"Infanticide" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The expense is not great: laudanum and treacle, administered in the shape of some popular elixir, affords these innocents a brief taste of the sweets of existence, and keeping them quiet, prepares them for the silence of their impending grave. Infanticide is practised as extensively and as legally in England, as it is on the banks of the Ganges; a circumstance which apparently has not yet engaged the attention of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... of massacre! dare ye deplore That the death-shriek is silenced on Hellas' shore? That the mother aghast sees her offspring no more By the hand of Infanticide grasped? And that stretched on yon billows distained by their gore Missolonghi's assassins ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... to understand, to make out things a little in the darkness, but she was right after all; he took these things too seriously in his way. With all her vulgar depravity, Barbro was not worth a single earnest thought. Infanticide meant nothing to her, there was nothing extraordinary in the killing of a child; she thought of it only with the looseness and moral nastiness that was to be expected of a servant-girl. It was plain, too, in the days that followed; never an hour ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... where living was always difficult and the diet poor, there were always more men than women despite the frequent wars in which men were victims. Another reason was that male children were saved often when females were killed in the practice of infanticide, also forced by famine. The overplus of men made them amenable to the commands of the women, who often dominated in permanent alliances, demanding lavishment of wealth and ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... conscience and desire. Although this prelude may be too subjective and involved to be readily digested by readers unfamiliar with the Swedish author's method they will soon follow with intent interest into those pages that describe how Ingmar met at the prison door the girl for whose infanticide he was ethically responsible. He brings her back apparently to face disgrace and to blot the fair scutcheon of the Ingmarssons, but actually to earn the respect of the whole community voiced in the declaration ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... texture and water-holding capacity of the soil. The newly set plant is not in need of outside nourishment; to put rank manure or strong commercial fertilizers about the roots of a young newly set vine is plant infanticide. ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... absence of the patriarchal family, and the recognition of kinship through women? Any circumstances which cause great scarcity of women will conduce to those results. Mr. M'Lennan's opinion was, that the chief cause of scarcity of women has been the custom of female infanticide—of killing little girls as bouches inutiles. Sir Henry Maine admits that 'the cause assigned by M'Lennan is a vera causa—it is capable of producing the effects.' {249} Mr. M'Lennan collected a very large mass of testimony to prove the wide existence of this cause of paucity of women. Till that ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... writes, "which is controlled by public opinion and regulated by law is not natural history. The true history of marriage begins where the natural history of pairing ends.... To treat these topics (polyandry, kinship through the female only, infanticide, exogamy) as essentially a part of the natural history of pairing involves a tacit assumption that the laws of society are at bottom mere formulated instincts, and this assumption really underlies all our author's theories. His fundamental position ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a check to increase, is common to civilized and savage man, and limits population by artificial checks to conception, abortion, infanticide, disease, and war. The third check, moral restraint, is peculiar to civilized man, and in the writings of Malthus, consists in restraint from ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... and in a large part of that in which we live, the practice of infanticide was, or is, a regular and legal custom; famine, pestilence, and war were and are normal factors in the struggle for existence, and they have served, in a gross and brutal fashion, to mitigate the intensity of the effects ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... to one-tenth of the population of penal institutions. Probably the percentage would be still lower if among these were not a number of rather common convictions for acts which are peculiar to women, like abortion, infanticide, child abandonment and the like. As to the other crimes, few women are burglars or robbers, or guilty of other crimes of violence, except murder. Women steal and poison and blackmail and extort money and lie and slander and gossip, and probably cause ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... the conduct of the female peasantry in the eastern counties of England, who unblushingly avow their derelictions from the paths of virtue. The crime of infanticide, so common there, is almost unknown among the Irish. If the priest and the confessional are able to restrain the lower orders from the commission of gross crime, who shall say that they are without their use? It is true that the priest often exercises his power over his flock ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... decide whether any one of these uniformities is wisely uniform or not. The record of the dealings of quite well-meaning conquerors with the institutions and arts of their subjects is full of tragedies of this kind. I call to mind an example in Paraguay, where abstention from infanticide, after conversion to Christianity, nearly wrought the extinction of a native tribe, for the population at once began to exceed the means of subsistence; and it was only when the committee in London was induced (just in time) to apply mission funds to the purchase ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... thick and full against