Mrs. Brown goes in for a scheme of window decoration which shows the dirt less. She has a row of red and yellow cocoa tins to make a bright effect.
The merest outsider calling for the first time on Mrs. Smith knows her beforehand for the decent, cleanly soul she is, and only wonders whether the struggle of life has worn her temper to fiddle-strings or whether some optimistic strain in her nature still allows her to hope on. The same outsider looking at Mrs. Brown’s front door and window would realize her to be one who puts a good face on things, and, if it happened to be the right time of a day which was not washing-day, probably would expect, after the proper ceremonial had been gone through, to be asked in to sit behind the cocoa tins.
Who could tell anything half so interesting from the front doors of Mrs. Smythe and Mrs. Browne of Bayswater? Who could tell, on meeting each of these ladies face to face, more than her official age and the probable state of her husband’s purse?
The children of the street are equally different from one another both in character and appearance, and are often startlingly good-looking. They have shrill voices, clumsy clothes, the look of being small for their age, and they are liable to be comfortably dirty, but there the characteristics they have in common cease. They may be wonderfully fair, with delicate skins and pale hair; they may have red hair, with snub-nosed, freckled faces; or they may be dark and intense, with long, thick eyelashes and slender, lithe bodies. Some are apathetic, some are restless. They are often intelligent; but while some are able to bring their intelligence to bear on their daily life, others seem quite unable to do so. They are abnormally noisy. Had they been well housed, well fed, well clothed, and well tended, from birth, what kind of raw material would they have shown themselves to be?
CHAPTER II
THE PEOPLE
It was this question which started an investigation which has been carried on for four years by a committee of the Fabian Women’s Group. A sum of money was placed at the disposal of this committee in order to enable them to study the effect on mother and child of sufficient nourishment before and after birth. Access was obtained to the list of out-patients of a well-known lying in hospital; names and addresses of expectant mothers were taken from the list, and a couple of visitors were instructed to undertake the weekly task of seeing each woman in her own home, supplying the nourishment, and noting the effects. From as long as three months before birth, if possible, till the child was a year old, the visits were to continue. The committee decided that the wives of men receiving over 26s. a week were likely to have already sufficient nourishment, while the wives of men out of work or receiving less than 18s. a week were likely to be living in a state of such misery that the temptation to let the rest of the family share in the mother’s and baby’s nourishment would be too great. They therefore only dealt with cases where the wages ranged between 18s. and 26s. a week. After two years’ experience they raised the higher limit to 30s.
For the convenience of visiting it was necessary to select an area. The district described in the previous chapter was chosen because it is within reach of the weighing centre, where each infant could be brought once a fortnight to see the doctor and have its weight recorded. A member of the committee who is a doctor interviewed each woman before the visits began, in order to ascertain if her health and her family history were such that a normal baby might be expected. It was at first proposed to rule out disease, but pulmonary and respiratory disease were found to be so common that to rule them out would be to refuse about half the cases. It was therefore decided to regard such a condition of health as normal, and to refuse only such cases of active or malignant disease in the parents as might, in the doctor’s opinion, completely wreck the child’s chance of a healthy life.
Drink, on the other hand, the committee had expected to find a normal condition, and had proposed the acceptance of moderate drinking. Experience, however, went to prove that married men in full work who keep their job on such a wage do not and cannot drink. The 1s. 6d. or 2s. which they keep for themselves has to pay for their own clothes, perhaps fares to and from work, smoking and drinking. It does not allow much margin for drunkenness. A man whose wife declared him to be “spiteful” on Saturday nights was certainly the worse for drink on Saturday nights; but never once during sixteen months of weekly visiting did he omit to bring his wife her full allowance. He had kept his job for many years, and the explanation is that he was given tips at the theatre for which he worked. The tips he, not unnaturally, considered to be peculiarly his own.