APPENDIX B
LIST OF THIRTY-NINE FAMILIES WITH THREE OR MORE CHILDREN, OUTSIDE THE INVESTIGATION, FROM WHICH TABLE OF COMPARISON IS COMPILED
CHAPTER IV
FURNITURE—SLEEPING ACCOMMODATION—EQUIPMENT FOR COOKING AND BATHING
It is difficult to say whether more furniture or less furniture would be the better plan in a home consisting of three rooms. Supposing the family to consist of eight persons, most people would be inclined to prescribe four beds. As a matter of fact, there will probably be two. In a double bed in one room will sleep father, mother, baby, and ex-baby, while in another bed in another room will sleep the four elder children. Sometimes the lodger granny will take a child into her bed, or the lodger uncle will take a boy into his; but the four in a bed arrangement is common enough to need attention. It must be remembered again that these people are respectable, hard-working, sober, and serious. They keep their jobs, and they stay on in the same rooms. They are not slum people. They pay their rent with wonderful regularity, and are trusted by the landlord when for any reason they are obliged to hold it back. But, all the same, they have to sleep four in a bed, and suffer the consequences. It is not an elastic arrangement; in case of illness it goes on just the same. When a child has a sore throat or a rash it sleeps with the others as usual. By the time a medical authority has pronounced the illness to be diphtheria or scarlet fever, and the child is taken away, perhaps another child is infected. Measles and whooping-cough just go round the bed as a matter of course. When a new baby is born, the mother does not get her bed to herself. There is nowhere for the others to go, so they sleep in their accustomed places. This is not a fact which obtrudes itself on the notice of a visitor as a rule. She arrives to find the mother and child alone in the bed, with the exception, perhaps, of a two-year-old having its daily nap at the foot. But in a case where there was but one room, and where the man was a night-worker, the visitor of the sick woman found him asleep beside her. This discovery led to questions being put to the other women, who explained at once that of course their husbands and children sleep with them at night. Where else is there for the unfortunate people to sleep? Moreover, the husband is probably needed to act as monthly nurse at night for the first week. It is an arrangement which does not allow of real rest for any of them, but it has to be put up with.
The rooms are small, and herein lies the open-window difficulty far more than in the ignorance of the women. Poor people dread cold. Their one idea in clothing their children is to keep them warm. To this end they put on petticoat over ragged petticoat till the children are fettered by the number of garments. It is not the best method, but it is the best method they know of. The best, of course, would be so to feed the children that their bodies would generate enough heat to keep them warm from within without unnecessary clothing. A second-best method might be to clothe the badly-nourished bodies warmly and lightly from without. The best they can do is to load the children with any kind of clothing they can procure, be it light and warm or cold and heavy. The best is too expensive; the second-best is too expensive; and so they have recourse to the third. It is all they can do with the means at their disposal. So with sleeping and fresh air. The best arrangement is a large room, a bed to oneself, plenty of bedclothes, and an open window. The second-best is a small room, a bed for every two persons, plenty of bedclothes, and an open window. The only arrangement actually possible is a tiny room, one bed for four people, one blanket or two very thin ones, with the bed close under the window. In wet or very cold weather the four people in the bed sleep with the window shut. What else can they do? Here are some cases each visited for over a year during the investigation:
1. Man, wife, and three children; one room, 12 feet by 10 feet; one bed, one banana-crate cot. Man a night-worker. Wages varying from 16s. to 20s. Bed, in which woman and two children slept all night, and man most of the day, with its head half across the window; cot right under the window.
2. Man, wife, and four children; one room, 12 feet by 14 feet; one bed, one cot, one banana-crate cot. Wage from 19s. to 22s. The bed and small cot stood alongside the window; the other cot stood across it.