ABSTRACT
The development of the acrobat’s body became stunted by this training; a “number must become diseased or crippled under the process.” The major problem acrobat children posed for evangelicals was that they strayed both from respectable codes of behavior and, more importantly, from religion. Argument overlooked by the peers was that the trade encouraged performers’ self-sufficiency: “[The peers] may have a feeling for the little ones,” said one acrobat on the eve of the bill’s passage, but the performers’ honest living “saves them from crime or the workhouse.” The child acrobat continued to draw the attention of the public and legislators alike, especially since, in the words of Shaftesbury in 1883, the provisions of the act were being “altogether ignored” and “at this time the evil prevailed to a greater extent than it ever did before.”.
