Chapter XVII · THE KILLING OF PARENTS, SICK PERSONS, CHILDREN—FETICIDE

WE have found that among mankind at large there is a moral rule which forbids people to kill members of their own society. We shall now see that the stringency of this rule is subject to variations, depending on the special relationship in which persons stand to one another or on their social status, and that there are cases to which it does not apply at all.

Owing to the regard which children are expected to feel for their parents, parricide is considered the most aggravated form of murder. Nowhere have parents been more venerated by their children than among the nations of archaic culture, and nowhere has parricide been regarded with greater horror. In China it is punished with the most ignominious of all capital punishments, the so-called “cutting into small pieces”; and in some instances, when the crime has occurred in a district, in addition to all punishments inflicted on persons, the wall of the city where the deed was committed is pulled down in parts, or modified in shape, a round corner is substituted for a square one, or a gate removed to a new situation, or even closed up altogether.1 In Corea the parricide is burned to death.2 Among the ancient Egyptians, we are told, he was sentenced to be lacerated with sharpened reeds, and after being thrown on thorns he was burned.3 In Exodus we read of the “smiting” of parents, but parricide is not expressly mentioned, perhaps because the Hebrew legislator, like Solon at Athens,4 did not think it possible that any one could be guilty of so unnatural a barbarity.5 Herodotus states that the same notion was held by the ancient Persians, who said that no one ever yet killed his own father or mother, and that all cases of so-called parricide if carefully examined, would be found to have been committed by supposititious children or those born in adultery, it being beyond the bounds of probability that a true father should be murdered by his own son.6 Plato says in his ‘Laws’:—“If a man could be slain more than once, most justly would he who in a fit of passion has slain father or mother undergo many deaths. How can he whom, alone of all men, even in defence of his life, and when about to suffer death at the hands of his parents, no law will allow to kill his father or his mother who are the authors of his being, and whom the legislator will command to endure any extremity rather than do this—how can he, I say, lawfully receive any other punishment?”7 At Athens parricides were the only persons accused of murder who were not allowed the chance of escaping before sentence was passed, but were instantly arrested.8 According to Roman Law, a committer of parricidium was not subjected to any of the regular modes of capital punishment, but for “the most execrable of crimes” was provided “the most strange of punishments.” The criminal was sewn up in a leathern sack with a cur, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and, when cooped up in this fearful prison, was hurled into the sea, or into some neighbouring river.9 But by the term parricidium was not understood the murder of a parent only. According to the ‘Lex Pompeia de parricidiis,’ it included the murder of any of the following persons: an ascendant or descendant in any degree,10 a brother or sister, an uncle or aunt, a cousin, a husband or wife, a bridegroom or bride, a father- or mother-in-law, a son- or daughter-in-law, a step-parent or step-child, a patron; and Mommsen suggests that in earlier times it had a still wider significance, being applied to intentional homicide in general.11 But whilst the punishment just referred to was in other cases of parricidium replaced by banishment, it was, during the Empire at least, actually inflicted upon him who murdered an ascendant.12

Whilst Christianity generally increased the sanctity of human life, it could add nothing to the horror with which parricide was regarded by the ancients. The Church punished it more severely than ordinary murder,13 and so did, at least in Latin countries, the secular authorities.14 In France, even to this day, a person convicted of parricide is “conduit sur le lieu de l’exécution en chemise, nu-pieds, et la tête couverte d’un voile noir”;15 and whilst meurtre is excusable if provoked by grave personal violence or by an attempt to break into a dwelling-house by day, parricide is never excusable under any circumstances.16

As regards the feelings with which ordinary parricide is looked upon by uncivilised peoples, direct information is almost entirely wanting. It is rarely mentioned at all, no doubt because it is very unusual.17 Among the Kafirs of Natal, though murder is generally punished by a fine, death is inflicted on him who kills a parent.18 Among the Ossetes a parricide draws upon himself a fearful punishment: he is shut up in his house with all his possessions, surrounded by the populace and burned alive.19 To judge from the respect which, among the majority of uncivilised peoples, children are considered to owe to their parents, it seems very probable that the murder of a father or a mother is generally condemned by them as a particularly detestable form of homicide. But to this rule there is an important exception. According to a custom prevalent among various savages or barbarians, a parent who is worn out with age or disease is abandoned or killed.

Hearne states that, among the Northern Indians, one half at least of the aged persons of both sexes, when no longer capable of walking, are left alone to starve and perish of want.20 Among the Californian Gallinomero, when the father can no longer feebly creep to the forest to gather his back-load of fuel or a basket of acorns, and is only a burden to his sons, “the poor old wretch is not infrequently thrown down on his back and securely held while a stick is placed across his throat, and two of them seat themselves on the ends of it until he ceases to breathe.”21 The custom of killing or abandoning old parents has been noticed among several other North American tribes,22 the natives of Brazil,23 various South Sea Islanders,24 a few Australian tribes,25 and some peoples in Africa26 and Asia.27 According to ancient writers, it occurred formerly among many Asiatic28 and European nations, including the Vedic people29 and peoples of Teutonic extraction.30 As late as the fifth or sixth century it was the custom among the Heruli for relatives to kindle a funeral pile for their old folks, although a stranger was employed to give the death wound.31 And there is an old English tradition of “the Holy Mawle, which they fancy hung behind the church door, which when the father was seaventie, the sonne might fetch to knock his father in the head, as effete and of no more use.”32