the prisoner, leaving upon the minds of none the remotest doubt of his fearful criminality. The mother, and a beggar who had passed the night in the hut when the murder was perpetrated, were the principal witnesses against the infanticide, and their depositions could not be shaken. I waited with anxiety and great irritability for the sentence which should remove the prisoner from the bar. The earth seemed polluted as long as he breathed upon it; he could not be too quickly withdrawn, and hidden for ever in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Abortion and infanticide, however, are exceedingly common, the more usual practice being that of procuring abortion. Although sexual immorality so largely exists, and young unmarried women and girls are known to indulge in it so freely, and it is not seriously reprobated, it is regarded as a disgrace ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... and childhood.—The desire for children is strong. Hence voluntary abortion and infanticide are unknown. In case of involuntary abortion, which is comparatively frequent, the fetus is hung or buried under the house. When the child begins to quicken in the womb, the mother undergoes a process of massage at the beginning ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... interest we feel in the preservation of the morals of our country, constrains us to raise our voice against the daily increasing practice of {256} infanticide, especially before birth. The notoriety this monstrous crime has obtained of late, and the hecatombs of infants that are annually sacrificed to Moloch, to gratify an unlawful passion, are a sufficient justification for our alluding to a painful and delicate subject, which ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... the sanction of laws, usage, religion, public opinion or example, when they have the support only of habit and prejudice, which seldom consult experience and good sense. No action is so abominable that it is not, or has not been, approved by some nation. Parricide, infanticide, theft, usurpation, cruelty, intolerance, prostitution, have been allowed and even considered meritorious by some of the peoples of the earth. Religion especially has consecrated the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... wanting to proceed on your journey. Time, they think, is nothing to any one. "What's the use of being in a hurry?" Their neglect of their children, a cause from which a large proportion of the few born perish, is a part of this universal carelessness. The crime of infanticide, which formerly prevailed to a horrible extent, has long been extinct; but the love of pleasure and the dislike of trouble which partially actuated it, are apparently still stronger among the women than the maternal instinct, and they do not take the trouble necessary to rear ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... of the poorest specimens before they have even attained conscious possession of their senses. But in any case, and whatever we may ourselves be pleased to think or not to think, it is certain that some of the most highly developed peoples of the world have practised infanticide. It is equally certain that the practise has not proved destructive to the emotions of humanity and affection. Even some of the lowest human races,—as we commonly estimate them,—while finding it necessary to put aside a certain proportion ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... children, and wives are not the companions of their husbands, the regeneration of this great empire will proceed very slowly." As might be expected, suicide is a refuge to which thousands of these ignorant idolaters fly. "The unnatural crime of infanticide is so common among them, that it is perpetrated without any feeling, and even in a laughing mood. There is also carried on a regular traffic ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... kill): (1) decide, suicide, homicide, concise, precise, decisive, incision, scissors, chisel, cement; (2) patricide, fratricide, infanticide, regicide, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... seems to be that the birth of a daughter is looked upon as a mournful event in the annals of a Chinese family, and that a large percentage of the girls born are victims of a wide-spread system of infanticide, a sufficient number, however, being spared to prevent the speedy depopulation of the Empire. It became our duty only the other day to correct a mistake, on the part of a reverend gentleman who has been some twelve years a missionary in China, bearing on ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... with other natives throughout the cruise, transmitted orders, and sometimes jested together on the fore-hatch. But what struck me perhaps most of all was a word I heard on the verandah of the Tribunal at Noumea. A case had just been heard—a trial for infanticide against an ape-like native woman; and the audience were smoking cigarettes as they awaited the verdict. An anxious, amiable French lady, not far from tears, was eager for acquittal, and declared she would engage the prisoner to be her children's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but when the thoughtless entreaties of the mother or nurse are interposed, it makes his condition most distressing. Mothers, in such cases, ought to encourage rather than remonstrate. They who do not, are guilty of cruelty, and—perhaps—of infanticide.] ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... Law Journal, of December, 1876, says: "The laws of infanticide must be a dead letter in the District of Columbia. According to the reports of the local officials, the dead bodies of infants, still-born and murdered, which have been found during the past year, scattered over parks and vacant lots in the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Juggernaut, before which hysterical fanatics used to throw their own bodies, and the bodies of their children, to be crushed under the iron wheels, in the hope of pleasing some monster among their deities. The suppression of infanticide, which is still encouraged by the Brahmins, is now receiving the vigilant attention ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... of infanticide, so extensively found in India, was the direct result of this difficulty. For instance, among the noble race of Rajputs in North India it was found, some years ago, that, in a community of 30,000, there was not a single girl! Every daughter ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... 