Great Britain: Spare the Rod

The Dickensian world of tiny flower girls freezing on wintry corners at midnight and brutalized orphans refused a second helping of porridge came startlingly alive last week in London. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children published a book entitled This Is Your Child, whose 200-odd pages are filled with stories and photographs of starved, burned and appallingly neglected children. One father heated leather thongs in a fire and then lashed his child until the skin lifted from its back. A mother kept her illegitimate son in a chicken...