I think if it had not been for the Women’s Guild I should have been in the asylum. It has helped me along. I was the first member made after the Committee was formed. I was secretary for over four years. Home duties were the cause of my resigning, but I never miss a meeting. I have only missed four times since I joined. I would not miss my Guild for anything but illness. I am pleased we are to have Moral Hygiene Classes. We are having a speaker on the subject a fortnight to-morrow.
I hope I have not taken too much of your valuable time in reading this. I am suffering to-day through my first being not properly attended to—at least, I think so; but that was because I had no means of paying a doctor, as they expect their fee, whether anything else is paid or not. I thank Lloyd George for maternity benefit, but I do wish the wife and mother could have been insured. Who works harder than us mothers? I often say we work twenty out of twenty-four hours very often. Some days I don’t sit down hardly to snatch a mouthful of food. There seems no time for women, but the men make time. If we did, we should have to be a day behind, and we don’t get much Sunday rest. I am forty-eight now, so I hope I’ll have no more.
Wages 17s. to 25s.; five children.
BRADFORD MUNICIPAL INFANT HOSPITAL.
(Reproduced by kind permission of the Bradford Health Committee.)
METHOD OF INQUIRY
The following questions, with a short letter, were sent to about 600 members who were, or had been, officials of the Women’s Co-operative Guild, of whose family histories nothing was previously known. The letter asked these members to bring out in their replies what they “have felt about the difficulty of taking care, the ignorance that has prevailed on the conditions of pregnancy, and how these conditions result in lack of health and energy, meaning that a woman cannot do justice to herself or give her best to her husband and children.”