The hereditary taint—Cain, as a child of fifteen—Because he wouldn't give her a toy—Playing with fire—A heartless lie for a threepenny-bit—Suicide among children

THERE is one phase in the mystery of life in the great City which I would gladly pass. But it is one of the strangest, one of the least known, and it is impossible to ignore it.

Only those whose duties or whose studies bring them into contact with the saddest phase of child-life in London know how terrible is the picture that could be painted by an artist who, in his desire for realism, did not shrink from the most painful details.

It is not my desire, nor is it the purpose of these chapters, to take the darkest view of the sins and sorrows of the City.

The truth—the appalling truth—concerning the phase to which I am now referring is written in the records of the schools in which the feeble-minded children of London are specially cared for and dealt with. In these volumes the family history of the parents of every child is written, the doctor's view of the child's mental and physical condition is given, and nothing that can be ascertained for the guidance of the teachers is left unrecorded.

The authorities have decided—and very wisely decided—that these volumes shall be bound with metal clasps and locked from the eyes of all save those who have by their official position the right of access to them.

There are some terrible family histories in those guarded volumes. The sins of the parents are there, and the children on whom the sins have been visited are in the schools for the mentally and physically unfit.

Not always is it sin that has set its mark upon the offspring. Drink has much to answer for in the deterioration of a race; but here there is affliction as well—degenerate parents have married and given the world degenerate children.

Insanity, epilepsy, all the forms of mental instability contribute to the legion of the lost little ones.

If you could see the record of the parents you would find again and again that suicide and insanity had occurred in the family. You would find weak-minded parents with six and seven children—sometimes with ten. Out of one family of ten that I know only two of the children are normal. Through the generations the taint has been handed down, and that is the reason that lunacy is advancing by leaps and bounds, and the number of the insane is now so great that even the unthinking are beginning to be alarmed.

I am not going to point a moral here or to urge a reform. This is not the place. But I have been compelled to state the truth that the reason for the existence in our midst of a class of children who are dangerous to the community may be understood.

Here is a lad of fifteen. A few months ago the law decided that the time had come when the freedom of the home and the streets shall be denied him, and that he shall be kept where the commission of further crimes by him will be guarded against.

This lad of fifteen attempted to murder a little boy of six. He met the boy in the streets, took him to a lonely place, and there savagely attacked him. The child succeeded in escaping from the homicidal maniac of fifteen, who later on was arrested and charged at the police-court.

There, when it became a question of the boy's sanity, a circumstance was narrated to the magistrate which threw a lurid light on the case.

A year previously the boy had taken his little sister of four for a walk. Two hours later he returned to his home saying that the child had fallen into the canal and was drowned.

Search was made, and the body of the child was found in the water. But to get there she had had to force her body through some broken palings, and portions of her clothing were found on this side of them.

The tragedy passed at the time as an accident. It was supposed the child in childish heedlessness had got through the palings and fallen in.

There is no doubt in the minds of those who knew the children that the little girl was deliberately thrust into the canal by her then fourteen-year-old brother. The boy was a homicidal maniac. His one idea was to take life. After he had been taken to an asylum many things came to light. Other children came forward and told how he had suddenly seized them in quiet places, and how, terrified by his strange look and his violent actions, they had struggled and escaped, and fled from him in terror.

The piano is being played in this big schoolroom, and some fifty little girls are taking part in the musical drill, which is part of their course of instruction. Many of them are pretty and neatly dressed, but there is a strange, uncanny look in some of the faces. Yet they are dangerous, requiring on the part of their teachers the utmost vigilance. Some of them become furiously angry in a moment, and if a schoolfellow is the cause of their anger will burst into fits of uncontrollable rage and threaten vengeance. Others are cunning and wait for their opportunity.

One of these girls, annoyed at having to mind a baby sister in what she considered her playtime, took it out with her, went some distance from home, and left the mite under a dark railway arch near a piece of waste ground. Then she came back and said that while she was out walking a big woman had snatched the baby and run away with it.

Fortunately, some one passing the arch soon afterwards heard a child cry, went in and found the baby, and was taking it to the police-station when she met the mother, who had gone in search of it.

The girl had stated that it was on the waste ground that the woman had attacked her, and this led the mother to search in that direction.

Another of these girls—a pretty little maid of twelve—invented a blood-curdling story which caused the utmost consternation in the neighbourhood. She declared that she had seen a man kill two children and throw them into the canal. She described the man, and declared that it was a half-witted, inoffensive hawker known as "Jim," who sometimes came about the neighbourhood selling little halfpenney home-made toys to the children.

The next time "Jim" was seen he had a very bad quarter of an hour, and might have been lynched if a policeman passing by had not come to the rescue and heard the story. The child was then cross-examined, and, apparently frightened by the policeman, said it wasn't "Jim," but somebody very like him.

Some time afterwards it was ascertained that the girl had invented the story for the deliberate purpose of getting "Jim" set upon and "hurt." He had refused to let her have a toy that she fancied for nothing.

Here in a mean street in the neighbourhood of the old "Nichol," immortalized by Mr. Arthur Morrison, is a small four-roomed house. It is occupied by one family who, in this neighbourhood, would be considered well off.

The head of the family is a man of forty-five. He is of weak intellect and has epileptic fits. He has an income of a week, derived from property left him by a relative. The sum is paid to him weekly by a solicitor. His wife is older. She married him "for his money," and spends as much as she can get in drink. There are five children at home. There were seven. The two absent are little boys—one of four and one of six. The little boy of four is dead. He went out for a walk with the boy of six one morning and never came back. The elder boy said that his little brother had run away. The next day a woman, going to her dustbin, which stood in her little bit of front garden, was horrified, on lifting the lid, to find the dead body of a little boy. The elder boy had throttled the younger and put the body in the dustbin. When the tragedy was inquired into the child said that "something told him to do it." This Cain of six is now in an asylum for idiots. When he gets his liberty he will, if he refrains from further criminal violence, grow up and marry and have a family.

