But there are other kinds of dangers which more immediately affect the body, and are the cause of more accidents than people in general imagine.

I shall here notice some of the most prominent, and hope to be able to convince the unprejudiced mind, that it would be a charity to take charge of the infant poor, even leaving the idea of their learning any thing good at school entirely out of the question; and surely those persons, who disapprove of educating the poor at all, will see the propriety of keeping, if possible, their children safe from accidents, and preserving the lives of many little ones, who would otherwise be lost to their country, from their falling a prey to surrounding dangers.
It is well known that many poor people are obliged to live in garrets, three or four stories high, with a family of six or seven children; and it will not appear improbable that, when the children are left by themselves, they should frequently meet with accidents by tumbling down stairs; some breaking their backs, others their legs or arms; and to this cause alone, perhaps, may be traced a vast number of the cripples that daily appear as mendicants in our streets.

When the poor parents return from their daily labour, they sometimes have the mortification of finding that one, or probably two, of their children, are gone to an hospital; which of course makes them unhappy, and unfits them for going through their daily labour.

This dead weight, which is continually on the minds of parents, is frequently the cause of their being unable to please their employers, and the consequence sometimes is, they are thrown out of work altogether; whereas, if they were certain that their children were taken care of, they would proceed with their daily labour cheerfully, and be enabled to give more satisfaction to their employers than they otherwise can do.
Other parents I have known, who, when obliged to go out, have locked their children in a room to prevent them from getting into the street, or falling down stairs, and who have taken every precaution, as they imagined, to protect their children; but the little creatures, perhaps, after fretting and crying for hours at being thus confined, have ventured to get up to the window, in order to see what was passing in the street, when one, over-reaching itself, has fallen out and been killed on the spot.

A gentleman said, at a public meeting at Exeter, when referring to this subject, "I have myself, twice in my life, nearly occasioned the death of children.