Infanticide

Titled INFANTICIDE in block capitals beneath the image, this nocturnal graveyard scene frames a social-reform argument in religious allegory. A luminous, bearded Christ figure stands at center, arms extended, gathering the souls of murdered infants — the theological reference explicit in the arch inscription: "Suffer Little Children to Come unto Me." Angels flank him, each cradling a dead baby. Tombstone inscriptions — one legible as "Infant Found Dead" — document real crime categories: abandoned newborns, back-alley killings. A infant lies exposed on the ground. The composition accuses Victorian urban society, particularly the conditions driving unwed mothers to infanticide, with sentimental religiosity typical of Harper's reform campaigns of the 1860s. No ethnic caricature is present; the victims and mourning figures are rendered uniformly as white, middle-class idealized types, reflecting the magazine's assumption that its subject — and audience — was exclusively Anglo-American.