_Objections to the Care of Foundlings._--In the literature of our subject we find great diversity of opinion regarding the care of foundlings, and it is therefore necessary that we should examine the objections that have been made to institutions for this purpose. A careful study of the matter will show that the criticisms apply not to the general principle on which foundling hospitals are instituted, but to a particular form of this institution. It is well known that the foundling hospitals of former days received children by means of a turn-table, through an aperture in the wall (so that the person who brought the child might remain entirely unknown), that the children grew to maturity in such institutions, that the infants were artificially fed, that the most elementary hygienic precautions were neglected in these buildings, &c. &c. It is natural that such foundling hospitals as these should be attacked by many writers as harmful in the highest degree. But these writers completely ignore the fact that the defects were not characteristic of all foundling hospitals, and that therefore they did not attach to the institutions as such, but were the outcome simply of defective organisation; they also fail to observe that the care of foundlings may be undertaken without instituting foundling hospitals. The weightiest of all the objections to foundling hospitals is that the cost of maintenance of these institutions is disproportionate to any good they may effect, inasmuch as the value to society of those foundlings who attain maturity is no proper equivalent for the pains expended in attaining this result. In view of the _lex minimi_, to which reference was made at the beginning of this chapter, has such an institution any right to exist?
The turn-table for the reception of children was instituted for two reasons. In the first place, the whole act of “exposing” a child was to be discreetly veiled from the public eye; and, in the second place, no excuse was to be left open for the crime of infanticide. It is true that in our own day there are many reasons to be alleged against retaining the turn-table; it provides a means whereby the parents of children born in lawful wedlock can evade their natural obligations, and impose these upon society at large; it involves a legal contradiction, inasmuch as it tacitly permits, and even formally invites, parents to expose their children, although this is a criminal offence; finally, it leads to the overcrowding of the foundling hospitals. In short, all the objections to the institution of the turn-table are perfectly sound; but it would be altogether unwarrantable to infer from this that foundling hospitals themselves are unnecessary and even harmful. Foundling hospitals can exist without a turn-table (not a single modern foundling hospital contains any such thing); the defects of foundling hospitals with turn-tables are not defects of foundling hospitals as such, but defects attaching to the institution of the turn-table.