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, and old women of the tribe practice it. A widow may marry again after a year's mourning for her first husband; but having children no man will take her ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... Thames. It will be an interesting task for our Legislature to ascertain whether there is any actual law to account for the transfer, as it inevitably will have to do when the delicate choice is forced upon it between justifiable infanticide, wholesale Hospices des Enfants Trouves, and possibly some kind of Japanese "happy despatch" for high-minded infants who are superior to the slow poison administered by injudicious "farmers." At all events, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the sexual act is very likely to lead to a ruined life for the girl companion and her offspring. Arthur Donnithorne, in "Adam Bede," did not forecast that his act would lead to the ruin of Hetty Sorrel and her condemnation for infanticide. ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... is the remarkable case of Elizabeth Gren, whom Bathurst and Dr. Willis restored after being executed, i. e. hanged, for infanticide. 'Vena ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... the character of God, be induced to believe that theft, or murder, or any vice, is right, his conscience will be corrupted by his faith. When men are brought to believe—as they frequently do in heathen countries—that it is right to commit suicide, or infanticide, as a religious duty, their conscience condemns them if they do not perform the act. Thus that power in the soul which pronounces upon the moral character of human conduct, is itself dependent upon and regulated by the faith of the individual. It is apparent, therefore, that the reception and ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... of infanticide, never reach the mountain at all, but are compelled to hover round the seats of their crimes, with branches of trees tied to their legs. The melancholy sounds, which are heard in the still summer evenings, and which the ignorance of the white people considers as the screams of the goat-sucker, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... short sharp crisis of the Mutiny, the population has greatly increased. Whenever an epidemic breaks out, means are at once employed to check it. There is a vaccination department for the purpose of preventing the ravages of small-pox. Female infanticide, which had prevailed to a frightful extent among certain castes, has been diminished, though not, it is feared, wholly suppressed. It is well known that famines have been sadly destructive of life, but there ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... could no longer live in the house with him; one, an informer, had been the victim of a Black Hand vendetta; and the last had poisoned his wife for the insurance money in order to go off with another woman. There were two cases of infanticide, one in which a woman threw her baby into the lake in Central Park, and another in which she gave her baby poison. Besides these murders, five homicides had been committed in the course of perpetrating other crimes, including ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... founded on a belief in one God, which shall be freed from all the errors and corruptions of the past. They propose many important reforms, such as the abolition of caste, the remodeling of marriage customs, the emancipation and education of women, the abolition of infanticide and the worship of ancestors, and a general moral regeneration. Their chief aid to spiritual growth may be summed up in four words, self-culture, meditation, personal purity, and universal beneficence. Their influence has been already felt in the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... favour of Christianity, as assigning women their proper place in society, is corroborated by observing the extremes of oppression and adulation, to which the Scandinavian nations alternately veered. While polygamy and infanticide prevailed, the practice of raising into heroines, prophetesses, and goddesses, some of their women, was no less indicative of a very imperfect sense of the true character of the female sex. [53] The public and domestic life of the Greeks exhibit unquestionable ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... these several checks, but he does not lay stress enough on what is probably the most important of all, namely infanticide, especially of female infants, and the habit of procuring abortion. These practices now prevail in many quarters of the world; and infanticide seems formerly to have prevailed, as Mr. M'Lennan (61. 'Primitive Marriage,' 1865.) has shewn, on a still more extensive scale. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... happy portion as guests, and another happy portion as savory dishes. It is Nature in modest simplicity, as it is exhibited in half-a-dozen mice in a deep kettle, of whom one survivor and material representative remains. The Chinese expose female infants, and lawful infanticide has been abolished in some districts of the British East Indies within these thirty years only. Would it not be wiser to reassimilate the tender dear ones, and think of them ever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... but I think they usually keep clear of the old fighting boars. Besides sport and their legitimate occupations the Wanjaris seldom stickle at supplementing their resources by theft, especially of cattle; and they are more than suspected of infanticide." ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... ratio at birth has recently emerged as an indicator of certain kinds of sex discrimination in some countries. For instance, high sex ratios at birth in some Asian countries are now attributed to sex-selective abortion and infanticide due to a strong preference for sons. This will affect future marriage patterns and fertility patterns. Eventually, it could cause unrest among young adult males who are unable to ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... (p. 39): 'Con loro non altri che usurai, fornicatori, e omini di mala sorte conversare si vedeno.' Their sins against nature (p. 65), the secret marriages of monks and nuns (p. 83), the 'fetide cioache oi monache,' choked with the fruits of infanticide (p. 81), not to mention their avarice (p. 55) and gross impiety (p. 52), are described with a naked sincerity that bears upon its face ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... hailed as a deliverance from an expensive and unwelcome burden! The simple suggestion is enough to carry with it a sense of obligation to lovers of humanity to see that a premium is not placed upon infanticide and kindred crimes. If such insurance is to be effected at all, which is extremely questionable, it should be under ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... and departed, after allowing the old bachelor to kiss her, which he did with an air that seemed to say, "It is a right which costs me dear; but it is better than being harried by a lawyer in the court of assizes as the seducer of a girl accused of infanticide." ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... considered to be the absolute chattels of the parents, with whose treatment of their offspring neither public opinion nor the country's laws have any right of interference. Infanticide can be, and undoubtedly is to a certain extent, practised, while the father is even said to be legally entitled to punish his grown-up children ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... hordes, distribution of. Indians, subtlety of. varied colour of. manner of living. characteristics of. legends of the. rafts of the. infanticide encouraged by. polygamy of the. population. white race. worship, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... briefly thus:—Their islands are grand and picturesque; they are very intelligent, and are physically powerful, but they seem abandoned to a debased idolatry, to cruel customs, and to a gross licentiousness. Constant and barbarous warfare, infanticide, and the diseases introduced by their foreign visitors have so rapidly decreased their numbers that the population consists of one-third less now than it did at the time of Cook. Captain Fuller, and ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... general, certain fixed amounts were paid as the penalties for most crimes, and in some cases the penalty was life for life. If the culprit could not pay the fine, he was usually sold as a slave. Parricide and infanticide were apparently unknown among them. Marriages, divorces, inheritances, enslavements, disputes, etc., are all considered in this account, obtained by the Franciscan Juan de Plasencia from ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... note of interrogation. I have seen both these things myself within the last few days. Nelson does die in the instant of victory; and a man named Williams does quite accidentally murder a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... than I? Through covetousness I caused Abhimanyu of tender years, that hero who resembled a lion born in the hills, to penetrate into the array that was protected by Drona himself. I am like one guilty of infanticide. Sinful as I am, I have not since then, been able to look Arjuna or the lotus-eyed Krishna in the face. I grieve also for Draupadi who is bereft of her five sons like the Earth bereft of her five mountains. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... with himself, and is honored by others, when he scalps a man of another tribe; and a Dyak cuts off the head of an unoffending person, and dries it as a trophy. The murder of infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world, and has been met with no reproach; but infanticide, especially of females, has been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not injurious. Suicide during former times was not generally considered as a crime, but rather, from the courage displayed, ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... rearing children, and the same conditions that contribute to this decadent ideal intensifies sex-hunger, and it is this dominating passion that tolerates and makes possible the most frightful crime of the age—infanticide. Greece and Rome paved the way for their ultimate annihilation when their beautiful women ceased to bear children and their men sought the companionship ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... which it appears possible they might themselves be the victims—such crimes, moreover, are the most dangerous for society—juries, on the contrary, are very indulgent in the case of breaches of the law whose motive is passion. They are rarely severe on infanticide by girl-mothers, or hard on the young woman who throws vitriol at the man who has seduced and deserted her, for the reason that they feel instinctively that society runs but slight danger from such crimes,[24] and that in a country in which ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... honesty, firmness under persecution, patience under worldly afflictions, and calmness and resignation at the approach of death—discouraged fornication, polygamy, adultery, divorces, suicide, and duels—checked infanticide, cruel sports, the violence of war, the vices of Kings and the assaults of princes—and rendered its sincere professors true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. It has improved the condition of females—reclaimed dissolute men—abolished human sacrifices—prevented ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... tribes of Cape York and Torres Strait. Mode of warfare illustrated. Their social condition. Treatment of the women. Prevalence of infanticide. Education of a child. Mode of scarifying the body. Initiation to manhood. Their canoes, weapons, and huts. Dress of the women. Food of the natives. Mode of fishing. Capture of the turtle and dugong described. Yams and mode of culture. Edible