However cruel this custom may appear to be, something is certainly to be said in its favour. It is particularly common among nomadic hunting tribes, owing to the hardships of life and the inability of decrepit persons to keep up in the march. Mr. Morgan observes that, whilst “among the roving tribes of the wilderness the old and helpless were frequently abandoned and, in some cases, hurried out of existence as an act of greater kindness than desertion,” this practice was unknown among the Iroquois, who “resided in permanent villages, which afforded a refuge for the aged.”33 With reference to certain tribes of Western Victoria, Mr. Dawson remarks that the old people are a burden to the tribe, and, should any sudden attack be made by an enemy, the most liable to be captured, in which case they would probably be tortured and put to a lingering death.34 Moreover, in times when the food-supply is insufficient to support all the members of a community, it is more reasonable that the old and useless should have to perish than the young and vigorous. Hahn was told that, among the Hottentots, aged parents were sometimes abandoned by very poor people who had not food enough to support them.35 And among peoples who have reached a certain degree of wealth and comfort, the practice of killing the old folks, though no longer justified by necessity, may still go on, partly through survival of a custom inherited from harder times, partly from the humane intent of putting an end to lingering misery.36 What appears to most of us as an atrocious practice may really be an act of kindness, and is commonly approved of, or even insisted upon, by the old people themselves. Speaking of the ancient Hottentot custom of famishing super-annuated parents in order to cause their death, Kolben remarks:—“If you represent to the Hottentots, as I have done very often, the inhumanity of this custom, they are astonished at the representation, as proceeding, in their opinion, from an inhumanity of your own. The custom, in their way of thinking, is supported by very pious and very filial considerations. ‘Is it not a cruelty.’ they ask you, ‘to suffer either man or woman to languish any considerable time under a heavy, motionless old age? Can you see a parent or a relative shaking and freezing under a cold, dreary, heavy, useless old age, and not think, in pity to them, of putting an end to their misery by putting, which is the only means, an end to their days?’”37 When Mr. Hooper, hearing of an old Chukchi woman who was stabbed by her son, made some remarks on the frightful nature of the act, his native companions answered him:—“Why should not the old woman die? Aged and feeble, weary of life, and a burden to herself and others, she no longer desired to cumber the earth, and claimed of him who owned nearest relationship the friendly stroke which should let out her scanty remnant of existence.”38 Catlin tells us that, among the North American tribes who roamed about the prairies, the infirm old people themselves uniformly insisted upon being left behind, saying, “that they are old and of no further use—that they left their fathers in the same manner—that they wish to die, and their children must not mourn for them.”39 In Melanesia, says Dr. Codrington, when sick and aged people were buried alive, it is certain that “there was generally a kindness intended”; they used themselves to beg their friends to put them out of their misery, and it was even considered a disgrace to the family of an aged chief if he was not buried alive.40 In Fiji, also, it was regarded as a sign of filial affection to put an aged parent to death. In his description of the Fijians Dr. Seemann observes, “In a country where food is abundant, clothing scarcely required, and property as a general rule in the possession of the whole family rather than that of its head, children need not wait for ‘dead men’s shoes’ in order to become well off, and we may, therefore, quite believe them when declaring that it is with aching heart and at the repeated entreaties of their parents that they are induced to commit what we justly consider a crime.”41 The ceremony is not without a touch of tragic grandeur:—“The son will kiss and weep over his aged father as he prepares him for the grave, and will exchange loving farewells with him as he heaps the earth lightly over him.”42 One reason why the old Fijian so eagerly desired to escape extreme infirmity was perhaps “the contempt which attaches to physical weakness among a nation of warriors, and the wrongs and insults which await those who are no longer able to protect themselves”; but another, and as it seems more potent, motive was the belief that persons enter upon the delights of the future life with the same faculties, mental and physical, as they possess at the hour of death, and that the spiritual life thus commences where the corporeal existence terminates. “With these views,” “says Dr. Hale, “it is natural that they should desire to pass through this change before their mental and bodily powers are so enfeebled by age as to deprive them of their capacity for enjoyment.”43 Finally, we have to observe that in many cases the old people are not only killed, but eaten, by the nearest relatives, and that the motive, or at least, the sole motive, for this procedure is not hunger or desire for human flesh.44 It is described as “an act of kindness” or as a “pious ceremony,” as a method of preventing the body from being eaten up by worms or injured by enemies.45 Considering that many cannibals have an aversion to the bodies of men who have died a natural death, it is not unreasonable to suppose that, in some instances, the old person is killed for the purpose of being eaten, and that this is done with a view to benefiting him.46 But, on the other hand, the “pious ceremony,” like so many other funeral customs which are supposed to comfort the dead, may be the survival of a practice which was originally intended to promote the selfish interests of the living.

Closely connected with the custom of doing away with decrepit parents is the habit, prevalent among certain peoples, of abandoning or killing persons suffering from some illness.

“The white man,” Mr. Ward observes, “can never, as long as he may live in Africa, conquer his repugnance to the callous indifference to suffering that he meets with everywhere in Arab and Negro. The dying are left by the wayside to die. The weak drop on the caravan road, and the caravan passes on.”47 Among the Kafirs instances are not rare in which the dying are carried to the bush and left to perish, and among some of them epileptics are cast over a precipice, or tied to a tree to be devoured by hyenas.48 The Hottentots abandon patients suffering from small-pox.49 The southern Tanàla in Madagascar take a person who becomes insensible during an illness, to the spot in the forest where they throw their dead, and should the unfortunate creature so cast away revive and return to the village, they stone him outright to death.50 In New Caledonia “il est rare qu’un malade rend naturellement le dernier soupir: quand il n’a plus sa connaissance, souvent même avant son agonie, on lui ferme la bouche et les narines pour l’étouffer, ou bien on le tiraille de tous côtés par les jambes et par les bras.”51 In Kandavu, of the Fiji Group, sick persons were often thrown into a cave, where the dead also were deposited.52 In Efate, if a person in sickness showed signs of delirium, his grave was dug, and he was buried forthwith, to prevent the disease from spreading to other members of the family.53 The Alfura “kill their sick when they have no hope of their recovery.”54 Dobrizhoffer says of the Patagonians, “Actuated by an irrational kind of pity, they bury the dying before they expire.”55 In cases of cholera or small-pox epidemics, North American Indians have been known to desert their villages, leaving all their sick behind, of whatever age or sex.56 According to Dr. Nansen, it is not inconsistent with the moral code of the Greenlanders “to hasten the death of those who are sick and in great suffering, or of those in delirium, of which they have a great horror.”57 Lieutenant Holm states that, in Eastern Greenland, when an individual is seriously ill, he consents, if his relatives request it, to end his sufferings by throwing himself into the sea; whereas it is rare that a sick person is put to death, except in cases of disordered intellect.58 At Igloolik “a sick woman is frequently built or blocked up in a snow-hut, and not a soul goes near to look in and ascertain whether she be alive or dead.”59

