THE CHILD-CRIMINAL.

WHAT shall we do with the child-criminal ? '

This is the unanswered question of the day. Our Home Secretary, alive to its momentous import and the urgent need that it should be soon and satisfactorily answered, has recently invited opinions and suggestions respecting it from numerous quarters; but up to the present moment efforts appear to have been for the most part futile to find the true solution of as difficult a problem as ever yet perplexed humanity.

'How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him?' anxiously asks the politician of the philosopher, and the philosopher, in his turn, of the philanthropist. But the philosopher's brain, though exercised profoundly, has not yet yielded satisfactory response, and the heart of the philanthropist, stirred to its depths, sighs only, 'It is not in me.'

One fact is indubitable, viz.: that letting the child-criminal alone now offers no security for his letting society alone hereafter. The quick-eyed, ragged urchin, who just now transferred some trifling article from the shop-window to his trousers pocket, will in a few years (if his present pilfering be not prevented) develop into the desperate burglar, who will find a dozen ways of intruding himself into your dwelling by any other entrance than its front door. The squalid child of severe Mother Street, driven by hunger-gnawings to commit a petty theft for the breakfast which his search among the refuse heaps in the gutter fails to furnish, will soon, if unbefriended and unfed, master the easy rule of progression in crime. For example, a young acquaintance of ours, late in the Homerton Truant School, graduated, in a fortnight, from stealing twopence to taking a paraffin lamp, and from taking a paraffin lamp to driving off in a horse and cart not his own. And when, from constant practice, the child's nimble fingers have attained dexterity in the art of thieving, he will not only brag of his exploits among his young companions, but also initiate them in the tricks of his trade. Thus he becomes captain' of a gang of child-rogues, who drink in with avidity his thrilling tales of hair-breadth escapes from shopmen's and policemen's clutches, and eagerly covet similar experiences. Some

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follow him, chiefly from that boyish love of adventure which a career of petty theft furnishes so many opportunities to gratify, while others join the band simply to satisfy the natural craving of empty stomachs for food otherwise not forthcoming. For instance, What did you steal?' we once inquired of a child, whose appearance failed altogether to suggest starvation. 'I stole half a crown, and spent it in sweets, and gave them to boys,' was the prompt reply. And what did you take?' we asked of a boy, of half-famished expression of countenance. 'Please, mum, I stole a lot of sausages, and ate them raw,' was the answer.

Yet the sad, half-famished, juvenile offender must no more be permitted to pilfer his daily bread, if we can hinder him, than the better fed, high-spirited child, who climbs your garden-wall with catlike agility, may be suffered to rob you, because he steals more from love of boyish enterprise than of the sour apples which he flings to his companions, agape with admiration below.

And thus we watch for each, and we pounce upon each, and as one struggles, and the other snivels, in our firm grasp, we look almost hopelessly into each other's faces, asking the still perplexing question, 'What shall we do with them-how shall we deal with them?' If the court is sitting, the usual course is to take them at once before a magistrate, to whom Section 10 of the Summary Jurisdiction Act gives power to adjudge each a whipping of six strokes with a birch rod, either in addition to, or instead of, any other punishment.' But, if the magistrate be a humane man, he will probably regard the pale, thin child with a perplexed air, very doubtful of the potency of a whipping to prevent a boy from living to steal, who steals to live. Possibly, also, the words of the wise man may occur to him, 'Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry.' He has less compunction in dealing with the lively, highspirited offender. This is precisely the boy who does not care for a flogging, so he gets one, and goes whistling out of court to play his pranks again on society at his earliest convenience. But with regard to the half-starved child, what can the magistrate do with him? The inquiry, 'What shall he not do with him?' is far less bewildering; and we would earnestly exclaim, do not send him to prison, and, above all, do not order him to an industrial school, if he be a little boy, until you have industrial schools solely for the reception of little boys; but of such industrial schools more hereafter.

We say, do not send him to prison, if you would not hinder the advance of civilisation and humanity; for, despite the arrogant utterances of magisterial pomposity which have reached us from some of the provinces, we cannot be satisfied that all the fats of our justices were unexceptionally wise which condemned 7,416 children in the year just expired to breathe the tainted atmosphere of prison life. Hundreds of these were offenders under twelve years of

age, some of them little fellows barely able to bring their matted heads and tear-stained faces to the level of the dock-creatures of neglect rather than of crime, living only to struggle, because every struggle was needed to live. Only very recently we heard a magistrate aver that children brought before him for theft and other offences were sometimes so small he was obliged to order them to be 'lifted up' that he might see them, and that occasionally so great was their terror of being locked up in prison cells that the gaol officials humanely placed them in the infirmary, fearing, if they did otherwise, the children might fall into fits through fright and be found dead in the morning. And if a large percentage of such children are adepts in the pilfering art, it is because many of them have no alternative but to steal, if they would not starve. The children of the very poor are not naturally more predisposed to dishonesty than the cherished children of the affluent, but their temptations to the commission of this sin are more pressing and abundant in proportion to their larger need. The babe born of a besotted woman in a dismal den, where no ray of sunlight penetrates the ragstuffed window, is quite as guileless, tender, and innocent a creature, as susceptible in time of good impressions, and as capable of attaining moral excellence, under efficient training, as the infant in costly cradle, whose father is a peer of the realm. Let those two children change places and conditions. Take the coarse wrap from the beggar's brat, and robe it in cambric and lace. Guard the babe from the berceaunette with holy and happy surroundings, and

Shed in rainbow hues of light

A halo round the Good and Right
To tempt and charm the baby's sight.

