Chapter 3

See also Macaulay,History of England, vol. iv.; R. Grant,Sketch of the History of the East India Company(1813); D. Macpherson,Annals of Commerce(1805); B. Willson,Ledger and Sword(1903).(T. A. I.)

See also Macaulay,History of England, vol. iv.; R. Grant,Sketch of the History of the East India Company(1813); D. Macpherson,Annals of Commerce(1805); B. Willson,Ledger and Sword(1903).

(T. A. I.)

CHILD, LYDIA MARIA(1802-1880), American author, was born at Medford, Massachusetts, on the 11th of February 1802. She was educated at an academy in her native town and by her brother Convers Francis (1795-1863), a Unitarian minister and from 1842 to 1863 Parkman professor in the Harvard Divinity School. Her first stories,Hobomok(1824) andThe Rebels(1825), were popular successes. She was a schoolmistress until 1828, when she married David Lee Child (1794-1874), a brilliant but erratic Boston lawyer and journalist. From 1826 to 1834 she editedThe Juvenile Miscellany, the first children’s monthly periodical in the United States. About 1831 both she and her husband began to identify themselves with the anti-slavery cause, and in 1833 she publishedAn Appeal for that Class of Americans called Africans, a stirring portrayal of the evils of slavery, and an argument for immediate abolition, which hada powerful influence in winning recruits to the anti-slavery cause. Henceforth her time was largely devoted to the anti-slavery cause. From 1840 to 1844, assisted by her husband, she edited theAnti-Slavery Standardin New York City. After the Civil War she wrote much in behalf of the freedmen and of Indian rights. She died at Wayland, Massachusetts, on the 20th of October 1880. In addition to the books above mentioned, she wrote many pamphlets and short stories andThe (American) Frugal Housewife(1829), one of the earliest American books on domestic economy,The Mother’s Book(1831), a pioneer cook-book republished in England and Germany,The Girls’ Own Book(1831),History of Women(2 vols., 1832),Good Wives(1833),The Anti-Slavery Catechism(1836),Philothea(1836), a romance of the age of Pericles, perhaps her best book,Letters from New York(2 vols., 1843-1845),Fact and Fiction(1847),The Power of Kindness(1851),Isaac T. Hopper: a True Life(1853),The Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages(3 vols., 1855),Autumnal Leaves(1857),Looking Toward Sunset(1864),The Freedman’s Book(1865),A Romance of the Republic(1867), andAspirations of the World(1878).

SeeThe Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a Biographical Introduction by J.G. Whittier(Boston, 1883); and a chapter in T.W. Higginson’sContemporaries(Boston, 1899).

CHILD, the common term for the offspring of human beings, generally below the age of puberty; the term is the correlative of “parent,” and applies to either sex, though some early dialectical uses point to a certain restriction to a girl. The word is derived from the A.S.cild, an old Teutonic word found in English only, in other Teutonic languageskindand its variants being used, usually derived from the Indo-European rootken, seen in Gr.γένος, Lat.genus, and Eng. “kin”;cildhas been held to be a modification of the same root, but the true root iskilth, seen in Goth.kilthei, womb, an origin which appears in the expressions “child-birth,” “to be with child,” and the like; the plural in A.S. wascild, and latercildru, which in northern M.E. becamechildre or childer, a form dialectically extant, and in southern Englishchilderenorchildren(with the plural termination -en, as in “brethren”). There are several particular uses of “child” in the English version of the Bible, as of a young man in the “Song of the three holy children,” of descendants or members of a race, as in “children of Abraham,” and also to express origin, giving a description of character, as “children of darkness.” During the 13th and 14th centuries “child” was used, in a sense almost amounting to a title of dignity, of a young man of noble birth, probably preparing for knighthood. In theYork Mysteriesof about 1440 (quoted in theNew English Dictionary) occurs “be he churl or child,” obviously referring to gentle birth, cf. William Bellenden’s translation (1553) of Livy (ii. 124) “than was in Rome ane nobill childe ... namit Caius Mucius.” The spelling “childe” is frequent in modern usage to indicate its archaic meaning. Familiar instances are in the line of an old ballad quoted inKing Lear, “childe Roland to the dark tower came,” and in Byron’sChilde Harold. With this use may be compared the Spanish and PortugueseInfanteandInfanta, and the early French use ofValet(q.v.).