These and similar facts are largely explained by the pitiful condition of the invalid, the hardships of a wandering life, and the superstitious notions of ignorant men. In some cases the practice of killing a dying person seems to be connected with a belief that the death-blow will save his soul.60 In 1812, a leper was burnt alive at Katwa, near Calcutta, by his mother and sister, who believed that by their doing so he would gain a pure body in the next birth.61 By carrying the patient away before he dies, the survivors escape the supposed danger of touching a corpse.62 In the poorer provinces of the kingdom of Kandy, when a sick person was despaired of, the fear of becoming defiled, or of being obliged to change their habitation, frequently induced those about him to take him into a wood, in spite of his cries and groans, and to leave him there, perhaps in the agonies of death.63 But the most common motive for abandoning or destroying sick people seems to be fear of infection or of demoniacal possession, which is regarded as the cause of various diseases.64 Among the North American Indians, we are told, “the custom of abandoning the infirm or sick arose from a superstitious fear of the evil spirits which were supposed to have taken possession of them.”65 In Tahiti, says Ellis, “every disease was supposed to be the effect of direct supernatural agency, and to be inflicted by the gods for some crime against the tabu, of which the sufferers had been guilty, or in consequence of some offering made by an enemy to procure their destruction. Hence, it is probable, in a great measure, resulted their neglect and cruel treatment of their sick.”66

Whilst the regard which children owe their parents makes parricide an aggravated form of murder, the paternal power sometimes implies that, under certain circumstances, the father is allowed to kill even his grown-up child. Though the Chinese Penal Code provides a slight punishment for parents who punish disobedient children with death,67 the crime is practically ignored by the authorities.68 Among the Hebrews, in early times, a father might punish his incontinent daughter with death.69 The Roman house-father had jus vitæ necisque—the power of life and death—over his children. However, this power did not imply that he could kill them without a just cause;70 already in pagan times a father who killed his son “latronis magis quam patris jure,” was punished as a murderer.71 As Dean Milman observes, long before Christianity entered into Roman legislation, “the life of a child was as sacred as that of the parent; and Constantine, when he branded the murder of a son with the name of parricide, hardly advanced upon the dominant feeling.72 Nor is there any reason to suppose that, among savages, the father possesses an absolute right of life and death over his children. On the contrary, among many of the lower races the existence of such a right is expressly denied.73

But whilst a father only in rare cases, and then merely as a measure of justice, is allowed to put to death his grown-up child, he very frequently has the right of destroying a new-born infant. Nay, in many instances infanticide is not only permitted, but enjoined by custom.

Among a great number of uncivilised peoples it is usual to kill an infant if it is a bastard,74 or if its mother dies,75 or if it is deformed or diseased,76 or if there is anything unusual or uncanny about it, or if it for some reason or other is regarded as an unlucky child. In some parts of Africa, for instance, a child who is born with teeth,77 or who cuts the upper front teeth before the under,78 or whose teeth present some other kind of irregularity,79 is put to death. Among the natives of the Bondei country a child who is born head first is considered an unlucky child, and is strangled in consequence.80 The Kamchadales used to destroy children who were born in very stormy weather;81 and in Madagascar infants born in March or April, or in the last week of a month, or on a Wednesday or a Friday, were exposed or drowned or buried alive.82 Among various savages it is the custom that, if a woman gives birth to twins, one or both of them are destroyed.83 They are regarded sometimes as an indication of unfaithfulness on the part of the mother—in accordance with the notion that one man cannot be the father of two children at the same time84—sometimes as an evil portent or as the result of the wrath of a fetish.85 Miss Kingsley observes, "There is always the sense of there being something uncanny regarding twins in West Africa, and in those tribes where they are not killed they are regarded as requiring great care to prevent them from dying on their own account.”86 The Kafirs believe that unless the father places a lump of earth in the mouth of one of the babies he will lose his strength.87

In the instances just referred to, the infant is killed either because, after the death of its mother, there is nobody to nurse it, or on account of the fault of its parents, especially the mother, or because it is held desirable that the sickly or defective should die at once, or out of superstitious fear. However, among many of the lower races, infanticide is not restricted to similar more or less exceptional cases, but is practised on a much larger scale. Custom often decides how many children are to be reared in each family, and not infrequently the majority of infants are destroyed.

