At every turn of the newspaper page and in every newscast on TV there seems to be something about the suffering of little children. Whether they are refugees from war or ethnic cleansing, or floods or famine, the innocents of this world are subject of the most gross neglect and abuse.

Sadly it seems that while time has provided many exanples from which to learn from mistakes, man has ignored the inhumanity to his own flesh and blood and merely extended the stage upon which to play out their suffering....and suffer they did from the earliest times despite the best endeavours of the reformers to generate a social conscience and the practical ministrations of the kirk.

The practice of Christian charity in Scotland was promoted by St. Columba who in one of his Runes or mystic sayings told of Christ the stranger who came to test the charity and hospitality of man. There were also efforts from the earliest times to alleviate the poverty such as the Hospital of St. Mary of Lochleven, created by the Bishop of St Andrews in 1214. But the fundamental treatment of children, particularly of the peasant or working class, remained much the same despite christian charity until late in the 19th century.

We might like to believe that there were times of elegaic life, with sun filled days, and healthy young cherubs about the family homestead feeding the hens, playing with the new born lambs, gathering seeds, herbs, mushrooms, flowers and firewood in the hedgerows. But these same headgerows were also the only shelter for the homeless and the dispossessed, and the place where the body of the unwanted child might be cast for the scavenging fox or badger to devour.

Living in the crudest of sod homes, with little or no hygiene, fed on scraps and clad in rags a child was both a nuisance and a boon - a mouth to feed but a helper on the land - if they lived. In the absence of records we can only presume that life prior to the 15th century was exceedingly hard and such charity as there was came from the monasteries and the hopefully, benevolent, feudal rule of the laird.

In Scotland there was legislation in 1424 that sought to contain vagrants and made the distinction between able bodied beggars and those unable to earn a living. This was important because from it stemmed the principle that there was a need to support the old and the infirm.

The proposals of John Knox for the structure of society as he saw it in 1561, included the need for education which "by touching the soul of the child may altogether avoid the sin." His credo recognised the need to take care of the deserving poor - the sick, the elderly, the widow and the fatherless child (collectively called the "impotent poor ") who should be given reasonable help in their home parish. He also proposed what was a major stumbling block, that the income of the churches from tithes and rents should pay for these provisions.

The Kirk Session, by an enactment of 1597, became responsible for the administration of Poor Relief in rural parishes. The focus therefore was on a strict morality that meant for example, that an otherwise healthy orphan aged seven could be discharged from relief and made to go begging for his keep as he was deemed to be "able bodied."

There was as a consequence of this approach to vagrancy the class of licensed beggars who would carry a metal medallion authorising them to beg, thus they were legal and set apart from the itinerant scrounger and vagrant. Abandoned babies were a concern and there was great shame in having an illegitimate child. These instances caused the Kirk Session to go to great lengths to establish the father, encourage marriage and ensure the cost of rearing the child was not on the parish.