roots, fruits, etc. No recognised chieftainship. Laws ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... he seen any system which entailed in the end so much misery on both sexes, though more particularly on the women, as that system of closely tabooed marriage, founded upon a broad basis of prostitution and infanticide, which has reached its most appalling height of development in hypocritical and puritan England. The ghastly levity with which all Englishmen treated this most serious subject, and the fatal readiness with which even Frida herself seemed to acquiesce ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... killed. These tribes are cannibals, but they very seldom eat members of their own tribe (when immolated on religious principles, I suppose); they eat strangers only. The parents love their children, play with them, and pet them. Infanticide meets with common approval. Old people are very well treated, never put to death. No religion, no idols, only a fear of death. Polygamous marriage. quarrels arising within the tribe are settled by means of duels fought with wooden swords and shields. ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... many aborigines, as they have an approach to domestic life. They have one word for HOUSE, and another for HOME, and one word for husband approaches very nearly to house-band. Truth is of value in their eyes, and this in itself raises them above some peoples. Infanticide is unknown, and aged parents receive filial reverence, kindness, and support, while in their social and domestic relations there ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... that such a comparison can be instituted, let us see to what extent murder, in the widest sense of the word, including wilful murder, manslaughter, and infanticide, prevails in the various countries of Europe. In ordinary circumstances this task would be a laborious one, entailing a minute and careful examination of the criminal statistics and procedure of many nations. Fortunately, it has recently been accomplished ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... well aware that her mamma would at first have preferred to give Arabella to Mr. Gibson, had the choice in the matter been left to her. But now, when the thing had been settled before all the world, would not such treatment on a mother's part be equal to infanticide? And then as to Mr. Gibson himself! Camilla was not prone to think little of her own charms, but she had been unable not to perceive that her lover had become negligent in his personal attentions to her. An accepted lover, who deserves ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the house of one of Juno's priestesses. You are aware, Juno was called Lucina when she superintended the birth of children. But the lady who has welcomed us so kindly is far from assisting in the birth of children; her calling, on the contrary, is to prevent it; she practices infanticide every day, and it is by carrying on this business she has obtained the wealth she is making so great a display of. Every one of those window-shades, so nicely arranged to ward off the rays of the sun, cost one thousand dollars. ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... We can see how nature and necessity would institute a law requiring such conduct where a tribe must carry on almost incessant warfare and where the available food supplies would be enough for only the most efficient individuals. Infanticide also has been practised for reasons of biological utility, as among the Romans, who at first maintained their racial vigor by deliberately ordering the death of weak babes. But times have changed, and ethics has become very different ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... a wise-looking baby on her back, supported by a square piece of scarlet cloth embroidered in gold and blue silks. Not one of this river population has yet received Christianity. Very little indeed is known about them and their customs, but it is said that their morals are low, and that when infanticide was less discouraged than it is now, the river was the convenient grave of many of their newly-born female children. I spent most of one afternoon alone in one of these boats, diving into all canals and traversing water streets, hanging on to junks and "passage ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... checks to population among savage nations mentioned by Malthus—starvation, disease, war, infanticide, immorality, and infertility of the women—the last is that which he seems to think least important, and of doubtful efficacy; and yet it is the only one that seems to me capable of accounting for the state ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... pool it is said in olden times women convicted of witchcraft or infanticide used to ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... remember that our increase of rice is your increase of worship; if we get little Rice we worship little." Among lesser gods the 'Fountain-god' is especially worshipped, with a sheep or a hog as sacrifice. Female infanticide springs from a feeling that intermarriage in the same tribe is incest (this is the meaning of the incest-law above; it might be rendered 'to marry in ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... will all be hangit'"—a piece of advice which William took, and immediately "depairtit." John got a maid with child to him in Biggar, and seemingly deserted her; she was hanged on the Castle Hill for infanticide, June 1614; and Martin, elder in Dalkeith, eternally disgraced the name by signing witness in a witch trial, 1661. These are two of our black sheep.[2] Under the Restoration, one Stevenson was a bailie in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been limited to a single sect. It was more or less general during the ascendancy of asceticism. Tertullian says that the desire to enjoy the reputation of virginity led to much immorality, the effects of which were concealed by infanticide. The Council of Antioch lamented the practice of unmarried men and women sharing the same room. In 450, the Anchorites of Palestine are described as herding together without distinction of sex, and with no garments but a breech-clout.