Infanticide is common among various tribes in North and South America.88 Dobrizhoffer says that it was a rare exception among the Abipones to find a woman who had brought up two or three sons, whilst some mothers killed all the children they bore, “no one either preventing or avenging these murders.”89 According to Azara, the Guanas buried alive the majority of their female infants, and the Mbayas suffered only one boy or one girl in a family to live;90 but the correctness of his statements has been questioned.91 On the other hand there can be no doubt as to the extreme prevalence of infanticide in the islands of the South Seas. In some of the principal groups of Polynesia it was practised publicly and systematically, without compunction, to an extent almost incredible. During the whole period of his residence in the Society Islands, Ellis does not recollect having met with a single pagan woman who had not imbrued her hands in the blood of her offspring, and he thinks that there, as also in the Sandwich Islands, two-thirds of the children were destroyed by their parents.92 “No sense of irresolution or horror,” he says, “appeared to exist in the bosoms of those parents who deliberately resolved on the deed before the child was born. They often visited the dwellings of the foreigners, and spoke with perfect complacency of their cruel purpose”; and when the missionaries tried to dissuade them from executing their intention, the only answer generally received was that it was the custom of the country.93 The Line Islanders allowed only four children of a family to get the chance of life; the mother had a right to rear one child, whereas it rested with the husband to decide whether any more should live.94 In Radack every mother was permitted to bring up three children, but the fourth and every succeeding one she was obliged to bury alive herself, unless she was the wife of a chief.95 In Vaitupu, of the Ellice Archipelago, also, “infanticide was ordered by law,” and only two children were allowed to a family.96 In New Zealand and the Marquesas infanticide, though not so general, was yet of frequent occurrence and not regarded as a crime.97 In most of the Melanesian groups it was very common.98 In the Solomon Islands there still seem to be several places where it is the custom to kill nearly all children soon after they are born, and to buy other children from foreign tribes, good care being taken not to buy them too young.99 The practice of infanticide occurred at least occasionally in Tasmania,100 and, as it seems, almost universally in Australia. Mr. Curr supposes that the Australian woman, as a rule, reared only two boys and one girl, the rest of her children being destroyed.101 “In the laws known to her,” says Mr. Brough Smyth, “infanticide is a necessary practice, and one which, if disregarded, would, under certain circumstances, be disapproved of; and the disapproval would be marked by punishment.”102 Mr. Taplin was assured that, among the Narrinyeri, more than one-half of the children born fell victims to this custom;103 and in the Dieyerie tribe hardly an old woman, if questioned, but will admit of having destroyed from two to four of her offspring.104

Among the Todas of India, up to the period of Mr. Sullivan’s visit to their hills, about the year 1820, only one female child was allowed to live in each family.105 With reference to the Kandhs, or Khonds, Macpherson observes, “The practice of female infanticide is, I believe, not wholly unknown amongst any portion of the Khond people, while it exists in some of the tribes of the sect of Boora to such an extent, that no female infant is spared, except when a woman’s first child is a female, and that villages containing a hundred houses may be seen without a female child.”106

It is said that among the Guanches of the Canary Islands, in ancient times, all children, except the first-born, were killed.107 The people of Madagascar frequently practised infanticide; but Ellis says that they were much less addicted to it than the South Sea Islanders, a numerous offspring being generally a source of much satisfaction.108 According to Kolben, infanticide was common among the Hottentots;109 whereas Sparrman only states that “the Hottentots are accustomed to inter, in case of the mother’s death, children at the breast alive,”110 and Le Vaillant altogether denies the existence of customary infanticide among them.111 Among the Swahili, according to Baumann, infanticides are very common and hardly disapproved of.112 But the peoples of the African continent are not generally addicted to infanticide, except in such special cases as have already come under our notice.

The custom of infanticide, in its extensive form, has been attributed to various motives. Among some peoples mothers are said to kill their new-born infants on account of the trouble of rearing them,113 or the consequent loss of beauty.114 Another cause is the long suckling time, generally lasting, among savages, for two, three, four years, or even more, owing to want of soft food and animal milk.115 When, as is very commonly the case, the husband must not cohabit with his wife during the whole of this period,116 he is naturally inclined to form other connections, and this seems in some instances to induce the mother to destroy her child.117 In another respect, also, the long suckling-time is an inducement to infanticide; among certain Australian tribes an infant is killed immediately on birth “when the mother is, or thinks she is, unable to rear it owing to there being a young child whom she is still feeding.”118 Among the Pimas of Arizona, again, infanticide is said to be connected with the custom of destroying all the property of the husband when he dies. “The women of the tribe, well aware that they will be poor should their husbands die, and that then they will have to provide for their children by their own exertions, do not care to have many children, and infanticide, both before and after birth, prevails to a great extent. This is not considered a crime.”119 But there can be little doubt that the wholesale infanticide of many of the lower races is in the main due to the hardships of savage life. The helpless infant may be a great burden to the parents both in times of peace and in times of war. It may prevent the mother from following her husband about on his wanderings in search of food, or otherwise encumber her in her work.120 Mr. Curr states of the Bangerang tribe of Victoria, with whom he was intimate for ten years, that their habit of killing nearly half of the children born resulted “principally from the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of transporting several children of tender age from place to place on their frequent marches.”121 Concerning the Abipones, Charlevoix observes:—“They seldom rear but one child of each sex, murdering the rest as fast as they come into the world, till the eldest are strong enough to walk alone. They think to justify this cruelty by saying that, as they are almost constantly travelling from one place to another, it is impossible for them to take care of more infants than two at a time; one to be carried by the father, and the other by the mother.”122 Among the Lenguas of the Paraguayan Chaco an interval of seven or eight years is always observable between children of the same family, infants born in this interval being immediately killed. The reasons for this practice, says Mr. Hawtrey, are obvious. “The woman has the hard work of carrying food from garden and field, and all the transport to do; the Lenguas are a nomadic race, and their frequent moves often entail journeys of from ten to twenty miles a day…. Travelling with natives under these circumstances, one is forced to the conclusion that it would be impossible for a mother to have more than one young child to carry and to care for.”123 Moreover, a little forethought tells the parents that their child before long will become a consumer of provisions perhaps already too scanty for the family. Savages often suffer greatly from want of food, and may have to choose between destroying their offspring or famishing themselves. Hence they often have recourse to infanticide as a means of saving their lives; indeed, among several tribes, in case of famine, children are not only killed, but eaten.124 Urgent want is frequently represented by our authorities as the main cause of infanticide;125 and their statements are corroborated by the conspicuous prevalence of this custom among poor tribes and in islands whose inhabitants are confined to a narrow territory with limited resources.

