I have just heard of the following case: A poor woman, only twenty-eight years of age, was confined last Wednesday with her seventh child, all living. She has been allowed to live until this affair is over in a deplorable cottage that is condemned. She has been living quite near for about four months, but I and my neighbours have never seen her nor the two youngest children, aged two and a half years and fifteen months, and we are now told they have no clothes to come out in. These two children were born in the workhouse infirmary. We hear that the father, a hay-carter, only did six weeks’ work in a twelvemonth. He must be a most brutal man. He was fighting the poor wife only a fortnight ago, as if she were another man. The poor thing lies there with only an old sheet and quilt for covering, and a poor woman who is attending to the other children has taken the blanket from her own baby to lend her. The very night the baby was born the midwife had to send for a policeman, the husband was carrying on in such a dreadful manner, and was worse afterwards, because they would not let him have the Insurance paper that had just been filled in by the midwife for the Insurance.
90. “I Overdid Myself.”
Judging from my own experience, a fair amount of knowledge at the commencement of pregnancy would do a lot of good. One may have a good mother who would be willing to give needed information, but to people like myself your mother is the last person you would talk to about yourself or your state. Although mother nursed me with my first child, I never said one word to her about it coming, except the bare date I expected. I felt I couldn’t, and outside people only tell you what garments you need, and just the barest information. I have learned the most useful things since my children have grown up. The youngest is nine. The idea that you impress the child all through the time with your own habits and ways, or that its health is to a great extent hindered or helped by your own well-being, was quite unknown to me.
At the time I fell with my second child we were in very bad circumstances, and feeding my first with a bottle, I stinted myself all I could to give him plenty; and having moved from one house to another two months before the second one was born, I overdid myself, with the result that I was bad for a week before he was born; and then, the birth being such a long time about, a clot of blood got down into my ankle, and before I got far over the confinement I was laid up with a bad leg, which the doctor said was due to the child being so long coming into the world. I should say I had a midwife this time, as I could not afford the doctor’s fee. Had the midwife called in the doctor, as she should have done, I might have been saved a lot, for my back has never been right since. Whenever I get very tired or not very well, I always feel it in the place where he seemed fixed. So I feel that if young mothers knew more of the need for care of themselves, and what should be done for them at the time of childbirth, much suffering could be saved.
Wages 18s. to 32s.; three children, one miscarriage.
91. “Better to have a Small Family.”
I have only had the three children, and have been married thirty-two years. In the first place, I was only twenty years old when I had my first baby, and must confess that I suffered a great deal through ignorance, but am pleased to say that I always had all that was really necessary, as regards doctors and nursing. I may say that my husband and myself were quite agreed on the point of restricting our family to our means. If we had not done so, I could not possibly have reared my eldest girl. I was able to have good medical advice and give her plenty of attention day and night.
I may say that I have disgusted some of our Guild members by advocating restrictions. I think that it is better to have a small family and give them good food and everything hygienic than to let them take “pot-luck.”
Wages £2 to £3; three children.