The Fertility of the Unfit Part 11

3. Epilepsy.

4. Inebrity.

5. Confirmed Pauperism.

With the exception of the very young and the very old, all members of society, who have to be supported by others, const.i.tute the unfit. Many are supported by friends and relatives, but year by year, it is becoming more noticeable, that the moral guardians of the unfit are s.h.i.+rking their responsibility and handing their defective relatives over to the State and demanding their gratuitous support as a right.

Dr. MacGregor, Inspector of Asylums and Hospitals, N.Z., in his report for 1898, p. 5, says:--

"As if the State had a vested interest in the degradation of its people, I find that they, as fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, are responding to our efforts to sap their self-respect by doing their utmost to throw the cost of maintaining their relatives on the ratepayers. I constantly hear the plea urged that as taxpayers and old colonists they have a right to send their relatives to State inst.i.tutions."

Our social conditions manufacture defectives, and foster their fertility. The strain and stress of modern compet.i.tion excite an anxiety and nervous tension under which many break down, and much of the insanity that exists to-day is attributable to nervous strain in the struggle of life.

The strong attractive force of one social stratum upon the next below, excites in the latter a nervous tension which predisposes to a breakdown in the face of some adversity.

The pa.s.sion for ease and luxury, and the dread of poverty tend to overstrain the nervous system, and numberless neurotic defectives fall back upon society, and give themselves up to the propagation of their kind.

Our charitable aid inst.i.tutions tend largely to swell the numbers of the great unfit.

Dr. MacGregor in one of his valuable and forcible reports upon our charitable aid inst.i.tutions, says:--

"Our lavish and indiscriminate outdoor relief, whose evils I am tired of recapitulating,--our shameless abuse of the hospital system,--the crowding of our asylums by people in their dotage, kept there because there is no suitable place to send them to, and many of them sent by friends anxious only to be relieved of the duty of supporting and caring for them,--what is it all coming to?"...

"The practical outcome of our overlooking the continued acc.u.mulation of degenerates among our people by our fostering of all kinds of weakness will necessarily be, if it continues, that society will itself degenerate. Taxation will increase by leaps and bounds, and the industrious and self-respecting citizens will rebel, especially if taxation is expected to meet all the demands of a legislature that puts our humanitarian idea of justice in the place of charity."

It has already been urged that there is no evidence of any physiological defect in any cla.s.s of society interfering with fertility. s.e.xual inhibition, from prudential motives is the real cause in New Zealand.

s.e.xual inhibition implies well-developed self-control, the very force in which almost all defectives are most deficient, and the absence of which makes them criminals, drunkards and paupers. In almost all defectives too, prudence is conspicuous by its absence.

The only moral force we know of, that has curtailed, or will curtail, the family within the limits of comfortable subsistence, is s.e.xual inhibition with prudence. But this force is absolutely impossible amongst defectives.

It is not only a powerful force among the normal, but with us to-day it is powerfully operative. Amongst the defectives it does not and cannot exist.

Apart from observation and statistics, therefore, it can be shown that the birth-rate amongst the unfit is undisturbed. They marry and are given in marriage, free from all restraint save that of environment, and worst of all they propagate their kind.

Dr. Clouston says (Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases, 4th Ed., p.

330) "As we watch children grow up we see that some have the sense of right and wrong, the conscience, developed much sooner and much stronger than others; just as some have their eye teeth much sooner than others; and looking at adults, we see that some never have much of this sense developed at all. This is notoriously the case in some of those whose ancestors for several generations have been criminals, insane or drunkards." Again (p. 331) "We know that some of the children of many generations of thieves take to stealing, as a young wild duck among tame ones takes to hiding in holes, and that the children of savage races cannot copy at once our ethics nor our power of controlling our actions.

It seems to take many generations to redevelop an atrophied conscience.

There is no doubt that an organic lawlessness is transmitted hereditarily."

Mr. W. Bevan Lewis says (A text-book of Mental Disease, p. 203) "It is also notable, that in a large proportion of cases, we find the history of ancestral insanity attached to the grand-parents, or the collateral line of uncles and aunts, significant of a more remote origin for the neurosis. The actual proportion of cases revealing strongly-marked hereditary features (often involving several members of the subject's ancestry), amounts to 36 per cent;" while Mr. Briscoe declares (Journal of Mental Science, Oct. 1896) that 90% of the insane have a heredity of insanity.

The following table from Dr. MacGregor's reports gives an account of two families in New Zealand and their Asylum history.

Cost per head.

Number. Name. Rate 1 Total Per week. Cost.

Family of B (Brothers). s. d. s. d.