Child-study.—The physical, psychological and educational development of children, from birth till adulthood, has provided material in recent years for what has come to be regarded as almost a distinct part of comparative anthropological or sociological science, and the literature of adolescence (q.v.) and of “child-study” in its various aspects has attained considerable proportions. In England the British Child Study Association was founded in 1894, its official organ being thePaidologist, while similar work is done by the Childhood Society, and, to a certain extent, by the Parents’ National Educational Union (which issues theParents’ Review). In America, where specially valuable work has been done, several universities have encouraged the study (notably Chicago, while under the auspices of Professor John Dewey); and Professor G. Stanley Hall’s initiative has led to elaborate inquiries, the principal periodical for the movement being thePedagogical Seminary. The impetus to this study of the child’s mind and capacities was given by the classic work of educationists like J.A. Comenius, J.H. Pestalozzi, and F.W.A. Froebel, but more recent writers have carried it much further, notably W.T. Preyer (The Mind of the Child, 1881), whose psychological studies stamp him as one of the chief pioneers in new methods of investigation. Other authorities of first-rate importance (their chief works only being given here) are J. Sully (Studies of Childhood, 1896), Earl Barnes (Studies in Education, 1896, 1902), J.M. Baldwin (Mental Development in the Child and the Race, 1895), Sigismund (Kind und Welt, 1897), A.F. Chamberlain (The Child, 1900), G. Stanley Hall (Adolescence, 1904; he had from 1882 been the leader in America of such investigations), H. Holman and R. Langdon Down (Practical Child Study, 1899), E.A. Kirkpatrick (Fundamentals of Child-study, 1903), and Prof. Tracy of Toronto (Psychology of Childhood, 5th ed., 1901); while among a number of contributions worth particular attention may be mentioned W.B. Drummond’s excellent summary,Introduction to Child Study(1907), which deals succinctly with methods and results; Irving King’sPsychology of Child Development(1906, useful for its bibliography); Prof. David R. Major’sFirst Steps in Mental Growth(1906); and Miss M. Shinn’sNotes an the Development of a Child(1893) and Mrs Louise E. Hogan’sStudy of a Child(1898), which are noteworthy among individual and methodical accounts of what children will do. In such books as those cited a great deal of important material has been collected and analysed, and a number of conclusions suggested which bear both on psychology and the science of education; but it must be borne in mind, as regards a great deal of the voluminous literature of the subject, that it is often more pertinent to general psychology and hygiene than to any special conclusions as to the essential nature of a child—whatever “achild” generically may be as the special object of a special science. The child, after all, is in a transition stage to an adult, and there is often a tendency in modern “child students” to interpret the phenomena exhibited by a particular child with aparti pris, or to exaggerate child-study—which is really interesting as providing the knowledge of growth towards full human equipment—as though it involved the discovery of some distinct form of animal, of separate value on its own account.

Growth.—Into the psychical characteristics and development of the child and all the interesting educational problems involved it is impossible to enter here, and reference must be made to the works cited above. But a knowledge of the more important features of normal physical development has a constant importance. Some of these, as matters of comparative physiology or pathology, are dealt with in other articles in this work. One of these chief matters of interest is weight and height, and this is naturally affected by race, nutrition and environment. But while the standard in different countries somewhat differs, the British average for healthy children may here be followed. At birth the average weight of a baby is a little over 7 ℔ and the length about 20 in. The following are the averages for weight and height, taking the age in years of the child at the last birthday:—

See alsoChildren, Law Relating to;Children’s Courts;Children’s Games;Infant; &c.

CHILDEBERT, the name of three Frankish kings.

Childebert I.(d. 558) was one of the four sons of Clovis. In the partition of his father’s realm in 511 he received as his share the town of Paris, and the country to the north as far as the river Somme, and to the west as far as the English Channel, with the Armorican peninsula. In 524, after the murder of Chlodomer’s children, Childebert annexed the cities of Chartres and Orleans. He took part in the various expeditions against the kingdom of Burgundy, and in 534 received as his share of the spoils of that kingdom the towns of Mâcon, Geneva and Lyons. When Vitiges, the king of the Ostrogoths, ceded Provence to the Franks in 535, the possession of Arles and Marseilles was guaranteed to Childebert by his brothers. Childebert also made a series of expeditions against the Visigoths of Spain; in 542 he took possession of Pampeluna with the help of his brother Clotaire I., and besieged Saragossa, but was forced to retreat. From this expedition he brought back to Paris a precious relic, the tunic of St Vincent, in honour of which he built at the gates of Paris the famous monastery of St Vincent, known later as St Germain-des-Prés. He died without issue in 558, and was buried in the abbey he had founded, where his tomb has been discovered.