[133] The practice of priests travelling about with ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... Pariahs taught and honored,—of high and low castes indiscriminately mingled, an obscene herd, in schools and regiments,— of glorious institutions, old as Mount Meru, boldly overthrown,—of suttee suppressed, and infanticide abated,—of widows re-married, and the dowries of the brides of Brahmins limited,—of high-caste students handling dead bodies, and Soodra beggars drinking from Brahminical wells,—of the triple cord broken in twain, and Brahminee bulls slain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of artillery killed at Jena, by whom she had a son, Athanase. From 1816 she lived at No. 8 rue du Bercail in Alencon, where the benevolence of a distant relative, Mme. du Bousquier, put in her charge the treasury of a maternal society against infanticide, and brought her into contact, under peculiar circumstances, with the woman who afterwards became Mme. Theodore Gaillard. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... the most able men will have succeeded best in defending and providing for their wives and offspring. Beards, beardlessness, voice, beauty are all related to sexual charm, and have been selectively developed. Early man, less licentious, not practising infanticide, was in several respects better calculated to carry out sexual selection than he is now; and thus we find the various races of men fully differentiated at the earliest date of ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... knew virtually nothing about her reproductive nature and less about the consequences of her excessive child-bearing. It is true that, obeying the inner urge of their natures, some women revolted. They went even to the extreme of infanticide and abortion. Usually their revolts were not general enough. They fought as individuals, not as a mass. In the mass they sank back into blind and hopeless subjection. They went on breeding with staggering rapidity those numberless, ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... attention to the daily newspaper reports of divorce and breach-of-promise suits, of wife murders and "paramour" shootings, of abortions and infanticide, she told them that the prevalence of these evils showed clearly that men were incapable of coping with them successfully and needed the help of women. She cited statistics, revealing 20,000 prostitutes ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... the last hundred years more than one officer has believed that infanticide had been suppressed by his efforts, and yet the practice is by no means extinct. In the Agra Province the severely inquisitorial measures adopted in 1870, and rigorously enforced, have no doubt done much to break the custom, but, in the neighbouring province of Oudh, the practice continued to ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... closed his lips again. Martin Cunningham's large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare's face. Always a good word to say. They have no mercy on that here or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn't broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late. Found in the riverbed clutching rushes. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... huge basis of slavery and filled with social classes, the Christians proclaimed the equality of all men before God. To a nation in which family life had become corrupt, infidelity and divorce common, and infanticide a prevailing practice, the Christians proclaimed the sacredness of the marriage tie and the family life, and the exposure of infants as simple murder. In place of the subjection of the individual to the State, the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... than I. One of the inspectresses of the other quarter of Saint Lazaro, destined for those accused of other crimes, will interest you much more. She related to me the arrival, this morning, of a young girl, accused of infanticide. Never have I heard anything more touching. The father of the poor unfortunate has become insane from grief, on learning the shame of his child. It appears that nothing could be more frightful than the poverty of this family, who lived in a wretched garret ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... the degradation of women, infanticide, vice, famine, war, and disease are active instruments of decimation, it will be found that the average population, generally speaking, presses hard against the limits of ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... keeper, or from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs, as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions." We have but to add:—if only the coming forth from the creative hand of God, the creation ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... the youthful Schiller's poetry foretell that he will never be a great lyrist, but they promise well enough for the poetic tale. This promise is seen notably in the poem called 'The Infanticide'. It is a gruesome thing, with the pathos here and there overstrained, but what a power of vivid narration! What a gift for the portraiture of frenzied passion! For the rest, it should not go unrecorded that certain ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... go through the fire for me. I had a good deal of trouble the other day to prevent her strangling the false railway porter. I picked her out of three or four thousand convicts. She had been convicted of infanticide and arson. I would bet a hundred to one that, during the three years that she has been in my service, she has not even thought of robbing me of ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... God alone could take human life since God alone could give it. He urged that the sorrow of the young woman's present was as nothing in comparison to the loss of her soul should she be guilty of infanticide. It was the plea of a man who lived for the old ideals. His white hair, his gentle face, his pure disinterested spirit lent weight to his words. Then came the statement of the young Belgian woman. ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... not the extreme instances of the principle. We find particular usages, where custom has rendered lawful and blameless actions, that shock the plainest principles of right and wrong; the most notorious and universal is infanticide. ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... work of Christ are even to the unbeliever indisputable and historical. It expelled cruelty; it curbed passion; it branded suicide; it punished and repressed an execrable infanticide; it drove the shameless impurities of heathendom into a congenial darkness. There was hardly a class whose wrongs it did not remedy. It rescued the gladiator; it freed the slave; it protected the captive; it nursed the sick; it sheltered the orphan; it elevated the woman; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... and successful men, such for example, as all the bishops and archbishops, doing exactly as Dean Alford did, and did not this make their action right, no matter though it had been cannibalism or infanticide, or even habitual untruthfulness ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... sprang out when the door was opened, and her first movement disturbed the berth, which it unclasped and rolled together. Upon the little table stood the water cask, and near it lay the remains of hard black bread, farther off the Bible, and a few spiritual songs. In another cell sat an infanticide; I saw her only through the small glass of the door, she had heard our steps, and our talking, but she sat still, cowered together in the corner by the door, as if she wished to conceal herself as much as she could; her back was ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the means of subsistence, that is to say, the physical basis of existence, are assured, the law of solidarity takes precedence over the law of the struggle for existence, and when they are not assured, the contrary is true. Among savages, infanticide and parricide are not only permitted but are obligatory and sanctioned by religion if the tribe inhabits an island where food is scarce (for instance, in Polynesia), and they are immoral and criminal acts on continents ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... most formidable enemies of the Spaniards. Among the Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco, the missionaries discovered what they describe as "a carefully planned system of racial suicide, by the practice of infanticide by abortion, and other methods." Nor is infanticide the only mode in which a savage tribe commits suicide. A lavish use of the poison ordeal may be equally effective. Some time ago a small tribe named Uwet came down from the hill country, and settled on the left ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the sexes in Oceanica is due to the murder of female infants, too early child-bearing, overwork, privation, licentiousness, and the violence of the men.[1004] The imminence of famine dictates certain positive checks to population, among which infanticide and abortion are widespread in Oceanica. In some parts of the New Hebrides and the Solomon groups it is so habitual, that in some families all children are killed, and substitutes purchased at will.[1005] In the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... of women, who were then estimated at "seventy-five millions of minds," and whom the census shows to be now above 144,000,000, is thus described after an account of female infanticide:— ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... landing was that the crime of infanticide had not reached the islands of Keeling Cocos. "The children have all come to welcome you," explained Mr. Ross, as they mustered at the jetty by hundreds, of all ages and sizes. The people of this country were all rather shy, but, young or old, they never passed one or saw one passing their door without ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... When examined the following day he showed still further signs of malingering, the detailed account of which must, however, be omitted on account of lack of space, and yet this man was unquestionably insane; the act itself (the infanticide) was unquestionably an insane act, as will be shown later. We have mentioned the fact of his neurasthenic symptoms and how as a result of these he lost his position. The physical examination of the patient revealed certain neurological signs, such as exaggeration ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... portions of the body found. The question then arose whether the child was born alive; pieces of the lungs were placed in a basin of water, and the fact that they floated on its surface proved, beyond a doubt, that the child had breathed; the crime of infanticide was then charged upon the unhappy mother, who, appalled by this evidence of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... by the activities of the Imperial infanticide: "The hand that wrecks the cradle rules ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... guaranteed by the sixth amendment. And yet the women of this nation have never been allowed a jury of their peers—being tried in all cases by men, native and foreign, educated and ignorant, virtuous and vicious. Young girls have been arraigned in our courts for the crime of infanticide; tried, convicted, hanged—victims, perchance, of judge, jurors, advocates—while no woman's voice could be heard in their defense. And not only are women denied a jury of their peers, but in some cases, jury trial altogether. During the war, a woman was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... That infanticide "would be extremely increased if it were entirely forbidden to dispose of children by buying and selling;" parents deprived of the means of keeping off starvation by selling their children would ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... family group. Of the authority of father or mother over the children, there is not much trace in Australia except in the most youthful period of the pre-adult life. It is for example exceptional for a parent to correct a child. As to who decides in cases of infanticide we have unfortunately too little information to be able to