A year or so ago a most atrocious child murder attracted towards this ugly subject the bull’s-eye beams of the press, and for some time it was held up and exhibited in all its nauseating nakedness. It may be safely asserted that during the protracted trial of the child murderess, Mrs. Winser, there was not one horrified father or mother in England who did not in terms of severest indignation express his or her opinion of how abominable it was that such scandalous traffic in baby flesh and blood should, through the law’s inefficiency, be rendered possible. But it was only while we, following the revolting revelations, were subject to a succession of shocks and kept in pain, that we were thus virtuous. It was only while our tender feelings were suffering excruciation from the harrowing story of baby torture that we shook in wrath against the torturer. Considering what our sufferings were (and from the manner of our crying out they must have been truly awful) we recovered with a speed little short of miraculous. Barely was the trial of the murderess concluded and the court cleared, than our fierce indignation subsided from its bubbling and boiling, and quickly settled down to calm and ordinary temperature. Nay it is hardly too much to say that our over-wrought sympathies as regards baby neglect and murder fell so cold and flat that little short of a second edition of Herod’s massacre might be required to raise them again.
This is the unhappy fate that attends nearly all our great social grievances. They are overlooked or shyly glanced at and kicked aside for years and years, when suddenly a stray spark ignites their smouldering heaps, and the eager town cooks a splendid supper of horrors at the gaudy conflagration; but having supped full, there ensues a speedy distaste for flame and smoke, and in his heart every one is chiefly anxious that the fire may burn itself out, or that some kind hand will smother it. “We have had enough of it.” That is the phrase. The only interest we ever had in it, which was nothing better than a selfish and theatrical interest, is exhausted. We enjoyed the bonfire amazingly, but we have no idea of tucking back our coat-sleeves and handling a shovel or a pick to explore the unsavoury depth and origin of the flareup, and dig and dam to guard against a repetition of it. It is sufficient for us that we have endured without flinching the sensational horrors dragged to light; let those who dragged them forth bury them again; or kill them; or be killed by them. We have had enough of them.