See “Nouveaux documents sur le tombeau de Childebert à Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” in theBulletin de la Société des Antiquaires(1887).

Childebert II.(570-595), king of Austrasia, was a son of Sigebert. When his father was assassinated in 575, Childebert was taken from Paris by Gundobald, one of his faithfulleudes, to Metz, where he was recognized as sovereign. He was then only five years old, and during his long minority the power was disputed between his mother Brunhilda and the nobles. Chilperic, king at Paris, and King Gontran of Burgundy, sought alliance with Childebert, who was adopted by both in turn. But after the assassination of Chilperic in 584, and the dangers occasioned to the Frankish monarchy by the expedition of Gundobald in 585, Childebert threw himself unreservedly into the arms of Gontran. By the pact of Andelot in 587 Childebert was recognized as Gontran’s heir, and with his uncle’s help he quelled the revolts of the nobles and succeeded in seizing the castle of Woëwre. Many attempts were made on his life by Fredegond, who was anxious to secure Gontran’s inheritance for her son Clotaire II. On the death of Gontran in 592 Childebert annexed the kingdom of Burgundy, and even contemplated seizing Clotaire’s estates and becoming sole king of the Franks. He died, however, in 595. Childebert II. had had relations with the Byzantine empire, and fought in 585 in the name of the emperor Maurice against the Lombards in Italy.

Childebert III.was one of the last and feeblest of the Merovingians. A son of King Theuderich III., he succeeded his brother Clovis III. in 695, and reigned until 711.

See B. Krusch, “Zur Chronologie der merowingischen Könige,” inForschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, xxii. 451-490.

(C. PF.)

CHILDERIC, the name of three Frankish kings.

Childeric I.(c. 437-481), king of the Salian Franks, succeeded his father Merwich (Merwing) as king about. 457. With his tribe he was established around the town of Tournai, on lands which he had received as afoederatusof the Romans, and for some time he kept the peace with his allies. About 463, in conjunction with the Roman general Egidius, he fought against the Visigoths, who hoped to extend their dominion along the banks of the Loire; after the death of Egidius he assisted Count Paul in attempting to check an invasion of the Saxons. Paul having perished in the struggle, Childeric delivered Angers from some Saxons, followed them to the islands at the mouth of the Loire, and massacred them there. He also stopped a band of the Alamanni who wished to invade Italy. These are all the facts known about him. The stories of his expulsion by the Franks; of his stay of eight years in Thuringia with King Basin and his wife Basine; of his return when a faithful servant advised him that he could safely do so by sending to him half of a piece of gold which he had broken with him; and of the arrival at Tournai of Queen Basine, whom he married, are entirely legendary. After the fall of the Western Empire in 476 there is no doubt that Childeric regarded himself as freed from his engagements towards Rome. He died in 481 and was buried at Tournai, leaving a son Clovis (q.v.), afterwards king of the Franks. His tomb was discovered in 1653, when numerous precious objects, arms, jewels, coins and a ring with a figure of the king, were found.

Childeric II.(c. 653-673), king of Austrasia, was a son of the Frankish king Clovis II., and in 660, although a child, was proclaimed king of Austrasia, while his brother, Clotaire III., ruled over the rest of the dominions of Clovis. After the death of Clotaire in 670 he became ruler of the three Frankish kingdoms, Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy, but soon quarrelled with some supporters in Neustria, and was assassinated whilst hunting. He was buried at St Germain near Paris.

Childeric III.(d. c. 751), king of the Franks, was the last king of the Merovingian dynasty. The throne had been vacant for seven years when the mayors of the palace, Carloman and Pippin the Short, decided in 743 to recognize Childeric as king. We cannot say whose son he was, or what bonds bound him to the Merovingian family. He took no part in public business, which was directed, as before, by the mayors of the palace. When in 747 Carloman retired into a monastery, Pippin resolved to take the royal crown for himself; taking the decisive step in 751 after having received the celebrated answer of Pope Zacharias that it were better to name king him who possessed the power than him who possessed it not. Childeric was dethroned and placed in the monastery of St Omer; his son, Theuderich, was imprisoned at Saint-Wandrille.

See W. Junghans,Die Geschichte der fränkischen Könige Childerich und Clodovech(Göttingen, 1857); J.J. Chiflet,Anastasis Childerici I. Francorum regis(Antwerp, 1655); J.B.D. Cochet,Le Tombeau de Childeric I, roi des Francs(Paris, 1859); and E. Lavisse,Histoire de France, tome ii. (Paris, 1903).