In the chapter dealing with human sacrifice we shall notice that infanticide is in some cases practised as a sacrificial rite. In other cases infants are killed for medicinal purposes, without being sacrificed to any divine being.126 Thus in the Luritcha tribe, in Central Australia, “it is not an infrequent custom, when a child is in weak health, to kill a younger and healthy one and then to feed the weakling on its flesh, the idea being that this will give to the weak child the strength of the stronger one.”127 A curious motive for female infanticide is also worth mentioning. That the victims of this practice are most commonly, among several peoples almost exclusively, females,128 is generally due to the greater usefulness of the men both as food-providers and in war. But the Hakka, a Mongolian tribe in China, often put their girls to a cruel death with a view to inducing thereby the soul to appear the next time in the shape of a boy.129

Thus various considerations have led men to destroy their own offspring. Under certain circumstances the advantages, real or imaginary, assumed to result from the deed have been sufficiently great to silence the voice of parental love, which, as will be seen, is to be found even in the bosom of a savage father. The resistance offered by this instinct would be so much the less as the child is killed immediately after its birth, at a period of its life when the father’s affection for it is as yet only dawning Even where, at first, infanticide was an exception, practised by a few members of the tribe, any interference from the side of the community may have been prevented by the notion that a person possesses proprietary rights over his offspring; and, once become habitual, infanticide easily grew into a regular custom. In cases where it was found useful to the tribe, it would be enforced as a public duty; and even where there no longer was any need for it, owing to changed conditions of life, the force of habit might still keep the old custom alive.

Though infanticide is thus regarded as allowable, or even obligatory, among many of the lower races, we must not suppose that they universally look upon it in this light. Mr. McLennan grossly exaggerated its prevalence when he asserted that female infanticide is “common among savages everywhere.”130 Among a great number of them it is said to be unheard of or almost so,131 and to these belong peoples of so low a type as the Andaman Islanders,132 the Botocudos,133 and certain Californian tribes.134 The Veddahs of Ceylon have never been known to practise it.135 Among the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, Mr. Bridges informs me, it occurred only occasionally, and then it was almost always the deed of the mother, who acted from “jealousy, or hatred of her husband, or because of desertion and wretchedness.”136 Mr. Fison, who has lived for a long time among uncivilised races, thinks it will be found that infanticide is far less common among the lower savages than it is among the more advanced tribes.137 Considering further that the custom of infanticide, being opposed to the instinct of parental love, presupposes a certain amount of reasoning or forethought, it seems probable that, where it occurs, it is not a survival of earliest savagery, but has grown up under specific conditions in later stages of development.138 It is, for instance, very generally asserted that certain Indians in California never committed infanticide before the arrival of the whites;139 and Ellis thinks there is every reason to suppose that this custom was practised less extensively by the Polynesians during the early periods of their history than it was afterwards.140

Where infanticide is not sanctioned by custom, the occasional commission of it has a tendency to call forth disapproval or excite horror. The Blackfeet are said to believe that women who have been guilty of this crime will never reach the happy mountain after death, but are compelled to hover round the seats of their crimes, with branches of trees tied to their legs.141 Speaking of another North American tribe, the Potawatomis, Keating observes:—“In a few instances, it is said that children born deformed have been destroyed by their mothers, but these instances are rare, and whenever discovered, uniformly bring them into disrepute, and are not unfrequently punished by some of the near relations. Independently of these cases, which are but rare, a few instances of infanticide, by single women, in order to conceal intrigue, have been heard of; but they are always treated with abhorrence.”142 Among the Omahas “parents had no right to put their children to death.”143 The Aleuts believed that a child-murder would bring misfortune on the whole village.144 The Brazilian Macusis145 and Botocudos146 look upon the deed with horror. At Ulea, of the Caroline Islands, “the prince would have the unnatural mother punished with death.”147 So, too, Herr Valdau tells us of a Bakundu woman who, accused of infanticide, was condemned to death.148 In Ashanti a man is punished for the murder of his child.149 Among the Gaika tribe, of the Kafirs, the killing of a child after birth is punishable as murder, the fine going to the chief.150 Nay, even peoples among whom infanticide is habitual seem now and then to have a feeling that the act is not quite correct. Mr. Brough Smyth asserts that the Australian Black is himself ashamed of it;151 and Mr. Curr has no doubt that he feels, in the commencement of his career at least, that infanticide is wrong, as also that its committal brings remorse.152

