The Child in Human Progress

The place of the child in law, medicine and custom from antiquity to the twentieth century: exposure, apprenticeship, the factory acts, the invention of childhood as a protected state. George Henry Payne was a journalist and wrote this in 1916 in support of child-labour legislation. The historical chapters are the argument, and they are documented. Twenty-eight plates after Piranesi, Bierstadt, Whistler and others run from prison vaults to Florida moss, matching the book's sweep from confinement to open air.