There is no sadder sight than—with a knowledge of this terrible phase of child-life—to watch these poor little degenerates come trooping out of the schools where a brave endeavour is being made to save them from the consequences of their own mental and moral deficiency.

Yes, there is one thing more painful still—that is, to listen to the prayers of their unhappy parents that the children of whom they are afraid—yes, literally afraid—may be taken from them and "put away."

"I never know a moment's peace," wailed one unhappy mother. "That boy has threatened to kill his little sister—and I'm sure that sooner or later he will do it."

Among these unfortunate children arson is a favourite amusement. Most children have a desire to play with fire, but here the object is distinctly mischievous. There is an intention to destroy property heedless of consequences, heedless even of the risk to human life.

"We shall be burned in our beds by him," said a poor woman one day to the schoolmistress. "He's set the place afire times when my back was turned, and the other day he got a lot of paper and shavings together and lighted 'em under the cradle."

The hatred or jealousy of the baby is a painful feature in many of these cases. It is the jealousy of a mind that is feeble. This jealousy led a young girl of gentle birth to commit a murder which attained world-wide notoriety.

Constance Kent killed her baby brother because she was jealous of him. There are several Constance Kents among these mentally deficient children, and many a baby meets with a fate which is supposed to be accidental, but the accident was materially contributed to by a brother or a sister.

For some of these children certain objects have an irresistible fascination.

There is no story more remarkable than that of the boy of fourteen in Paris who had murdered first an old woman and then an old man, solely in older to get possession of the cheap watches they wore.

After the boy's arrest several watches were found concealed in his home. They had no money value to him. He was simply collecting watches, and did not hesitate to kill in order to add to the number.

To get possession of some trifling and valueless ornament, a string of beads, a penny brooch, a toy, a few marbles, young children of the unfortunate class I am dealing with have laid the most elaborate plans. One youthful desperado noticed that a little girl on Sundays wore a string of beads to which was attached a lucky threepenny-bit—a threepenny-bit with a hole in it.

The child was always with an elder sister on Sundays, and there was no chance of a highway robbery. Moreover, the children knew the boy, and if he snatched the necklace they would tell their parents who did it.

He wormed himself into the confidence of the children, and ascertained that on week-days the necklace was kept put away in a drawer in the bedroom with the Sunday clothes.

On that information he acted. One day, when only the mother was at home, the sisters being out playing in another street near the school, the young hopeful suddenly rushed into her room. "Oh, Mrs. Jones," he exclaimed, "there's a little girl been run over in the next street, and I think it's your Annie!"

Off went Mrs. Jones, and the boy instantly made his way into the bedroom, found the drawer, opened it, and abstracted the necklace with the lucky threepenny-bit on it.

In all the cases that I know of childish criminality of the insane type—none of these children are of normal intellect—there is a family history which accounts for everything.

In the case of a little lad who broke into a house for the sole purpose of killing a canary—and he killed it cruelly—the mother and father were "afflicted," and the eight children of the family were all of violent temper and a source of constant annoyance to the neighbours. Six of them had been certified for "special instruction"—i.e., to be sent to the schools specially arranged for the feeble-minded.

It was for a long time a widely entertained idea that for a great deal of juvenile crime the sensational stories called "Penny Dreadfuls" were largely responsible.

In the worst cases of juvenile crime—or, it would be fairer to say, of juvenile insanity with a criminal tendency—of which I have had personal knowledge, there has been no fiction reading at all. The appeal to the imagination has been wholly lacking. The children have acted on their own initiative or the suggestion of a companion suffering from a similar lack of moral sense.

Here are two boys who broke into a church—one is fourteen, the other fifteen. Their object was to get at the offertory box in which they had seen money placed. On the younger boy when he was caught was found a common table-knife which he had taken from his home.

Asked what he had taken the knife with him for, he said without the slightest hesitation, "To stick into anybody that tried to nab me."

It was fortunate for the policeman who caught the lad as he came out of the church that he seized his quarry by both arms; otherwise he might have had practical proof of what the knife was carried for.

Suicide among children is officially announced to be on the increase. Suicide among children—the idea is terrible! One can hardly connect childhood with deliberate self-destruction. How, one asks oneself, can a child have become so melancholy, so depressed, so weary of life as to seek that which for all normal children has an element of terror in it—death?

The answer is that a large number of attempts at suicide by children are not caused by melancholia, but by insane malice or ungovernable temper. The dominant idea is the idea of causing trouble and pain to others. A little girl who attempted to commit suicide by throwing herself into a canal explained after she had been rescued that she did it to upset her mother.

I have dwelt reluctantly on this feature of our modern life—this outcome of the stress of civilization. I have made no mention of one phase of it with which the police-courts are, unfortunately, only too familiar. For its details you must turn to the records of rescue homes in which the cases are set out of girls of tender years who have been "rescued." But it is impossible to ignore the feature itself in dealing with the mysteries, or little-known phases, of London life.

The extent of the evil is not appreciated by the great public, for they see little of it. Even if they were to see a hundred of these children learning in the schools or romping in the playground, ordinary observers would not suspect the tragedy that lies below the surface.

For each of these children is a human document—a document which the genius of a Zola could extend into a world-shocking realistic romance like "L'Assommoir," or "Nana."

In the locked and guarded volumes where the family histories of these children are recorded lie more horrors than ever the great French novelist dared to blacken his pages with. There are the first and the second chapters of life-stories that ere they are closed will add many a strange romance of passion and crime, of madness and murder, to the mysteries of the town.