The custom of infanticide in most cases requires that the child should be killed immediately or soon after its birth. Among certain North American Indians “the right of destroying a child lasted only till it was a month old,” after which time the feeling of the tribe was against its death.153 Ellis says of the Society Islanders:—“The horrid act, if not committed at the time the infant entered the world, was not perpetrated at any subsequent period…. If the little stranger was, from irresolution, the mingled emotions that struggled for mastery in its mother’s bosom, or any other cause, suffered to live ten minutes or half an hour, it was safe; instead of a monster’s grasp, it received a mother’s caress and a mother’s smile, and was afterwards nursed with solicitude and tenderness.”154 Almost the same is said of other South Sea Islanders155 and of tribes inhabiting the Australian continent.156 That the custom of infanticide is generally restricted to the destruction of new-born babies also appears from various statements as to the parental love of those peoples who are addicted to this practice.157 In Fiji “such children as are allowed to live are treated with a foolish fondness.”158 Among the Narrinyeri, “only let it be determined that an infant’s life shall be saved, and there are no bounds to the fondness and indulgence with which it is treated”;159 and with reference to other Australian tribes we are told that it is brought up with greater care than generally falls to the lot of children belonging to the poorer classes in Europe.160 Among the Indians of the Pampas and other Indians of that neighbourhood, who abandon deformed or sickly-looking children to the wild dogs and birds of prey, an infant becomes, from the moment it is considered worthy to live, “the object of the whole love of its parents, who, if necessary, will submit themselves to the greatest privations to satisfy its least wants or exactions.”161 In Madagascar, according to Ellis, “nothing can exceed the affection with which the infant is treated by its parents and other members of the family; the indulgence is more frequently carried to excess than otherwise.”162 From these and similar facts, as also from the general absence of statements to the contrary, I conclude that murders of children who have been allowed to survive their earliest infancy are very rare, though not quite unknown,163 among the lower races.

The custom of infanticide prevails, or has prevailed, not only in the savage world, but among semi-civilised and civilised races. In the poorest districts of China female infants are often destroyed by their parents immediately after their birth, chiefly on account of poverty.164 Though disapproved of by educated Chinese, the practice is treated with forbearance or indifference by the mass of the people, and is acquiesced in by the mandarins.165 “When seriously appealed to on the subject,” says the Rev. J. Doolittle, “though all deprecate it as contrary to the dictates of reason and the instincts of nature, many are ready boldly to apologise for it, and declare it to be necessary, especially in the families of the excessively poor.”166 However, infanticide is neither directly sanctioned by the government, nor agreeable to the general spirit of the laws and institutions of the Empire;167 and it is prohibited both by Buddhism and Taouism.168 According to Dr. de Groot, the belief that the spirits of the dead may, with authorisation of Heaven, take vengeance on the living, has a very salutary effect on female infanticide in China. “The fear that the souls of the murdered little ones may bring misfortune, induces many a father or mother to lay the girls they are unwilling to bring up in the street for adoption into some family, or into a foundling-hospital.”169

In ancient times the Semites, or at least some of them, not only practised infanticide, but, under certain circumstances, approved of it or regarded it as a duty. According to an ancient Arabic proverb, it was a generous deed to bury a female child;170 and we read of ʿOṣaim the Fazarite who did not dare to save alive his daughter Lacîṭa, without concealing her from the people, although she was his only child.171 Considering that among the nomads of Arabia, who suffer constantly from hunger during a great part of the year, a daughter is a burden to the poor, we may suppose, with Professor Robertson Smith, that “infanticide was as natural to them as to other savage peoples in the hard struggle for life.”172 It was condemned, however, by the Prophet:—“Slay not your children for fear of poverty: we will provide for them; beware! for to slay them is ever a great sin.”173 In the Mosaic Law, on the other hand, infanticide is never touched upon, and, in all probability, it hardly occurred among the Hebrews in historic times. But we have reason to believe that, at an earlier period, among them as also among other branches of the Semitic race, child-murder was frequently practised as a sacrificial rite.174

The murder of female infants, whether by the direct employment of homicidal means, or by exposure to privation and neglect, has for ages been a common practice, or even a genuine custom, among various Hindu castes.175 Yet they are well aware that it is prohibited by their sacred books; according to the Laws of Manu, the King shall put to death “those who slay women, infants, or Brâhmanas.”176 Even the Rajputs, who—out of family pride and owing to the expenses connected with the marriage ceremony—were particularly addicted to infanticide, considered that a family in which such a deed had been perpetrated was, in consequence, an object of divine displeasure. On the twelfth day, therefore, the family priest was sent for, and, by suitable gratuities, absolution was obtained. In the room where the infant was born and destroyed, he also prepared and ate some food with which the family provided him; this was considered a hom, or burnt offering, and, by eating it in that place, the priest was supposed to take the whole hutteea, or sin, upon himself, and to cleanse the family from it.177

Exposure of new-born children was practised by the people of the Vedic age,178 as also by other so-called Aryan peoples in ancient times.179 The Teutonic father had to decide whether the child, whilst still lying on the ground, should be accepted as a member of the family, or whether it should be exposed. If he lifted it up, and some water was poured over it, or a drop of milk or honey passed its lips, it was generally safe. But apart from these restrictions, custom seems to have been in favour of exposure only under certain circumstances, exactly similar to those in which infanticide is practised among many modern savages: if the child was born out of wedlock, or if it was deformed or sickly, or if it was born on an unlucky day, or in case of twins—one of whom was always supposed to be illegitimate—or if the parents were very poor. The exposed infant, however, was not necessarily destined to die, but was, in many cases, adopted by somebody who could afford to rear it.180

The exposure of deformed or sickly infants was undoubtedly an ancient custom in Greece; in Sparta, at least, it was enjoined by law. It was also approved of by the most enlightened among the Greek philosophers. Plato condemns all those children who are imperfect in limbs, as also those who are born from depraved citizens, to be buried in some obscure and unknown place; he maintains, moreover, that when both sexes have passed the age assigned for presenting children to the State, no child is to be brought to light, and that any infant which is by accident born alive, shall be done away with.181 Aristotle not only lays down the law with respect to the exposing or bringing up of children, that “nothing imperfect or maimed shall be brought up,” but proposes that the number of children allowed to each marriage shall be regulated by the State, and that, if any woman be pregnant after she has produced the prescribed number, an abortion shall be procured before the fetus has life.182 These views were in perfect harmony with the general tendency of the Greeks to subordinate the feelings of the individual to the interest of the State. Confined as they were to a very limited territory, they were naturally afraid of being burdened with the maintenance of persons whose lives could be of no use. It is necessary, says Aristotle, to take care that the increase of the people should not exceed a certain number, in order to avoid poverty and its concomitants, sedition and other evils.183 Yet the exposure of healthy infants, which was frequently practised in Greece, was hardly approved of by public opinion, although tolerated,184 except at Thebes, where it was a crime punishable with death.185