Let it, as it grows, associate only with well-taught and well-bred children, sheltered carefully from contact with the vicious and the mean, and we hesitate not to affirm that when that child becomes a man you shall fail to trace upon his honest brow the faintest stain of infamous origin, or brand of ignoble birth. On the other hand, let the infant of high degree, by some terrible mischance, inhale only the impure atmosphere of vicious indigence among the brutal and miserable. Let him suffer from hunger, cold, experiencing none of the countless endearments which should ever fall to the lot of early childhood. A little creature, never without care, let him as he older grows listen only to the corrupt conversation of the depraved and the abandoned.

With ready and obedient care

To learn the tasks they teach him there—
Black sin for lesson, oaths for prayer.

Let him be cuffed, and kicked, and scolded, till he become almost insensible to rating and callous to blows. Let him be driven out into

the cold street to steal, if he cannot beg, the breakfast that none provide him, and see then if, despite his noble birth, he will not prefer to pilfer rather than suffer the pangs of hunger. Mark if he will not seize the milk-can on the door-step (meant to be presently taken in) and gulp down its contents as rapidly and cunningly as any low-born delinquent, and make off with feet as nimble to escape capture. Only leave that child among evil companions to pursue a pernicious course unchecked, and though he first saw the light in a ducal mansion, all too soon he may develop into the degraded felon, with slouching gait and hangdog expression of countenance. Vice is a heritage as surely and equally bequeathed to the children of the so-called 'better classes' as to the offspring of the poor; and if the former have no recollection, as they older grow, of the fields where cockles grow instead of barley,' it is that they were early led from them by virtue's path into healthier pastures, led by holy teachers, wise counsellors, and good companions. Crime contains contagion that is speedily communicated by contact, and let us not then too hastily censure an unfortunate child for sickening morally amid the pestilential exhalations of a dissolute locality. But when he has so sickened, and the malady is virulent enough to taint a whole district, let us be less anxious to deal out punishment to the sin-stricken child than to discover how best we may treat and isolate him, with the double object of preserving others from infection, and securing his own moral restoration. Therefore we rejoice that the public mind is stirring and the public voice protesting against the mistaken policy of committing young offenders to gaol in the belief that such a measure must be remedial of crime. Crime in the bud, which might be nipped in the bud, becomes crime full-blown, if the young plant be placed in a hot-house of moral unhealthiness; therefore it is not desirable that naughty little children with the imitative faculty strong and active within them should be early acquainted with the evil ways of adult criminals. It is not for us to make young eyes and ears familiar with the debasing sights and sounds which must occasionally be seen and heard wherever full fledged gaol-birds congregate; for the impressionable heart of childhood is even more yielding to the hideous stamp of vice than to the softer imprint of virtue, and vainly we shall essay hereafter to obliterate the deep disfiguring scar. We are aware that greater care has been exercised of late in isolating children as far as possible from adult criminals; but despite precautionary measures, young offenders often acquire in a gaol much objectionable knowledge.

But if we decline to lead young offenders through the huge gates of a prison, past dismal gratings, down long stone passages, to dreary cells, to be introduced one day perchance, through having undergone imprisonment, as apt learners, to practised villains who can strike with master-touch every note in the gamut of crime, and who are able as willing to communicate their corrupt knowledge-

if we will not commit them to gaol, where shall we place them? what shall we do with them? The great question with which we have to deal is not, how shall we most severely punish the child-criminal? but how shall we soonest and most surely effect his reclamation? If a neglected urchin of seven or eight strays in a forbidden path, will a birching prevent his future wandering there, when you send him back to tread it again, because you supply no guide to lead him into a safer way? The unhappy child of depraved parents, who breaks the law, will not be reformed by an occasional monition or even a sound whipping; what he needs for such reformation is to be trained to good behaviour under moral and religious influences; and training is not the result of spasmodic effort, but of a course of patient, continuous exertion. And where is he to get this training-and from whom shall he receive it? Where? The damp cellar or gloomy garret, which it were bitter irony to hallow and dignify by the name of home, is not a place well adapted for the giving of such a course of instruction; nor, if the magistrate wisely remands the juvenile offender to the workhouse, should he remain sufficiently long there to enter upon it.

To the workhouse it appears to us, under existing circumstances, best that he should be remanded, isolated entirely for a few days (if he deserve severe punishment) from the other children in an empty room or cell, in which he should be furnished with some manual occupation, and which he might be permitted to leave for half an hour, morning and afternoon, during the children's schoolhours, to take exercise in the airing-ground under the supervision of an adult pauper. After two or three days, if his conduct be good, he might be allowed to attend school, sitting somewhat apart from the rest of the scholars. When, pending the sessions, the time of remand is lengthened (occasionally lasting three months), if the child's behaviour has been uniformly good for three weeks, we see no objection to the treatment being relaxed under continuous watchfulness. A child-criminal should not be permitted (even in a workhouse) to sleep in the same room with other children. His bed were better placed near some trustworthy adult's, who would take charge of him at night.

For very young offenders solitary confinement is seldom desirable, save for short periods during daylight hours. Darkness fills the cell with imaginary terrors, all too real for the timid child, and permanent injury to the brain has frequently resulted from fright.

But as to the requisite training of such children, if hovel and workhouse fail to furnish facilities for teaching them better habits of life, where shall we educate them?

And here, before we proceed further, let us remark that in this paper we are treating solely of criminal children, not young

persons.

Under the Summary Jurisdiction Act, a child remains a child