, since 1918 have been eligible for such grants. Submission of arrangements (see Education Act 1918, and Ministry of Health Act 1919) are made by each local authority to the Board or Min- istry concerned. Medical records are kept, school clinics and feeding centres are provided, as are special schools for the deaf and blind who must be kept completely separate, and the mentally deficient and epileptic. The necessity of beginning the training between the ages of two and five is insisted on by the Board. The curriculum for each class of child, building regulations, rules as to grants regu- lation for special schools and boarding-houses will be found in the appendices to the consolidated regulations. The Elementary Edu- cation Defective and Epileptic Children Acts 1899-1914 make it a duty of the local authority to provide for their education, and make it incumbent on the parent of such a child over seven to make suitable provision for its education or to send it to a certified school.
Affiliation (see 1.300). The maximum payment obtainable from the father of an illegitimate child was in 1921 increased to IQS. per week, to be collected by an officer of the court.
Adoption. In 1921 the Report of the Committee appointed by the Home Office was published (Cmd. 1254). It recommends: (i) that adoption of children should be made a legal and enforceable act, the adopting parents having the rights of natural parents; (2) that the county court as well as high court should have jurisdiction; (3) that subsequent marriage should legiti- matize any children previously born.
For the law as to custody and guardianship of children, see WOMEN, LEGAL STATUS OF. ' (R. TH.)
UNITED STATES
There was a distinct advance in regard to the care of children, legislative and otherwise, in the United States during the decade 1910-20. In 1912 the Federal Children's Bureau was established by Act of Congress as a division of what was then the Depart- ment of Commerce and Labor. The Bureau was made a part of the Department of Labor when the latter was created in 1913. The Bureau was directed by statute to investigate all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life, and especially the questions of infant mortality, the diseases of children, juvenile courts, abandonment, and the employment of children in dangerous and other occupations. Miss Julia C. Lathrop (b. 1858), chief of the Children's Bureau from its establishment, was responsible for its success in scientific research and in cooperating with national societies and local public and private agencies in the advancement of the interests of children.
Children's Codes. The new movement for " children's codes " took form in 1911, when Ohio was the first state to create an official Children's Code Commission to " revise, consolidate and suggest amendments " to the laws of the state pertaining to children. As a result of the work of this commission, a children's code was adopted by Ohio in 1913. By 1921, 24 states had followed the example by appointing official bodies to codify laws and to recommend legisla- tion in the field of child welfare. Special attention was given by these commissions to the laws with reference to dependent, delin- quent and defective children. The legislation which was adopted after the report of the Minnesota Commission in 1917 made Min- nesota a leading state in the public protection and care of children. Here, as in seven other states, the work is centralized in a special division, a state board of control or whatever state department has general oversight of the state's wards.
Illegitimacy. There has been some discussion in recent years of the legal position of children born out of wedlock. Most of the American states adopted laws which made the issue of certain annulled marriages legitimate, followed the civil-law principle of legitimation by subsequent matrimony, and created rights of inter- state succession between the illegitimate child and the mother. Bas- tardy support legislation in America has followed English lines. According to Prof. Ernst Freund, of the university of Chicago, the most striking feature of this legislation has been its stationary char- acter, indicative of a lack of thought with reference to the subject during the past century. This stagnation appears to have come to an end in the last few years. In 1917 liberal laws were adopted in the states of Minnesota and North Dakota. The Minnesota law provides that the state Board of Control shall look after the interests of the illegitimate child so that he may have approx- imately the same advantages as the legitimate child. To do this the Board may initiate proceedings to establish the parent- age and rights of the child, may cooperate with child-aiding organizations, and, when requested to do so, may appoint a county child-welfare board, two members of which shall be women, to aid in the objects of the state Board; if there is no county welfare board, the judge of the juvenile court may appoint local agents to