CHILDERS, HUGH CULLING EARDLEY(1827-1896), British statesman, was born in London on the 25th of June 1827. On leaving Cambridge he went out to Australia (1850), and became a member of the government of Victoria, but in 1857 returned to England as agent-general of the colony. Entering parliament in 1860 as Liberal member for Pontefract (a seat that he continued to hold till 1885), he became civil lord of the admiralty in 1864, and in 1865 financial secretary to the treasury. Childers occupied a succession of prominent posts in the various Gladstone ministries. He was first lord of the admiralty from 1868 to 1871, and as such inaugurated a policy of retrenchment. Ill-health compelled his resignation of office in 1871, but next year he returned to the ministry as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. From 1880 to 1882 he was secretary for war, a post he accepted somewhat unwillingly; and in that position he had to bear the responsibility for the reforms which were introduced into the war office under the parsimonious conditions which were then part of the Liberal creed. During his term of office the Egyptian War occurred, in which Childers acted with creditable energy; and also the Boer War, in which he and his colleagues showed to less advantage. From 1882 to 1885 he was chancellor of the exchequer, and the beer and spirit duty in his budget of the latter year was the occasion of the government’s fall. Defeated at the general election at Pontefract, he was returned as a Home Ruler (one of the few Liberals who adopted this policy before Mr Gladstone’s conversion) in 1886 for South Edinburgh, and was home secretary in the ministry of 1886. When the first Home Rule bill was introduced he demurred privately to its financial clauses, and their withdrawal was largely due to his threat of resignation. He retired from parliament in 1892, and died on the 29th of January 1896, his last piece of work being the drafting of a report for the royal commission on Irish financial relations, of which he was chairman. Childers was a capable and industrious administrator of the old Liberal school, and he did his best, in the political conditions then prevailing, to improve the naval and military administration while he was at the admiralty and war office. His own bent was towards finance, but nostriking reform is associated with his name. His most ambitious effort was his attempt to effect a conversion of consols in 1884, but the scheme proved a failure, though it paved the way for the subsequent conversion in 1888.

TheLife(1901) of Mr Childers, by his son, throws some interesting side-lights on the inner history of more than one Gladstonian cabinet.

CHILDERS, ROBERT CAESAR(1838-1876), English Oriental scholar, son of the Rev. Charles Childers, English chaplain at Nice, was born in 1838. In 1860 he received an appointment in the civil service of Ceylon, which he retained until 1864, when he was compelled to return to England owing to ill-health. He had studied Pāli during his residence in Ceylon, under Yátrámullé Unnánsé, a learned Buddhist for whom he cherished a life-long respect, and he had gained an insight into the Sinhalese character and ways of thought. In 1869 he published the first Pāli text ever printed in England, and began to prepare a Pāli dictionary, the first volume of which was published in 1872, and the second and concluding volume in 1875. In the following year it was awarded the Volney prize by the Institute of France, as being the most important philological work of the year. He was a frequent contributor to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, in which he published theMahā-parinibbāna Sutta, the Pāli text giving the account of the last days of Buddha’s life. In 1872 he was appointed sub-librarian at the India Office, and in the following year he became the first professor of Pāli and Buddhist literature at University College, London. He died in London on the 25th of July 1876.

CHILDREN, LAW RELATING TO. English law has always in theory given to children the same remedies as to adults for ill-usage, whether by their parents or by others, and has never recognized thepatria potestasas known to the earlier Roman law; and while powers of discipline and chastisement have been regarded as necessarily incident to paternal authority, the father is civilly liable to his children for wrongs done to them. The only points in which infancy created a defect in civil status were that infants were subject to the restraints on complete freedom of action involved in their being in the legal custody of the father, and that it was and is lawful for parents, guardians, employers and teachers to inflict corporal punishment proportioned in amount and severity to the nature of the fault committed and the age and mental capacity of the child punished. But the court of chancery, in delegated exercise of the authority of the sovereign asparens patriae, always asserted the right to take from parents, and if necessary itself to assume the wardship of children where parental rights were abused or serious cruelty was inflicted, the power being vested in the High Court of Justice. Abuse of the power of correction was regarded as giving a cause of action or prosecution for assault; and if attended by fatal results rendered the parent liable to indictment for murder or manslaughter.

The conception of what constitutes cruelty to children undoubtedly changed considerably with the relaxation of the accepted standard of severity in domestic or scholastic discipline and with the growth of new ideas as to the duties of parents to children, which in their latest developments tend enormously to enlarge the parental duties without any corresponding increase of filial obligations.