In Rome custom or law enjoined the destruction of deformed infants. According to a law of the Twelve Tables, referred to by Cicero, monstrous abortions were not suffered to live.186 With reference to a much later period Seneca writes, “We destroy monstrous births, and we also drown our children if they are born weakly or unnaturally formed”; he adds that it is an act of reason thus to separate what is useless from what is sound.187 But there was no tendency in Rome to encourage infanticide beyond these limits. It has been observed that, whilst the Greek policy was rather to restrain, the Roman policy was always to encourage, population.188 Being engaged in incessant wars of conquest, Rome was never afraid of being over-populated, but, on the contrary, tried to increase the number of its citizens by according special privileges to the fathers of many children, and exempting poor parents from most of the burden of taxation.189 The power of life and death which the Roman father possessed over his children undoubtedly involved the legal right of destroying or exposing new-born infants; but it is equally certain that the act was frequently disapproved of.190 An ancient “law,” ascribed to Romulus—which, as Mommsen suggests, could have been merely a priestly direction191—enjoined the father to bring up all his sons and at least his eldest daughter, and forbade him to destroy any well-formed child till it had completed its third year, when the affections of the parent might be supposed to be developed.192 In later times we find the exposure of children condemned by poets, historians, philosophers, jurists. Among nefarious acts committed in sign of grief on the day when Germanicus died, Suetonius mentions the exposure of new-born babes.193 Epictetus indignantly opposes the saying of Epicurus that men should not rear their children:—“Even a sheep will not desert its young, nor a wolf; and shall a man? ‘What! will you have us to be silly creatures, like the sheep?’ Yet they desert not their young. ‘Or savage, like wolves?’ Yet even they desert them not. Come, then, who would obey you if he saw his little child fall on the ground and cry?”194 Julius Paulus, the jurist, pronounced him who refused nourishment to his child, or exposed it in a public place, to be guilty of murder195—a statement which is to be understood, not as a legal prohibition of exposure, but only as the expression of a moral opinion.196 On the other hand, though the exposure of healthy infants was disapproved of in Pagan Rome, it was not generally regarded as an offence of very great magnitude, especially if the parents were destitute.197 During the Empire it was practised on an extensive scale, and in the literature of the time it is spoken of with frigid indifference. Since the life of the victim was frequently saved by some benevolent person or with a view to profit,198 it was not regarded in the same light as downright infanticide, which, in the case of a healthy infant, seems to have been strictly prohibited by custom.199

As is generally the case in the savage world, so among semi-civilised and civilised nations whose customs allow or tolerate infanticide, the child, if not suffered to live, has to be killed in its earliest infancy. Among the Chinese200 and Rajputs201 it is destroyed immediately after its birth. In the Scandinavian North the killing or exposure of an infant who had already been sprinkled with water was regarded as murder.202 At Athens parents were punished for exposing children whom they had once begun to rear.203

The practice of exposing new-born infants, so common in the Pagan Empire, was vehemently denounced by the early Fathers of the Church.204 They tried to convince men that, if the abandoned infant died, the unnatural parent was guilty of nothing less than murder, whilst the sinful purposes for which foundlings were often used formed another argument against exposure.205 The enormity of the crime of causing an infant’s death was enhanced by the notion that children who had died unbaptised were doomed to eternal perdition.206 According to a decree of the Council of Mentz in 852, the penance imposed on the mother was heavier if she killed an unbaptised than if she killed a baptised child.207 In the year 1556, Henry II. of France made a law which punished as a child-murderer any woman who had concealed her pregnancy and delivery, and whose child was found dead, “privé, tant du saint sacrement de baptesme, que sépulture publique et accoustumée.”208 This statute—to which there is a counterpart in England in the statute 21 Jac. I. c. 27,209 and in the Scotch law of 1690, c. 21210—thus went so far as to constitute a presumptive murder, avowedly under the influence of that Christian dogma to which Mr. Lecky attributes, in the first instance, “the healthy sense of the value and sanctity of infant life which so broadly distinguishes Christian from Pagan societies.”211

If the Pagans had been comparatively indifferent to the sufferings of the exposed infant, the Christians became all the more cruel to the unfortunate mother, who, perhaps in a fit of despair, had put to death her new-born child. The Christian emperor Valentinian I. made infanticide a capital offence.212 According to the Coutume de Loudunois, a mother who killed her child was burned.213 In Germany and Switzerland she was buried alive with a pale thrust through her body;214 this punishment was prescribed by the criminal code of Charles V., side by side with drowning.215 Until the end of the eighteenth, or the beginning of the nineteenth, century, infanticide was a capital crime everywhere in Europe, except in Russia.216 Then, under the influence of that rationalistic movement which compelled men to rectify so many preconceived opinions,217 it became manifest that an unmarried woman who destroyed her illegitimate child was not in the same category as an ordinary murderess.218 It was pointed out that shame and fear, the excitement of mind, and the difficulty in rearing the poor bastard, could induce the unfortunate mother to commit a crime which she herself abhorred. That no notice had been taken of all this, is explicable from the extreme severity with which female unchastity was looked upon by the Church. At present most European lawbooks do not punish infanticide committed by an unmarried woman even nominally with death.219 In France the law which regards infanticide as an aggravated form of meurtre220 has become a dead letter;221 and in England no woman seems for a long time to have been executed for killing her new-born child under the distress of mind and fear of shame caused by child-birth.222

