law needed mending, it was already much better than the existing practice. By law, no insurance for money payable at death could be made on any child under six years of age. The principle of the law had been the plain one, that it was necessary to uphold all safeguards of the life of infants whose existence could not be made profitable. To make their death profitable while their lives were expensive, was to offer a premium on neglect, and even on murder. As such was the law, society supposed that all was right, till the Preston chaplain showed that it was useless—and how. The law was prospective, and nobody seems to have asked how many children were on the “death-lists” at the time of the passing of the Act (1847): and the members of the old clubs insisted on understanding that the new law affected only new clubs, and went on registering infants for burial as before. They quoted the opinion of counsel for this; and, when new clubs were to be formed, they framed them on the model of the old ones, without any regard to the law. So lately as the month of May, 1853, there was a club of 1500 members set up, into which infants were received just as if no impediment existed.
This was one fact. Another—perfectly astonishing to all but local visitors of the poor—was the way in which the illness or death of an infant was spoken of. It was a difficult affair to persuade the parents to send for the doctor. The answer was, in the ingenuousness of barbarism, that “the child was in two clubs.” It would, in other words, be no harm if the child died, while it would be a pity to have to break into the money to pay the doctor, when it was of no use. Doctors themselves have been told, and so have rate and rent collectors, that the cottager cannot pay now, but will have money when such or such a child dies. It was the commonest thing in the world to hear the neighbours saying, what a fine thing it would be for the parents if their sick child died, as it was insured in three clubs, or two, or ten, as it might be.
On the trial of Rodda, who was hanged at York, some five or six years ago, for the murder of his infant, it was proved that he had said he did not care how soon the child died, as he should then have 50s. from the club; and that he added remarks to the effect that the death of another would bring in the same amount; and two more would each fetch 5l. Clergymen could tell how often the parents of a fallen daughter, or the fallen daughter herself, found comfort for the disgrace and burden of an illegitimate child in the thought of the compensation that its death would purchase from the burial-club.
Such were the facts which inquirers encountered, and which the Preston chaplain published, to bring the representation of the Liverpool grand jury into general notice, and obtain a reform of the law.
It was full time that something of the kind should be done. In one burial-club, the deaths of children between two months and five years old were no less than 62 per cent. of the whole. If any fact could be more directly to the point than that, it is that from 6 to 8 per cent. more children died who were in burial-clubs than in the poorest class where no such insurance was made.
Full and clear as the evidence was, and remarkable as were two or three child-murders, in connection with burial-clubs about that time, many of us could not believe that such things could be done in England as Rodda was hanged for, and for which Honor Gibbons and Bridget Gerratz were sentenced to the same doom. But the prevalence of the feeling that they had done what was natural under the bribe offered for the child’s life, and the certainty that the law would be altered, caused a commutation of the sentence on these women to one of transportation for life. From that moment society was pledged to amend the law: and the thing was done.
It was a fact not sufficiently made known, that the law of the land does not permit Life-insurance in the offices to which the middle and upper classes resort when the death of the person insured can be otherwise than unprofitable to the insurer. If I remember right, this restriction was suggested by the case of Miss Abercrombie, who was thoroughly understood to have been poisoned by her brother-in-law in 1830, after he had effected large insurances on her life. It seems strange that the same limitation should not have been extended to burial-clubs. What a rich man could not do in regard to his child, was done in the case of 39,000 children in a single town of less than 100,000 inhabitants: a circumstance which occasioned repeated comment in the Committee of 1854.
The inquiries of that Committee brought out some evidence of a very interesting character. Much of it has been lightly passed over because there was no proof of any considerable number of direct murders. But, as one judge observed, in his evidence, all orders of murder are rare in the experience of any one judge: as several witnesses observed, the undetected murders were likely to bear, in this case, a large proportion to the detected, while there was no provision for detecting them: as many more observed, the mortality arose from neglect and inaction, where murder was not to be imputed: and, as nearly all agreed, it was a perilous and pernicious practice to throw the inducements into the scale of a child’s death, rather than its continued life. Hence the change in the law.
By the Friendly Societies Acts of 1855 and 1858, the amount obtainable from one or more Societies may not exceed 6l. for a child under five years of age, or 10l. for one between five and ten; and no money is to be paid without the production of a certificate of a duly qualified medical man, stating the probable cause of death, and also endorsing the amount paid upon such certificate.
It had been earnestly desired that the object of insurance should be the burial of the dead by the club, so as to preclude the passing of money into the hands of the parents or nurse. It was objected that this would break up existing clubs, and that it might interfere with a provident habit largely established. We shall all be better pleased when we see the provident habit based upon the life instead of the death of children; when we see insurance effected to procure them education,