Starting from the earlier conception, which limited ill-treatment legally punishable to actual threats or blows, the common law came to recognize criminal liability in cases where persons, bound under duty or contract to supply necessaries to a child, unable by reason of its tender years to provide for itself, wilfully neglected to supply them, and thereby caused the death of the child or injury to its health, although no actual assault had been committed. Questions have from time to time arisen as to what could be regarded as necessary within this rule; and quite apart from legislation, popular opinion has influenced courts of justice in requiring more from parents and employers than used to be required. But parliament has also intervened to punish abandonment or exposure of infants of under two years, whereby their lives are endangered, or their health has been or is likely to be permanently injured (Offences against the Person Act of 1861, s. 27), and the neglect or ill-treatment of apprentices or servants (same act, s. 26, and Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875, s. 6). By the Poor Law Amendment Act 1868, parents were renderedsummarilypunishable who wilfully neglected to provide adequate food, clothing, medical aid or lodging for their children under fourteen years of age in their custody, whereby the health of the child was or was likely to be seriously injured. This enactment (now superseded by later legislation) made no express exception in favour of parents who had not sufficient means to do their duty without resort to the poor law, and was construed as imposing criminal liability on parents whose peculiar religious tenets caused them advisedly to refrain from calling in a doctor to a sick child.

The chief progress in the direction of adequate protection for children prior to 1889 lay less in positive legal enactment on the subject than in the institution of an effective system of police, whereby it became possible to discover and repress cruelty punishable under the ordinary law. It is quite inaccurate to say that children had very few rights in England, or that animals were better protected. But before the constitution of the present police force, and in the absence of any proper system of public prosecution, it is undeniable that numberless cases of neglect and ill-treatment went unpunished and were treated as nobody’s business, because there was no person ready to undertake in the public interest the protection of the children of cruel or negligent parents. In 1889 a statute was passed with the special object of preventing cruelty to children. This act was superseded in 1894 by a more stringent act, which was repealed by the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act 1904, in its turn superseded for the most part by the Children Act 1908, which introduced many new provisions in the law relating to children and specifically deals with the offence of “cruelty” to them. This offence can only be committed by a person over sixteen in respect of a child under sixteen of whom he has “custody,” “charge” or “care.” The act presumes that a child is in the custody of its parents, step-parents, or a person cohabiting with its parent, or of its guardians or persons liable by law to maintain it; that it is in the charge of a person to whom the parent has committed such charge (e.g.a schoolmaster), and that it is in the care of a person who has actual possession or control of it. Cruelty is defined as consisting in assault, ill-treatment (falling short of actual assault), neglect, abandonment or exposure of the child in a manner likely to causeunnecessarysuffering or injury to health, including injury to or loss of sight, hearing or limb, or any organ of the body or any mental derangement; and the act or omission must be wilful,i.e.deliberate and intentional, and not merely accidental or inadvertent. The offence may be punished either summarily or on indictment, and the offender may be sent to penal servitude if it is shown that he was directly or indirectly interested in any sum of money payable on the death of the child,e.g.by having taken out a policy permitted under the Friendly Societies Acts. A parent or other person legally liable to maintain a child or young person will be deemed to have “neglected” him by failure to provide adequate food, clothing, medical aid, or lodging, or if in the event of inability to provide such food, &c., by failure to take steps to procure the same under acts relating to the relief of the poor.

These statutes overlap the common law and the statutes already mentioned. Their real efficacy lies in the main in the provisions which facilitate the taking of evidence of young children, in permitting poor law authorities to prosecute at the expense of the rates, and in permitting a constable on arresting the offender to take the child away from the accused, and the court of trial on conviction to transfer the custody of the child from the offender to some fit and willing person, including any society or body corporate established for the reception of poor children or for the prevention of cruelty to children. The provisions of the acts as to procedure and custody extend not only to the offence of cruelty but also to all offences involving bodily injury to a child under sixteen, such as abandonment, assault, kidnapping and illegally engaging a child in a dangerous publicperformance. The act of 1908 also makes an endeavour to check the heavy mortality of infants through “overlaying,”1enacting that where it is proved that the death of an infant under three years of age was caused by suffocation whilst the infant was in bed with some other person over the age of sixteen, and that that person was at the time of going to bed under the influence of drink, that other person shall be deemed to have neglected the child in manner likely to cause injury to its health, as mentioned above. The acts have been utilized with great zeal and on the whole with much discretion by various philanthropic societies, whose members make it their business to discover the ill-treated and neglected children of all classes in society, and particularly by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which is incorporated under royal charter of the 28th of May 1895, for the purposesinter aliaof preventing the public and private wrongs of children, and the corruption of their morals and of taking action to enforce the laws for their protection.