Hand in hand with the custom of infanticide goes feticide, which prevails extensively in the savage world.223 The same considerations as induce savages to kill their new-born infants also induce them to destroy the fetus before it has proceeded into the world from the mother’s body. Besides, women procure abortion with a view to avoiding the disagreeable incidents accompanying the state of pregnancy; or, very frequently, in order to conceal illicit intercourse.224 Considering that the same degree of sympathy cannot be felt with regard to a child not yet born as with regard to an infant, it is not surprising to find that feticide is practised without objection even by some peoples who never commit infanticide. Thus in Samoa, where the latter practice was perfectly unknown, the destruction of unborn children prevailed to a melancholy extent, and the same was the case in the Mitchell Group.225 Among the Dacotahs, who only occasionally killed infants, abortion procured by artificial means was not held objectionable.226 On the other hand there are savages who consider it a crime. Some Indian tribes in North America abhor the practice.227 The natives of Tenimber and Timor-laut punish it with heavy fines.228 Regarding the Kafirs, Mr. Warner states that “the procuring of abortion, although universally practised by all classes of females in Kafir society, is nevertheless a crime of considerable magnitude in the eye of the Law; and when brought to the notice of the Chief, a fine of four or five head of cattle is inflicted. The accomplices are equally guilty with the female herself.“229

Passing to more civilised nations, we notice that, among Hindus and Muhammedans, artificial abortion is extremely common and is hardly reprobated by public opinion, whatever religion or law may have to say on the subject.230 It is especially resorted to by unmarried women as a means of escaping punishment and shame. “In a country like India,” says Dr. Chevers, “where true morality is almost unknown, but where the laws of society exercise the most rigorous and vigilant control imaginable over the conduct of females, and where six-sevenths of the widows, whatever their age or position in life may be, are absolutely debarred from re-marriage, and are compelled to rely upon the uncertain support of their relatives, it is scarcely surprising that great crimes should be frequently practised to conceal the results of immorality, and that the procuring of criminal abortion should, especially, be an act of almost daily commission, and should have become a trade among certain of the lower midwives.”231 In Persia every illegitimate pregnancy ends with abortion; the act is done almost publicly, and no obstacle is put in its way.232 In Turkey, both among the rich and poor, even married women very commonly procure abortion after they have given birth to two children, one of which is a boy; and the authorities regard the practice with indifference.233 In ancient Greece, as we have seen, feticide was under certain circumstances recommended by Plato and Aristotle, in preference to infanticide. In Rome it was prohibited by Septimius Severus and Antoninus, but the prohibition seems to have referred only to those married women who, by procuring abortion, defrauded their husbands of children.234 During the Pagan Empire, abortion was extensively practised, either from poverty, or licentiousness, or vanity; and, although severely disapproved of by some,235 “it was probably regarded by the average Romans of the later days of Paganism much as Englishmen in the last century regarded convivial excesses, as certainly wrong, but so venial as scarcely to deserve censure.”236 Seneca thinks Helvia worthy of special praise because she had never destroyed her expected child within her womb, “after the fashion of many other women, whose attractions are to be found in their beauty alone.”237 The Romans drew a broad line between feticide and infanticide. An unborn child was not regarded by them as a human being; it was a spes animantis, not an infans.238 It was said to be merely a part of the mother, as the fruit is a part of the tree till it becomes ripe and falls down.239

Very different opinions were held by the Christians. A sanctity, previously unheard of, was attached to human life from the very beginning. Feticide was regarded as a form of murder. “Prevention of birth,” says Tertullian, “is a precipitation of murder; nor does it matter whether one take away a life when formed, or drive it away while forming. He also is a man who is about to be one. Even every fruit already exists in its seed.”240 St. Augustine, again, makes a distinction between an embryo which has already been formed, and an embryo as yet unformed. From the creation of Adam, he says, it appears that the body is made before the soul. Before the embryo has been endowed with a soul it is an embryo informatus, and its artificial abortion is to be punished with a fine only; but the embryo formatus is an animate being, and to destroy it is nothing less than murder, a crime punishable with death.241 This distinction between an animate and inanimate fetus was embodied both in Canon242 and Justinian law,243 and passed subsequently into various lawbooks.244 And a woman who destroyed her animate embryo was punished with death.245

The criminality of artificial abortion was increased by the belief that an embryo formatus, being a person endowed with an immortal soul, was in need of baptism for its salvation. In his highly esteemed treatise De fide, written in the sixth century, St. Fulgentius says, “It is to be believed beyond doubt, that not only men who are come to the use of reason, but infants, whether they die in their mother’s womb, or after they are born, without baptism, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are punished with everlasting punishment in eternal fire, because though they have no actual sin of their own, yet they carry along with them the condemnation of original sin from their first conception and birth.”246 And in the Lex Bajuwariorum this doctrine is expressly referred to in a paragraph which prescribes a daily compensation for children killed in the womb on account of the daily suffering of those children in hell.247 Subsequently, however, St. Fulgentius’ dictum was called in question, and no less a person than Thomas Aquinas suggested the possibility of salvation for an infant who died before its birth.248 Apart from this, the doctrine that the life of an embryo is equally sacred with the life of an infant was so much opposed to popular feelings, that the law concerning feticide had to be altered. Modern legislation, though treating the fetus as a distinct being from the moment of its conception,249 punishes criminal abortion less severely than infanticide.250 And the very frequent occurrence of this crime251 is an evidence of the comparative indifference with which it is practically looked upon by large numbers of people in Christian countries.