I. A.B. 80 0 0 II. C.B. 274 4 0 III. D.B. 230 2 0 IV. E.B. 8 2 0 V. F.B. 8 2 0 --------- 600 12 0

Family of C.

I. A.C. (wife) 472 2 0 II. B.C. (husband of A.C.) 418 0 0 III. D.C. (daughter of A.C.) 834 2 0 IV. E.C. (ditto) 1,318 2 0 V. F.C. (illegitimate daughter of E.C.) 169 8 0 VI. G.C. (husband of F.C.

but no blood relation) 5 2 0 ------------ 3,216 16 0 ------------ 3,817 8 0

In his report for 1897, the same writer says:--"I know of a 'defective'

half-imbecile girl, who has had already five illegitimate children by different fathers, all of whom are now being supported by the Charitable Aid Board, while, of course, the mother is maintained, and encouraged to propagate more;" while in an appendix to a pamphlet on "Some Aspects of the Charitable Aid question," he gives the following history of two defective cases:--

J.A. admitted to Lunatic Asylum, May, 1897.

Three medical men report on her as follows:--"She appears imbecile, but without delusions: natural imbecility, stupid, idiotic expression; baby one month old; age between 30 and 40. Suffering from dementia; lactational."

J.A., husband aged 69; labourer, average earnings 15s. week. He wishes to get admission into some Old Man's Home.

This couple have six children--four girls and one boy. A. aged 12; B.

10; C. 9; D. (boy) 5; and E. 3 years. These children are all in the Industrial School. There is also one baby, born April, 1897; has been put out to nurse by the County Council.

The sister of Mrs. J.A. in Salvation Army Home. There are two brothers, whereabouts not known. The police report on this case that the whole of the relatives of Mrs. J.A. were partly imbecile, always in a helpless condition and state of dest.i.tution, and have been for years supported partly by charity of neighbours and help from the Charitable Aid Boards.

J.J., the father, now dead, reported as a "lazy, drunken fellow."

A.J., the mother, "a drunken prost.i.tute" (police report 1886). "Makes a precarious living at nursing" (police report 1897); in dest.i.tute circ.u.mstances, living with a man known as a thief.

This couple had seven children--six boys and one girl:--

A., committed to Industrial School, 1877; discharged from there 1890; aged 18. Sentenced in 1896 to three years for burglary.

B., committed to Industrial school for larceny in 1883; discharged from there, 1887; aged 17.

C., committed to Industrial School for breaking into and stealing, 1886; aged 16; discharged, 1890.

D., aged 14; E. 9; and F., 7 years; were sent to Industrial School in 1891 by the Charitable Aid Board, the father being dead and the mother in gaol.

D. was discharged last year, aged 18. F. is in hospital for removal of nasal growth, and defective eyesight. E. was admitted to a lunatic Asylum, September, 1897. Four medical men report on him as follows:--"A case of satyriasis from congenital defect." "His depraved habits result of bad bringing up by his mother." "Probably hereditary." "A case of moral depravity a.s.sociated with mental deficiency, and cretinism." The youngest of the family, a girl aged 11, is said to be dependent on her mother.

With regard to the hereditary nature of Insanity, John Charles Bucknill and Daniel Hack Tuke, M.D.'s, in "A Manual of Psychological Medicine,"

4th Ed., p. 65, says:--

"Certainly, if in ever so small degree there is to be a stamping out of insanity, we must act on the principle, better let the individual suffer than run the risk of bequeathing a legacy of insanity to the next generation.... With regard to males, marriage would no doubt be highly beneficial in many instances, _and if the risk of progeny is not run, may well be encouraged_."

Esquirol, quoted by Bucknill and Tuke, p. 58, says:--"Of all diseases Insanity is the most hereditary."

Bucknill and Tuke, p. 647, say:--

"Of marriage it may be said that the celibacy of the insane is the prophylaxis of Insanity in the race, and although a well chosen mate and a happy marriage may sometimes postpone or even prevent the development of insanity in the individual, still no medical man, having regard to the health of the community, or even of that of the family, can possibly feel himself justified in recommending the marriage of any person of either s.e.x in whom the insane diathesis is well marked."

Again (pp. 647 and 648) "It is thus that the seeds of mental diseases and of moral evils are sown broadcast through the land; and other new defects and diseases are multiplied and varied with imbecilities, and idiocies, and suicidal and other propensities and dispositions, leading to all manner of vice and crime. The marriage of hereditary lunatics is a veritable Pandora's box of physical and moral evil."

The least fit, then, are the most fertile, and the most fertile are subject to the common law of heredity, and the defects are transmitted to their offspring, often accentuated by the intermarriage which their circ.u.mstances favour or even necessitate.