That the children of the poor suffer from insufficient attention and care is not because the mother is lazy and indifferent to her children’s well-being. It is because she has but one pair of hands and but one overburdened brain. She can just get through her day if she does everything she has to do inefficiently. Give her six children, and between the bearing of them and the rearing of them she has little extra vitality left for scientific cooking, even if she could afford the necessary time and appliances. In fact, one woman is not equal to the bearing and efficient, proper care of six children. She can make one bed for four of them; but if she had to make four beds; if she even had to separate the boys from the girls, and keep two rooms clean instead of one; if she had to make proper clothing and keep those clothes properly washed and ironed and mended; if she had to give each child a daily bath, and had to attend thoroughly to teeth, noses, ears, and eyes; if she had to cook really nourishing food, with adequate utensils and dishes, and had to wash up these utensils and dishes after every meal—she would need not only far more money, but far more help. The children of the poor suffer from want of room, want of light, want of air, want of warmth, want of sufficient and proper food, and want of clothes, because there is not enough to pay for these necessaries. They also suffer from want of cleanliness, want of attention to health, want of peace and quiet, because the strength of their mothers is not enough to provide these necessary conditions.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CHILDREN
In this investigation forty-two families have been visited. Of these, eight, owing to various reasons, were visited but for a short time. Three were given up after several weeks, because the husbands objected to the household accounts being shown to the visitor; and here it would be interesting to mention that in three other cases, not reckoned in the investigation, the husbands refused after the first week for the same reason as soon as they thoroughly realised the scope of the inquiry. In four cases the babies were born too soon, and lived but a few hours. The investigation was primarily on infantile mortality, so that it automatically ceased with the child’s death. One family moved out of London before the child’s birth. There remain, therefore, thirty-four babies who were watched and studied by the visitors for many months. In every case but one these children were normal, and thriving at birth. Only one weighed less than 6 lbs.; four more weighed less than 7 lbs.; fifteen more weighed less than 8 lbs.; ten more weighed less than 9 lbs.; and four weighed over 9 lbs. The average weight at birth for the whole number was 7 lbs. 10 ozs. The child which weighed 5 lbs. 12 ozs. at birth was always sickly, and died of diarrhœa and sickness during the hot August of 1911 at the age of six months. Her mother was a delicate woman, and had come through a time of dire stress when her husband was out of work for four months before this child was born. A baby born since, which does not appear in this investigation, is now about five months old. Not one of the others seemed otherwise than sound and healthy, and able to thrive on the nourishment which was provided for their special benefit by the investigation. One child, however, a beautiful boy of five months, who weighed 7 lbs. 12 ozs. at birth, and 14 lbs. 14 ozs. at twenty weeks, died suddenly of bronchitis in December, 1910. His mother’s health record was bad. He was the sixth child she had lost out of eleven. She was an extraordinarily tidy, clean woman, and an excellent manager; but her father had died of consumption, and she was one of those mothers who economised in rent in order to feed her flock more adequately. She paid 5s. a week for very dark ground-floor rooms. The death of the child was so sudden and unexpected that an inquest was held. The mother was horrified and bewildered at the entrance of police officers into her home. She wrung her hands and repeated over and over, “I done all I could!” and never shook off the impression that some disgrace attached to her. The burial insurance money paid by the company was £1. Five shillings specially earned by the mother and 5s. lent by a friend brought up the amount to the necessary 30s., and the humble funeral took place. The child was buried in a common grave with seven other coffins of all sizes.
With these two exceptions, the babies all lived to be over a year. They usually did fairly well, unless some infection from the elder children gave them a bad cold, or measles, or whooping-cough, when some of them had a hard struggle to live, and their convalescence was much retarded by the close air and overcrowding of their unhygienic surroundings. Compared with babies who were fighting such surroundings without special nourishment, they did well, but compared with the children of well-to-do people they did badly indeed!
