nt or exposure of the child in a manner likely to cause
_unnecessary_ suffering or injury to health, including injury to or loss
of sight, hearing or limb, or any organ of the body or any mental
derangement; and the act or omission must be wilful, i.e. deliberate and
intentional, and not merely accidental or inadvertent. The offence may
be punished either summarily or on indictment, and the offender may be
sent to penal servitude if it is shown that he was directly or
indirectly interested in any sum of money payable on the death of the
child, e.g. by having taken out a policy permitted under the Friendly
Societies Acts. A parent or other person legally liable to maintain a
child or young person will be deemed to have "neglected" him by failure
to provide adequate food, clothing, medical aid, or lodging, or if in
the event of inability to provide such food, &c., by failure to take
steps to procure the same under acts relating to the relief of the poor.

These statutes overlap the common law and the statutes already
mentioned. Their real efficacy lies in the main in the provisions which
facilitate the taking of evidence of young children, in permitting poor
law authorities to prosecute at the expense of the rates, and in
permitting a constable on arresting the offender to take the child away
from the accused, and the court of trial on conviction to transfer the
custody of the child from the offender to some fit and willing person,
including any society or body corporate established for the reception of
poor children or for the prevention of cruelty to children. The
provisions of the acts as to procedure and custody extend not only to
the offence of cruelty but also to all offences involving bodily injury
to a child under sixteen, such as abandonment, assault, kidnapping and
illegally engaging a child in a dangerous public performance. The act
of 1908 also makes an endeavour to check the heavy mortality of infants
through "overlaying,"[1] enacting that where it is proved that the death
of an infant under three years of age was caused by suffocation whilst
the infant was in bed with some other person over the age of sixteen,
and that that person was at the time of going to bed under the influence
of drink, that other person shall be deemed to have neglected the child
in manner likely to cause injury to its health, as mentioned above. The
acts have been utilized with great zeal and on the whole with much
discretion by variou