the nation's conscience stirred with our domestic evils.
Nevertheless, all this legislation up to 1889 was to some degree experimental and preliminary, and failed to reach the evil deep down. It was the act of 1889 for the Protection of Children which definitely marked a new stage, and which, with its progeny of consequential statutes, will, if properly administered, be fruitful for coming generations.
Prior to that act a child had no legal right to proper treatment, to due care, to cleanliness, or to any of the conditions most essential to its life. The act accorded those rights. Hitherto there had been no such offence as ill-treatment or neglect. The act created those offences. Till then, however brutal or unendurable its treatment at home, the child must bow its head in submission. The act abolished that misuse and violation of authority. Before it passed, the English home could be the unassailable castle of an unnatural parent and the prison of a victimised child. The act swept away that heinous prescription. Till then, the law only provided homes for the destitute child: henceforth it provided prisons for the criminal parent. Hitherto the parent had owned the child as his property: for the future the child had the privileges of a citizen. Hitherto the child had received the necessaries of life as matters of parental grace: henceforth it could claim these rights lawfully.
Following closely upon the act of 1889 came
