The pernicious practice of killing infants to collect the insurance on their lives is vividly described in an editorial in The Dublin Medical Press of December 4, 1844.1 The editorials published in this Journal were especially noted for their fervor to correct evil medical practices and also for their biting political satire, usually directed against England. The juxtaposition of the former and latter will be apparent in the editorial excerpts below:
In the last [London] Medical Gazette, we have again attention drawn to the horrible, the atrocious practice of destroying children for the purpose of obtaining money insured on their lives, or rather on their deaths. Our readers will scarcely believe us when we say it, but it seems there can be now no more doubt on the subject than there is that people were strangled by BURKE and HARE for the sake of their bodies to be sold for dissection. The plan is, to subscribe in the child's name to what is called a "burial club," a kind of "little go" insurance office, where for a penny a week a sum varying from £2 to £10is allowed on the child's death, and the same child may be entered into many clubs; so that the insurer or parent may receive as much as £5, £10, or £15 on the death of the insured infant, while the expense of interment is only about £3.A sum, as the writer says, "larger than the insurer in most cases ever previously possessd . . .
Louis I. Dublin, Medical Statistician
