“It has been suggested to us by persons experienced in the peculiar dangers of institutions for infants of tender years, that the high death rate, especially the excessive death rates after the first few weeks of life, right up to the age of three or four, may be due to some adverse influence steadily increasing in its deleterious effect the longer the child is exposed to it. In the scarlet fever wards of isolation hospitals it has been suggested that the mere aggregation of cases may possibly produce, unless there are the most elaborate measures for disinfection, a dangerous ‘intensification’ of the disease. In the workhouse nursery there is practically no disinfection. The walls, the floors, the furniture, must all become, year after year, more impregnated with whatever mephitic atmosphere prevails. The very cots in which the infants lie have been previously tenanted by an incalculable succession of infants in all states of health and morbidity.”
“Is the long undertaker’s bill to be deplored, considering the parentage of this class of children and the way the Guardians rear them?”
The nation wants the babies; indeed, to maintain its position it must have them, and “the tendency of nature is to return to the normal”—a scientific fact of profound civic importance. Besides, the Report says:—
“We find that it is generally assumed that the women admitted to the workhouse for lying-in are either feeble-minded girls, persistently immoral women, or wives deserted by their husbands. Whatever may have been the case in past years, this is no longer a correct description of the patients in what have become, in effect, maternity hospitals. Out of all the women who gave birth to children in the Poor-Law institutions of England and Wales during 1907, it appears that about 30 per cent were married women. In the Poor-Law institutions of London and some other towns the proportion of married women rises to 40 and even to 50 per cent.”
As to how the Guardians rear the babies that is another matter. But let us leave Institutions with the high walls, the monotony which stifles, the organization which paralyses energy, the control which alike saps freedom and initiation, and the unfailing provision of food no one visibly earns, so that we may go and visit some of the homes which the Guardians subsidize, and where they keep, or partially keep, out of the ratepayers’ pockets 163,801 children.
I.—A clean home this, mother out at work, earning 4s. 6d. by charing; the Guardians giving 7s. 6d. Four children (thirteen, nine, six, four), left to themselves while she is out, but evidently fond of home and each other. A small kitchen garden which would abundantly pay for care, but fatigue compels its neglect. No meat is included in her budget, and but 3d. a week for milk; but 12s. a week, and 4s. 6d. of it depending on her never ailing and her employers always requiring her, is hardly adequate on which to pay rent and to keep five people, providing the children with their sole items of life’s capital—health, height, and strength.
II.—A dirty home this, in a filthy court. The mother is out; the children playing among the street garbage. Their clothes are ragged, their heads verminous, their poor faces sharp with that expression which always wanting and never being satisfied stamps indelibly on the human countenance. One bed and a mattress pulled on to the floor is all that is provided for the restful sleep of six people; and 3s. a week is what a pitiful public subscribes via the rates to show its appreciation of such a home life. Waste and worse. The Majority Report quotes with approval the words of Dr. McVail: “In many cases the amount allowed by the Guardians for the maintenance of out-door pauper children cannot possibly suffice to keep them even moderately well”. This could be applied to Case I. “Many mothers having to earn their living ... cannot attend to their children at home, so that there is no proper cooking, the house is untidy and uncomfortable, and the living rooms and bedrooms unventilated and dirty.” This could be applied to Case II.
III. A disgraceful home this, best perhaps described in the words of the Majority Report:—
“A widow with three children, a well-known drunken character, was relieved with 3s., one of her children earning 7s. making a total of 10s. It was urged by the relieving officer that it was no case for out relief, as it was encouraging drunkenness and immorality.... It was held that the relief having been suspended for a month, she had suffered sufficient punishment. The officer said: ‘She still drinks,’ and that 4s. relief was given on 13 December, ‘to tide her over the holidays’. She had been before the police for drunkenness. It was considered (by the Guardians) to meet the disqualification of the case by reducing the relief to 3s. instead of 4s.”
IV. An immoral home this, again best described in official words:—