Note 251-6 — Chapter II

According to J. Bowring's official report: Athenæum, 17 Nov., 1855. That the exposure of children is allowed by law in China, and that many poor couples marry with the intention of exposing them, is unquestionable. But the reports concerning the extent of the evil differ materially. The Jesuits estimated that in Pekin alone from 2,000 to 3,000 children were exposed in the streets. To this must be added the many thrown into the water or smothered in a bath-tub immediately after birth. Compare Lettres édif., XVI, 394 ff.; Barrow, 166 ff. The street-foundlings were picked up by the police and placed in wagons, living and dead together, and cast into one pit in a part of the city. Other accounts are much more favorable: thus that of Ellis, Voyage, ch. 7, who was there in 1816, and of Timkowski, Reise, II, 359. Compare the quotations in Klemm, Kulturgeschichte, VI, 212.