London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Wandsworth 1918

Annual report on the health, sanitary condition, &c., of the Borough for the year1918

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48
Report of the Medical Officer of Health.
the Medical Officer of Health, at the following scale of charges:—
Children over one year and under two years of age, 3s. 6d. weekly ;
over three years and under five years, 4s. to 5s. weekly, according
to age and parents' income.; mothers, 6s. weekly. The cost of
this should not exceed £100 per annum. Patients requiring skilled
nursing and attention cannot be admitted.
7.—Homes for Children of Widowed and Deserted Mothers
and for Illegitimate Children. There are at present no homes in
the borough for the above children. There are, however, two homes,
viz.:—The Lambeth Home, or Mothers' and Baby Hostel, at 11,
St. Nicholas Road, Upper Tooting, and the Church Army Home at
64, St. Ann's Hill, Wandsworth, in which unmarried mothers and
their infants are kept for at least three months. At the expiration
of that period, the child is boarded out or sent to some other home.
The Home at 11, St. Nicholas Road, has applied to the Local
Government Board for a grant in aid of its expenditure, and the
Health Visitors report that this Home is well kept and in every
way suitable. The estimated annual net expenditure of the Home
for the year ending 31st March, 1919, is £420.
The accommodation is sufficient for eight mothers and their
infants, and a payment of £2 2s. od. is charged for a stay of one
month. After that period the mothers make their own payments
(13s. per week) from wages earned.
The other home at 64, St. Ann's Hill, has not, up to the present,
made any application.
Arrangements might be made by the Borough Council with
one or other of these homes for the admission of necessitous cases
in this Borough, and the cost of this should not exceed £100 per
annum.
8.—Health Visitors. I am of opinion that in order to cope
with the additional work above mentioned it would be necessary
to appoint two additional Health Visitors.