The act of 1908 enacted more stringent provisions against baby-farming (q.v.). The Infant Life Protection Act of 1897 did not apply where only one child was taken, but now by the act of 1908, where a person undertakes for reward the nursing and maintenance of one or more infants under the age ofsevenyears apart from their parents or having no parents, he must give notice in writing to the local authority within forty-eight hours from the reception of the child. If an infant is already in the care of a person without reward and he undertakes to continue the nursing for reward, such undertaking is a reception of the child. The notice to the local authority must state the name, sex, date and place of birth of the infant, the name and address of the person receiving the infant and of the person from whom the infant was received. Notice must also be given of any change of address of the person having the care of the infant, or of the death of the infant, or of its removal to the care of some other person, whose name and address must also be given. It is the duty of local authorities to provide for the carrying-out in their districts of that portion of the act which refers to nursing and maintenance of infants, to appoint infants’ protection visitors, to fix the number of infants which any person may retain for nursing, to remove infants improperly kept, &c. Relatives or legal guardians of an infant who undertake its nursing and maintenance, hospitals, convalescent homes, or institutions, established for the protection and care of infants, and conducted in good faith for religious and charitable purposes, as well as boarding schools at which efficient elementary education is given, are exempt from the provisions of the act.

The acts of 1904 and 1908 deal with many other offences in relation to children and young persons. The act of 1904 introduced restrictions on the employment of children which lie on the border land between cruelty and the regulation of child labour. It prohibits custodians of children from taking them, or letting them be, in the street or in public-houses to sing, play, perform or sell between 9P.M.and 6A.M.These provisions apply to boys under fourteen and girls under sixteen. There are further prohibitions (1) on allowing children under eleven to sing, play, perform or be exhibited for profit, or offer anything for sale in public-houses or places of public amusement at any hour without a licence from a justice, which is granted only as to children over ten and under stringent conditions; (2) on allowing children under sixteen to be trained as acrobats, contortionists, or circus performers, or for any dangerous performance; and the Children’s Dangerous Performances Act 1879, as amended in 1897, makes it an offence to employ a male young person under sixteen and a female under eighteen in a dangerous public performance.

The act of 1908 renders liable to a fine not exceeding £25, or alternatively, or in addition thereto, imprisonment with or without hard labour for any term not exceeding three months, any custodian, &c., of any child or young person who allows him to be in any street, premises or place for the purpose of begging or receiving alms, or of inducing the giving of alms, whether or not there is a pretence of singing, playing, performing or offering anything for sale. An important departure in the act of 1908 was the attempt to prevent the exposure of children to the risk of burning. Any custodian, &c., of a child under seven who allows that child to be in a room Containing an open grate not sufficiently protected to guard against the risk of burning or scalding is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £10. Provision is made against allowing children between the ages of four and sixteen to be in brothels; it is also made a misdemeanour if any custodian, &c., of a girl under sixteen causes or encourages her seduction or prostitution, and any person having the custody of a young girl may be bound over to exercise proper care if it is shown to the satisfaction of a court of summary jurisdiction, on the complaint of any person, that she is exposed to such risk.

The act of 1908, following legislation in many parts of the United States and in some of the British colonies, places a penalty on selling tobacco to any person apparently under the age of sixteen, whether for his own use or not. It empowers constables and park keepers to seize tobacco in the possession of any person apparently under sixteen found smoking in any street or public place, as well as to search them; it also empowers a court, of summary jurisdiction to prevent automatic machines for the sale of tobacco being used by young persons. The act also contains useful provisions empowering the clearing of a court whilst a child or young person is giving evidence in certain cases (e.g.of decency or morality), and the forbidding children (other than infants in arms) being present in court during the trial of other persons; it places a penalty on pawnbrokers taking an article in pawn from children under fourteen; and on vagrants for preventing children above the age of five receiving education. It puts a penalty on giving intoxicating liquor to any child under the age of five, except upon the orders of a duly qualified medical practitioner, or in case of sickness, or other urgent cause; also upon any holder of the licence of any licensed premises who allows a child to be at any time in the bar of the licensed premises; or upon any person who causes or attempts to cause a child to be in the bar of licensed premises other than railway refreshment rooms or premises used for any purpose to which the holding of a licence is merely auxiliary, or where the child is there simply for the purpose of passing through to some other part of the premises. It makes provision for the safety of children at entertainments, and consolidates the law relating to reformatory and industrial schools, and to juvenile offenders (seeJuvenile Offenders).

