arranged on a more extensive scale than
any at present in operation, for the rescuing
of children who, though not orphans in
the strict sense of the word, are to all intents
and purposes both fatherless and motherless;
since those who do as a matter of
fact bear the parental relations towards
them fail in all the duties which that relation
should imply. Almost all the
undertakings for the benefit of destitute children,
at present in existence, are organised for
the exclusive benefit of those who are
orphans in the literal sense of the word,
and fail to supply the need of neglected
children whose parents are still living.
Such children, however, are often really
worse off than actual orphans, these last
having, at all events, a chance of being
placed out in institutions, where they are
more or less carefully looked after, whilst
the others, being supposititiously under the
care of their parents, are left, virtually, without
any protection or succour whatsoever.
It is on behalf of children such as these—
orphans in every sense of the word except
the literal one—that appeal is here made.
Their misery is extreme, but it is
eminently capable of relief.

It is not even necessary to visit personally
the localities where these things go on in
order to be able to form some estimate
of the unhappy condition of the "gutter
children," as they have got to be called, of
London. Details of cruelty, neglect, and ill-
usage inflicted on helpless children by their
parents, are to be met with in almost every
newspaper that we take up. In a recent
number of the Times newspaper a case is
reported which is a fair specimen of many
others. A man named G. Phillips and his
wife, says the report, were brought up for
cruel ill-usage and neglect of the son of
the male prisoner. The boy had run away
from home to the house of a neighbour,
who had heard him crying bitterly, and
shrieking, "Oh, don't father—don't!"
The neighbour—a woman—found the boy
with his face and ears cut, and taking him
to her room, asked him who had done this.
He said his father. He was so hungry
that he took up a crust which was lying on
the window sill, and began to gnaw it.
When examined by the surgeon, the child
was found to be suffering from cutaneous
disease, was covered with vermin, and partly
demented. He had several wounds on the
head, caused by some hard instrument, and
"round the arm there was a bruise two
inches wide, probably caused by a strap or
cord." More details of cruelty follow, and
the case is brought to a conclusion thus:
"The same man had been charged previously
with neglect of another child, which
was found lying in some quicklime, for the
sake of the warmth."

It would be useless to sicken the reader
with more cases of the same kind—cases
of children sent out by their parents to
beg or steal, and cruelly beaten if they
came back empty-handed; of others tied
up like wild beasts, and neglected till their
whole bodies were a mass of disease and
filth, or kept in such a condition of starvation
that they were glad to devour garbage
from which a dog would turn in disgust.
Such things go on among us, and,
unspeakably painful as it is to face such facts,
it is cruelty to ignore them.

One curious instance of unworthiness
on the part of a mother to have charge of
her child came to light the other day at the
Clerkenwell Police Court, and may
properly be quoted here. A woman had sold
her son in January last to a showman,
who agreed to pay her twelve pounds a
year, and to allow the boy to write to her
once a month. The child is now probably
being taken about the country, but the
mother has lost all trace of it since
Nottingham Races. It certainly seems clear
that the care of a child should not be
entrusted to one who sells it thus to the
highest bidder as if it were a slave.

But the children who are subjected to
these extremes of misery are not the only
members of our younger population who
need our help. There is besides a class—to
all appearance rather on the increase than
otherwise—of what may be called vagabond
children, whose existence it is
impossible to regard with any feeling except
one of great dissatisfaction. As one passes
along the streets—and this not by any
means exclusively in those "low
neighbourhoods" before spoken of—one is beset
by crowds of mere children holding copies
of cheap newspapers or boxes of fusees in
their hands, and uttering shrill cries of
"Echo, sir?" or "Cigar-lights, sir?"
Sometimes half a dozen little creatures will thus
clamour for custom all at once, all thrusting
their wares at the passers-by at the same time.

Now it would surely be impossible to find
any person possessed of an average allowance
of common sense who would have the
audacity to assert that these mere children
may be allowed to "pick up a living" thus
about the streets with impunity. To enable
a human creature to pass through life