Wages 18s. to 22s.; eight children, two still-births.
50. A Farm-Worker’s Wife.
I have had four children; the oldest is now twenty-three, the next twenty-two, the next twenty-one, and the youngest fourteen. I might say that at the time my three eldest were born, my husband was working on a farm, and earning 18s. a week. When the last was born he had moved into rather better work, and earned 25s. a week. You may be sure after I had paid 3s. for a small cottage of two rooms and scullery, I had not much to spare, and of course doctors had to be paid. As for nursing, well, I did not get much of it, and I feel very deeply always the need of good nursing at these times. For years I suffered from what I feel was the want of proper nursing and nourishment. In fact I wonder sometimes even now if I have ever really got over it. When I think of it I feel I would do anything to support any measure that would help to secure that our daughters now shall not suffer as their mothers did before them.
Wages 18s. to 25s.; four children.
51. Shun Patent Foods.
As you will see (from my having lost six children in succession before I reared one), I was very unfortunate in my early married life, and at one time thought I was not going to rear any children. Congenital weakness may have had something to do with the failure to rear, through falling down a flight of stairs as a girl and dislocating my neck. This fall would have cost me my life but for the presence of mind of a young woman who picked me up. Using her hands and knees, she pulled my neck in, and undoubtedly saved my life. The doctor said I would suffer as a woman, for every organ internally was put out of place. My first set of children were weakly, and being unable to nurse them, I resorted to patent foods, which I am now firmly convinced did harm and not good, and in my opinion contributed to the convulsions. I found later that weakened milk, afterwards strengthened as the baby got older, was the best and safest food for infants brought up by hand. Undoubtedly the remaining ones progressed all right, and are sound and healthy. The fact that one girl put ten and a half years’ perfect attendance in at an elementary school speaks well for the change. The one I lost at seven weeks was easily accounted for, from the fact that at the time of birth I was suffering from the bloody flux, a very severe form of dysentery. In fact, the doctor said that if I had had Asiatic cholera I could not have been worse. You will readily see that that child had a very poor start in life, and waned away from birth. As a result of my experience, my advice is that mothers unable to suckle their children should shun all patent foods, rusks, etc., as they would shun the devil himself, for an infant will have to be born with a digestion like a horse if it is to digest solid food in the early stages. Thousands of infants are killed with mistaken kindness, and I am convinced that milk and milk only—human, if possible, and animal, if human fails—in a diluted state, is the only safe food for infants. I sincerely hope you will sound a note of warning against patent foods that cake to a solid lump in the infant’s stomach, the result being convulsions and death. This is my sincere belief resulting from bitter experience.
Wages 24s. to 30s.; ten children.
52. “Get Very Little Pity.”
I am the mother of a large family, but I am glad to say they are fast growing up, as their ages range from twenty-eight down to five years, so that I feel I can speak from experience, if anyone can. I must say that although it is a time that women suffer terribly, yet it is a time when they get very little pity, as it is looked upon as quite a natural state of things. I have myself got up in the morning, unable to partake of any breakfast, and tried to get about my work, and had to sit down in every chair I have got to with my brush in my hand. Then after confinement, as soon as I could sit up in bed, having such a large family, I have had to sit with my needle in my hand. But all this does no good, but only tends to keep a woman’s health down. When I had my first miscarriage—it happened in October—and I crawled about all the winter, and well on into the next summer, like a person in consumption; in fact, it was generally thought that I was. And, of course, all those months we were obliged to have a woman in, as I could do nothing. So I think if anything could be done to lessen the sufferings of the coming generations, I for one should be in great favour of it, as of course, if it is too late for me to benefit by it, I have daughters growing up, and sons’ wives to think of. Suffering as I have done, it is really a time when extra funds are needed, so that one could pay a little to have anything done, instead of having to do it themselves.
Wages 17s. 8d.; nine children, six miscarriages.