In the act of 1908, “child” is denned as a person under the age of fourteen years, and “young person” as a person who is fourteen years and upwards and under the age of sixteen years. The act applies to Scotland and Ireland. In the application of the act to Ireland exception is made relative to the exclusion of children from bars of licensed premises, in the case of a child being on licensed premises where a substantial part of the business carried on is a drapery, grocery, hardware or other business wholly unconnected with the sale of intoxicating liquor, and the child is there for the purpose of purchasing goods other than intoxicating liquor.

British Possessions.—Legislation much on the lines of the acts of 1889-1908 has been passed in many British possessions,e.g.Tasmania (1895, 1906), Queensland (1896, 1905), Jamaica (1896), South Australia (1899, 1904), New South Wales (1892 and 1900), New Zealand (1906), Mauritius (1906), Victoria(1905,1906). In South Australia a State Children’s Department has been created to care for and manage the property and persons of destitute and neglected children, and the officials of the council may act in cases of cruelty to children; the legislation of Victoria and Queensland is based on that of South Australia.

See alsoChildren’s Courts,EducationandLabour Legislation.

(W. F. C.; T. A. I.)

1There has been some doubt as to whether it is more correct to say a person “overlays” or “overlies” a child, and the question came up in committee on the bill. According to Sir J.A.H. Murray (see Letter inThe Times, 12th of May 1908) “to lie,” an intransitive verb, becomes transitive when combined with a preposition,e.g.a nurse lies over a child or overlies a child; “to lay” is the causal derivative of “to lie,” and is followed by two objects,e.g.to lay the table with a cloth, or to lay a cloth on the table; similarly, to overlay a surface with varnish, or to overlay a child with a blanket, or with the nurse’s or mother’s body. The instrument can be left unexpressed, and a person can be said to overlay a child,i.e.with her own body, a pillow, &c. Thus, while “overlie” covers the case where the woman herself lies over the child, “overlay” is the more general word.

CHILDRENITE, a rare mineral species; a hydrous basic aluminium iron phosphate, orthorhombic in crystallization. The ferrous oxide is in part replaced by manganous oxide and lime, and in the closely allied and isomorphous species eosphorite manganese predominates over iron. The general formula for the two species is Al(Fe, Mn)(OH)2PO4+ H2O. Childrenite is found only as small brilliant crystals of a yellowish-brown colour, somewhat resembling chalybite in general appearance. They are usually pyramidal in habit, often having the form of double six-sided pyramids with the triangular faces deeply striated parallel to their shorter edges. Hardness 4.5-5; specific gravity 3.18-3.24. The mineral, named after the zoologist and mineralogist J.G. Children (1777-1852), secretary of the Royal Society, was detected in 1823 on specimens obtained some years previously during the cutting of a canal near Tavistock in Devonshire. It has also been found in a few copper mines in Cornwall and Devonshire.

Eosphorite occurs as crystals of prismatic habit with angles very nearly the same as those of childrenite. Unlike childrenite, it has a distinct cleavage in one direction, and often occurs in compact masses as well as in crystals. The colour is sometimes yellowish-white, but usually rose-pink, and on this account the mineral was named fromἠωσφόρος, dawn-bearer. Hardness 5; specific gravity 3.11-3.145. It was discovered in 1878 in a pegmatite-vein at Branchville, Connecticut, where it is associated with other rare manganese phosphates.

(L. J. S.)

CHILDREN’S COURTS, orJuvenile Courts, a special system of tribunals for dealing with juvenile offenders, first suggested in the United States. The germ of such institutions was planted in Massachusetts in 1869, when a plan was introduced at Boston of hearing charges against children separately, and apart from the ordinary business of the lesser tribunals. No great progress was made in the development of the idea in Massachusetts, as the legal authorities were not fully convinced of the utility or need for a separate court so long as the children were kept strictly apart from adults, and this could be assured by a separate session. But the system of “probation,” by which children were handed over to the kindly care and guardianship of an appointed officer, and thus escaped legal repression, was created about the same time in Boston and produced excellent results. The probation officer is present at the judge’s side when he decides a case, and is given charge of the offender, whom he takes by the hand, either at his parent’s residence or at school, and continually supervises, having power if necessary to bring him again before the judge. The example of Massachusetts in due course influenced other countries, and especially the British colony of South Australia, where a State Children’s Department was created at Adelaide in 1895, and three years later a juvenile court was opened there for the trial of persons under eighteen and was conducted with great success, though the system of probation officers was not introduced. A juvenile court was also established at Toronto (Canada) on the South Australian model.

