[358]. At one of these schools, the mentally defective children were having their dinner in one room, the physically defective in an adjoining room. All the children stay for the meal. The headmistress supervised, assisted by a teacher for the mentally defective, and the school nurse for the physically defective children. Tablecloths were provided for the latter, but not for the former. The dinner was cooked by the children who had been attending the cookery class in the morning; the children laid the tables, and monitors helped to serve the food.
[359]. In East Sussex, for instance, where particulars were supplied by the teachers as to the meals brought by eleven of the children, it was found that the food was totally inadequate, in most cases consisting of bread and butter, or cake, with perhaps a small piece of cheese or an apple. Two children of five years old, who had to walk two miles to school, brought, one of them bread and butter only, the other cake. Three children, who had to walk three and a half miles, brought either cake or only bread. ("The Diet of Elementary School Children in Country Districts," by Dr. George Finch, in Rearing an Imperial Race, edited by C. E. Hecht, 1913, p. 29.) In a Bedfordshire school out of 62 children who brought their dinner to school with them, one had an apple tart, three had bread and cheese, while 58 had "bread with a thin layer of butter or lard on it, or else bread and jam, or bread and syrup. This meal was washed down with water, as nothing hot was obtainable." ("How the Family of the Agricultural Labourer Lives," by Ronald T. Herdman, reprinted in Rearing an Imperial Race, p. 341.)
[360]. Thus at Brynconin, where 85 children are supplied daily with cocoa for a weekly charge of 1d., the week's expenditure on cocoa, sugar and milk amounts to 6s. 6d., and the children's payments to 6s. 10d. (Report of the School Medical Officer for Pembrokeshire for 1912, p. 14.) See also Reports of the School Medical Officer for Hampshire (1910), p. 25; for the Isle of Ely (1910), p. 18; for Gloucestershire (1910), p. 53; for East Suffolk (1910), p. 19; for West Sussex (1911), p. 10. Sometimes the cocoa is provided free through the generosity of the teachers. (See Report of Monmouthshire Education Committee on the Medical Inspection Department for 1910, p. 9.)
[361]. Report of the School Medical Officer for Hampshire for 1910, p. 25.
[362]. For sample menus, see Appendix [I]., p. [236].
[363]. For instance, the cost of the food for the dinners for twelve weeks amounted to £7 9s. 8d., and the children's payments to £7 9s. 5d. On cold snowy mornings hot cocoa is provided before morning school for all the children. The cost of this is, we gather, borne entirely by the headmaster and his wife.
[364]. Yorkshire Post, July 9, 1908.
[365]. "The Diet of Elementary School Children in Country Districts," by Dr. George Finch, in Rearing an Imperial Race, edited by C. E. Hecht, 1913, p. 109.
[366]. Report of the School Medical Officer for Hampshire, 1910, p. 24.