ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1870, under stimulus from the build-up of the Margaret Waters affair, an Infant Life Protection Society was formed, combining leading lights of the Harveian Society, such as Hart and Curgenven, with non-medical activists like the Rev. Oscar Thorpe, and the invaluable William Thomas Charley, a barrister and MP for Salford since 1868, who was to spearhead the campaign for legislation in the House of Commons. Their prospectus listed the Society’s objectives under four heads:
the registration of foster-nurses;
the formation of local committees to select and supervise these nurses;
the boarding-out of children from workhouses;
amendments to the laws of bastardy, registration of births and deaths and the law of evidence in the case of infanticide.
