Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 27 - CHI-ELD.pdf/33

 geography]

C H.

servants (24 and 25 Yict. c. 100, § 26; 38 and 39 Yict. c. 86, § 6); and by the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1868, parents were rendered summarily punishable who wilfully neglected to provide adequate food, clothing, medical aid, or lodging for their children under 14 in their custody, whereby the health of the child was or was likely to be seriously injured. This enactment made no express exception in favour of parents who had not sufficient means to do their duty without resort to the poor law, and was construed as imposing criminal liability on parents whose peculiar religious tenets caused them advisedly to refrain from calling in a doctor to a sick child. But the chief gain in the direction of adequate protection of children prior to 1889 lay less in positive legal enactment on the subject than in the institution of an effective system of police, whereby it became possible to discover and repress cruelty punishable under the ordinary law. It is quite inaccurate to say that children had very few rights in England, or that animals were better protected. But before the constitution of the present police force, and in the absence of any proper system of public prosecution, it is undeniable that numberless cases of neglect and ill-treatment went unpunished and were treated as nobody’s business. In 1889 a special statute was passed to prevent cruelty to children, which was superseded in 1894 by the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, which now regulates the matter and specifically deals with the offence of “ cruelty ” to children. This offence can only be committed by a person over 16 in respect of a child under 16 of whom he has “ custody,” “ charge,” or “ care.” The Act presumes that a child is in the custody of its parents, step-parents, or a person cohabiting with its parent, or of its guardians; that it is in the charge of a person to whom the parent has committed such charge (e.g., a schoolmaster), and that it is in the care of a person who has actual possession or control of it. Cruelty is defined as consisting in assault, ill-treatment (falling short of actual assault), neglect, or abandonment of the child in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health, including injury to or loss of sight, hearing, or limb, or any organ of the body or any mental derangement; and the act or omission must be wilful, i.e., deliberate and intentional, and not merely accidental or inadvertent. Though medical aid is not specified, it has been decided that for a member of the sect of Peculiar People not to call in a doctor may amount to an offence under the Act. The offence may be punished either summarily or on indictment, and the offender may be sent to penal servitude if it is shown that he was pecuniarily interested in the death of the child, e.g., by having taken out one of these

L E

7

pernicious policies permitted under the Friendly Societies Acts. By § 23 (2) parents may be guilty of cruelty by neglect if they fail to apply for poor relief for their children in the event of their inability otherwise to maintain them. This enactment overlaps the common law and the statutes already mentioned. Its real efficacy lies in the main in the provisions which facilitate the taking of evidence of young children, in permitting boards of guardians to prosecute at the expense of the rates, and in permitting a constable on arresting the offender to take the child away from the accused, and the court of trial on conviction to transfer the custody of the child from the offender to some fit and willing person. The Act has been utilized with great zeal and on the whole with much discretion by various philanthropic societies, whose members make it their business to discover the ill-treated and neglected children of all classes in society. Besides the provisions above indicated directly dealing ■with cruelty to children, there was during Queen Yictoria’s reign much legislation in the interests of children, requiring their parents to procure their elementary education, forbidding the employment of children under 10 in business or trade for gain (except in the case of children licensed by justices to perform in public), and restricting the employment of children of school age unless they have attained a certain standard of proficiency, which in practice prevents children under 13 from being put to work (the Elementary Education Act, 1876). The labour of boys under 12 underground in mines is forbidden. And where children may legally be employed in factories or shops limitations are imposed with respect to their hours of labour and other matters. The special legislation against the employment of children in agricultural gangs and in sweeping chimneys is virtually obsolete, owing to changes in the conditions of these occupations and the subsequent enactments above indicated. The Act of 1894 also prohibits custodians, &c., of children from taking them, or letting them be, in the street to beg or receive alms, or to sing, play, perform, or sell in the street or in public-houses between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. These provisions apply to boys under 14 and girls under 16. There are further prohibitions (1) on allowing children under 11 to perform, &c., for gain in public-houses or places of public amusement at any hour without a license from a justice, which is granted only as to children over 7 and under stringent conditions; (2) on allowing children under 16 to be trained as acrobats or for any dangerous performance except by their parents or legal guardians. (w. F. c.)

CHILE. Geography and Statistics.—Chile, or Chili, extends along the S.W. coast of South America, from the Peruvian frontier at 17° 57' S. lat. to Cape Horn at 55° 59' S. lat.; total area about 266,460 square miles. After controversies extending over many years, the boundaries have within recent years settled by treaties °un ar es. been con(quqeq wjth Bolivia, Peru, and the Argentine Bepublic. Of Northern Chile, the portion extending from 23° S. lat. to the river Loa, comprising the province of Antofagasta, formerly belonged to Bolivia; it was occupied by Chile in accordance with the truce agreement of 4th April 1884, and was definitely ceded by Bolivia by treaty of 1st May 1896. The province of Tarapacfi, extending from the river Loa northwards to the river Camarones, 19° 12' S. lat., was formerly Peruvian. It

was occupied by Chile in 1880, and was definitely relinquished by Peru by agreement of 28th March 1884. Between the Camarones and the Sama rivers lies the province of Tacna, consisting of the departments of Tacna and Arica. Under the treaty of 20th October 1883 this province was to be held by Chile for ten years, after which a popular vote was to decide whether it should be definitely incorporated Avith Chile or should revert to Peru, the country retaining it to pay a sum of 10,000,000 pesos to the other. In consequence of disagreement as to the manner of voting and the persons entitled to vote, no action was taken at the end of the ten years’ term; and a convention, signed at Santiago on 16th April 1898, for the taking of the plebiscite was in 1900 rejected by the Chilian Congress.