The movement when once fully appreciated went ahead very rapidly. In the United States Illinois was the first state to call a distinct children’s court into existence, and Judge Richard Tuthill was the pioneer at Chicago, where the court was established in 1899. Many states followed suit, including New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Kansas, Colorado, Indiana and others, till the number rose to nineteen in 1906. In New York, where juvenile probation is supervised by the Society for the Protection of Children, there is a separate children’s court with rooms attached, where the children for detention wait till they are brought in for trial. Brooklyn has also a children’s court. In Pennsylvania, where the juvenile court was at first opposed as unconstitutional, the difficulty was met by first bringing the child before the magistrate in the police court, a course which (though followed by his transferring the case to the special court) perpetuated the very evils the children’s court was intended to avoid; the work of probation was, however, most effectively carried out, chiefly by female officers. The Chicago Juvenile Court sits twice weekly under an especially appointed judge, and policemen act as probation officers to some extent. The court of Indianapolis, however, gained the reputation of being the most complete and perfect in the United States. It works with a large and highly efficient band of volunteer probation officers under a chief. The juvenile court of Denver, Colorado, attained remarkable results under Judge B. Lindsey, whose magnetic personality, wonderful comprehension of boy nature, and extraordinary influence over them achieved great results. The court meets once a fortnight, when fresh cases are tried and boys already on probation report themselves, often to the number of two hundred at a time. The latter appear before the judge in batches, each hands in his school report in a sealed letter, and according to its purport receives praise or blame, or he may be committed to the Detention House. An efficient court was also constituted at Baltimore, Maryland, with a judge especially chosen to preside, probation being for fixed periods, varying from three months to three years, and children being brought back to the court for parole or discharge, or, if necessary, committal to the house of one of the philanthropic societies. In Washington, D.C., the system of having no distinct court or judge, but holding a separate session, was followed, and it was found that numbers of children came to the court for help and guidance, looking upon the judge for the time being as their friend and counsellor. Probation in this instance offered peculiar difficulties on account of the colour question, two-thirds of the children having negro blood and a white boy being always preferred for a vacant situation. Throughout, the action of juvenile courts in the United States has been to bring each individual into “human touch” with kindly helpful workers striving to lead the young idea aright and train it to follow the straight path. It was the result always of the effort of private persons and not due to government initiative, indeed the advocates and champions of the system only established it by overcoming strong opposition from the authorities.

Progress in the same direction has been made in England. The home office had recommended London police magistrates to keep children’s cases separate from those of adults; the same practice or something analogous obtained in many county boroughs, such as Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Bolton, Bradford, Hull, Manchester, Walsall, Halifax and others, and the Children Act 1908 definitely established children’s courts. This act enacted that courts of summary jurisdiction when hearing charges, &c., against children or young persons should, unless the child or young person is charged jointly with an adult, sit in a different building or room from that in which the ordinary sittings of the court are held, or on different days or at different times. Furthermore, provision must be made for preventing persons apparently under the age of sixteen years whilst being conveyed to or from court, or whilst waiting before or after their attendance in court, from associating with adults, unless such adults are charged jointly with them. The act prohibits any persons other than members and officers of the court, the parties to the case, their solicitors, counsel and other persons directly concerned in the case, from being present in a juvenile court, except by leave of the court. Bona-fide press representatives are also excepted. The main object of the whole system is to keep the child, the embryotic offender who has probably erred from ignorance or the pressure of circumstances or misfortune, altogether free from the taint or contagion that attaches to criminal proceedings. The moral atmosphere of a legal tribunal is injurious to the youthful mind, and children who appear before a bench, whether as accused or as witness, gain a contemptuous familiarity with legal processes.

The most beneficial action of the children’s court comes from its association with the system of personal guardianship andclose supervision exercised by the probation officers, official and voluntary. Where the intervention of the newly constituted tribunal can not only save the child from evil association when first arrested, but can rescue him without condemnation and committal to prison, its functions may be relied upon to diminish crime by cutting it off at the source. Much depends upon the quality and temperament of the presiding authority. Where a judge with special aptitude can be appointed, firm, sympathetic, tactful and able to gain the confidence of those brought before him, he may do great good, by dealing with each individual and not merely with his offence, realizing that the court does not exist to condemn but to strengthen and give a fresh chance. Where the children’s court is only a branch of the existing jurisdiction worked by the regular magistrate or judge fulfilling his ordinary functions and not specially chosen, the beneficial results are not so noticeable.

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