The ex-baby, where such a person existed, was nearly always undersized, delicate, and peevish. Apart from such causes as insufficient and improper food, crowded sleeping quarters, and wretched clothing, this member of the family specially suffered from want of fresh air. Too young to go out alone, with no one to carry it now the baby had come, it lived in the kitchen, dragging at its mother’s skirts, much on its legs, but never in the open air. One of the conveniences most needed by poor mothers is a perambulator which will hold, if possible, her two youngest children. With such a vehicle, there would be some sort of chance of open air and change of scene so desperately necessary for the three house-bound members of the family. As it is, the ex-baby is often imprisoned in a high chair, where it cannot fall into the fire, or pull over the water-can, or shut its finger in the crack of the door, or get at the food. But here it is deprived of exercise and freedom of limb, and develops a fretful, thwarted character, which renders it even more open to disease than the rest of the family, though they share with it all the other bad conditions.
There is no doubt that the healthy infant at birth is less healthy at three months, less healthy still at a year, and often by the time it is old enough to go to school it has developed rickets or lung trouble through entirely preventible causes.
To take several families individually, and go through their history, may serve as illustration of the way in which children who begin well are worn down by the conditions round them:
Mr. A., whose house was visited all the year of 1909, was originally a footman in one of the houses of a large public school. He seemed at the time of visiting to be fairly strong and wiry. He was about 5 feet 8 inches in height, well educated, and very steady. His wife had been a lady’s-maid, who had saved a little money, which she sank in a boarding-house kept by herself and her sister. The boarding-house did not pay, and when Mrs. A. married, the sister went back into the service of the lady with whom she had been before. Mr. A. left his position as footman, and became a bus conductor in one of the old horse-bus companies. When visited in 1909 he had been fifteen years in his position, but owing to the coming of motor traffic, his employers gradually ran fewer buses, and his work became more casual. He was paid 4s. a day, and got four days’ work a week, with an occasional fifth day. He had to present himself every morning, and wait a certain time before he knew whether he would be employed or not. All that he made he brought home. His wife, who by the time the visits began was worn and delicate, was a well-educated woman, and an excellent manager. She saved on all the 20s. weeks in order to have a little extra for the 16s. weeks. Her sister in service often came to the rescue when extra trouble, such as illness or complete unemployment, visited the household. There were five children after the baby of the investigation arrived. The eldest, a girl, was consumptive; the next, a boy, was short in one leg, and wore a surgical boot; the next, a girl, was the airless ex-baby, and suffered with its eyes; and only the new-born child, weighing 9 lbs., seemed to be thriving and strong. The average per week for food was 1s. a head for man, woman, and children. Presently the conductor’s work stopped altogether. No more horse-buses were run on that particular route, and motor-buses did not come that way. Mr. A. was out of work. He used to bring in odd sums of money earned in all sorts of ways between tramping after a new job. The eldest girl was put into a factory, where she earned 6s. a week; the eldest boy got up early one morning, and offered himself to a dairyman as a boy to leave milk, and got the job, which meant work from 6 a.m. till 8 a.m., and two hours after school in the evening. Several hours on Saturday and Sunday completed the week’s work, for which he was paid 2s. 6d. His parents were averse to his doing this, but the boy persisted. The family moved to basement rooms at a cheaper rent, and then the gradual pulling down of the baby began. The mother applied to the school authorities to have the two boys given dinner, and after some difficulty succeeded. The elder boy made no complaint, but the short-legged one could not eat the meals supplied. He said they were greasy, and made him feel sick. He used to come home and ask for a slice of the family bread and dripping. The father’s earnings ranged between 5s. and 10s., which brought the family income up to anything from 13s. 6d. to 18s. 6d. The food allowance went often as low as 8d. a week. A strain was put upon the health of each child, which reduced its vitality, and gave free play to disease tendencies. The eyes, which had been a weak point in every child, grew worse all round. The consumptive girl was constantly at home through illness, the boy had heavy colds, and the younger children ailed. Work was at last found by the father at a steady rate of 20s. a week. He took the consumptive girl from her work, and sent her into the country, where she remained in the cottage of a grandparent earning nothing. The boy was induced to give up his work, and the family, when last seen, were living on a food allowance of 1s. 6d. per head all round the family. The baby was the usual feeble child of her age, the children were no longer fed at school, and the parents were congratulating themselves on their wonderful good fortune.