generalise. Only in one important step—that of betrothal—have we anything like adequate information, and the interrelations between rule of descent and potestas are found to be in this case sufficiently clear, ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... the cruel abuse or murder of children by their parents, or by other adults of the tribe, is unknown; but in all the "civilized" races of men infanticide and child murder are frightfully common crimes. In 1921 a six-year-old Eskimo girl, whose father and mother had been murdered, was strangled by her relatives, because she had no visible means ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... indeed the earth itself, would have been overpopulated long ago if the increase of population had not been limited by certain factors, ranging from celibacy and late marriages to famines, diseases, wars, and infanticide. The truth of these facts is indisputable, but it is nevertheless a manifest breach of logic to argue from the fact of poverty, disease, and war having checked an increase of population, that therefore poverty, disease, and war are due to an increase of population. It ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... Mary's infatuation for the worthless Count that, under his influence, she stooped to various kinds of crime, from stealing the Tsarina's jewels to fill her lover's purse, to infanticide. The climax came when an important document was missing from the Tsar's cabinet. Suspicion pointed to Orloff as the thief; he was arrested, and, when brought into Peter's presence, not only confessed to the thefts and to his ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... that day six months. It was his opinion, he said, that the bastardy clause, which threw all the burden on the mother, on whom the odium rested already, thus held out a premium to immorality and an inducement to infanticide; and the clauses which effected the law of settlement would of themselves justify the house in throwing out the bill. His great objection, however, was to the board of commissioners. The board ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of sixty canoes was seen steering for Ulietea. The people on board them were Eareeoies, going to visit their brethren in the neighbouring islands. They formed a secret society, and seemed to have customs which they would not explain. Infanticide appeared to be almost universal among them, and they had many other practices of a most abominable character. Cava-drinking and acting plays seemed to be the principal amusements of the chiefs ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... Infanticide; Indifference to chastity; Jealous women; Female opposition to marriage; Capture not encouraged; Protection not gallantry; Risking life for a woman; War-paint; Mutilations; Signs of mourning; Colors ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... went through more than forty editions. The least delicate ears would be offended by an enumeration of all the horrors it contains. Incest, if not detected, was to cost five groats; and six, if it was known. There was a stated price for murder, infanticide, adultery, perjury, burglary, &c. Polygamy cost six ducats; sacrilege and perjury, nine; murder, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... the African mind, curious and yet general, in a land where population is the one want, and where issue is held the greatest blessing, is the imaginary necessity of limiting the family. Perhaps this form of infanticide is a policy derived from ancestors who found it necessary. In the kingdom of Apollonia (Guinea) the tenth child was always buried alive; never a Decimus was allowed to stand in the way of the nine seniors. The birth of twins is an evil portent to the Mpongwes, as it is ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Schiller's fiery youth formed itself for nobler grades—the school "of Storm and Pressure"—(Stuerm und Draeng—as the Germans have expressively described it.) If the reader will compare Schiller's poem of the 'Infanticide,' with the passages which represent a similar crime in the Medea, (and the author of 'Wallenstein' deserves comparison even with Euripides,) he will see the distinction between the art that seeks an elevated emotion, and the art which is satisfied ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... and education, so that I am inclined to think that that alone is obligatory which the positive laws and institutions of any society render binding." "So that" cried Harrington, "a man both may and ought to thieve in ancient Sparta, may expose his parents in Hindostan, and commit infanticide in China!" "It is a pity," archly whispered the Italian guest, "that this gentleman was not born ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... that all the remedies for pauperism and fecundity—sanctioned by universal practice, philosophy, political economy, and the latest reformers—may be summed up in the following list: masturbation, onanism, [19] sodomy, tribadie, polyandry, [20] prostitution, castration, continence, abortion, and infanticide. [21] ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... sea and carried the Bible to their shores! At the birth of a child, as Humboldt relates, a fire was kindled on the floor of the hut, and a vessel of water placed beside it; but not with the murderous intent of those savage tribes who practise infanticide, and, pressed by hunger, destroy their children to save their food. The infant here was first plunged into the water—buried, as we should say, in baptism; and afterwards swept rapidly and unharmed through the ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... Tacitus contains several remarks which, in their author's despite, reveal the moral superiority of the conquered over the conquerors. He notes their national tenacity, their ready charity, their freedom from infanticide, their conviction of the immortality of the soul, their purely spiritual and monotheistic cult. Tacitus certainly wrote after the works of Josephus had been published, so that the apology is not an answer to him; but his methods of misstatement ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich |
