Chap. 121.—An ACT to require the licensing and adequate inspection and
supervision of persons and corporations conducting maternity hospitals
and lying-in asylums, and of those engaged in placing destitute children
in family homes.

Approved March 10, 1910.

1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virgini,a That any per-
son or corporation, not being superintendent of the poor, that erects,
conducts, establishes or maintains in this State a maternity hospital or
lying-in asylum, where females may be received, cared for or treated
during pregnancy or during or after delivery, or receives, boards or
keeps any children, not relatives, under five years of age, without legal
commitment, shall, on and after July first, nineteen hundred and ten,
obtain, on the recommendation of the State board of charities and cor-
rections, a license to conduct said business from the local board of health
of the city or county in which said business is carried on.

2. Any person or corporation who shall place out a destitute child
shall keep a record of the color, full name and actual or apparent age of
such child, the names and residence of its parents so far as can be
ascertained, and the name and residence of the person or persons with
whom such child is placed. If such person or corporation shal] subse-
quently remove such child from the custody of the person or persons with
whom such child was placed, the fact of such removal and the disposition
made of such child shall be entered upon such record. A copy of such
record shall be sent to and filed in the office of the State board of chari-
ties and corrections within ten days.

3. The State board of charities and corrections, through any member,
officer, or duly authorized inspector of the said board, is hereby author-
ized to visit, in its discretion, any child under the age of sixteen years,
not legally adopted, placed out in this State.

The State board of charities and corrections is directed to perform
the following additional duties:

1. To visit delinquent minors before they are committed to the re-
formatories.

2. To visit paroled prisoners.
3. To visit paroled inmates of the Laurel Industrial School.

4. To visit paroled inmates of the Negro Reformatory.

5. To secure homes in different parts of the State for delinquents
and others under State control.

4. Any person or corporation engaged in the work of placing chil-
dren in family homes is hereby required to furnish to the State board of
charities and corrections or its committee, secretary, assistant secretary,
or other agents of the board, full and free access to all departments of its
work and to all its records for the purpose of this act.

5. Whenever the State board of charities and corrections shall decide
by the affirmative vote of the majority of its members that any person or
corporation has placed out children for the purpose of gain, or without
due inquiry as to the character and reputation of the persons with whom
such children are placed, and with the result that such children are sub-
jected to cruel or improper treatment, or neglected or subjected to im-
moral influences, the State board of charities and corrections shall report
the same to the governor and to the judge of the circuit or corporation
court in whose jurisdiction the said child has been placed.

6. Any person or corporation who shall willfully violate any of the
provisions of this act shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon con-
viction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not less than twenty-five
dollars nor more than one hundred dollars for each offense.

7. All acts and parts of acts inconsistent with the provisions of this
act are hereby repealed.

8. A public emergency demanding the same on account of the neces-
sity existing in regard to the proper care of destitute children, this act
shall be in force from its passage.